The Military Techno-thriller: A History is now available in print and e-book formats from Amazon and other retailers.
Get your copy today.
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Friday, May 1, 2020
THE MILITARY TECHNO-THRILLER: A HISTORY
THE MILITARY TECHNO-THRILLER: A HISTORY takes a close look at this widely read but still little studied genre, tracing its origins from the Victorian-era invasion story, to its 1980s heyday as king of the bestseller list in the hands of authors like Tom Clancy, down to today, considering its interaction with other genres and other media throughout. In the process, this book also tells the larger story of how the ways in which we think about, imagine and portray war evolved during the last century to bring us to where we are now.
The Military Techno-thriller: A History is now available in print and e-book formats from Amazon and other retailers.
Get your copy today.
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The Military Techno-thriller: A History is now available in print and e-book formats from Amazon and other retailers.
Get your copy today.
Tweet
Monday, September 9, 2019
We Need To Talk About Geoengineering
Already the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has not only elevated temperatures and increased the frequency of extreme weather events to a disruptive, damaging degree. They have produced a variety of second-order effects which are, in turn, contributing to further warming, and the damage generally. The melting of the polar ice caps means open water where there was ice cover that had previously reflected solar radiation, and the release of methane previously trapped in permafrost, as well as directly raising sea levels. The increased droughts are killing forests that had been great carbon sinks, while the burning trees and rotting wood that result contribute yet more such emissions. And of course, there is the acidification of the carbon dioxide-saturated oceans. The most ambitious decarbonization of our energy and transport system, our industry and food production, is likely to still see positive emissions for decades to come, exacerbating the pattern.
The result is that anything remotely resembling a livable situation requires going beyond zero emissions. The two most obvious courses are negative emissions--the extraction of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere--and the management of solar radiation. Where negative emissions are concerned the most obvious courses are reforestation and afforestation, which can extend to wetlands and undersea kelp "forest" (the latter, offering the nice bonus of directly reversing one of the more worrisome consequences of warming, the acidification of the oceans), and management of the soil. Such natural means can also be supplemented by direct air capture technology, which currently operates on a small scale. Many of these options have the added benefit of generating useful products, with help notable as a potential source of animal feed capable of reducing the methane emissions of cattle-raising, and biofuels; while carbon recovered from the atmosphere can be converted into "buckytubes" with potentially wide applications, from computer chip architectures to large-scale construction and engineering.
Solar radiation management can be carried on through some of the same techniques, with greenery cooling the immediate area, while other techniques entail the reflection of a higher proportion of solar radiation into space. One promising approach is the dispersal of silica across ice to increase its reflection of the sun's rays. More broadly, the conservation and expansion of ice cover is useful in this regard, with the thickening of ice packs through water-spraying one plausible option. Another is the construction of "cooling tunnels" in areas subject to melting, such as Greenland, and the building of sills which prevent warm water from getting underneath them. Additionally melting glaciers and ice shelves can be kept from running off into the sea with the use of walls. (And of course, anything that preserves the ice ameliorates the risk of rising sea levels.)
All this, of course, does not exhaust the full range of options. Others, many more radical (like the fertilization of the ocean with iron, or the use of aerosols to reduce the entry of solar radiation into the atmosphere) also existing. They entail higher risk, but I do not rule them out, especially if the prognosis continues to worsen at the rate it has this past, exceedingly depressing decade. Still, the more modest options discussed above seem to me to offer an ample basis for a comprehensive geoengineering plan, without which any plan to redress climate change cannot be considered anywhere close to complete.
A 100 Percent Renewable Energy-Based Electric Grid?
6/28/19
A 100 Percent Renewable Energy World?
5/31/19
The Mendacity of the Renewable Energy-Bashers
5/31/19
Don't Believe the Trolls; 100 Percent Renewable Energy is Our Best Bet: Postscript
5/31/19
Reflections on the "Moral Equivalent of War"
5/31/19
Don't Believe the Trolls; 100 Percent Renewable Energy is Our Best Bet
4/23/19
My Notes on a Green New Deal
4/14/19
Societal Complexity, Diminishing Returns and a Green New Deal
4/14/19
The Moral Equivalent of War
4/13/19
The result is that anything remotely resembling a livable situation requires going beyond zero emissions. The two most obvious courses are negative emissions--the extraction of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere--and the management of solar radiation. Where negative emissions are concerned the most obvious courses are reforestation and afforestation, which can extend to wetlands and undersea kelp "forest" (the latter, offering the nice bonus of directly reversing one of the more worrisome consequences of warming, the acidification of the oceans), and management of the soil. Such natural means can also be supplemented by direct air capture technology, which currently operates on a small scale. Many of these options have the added benefit of generating useful products, with help notable as a potential source of animal feed capable of reducing the methane emissions of cattle-raising, and biofuels; while carbon recovered from the atmosphere can be converted into "buckytubes" with potentially wide applications, from computer chip architectures to large-scale construction and engineering.
Solar radiation management can be carried on through some of the same techniques, with greenery cooling the immediate area, while other techniques entail the reflection of a higher proportion of solar radiation into space. One promising approach is the dispersal of silica across ice to increase its reflection of the sun's rays. More broadly, the conservation and expansion of ice cover is useful in this regard, with the thickening of ice packs through water-spraying one plausible option. Another is the construction of "cooling tunnels" in areas subject to melting, such as Greenland, and the building of sills which prevent warm water from getting underneath them. Additionally melting glaciers and ice shelves can be kept from running off into the sea with the use of walls. (And of course, anything that preserves the ice ameliorates the risk of rising sea levels.)
All this, of course, does not exhaust the full range of options. Others, many more radical (like the fertilization of the ocean with iron, or the use of aerosols to reduce the entry of solar radiation into the atmosphere) also existing. They entail higher risk, but I do not rule them out, especially if the prognosis continues to worsen at the rate it has this past, exceedingly depressing decade. Still, the more modest options discussed above seem to me to offer an ample basis for a comprehensive geoengineering plan, without which any plan to redress climate change cannot be considered anywhere close to complete.
A 100 Percent Renewable Energy-Based Electric Grid?
6/28/19
A 100 Percent Renewable Energy World?
5/31/19
The Mendacity of the Renewable Energy-Bashers
5/31/19
Don't Believe the Trolls; 100 Percent Renewable Energy is Our Best Bet: Postscript
5/31/19
Reflections on the "Moral Equivalent of War"
5/31/19
Don't Believe the Trolls; 100 Percent Renewable Energy is Our Best Bet
4/23/19
My Notes on a Green New Deal
4/14/19
Societal Complexity, Diminishing Returns and a Green New Deal
4/14/19
The Moral Equivalent of War
4/13/19
Just Out: What is Neoliberalism?
What is neoliberalism? How does it stand in relation to the rest of the liberal tradition? Were Bill Clinton and Barack Obama (and the Democratic Party more generally) neoliberals, as many of their critics charge? And what has neoliberalism meant for the world?
Nader Elhefnawy's What is Neoliberalism? addresses, and answers, all of these questions—so critical to making sense of the world this past half century, and of currents events now.
Get your copy today.
Nader Elhefnawy's What is Neoliberalism? addresses, and answers, all of these questions—so critical to making sense of the world this past half century, and of currents events now.
Get your copy today.
Wednesday, September 4, 2019
Is Bernie Sanders a Socialist?
Socialism calls for the economy to be managed collectively, for the sake of the well-being of all of society's members; rather than its driving force being the decision-making of private actors pursuing private profit (what its proponents, not always coherently, call "the market").
By contrast, social democracy accepts the private, capitalist economy as its baseline, but simply takes the position that in real life markets require rules to permit them to function, and that optimal economic outcomes may come from channeling market forces; that there may be areas where markets simply do less well than alternative modes of organization, for example, in cases of natural monopoly; and that optimal social outcomes tend to require remedial action to protect the public against the harsher consequences of the market.
Thus one has regulations to protect the worker, the consumer, the natural environment; one has subsidy of various kinds; one has public services, going beyond the traditional minimum of armed forces, law enforcement, a postal service, infrastructure, to the realms of education and health and perhaps public ownership of enterprises like utilities or transport systems; one has a social safety net. Accordingly one also sees a fairly large state, supported by relatively high taxes. Still, the economy remains largely and usually private and proft-driven.
There is a world of difference between socialism as described here, and social democracy as described here. The really hardline anti-Communist may claim not to understand that difference, or make slippery slope arguments about any impurity of a capitalist society putting it on the train straight to Stalintown or somesuch. Yet, the fact remains that, whatever one makes of such arguments, they are two different social models, in their principles and their workings.
By and large what we in the United States are hearing described as "socialism" is just social democracy. Thus does it even go with Sanders' call for the expansion of the publicly owned electric grid on the basis of enlarged investment in renewable power in his vision of a Green New Deal. The end result would be that the American government would be the principal provider of electricity to the consumer. Yet, those who know something of the history of social democracy will remember that other states went rather further in this direction before--even post-war Britain, which far from building up a government-owned electric grid, did not hesitate to nationalize it, and the government become a majority share-holder in British Petroleum (and remain so until the privatizations of the Thatcher era).
Simply put, Sanders' plan in this area, and others, looks much more radical than it is because of how modest the social democratic element in the U.S. was even at its peak (the extent of regulation, the social safety net, public ownership never coming close to what was seen even in safely capitalist Europe), and because of how far to the right the Democratic Party has marched since the 1970s, especially under the Presidencies of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, a march that the party's neoliberal elite (epitomized by Nancy "Paygo" Pelosi) are utterly intent on continuing. The result has been to pit that elite against the party's more left-leaning base, a conflict which cost the party dearly in 2016. Should the elite get their way again, it seems likely the party will pay the price yet again in 2020.
Just Out: Complexity, Stagnation and Frailty: Understanding the Twenty-First Century
9/1/19
American Monarchists
8/31/19
Bernie Sanders' Green New Deal: A First Take, Part II
8/22/19
Bernie Sanders' Green New Deal: A First Take, Part I
8/22/19
My Posts on a Green New Deal
4/12/19
My Posts on Neoliberal Environmentalism
4/12/19
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By contrast, social democracy accepts the private, capitalist economy as its baseline, but simply takes the position that in real life markets require rules to permit them to function, and that optimal economic outcomes may come from channeling market forces; that there may be areas where markets simply do less well than alternative modes of organization, for example, in cases of natural monopoly; and that optimal social outcomes tend to require remedial action to protect the public against the harsher consequences of the market.
Thus one has regulations to protect the worker, the consumer, the natural environment; one has subsidy of various kinds; one has public services, going beyond the traditional minimum of armed forces, law enforcement, a postal service, infrastructure, to the realms of education and health and perhaps public ownership of enterprises like utilities or transport systems; one has a social safety net. Accordingly one also sees a fairly large state, supported by relatively high taxes. Still, the economy remains largely and usually private and proft-driven.
There is a world of difference between socialism as described here, and social democracy as described here. The really hardline anti-Communist may claim not to understand that difference, or make slippery slope arguments about any impurity of a capitalist society putting it on the train straight to Stalintown or somesuch. Yet, the fact remains that, whatever one makes of such arguments, they are two different social models, in their principles and their workings.
By and large what we in the United States are hearing described as "socialism" is just social democracy. Thus does it even go with Sanders' call for the expansion of the publicly owned electric grid on the basis of enlarged investment in renewable power in his vision of a Green New Deal. The end result would be that the American government would be the principal provider of electricity to the consumer. Yet, those who know something of the history of social democracy will remember that other states went rather further in this direction before--even post-war Britain, which far from building up a government-owned electric grid, did not hesitate to nationalize it, and the government become a majority share-holder in British Petroleum (and remain so until the privatizations of the Thatcher era).
Just Out: Complexity, Stagnation and Frailty: Understanding the Twenty-First Century
9/1/19
American Monarchists
8/31/19
Bernie Sanders' Green New Deal: A First Take, Part II
8/22/19
Bernie Sanders' Green New Deal: A First Take, Part I
8/22/19
My Posts on a Green New Deal
4/12/19
My Posts on Neoliberal Environmentalism
4/12/19
Tweet
Sunday, September 1, 2019
Just Out: Complexity, Stagnation and Frailty: Understanding the Twenty-First Century
Back in 2004 I published "Societal Complexity and Diminishing Returns in Security" in the journal International Security. (The journal is paywalled, but you can access a copy on my blog, here.)
The argument, which built on Joseph Tainter's thesis in The Collapse of Complex Societies, boiled down to its absolute basics, was that modern civilization was getting more complex, by and large in ways that were offering less and less benefit, leaving it more strained and more vulnerable to disruption, all as the costs of protecting it kept going up.
This sounds abstract, but there were fairly concrete ways in which this was the case. The ever-rising volume of trade, travel, communication, information production and processing show our society's increasing complexity. The profound slowdown in economic growth in recent decades, the routinization of colossal deficits, the explosion of debt, testify to a society whose resources are badly strained. And of course, the "tight coupling" of our contemporary systems, the preference for leanness in the name of "efficiency" (at the expense of resiliency) also suggested rising vulnerability. This was evident, too, in the standard deemed necessary for protection--with the old idea of nuclear deterrence giving way to an obsession with not deterring but neutralizing the abilities of "irrational" actors, which entailed such things as preventive wars and missile defense. Meanwhile, way below that threat level there was the burgeoning expenditure on law enforcement, emergency services, private security.
As is often the case with a piece of published research, it was a starting point for me rather than an end to a line of speculation, in particular the first aspect of it--the way society was getting more complex but stagnant and strained, as declining growth and rising deficits and debt suggested. One result was a more thoroughly worked out and heavily updated version of the argument in 2008 which I was releasing just as the mortgage crisis demonstrated the stagnation and frailty of the globalized, financialized, twenty-first century economy, with the paper. (You can find it here on my blog, a PDF version here at SSRN.)
Still, that was not the end of it. I returned to the same theme later, and more recently produced three papers, also published through SSRN--one offering a yet more thorough and more up-to-date version of that argument in early 2018; an accompanying piece which probed deeply into the multiple available data sets regarding post-World War II growth in Gross World Product; and finally one which endeavored to relate our economic stresses to the sharp deterioration of the "liberal international order" that respectable mainstream talking heads remark so much but do so little to help anyone understand.
My new book, Complexity, Stagnation and Frailty: Understanding the Twenty-First Century, brings this later research together in a single, convenient volume, in both Kindle and paperback editions, available at Amazon and other retailers.
Get your copy today.
Tweet
The argument, which built on Joseph Tainter's thesis in The Collapse of Complex Societies, boiled down to its absolute basics, was that modern civilization was getting more complex, by and large in ways that were offering less and less benefit, leaving it more strained and more vulnerable to disruption, all as the costs of protecting it kept going up.
This sounds abstract, but there were fairly concrete ways in which this was the case. The ever-rising volume of trade, travel, communication, information production and processing show our society's increasing complexity. The profound slowdown in economic growth in recent decades, the routinization of colossal deficits, the explosion of debt, testify to a society whose resources are badly strained. And of course, the "tight coupling" of our contemporary systems, the preference for leanness in the name of "efficiency" (at the expense of resiliency) also suggested rising vulnerability. This was evident, too, in the standard deemed necessary for protection--with the old idea of nuclear deterrence giving way to an obsession with not deterring but neutralizing the abilities of "irrational" actors, which entailed such things as preventive wars and missile defense. Meanwhile, way below that threat level there was the burgeoning expenditure on law enforcement, emergency services, private security.
As is often the case with a piece of published research, it was a starting point for me rather than an end to a line of speculation, in particular the first aspect of it--the way society was getting more complex but stagnant and strained, as declining growth and rising deficits and debt suggested. One result was a more thoroughly worked out and heavily updated version of the argument in 2008 which I was releasing just as the mortgage crisis demonstrated the stagnation and frailty of the globalized, financialized, twenty-first century economy, with the paper. (You can find it here on my blog, a PDF version here at SSRN.)
Still, that was not the end of it. I returned to the same theme later, and more recently produced three papers, also published through SSRN--one offering a yet more thorough and more up-to-date version of that argument in early 2018; an accompanying piece which probed deeply into the multiple available data sets regarding post-World War II growth in Gross World Product; and finally one which endeavored to relate our economic stresses to the sharp deterioration of the "liberal international order" that respectable mainstream talking heads remark so much but do so little to help anyone understand.
My new book, Complexity, Stagnation and Frailty: Understanding the Twenty-First Century, brings this later research together in a single, convenient volume, in both Kindle and paperback editions, available at Amazon and other retailers.
Get your copy today.
Tweet
Saturday, August 31, 2019
American Monarchists
A surprising number of Americans seem to romanticize Britain's upper classes, and its associated trappings, the ultimate symbol, idol, fetish of which is the monarchy. The tendency clearly extends far, far beyond the well-known Anglophilia of blue-blooded Eastern Establishment types who feel the more blue-blooded and Established for a trans-Atlantic connection to the even older Establishment in Britain. Even some who should know much better seem awed by the upper strata of British society, feel inferior to them. I remember, for instance, C.M. Kornbluth's rather gratuitous remark regarding George Orwell's literary craftsmanship in Nineteen Eighty-Four:
One reflection of this is that many Americans hear Received Pronunciation, and immediately assume great education and intelligence on the part of the speaker, necessarily superior to their own--just as the only school whose name can beat "Harvard" in the snob stakes among adherents of the Cult of the Big School that may be sending Aunt Becky to a very different kind of Full House than the one some of us grew up watching her in is "Oxford."
Another more significant reflection is that they think the feudal trappings of a British social system that, as H.G. Wells remarked in Tono-Bungay, was, and a century later remains, frozen circa 1688, are quaint and picturesque and essentially harmless, essentially not at odds with their cherished notion of Britain's as the Mother of Parliaments, which brought the light of democracy back into the world--and that, indeed, it is in poor taste, gauche, to criticize such things. However, the reality, as Adam Ramsay recently put it in his book, is a
Altogether it is a spectacle of backwardness, unearned and unjustifiable privilege, reaction, which the same people, seeing them in a nation of Africa or Asia (especially one which had suffered the kind of industrial hollowing out Britain did, living off of accommodating foreign financiers and the kind of balance of payments Britain has), would be an object of racist scorn, proof that "those savages" are unfitted for industry, democracy, modernity and the rest of modern life. And all of it has real-world consequences, with the Queen's Stuart-ish, pre-1688-ish suspension of Parliament to permit Boris Johnson's shoving a No-Deal Brexit down the throats of the British people only the latest and most recent example. (Ask the Australians what happened in 1975 for another.)
Online, at least, one seems to encounter a little more alertness to the fact from British observers.
One wonders if this will give American observers, or at least those who pretend to be at least a little bit progressive, similar pause where fawning over "the Queen" is concerned.
Alas, to go by the fawning over Prince Diana I see today, I do not think it likely.
James Bond and Britain's Small Wars
7/22/19
The New 007 Is . . .
7/22/19
Announcing . . . The Long Drawdown: British Military Retrenchment, 1945-1979
7/17/19
George Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier and Obesity
5/28/19
George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Note
10/27/18
Just Out . . . (The Many Lives and Deaths of James Bond, 2nd edition)
11/12/15
Just Out. . . (James Bond's Evolution)
10/10/15
Just Out . . . (The Forgotten James Bond)
9/24/15
Just Out: After the New Wave: Science Fiction Today
7/27/15
Reading H.G. Wells' Tono-Bungay
7/14/15
Preview Cyberpunk, Steampunk and Wizardry
7/9/15
The prose is the prose of a man with an English public school education, and I have noticed that these old Eton and Cambridge boys can write rings around anybody unfortunate enough not to have attended a public school and an ancient university.The lecture in which Kornbluth made this remark was, on the whole, deeply disappointing in its intellectual shallowness and sheer enervation (the title was "The Failure of the Science Fiction Novel as Social Criticism"), but this line was disgusting in its bowing and scraping before a pretension and snobbery that the individual object of his praise happily did not share (the more fortunately as the man who gave the world Oceania and The Road to Wigan Pier could not have produced his sterling work had he shared it). And it says a great deal that a writer as intelligent and talented and accomplished as Kornbluth (six decades on The Space Merchants and Gladiator-at-Law remain as relevant as ever, in their ways even cleverer and more relevant than Orwell's book) could have spoken it publicly in such a context.
One reflection of this is that many Americans hear Received Pronunciation, and immediately assume great education and intelligence on the part of the speaker, necessarily superior to their own--just as the only school whose name can beat "Harvard" in the snob stakes among adherents of the Cult of the Big School that may be sending Aunt Becky to a very different kind of Full House than the one some of us grew up watching her in is "Oxford."
Another more significant reflection is that they think the feudal trappings of a British social system that, as H.G. Wells remarked in Tono-Bungay, was, and a century later remains, frozen circa 1688, are quaint and picturesque and essentially harmless, essentially not at odds with their cherished notion of Britain's as the Mother of Parliaments, which brought the light of democracy back into the world--and that, indeed, it is in poor taste, gauche, to criticize such things. However, the reality, as Adam Ramsay recently put it in his book, is a
House of Lords where a combination of the only hereditary legislators in the world, the only automatic seats for clerics outside Iran, and hundreds of appointed cronies get a say on all the UK's laws. This valve in the British state allows the interests of the powerful to flow freely, while holding back progressive change.All this is combined with, as his colleague Laurie MacFarlane explains, "a head of state that is appointed not on the basis of merit, but by bloodline," with the whole operating under "an 'uncodified' constitution, which is to say that we don’t really have one." And it all gets crazier from there--the seven-eighths of British territory outside the British isles, "asymmetric devolution," and the rest, complemented and reinforced by the culture of the civil service, the culture of "empire-kitsch nationalism" sustained by the tabloids, which leads people to speak such stupidities as "We need a monarchy because we don't have a Hollywood!"
Altogether it is a spectacle of backwardness, unearned and unjustifiable privilege, reaction, which the same people, seeing them in a nation of Africa or Asia (especially one which had suffered the kind of industrial hollowing out Britain did, living off of accommodating foreign financiers and the kind of balance of payments Britain has), would be an object of racist scorn, proof that "those savages" are unfitted for industry, democracy, modernity and the rest of modern life. And all of it has real-world consequences, with the Queen's Stuart-ish, pre-1688-ish suspension of Parliament to permit Boris Johnson's shoving a No-Deal Brexit down the throats of the British people only the latest and most recent example. (Ask the Australians what happened in 1975 for another.)
Online, at least, one seems to encounter a little more alertness to the fact from British observers.
One wonders if this will give American observers, or at least those who pretend to be at least a little bit progressive, similar pause where fawning over "the Queen" is concerned.
Alas, to go by the fawning over Prince Diana I see today, I do not think it likely.
James Bond and Britain's Small Wars
7/22/19
The New 007 Is . . .
7/22/19
Announcing . . . The Long Drawdown: British Military Retrenchment, 1945-1979
7/17/19
George Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier and Obesity
5/28/19
George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Note
10/27/18
Just Out . . . (The Many Lives and Deaths of James Bond, 2nd edition)
11/12/15
Just Out. . . (James Bond's Evolution)
10/10/15
Just Out . . . (The Forgotten James Bond)
9/24/15
Just Out: After the New Wave: Science Fiction Today
7/27/15
Reading H.G. Wells' Tono-Bungay
7/14/15
Preview Cyberpunk, Steampunk and Wizardry
7/9/15
Thursday, August 22, 2019
Bernie Sanders' Green New Deal: A First Take, Part II
As noted in my previous post, I was impressed by the extent to which Bernie Sanders' Green New Deal acknowledged those important principles of scale, global thinking, pragmatism, and equity. What does it really consist of, however?
The centerpiece of the plan is a shift to renewable power as the basis of the energy and transport systems of the country (and it is on this aspect of the plan that I will focus here). The plan specifically envisions a massive, rapid expansion of electricity production capacity, combined with a "smart grid"; the electrification of homes and businesses currently using oil and gas for such purposes as heating; and transport fleets, the latter with the help of grants for trade-ins for individuals, school districts, transit agencies, and trucking, and the funding of a user-friendly charging infrastructure. (The plan also includes a substantial investment in electrically powered public transit and high-speed rail; the weatherizing of buildings, which will entail the construction and modification of a great deal of housing stock.)
As renewable energy production increasingly meets the country's energy needs, the plan also curbs fossil fuels production and consumption, with the latter sector paying significantly toward the progress of the former. The elimination of Federal fossil fuel subsidies (including the massive military expenditures devoted to protecting oil supplies and transport routes, far vaster than the official subsidies) and divestment from overseas fossil fuel project financing, the penalties for violations of environmental laws that the crippled regulators from the Reagan era forward failed to collect, taxes on polluters, and suits against the oil industry (like those against the tobacco companies) will provide much of the funding for the transition--which will, over time, substantially pay for itself. Far and away the most significant reason is that the Power Marketing Associations will build and operate much of the renewable energy-based power generation capacity, and collect the revenue--making this not some mere subsidy, but an investment by the government in what will become a major publicly owned enterprise. However, there will also be the economic boost from rising income tax revenue (and falling social safety net payouts) due to the colossal stimulus of the plan, which it is intended will create 20 million jobs.
Alongside all this, the environmental destructiveness of the fossil fuel production that will continue as the shift is carried through will be minimized, with the plan explicitly calling for bans on offshore drilling, fracking, mountaintop removal coal-mining, and the import and export of fossil fuels, and on new fossil fuel infrastructure permits on Federal land. It also calls for the repair and clean-up of existing fossil fuel infrastructure, both that in use and that which has been abandoned, to minimize its negative effects. Beyond these objects the plan will also see government enlargement of recycling efforts, not least to minimize the resource consumption required by the construction of renewable energy-production systems.
In considering all this the plan is notable for its comparative technological conservatism--its emphasis on the use of existing, proven technologies. However, it also acknowledges the areas where further research and development will be required, or helpful, specifying programs in the areas of energy storage; the decarbonization of shipping and aviation; and the production of alternatives to petrochemical-based plastics. Notable, too, is the extent to which it addresses other problems related to this transition, and to coping with climate change, including more general redress of an infrastructure which must be made more efficient and resilient, from the supply of potable water to the supply of broadband Internet (here, too, public ownership will be part of the plan), the strengthening of firefighting capabilities, the expansion of Brownfield and Superfund cleanup, and the protection of public lands.
Considering all this I must admit that I was impressed by not just the scale of the program, as previously acknowledged here, but also its comprehensiveness, its audacity, and its rigor, not a single thing so far striking me as obviously infeasible or even implausible from the technical standpoint given what I know of the issue, whether in regard to its aims or the means for realizing them. No plan previously presented by a national figure even begins to compare with it in any of these respects--and whatever I make of the details as they continue to appear, and we all continue to study them, I think I will still think what I do now, that finally we are starting to see some real acknowledgment of just what this job will take.
A 100 Percent Renewable Energy-Based Electric Grid?
6/28/19
A 100 Percent Renewable Energy World?
5/31/19
The Mendacity of the Renewable Energy-Bashers
5/31/19
Don't Believe the Trolls; 100 Percent Renewable Energy is Our Best Bet: Postscript
5/31/19
Reflections on the "Moral Equivalent of War"
5/31/19
Don't Believe the Trolls; 100 Percent Renewable Energy is Our Best Bet
4/23/19
My Notes on a Green New Deal
4/14/19
Societal Complexity, Diminishing Returns and a Green New Deal
4/14/19
The Moral Equivalent of War
4/13/19
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The centerpiece of the plan is a shift to renewable power as the basis of the energy and transport systems of the country (and it is on this aspect of the plan that I will focus here). The plan specifically envisions a massive, rapid expansion of electricity production capacity, combined with a "smart grid"; the electrification of homes and businesses currently using oil and gas for such purposes as heating; and transport fleets, the latter with the help of grants for trade-ins for individuals, school districts, transit agencies, and trucking, and the funding of a user-friendly charging infrastructure. (The plan also includes a substantial investment in electrically powered public transit and high-speed rail; the weatherizing of buildings, which will entail the construction and modification of a great deal of housing stock.)
As renewable energy production increasingly meets the country's energy needs, the plan also curbs fossil fuels production and consumption, with the latter sector paying significantly toward the progress of the former. The elimination of Federal fossil fuel subsidies (including the massive military expenditures devoted to protecting oil supplies and transport routes, far vaster than the official subsidies) and divestment from overseas fossil fuel project financing, the penalties for violations of environmental laws that the crippled regulators from the Reagan era forward failed to collect, taxes on polluters, and suits against the oil industry (like those against the tobacco companies) will provide much of the funding for the transition--which will, over time, substantially pay for itself. Far and away the most significant reason is that the Power Marketing Associations will build and operate much of the renewable energy-based power generation capacity, and collect the revenue--making this not some mere subsidy, but an investment by the government in what will become a major publicly owned enterprise. However, there will also be the economic boost from rising income tax revenue (and falling social safety net payouts) due to the colossal stimulus of the plan, which it is intended will create 20 million jobs.
Alongside all this, the environmental destructiveness of the fossil fuel production that will continue as the shift is carried through will be minimized, with the plan explicitly calling for bans on offshore drilling, fracking, mountaintop removal coal-mining, and the import and export of fossil fuels, and on new fossil fuel infrastructure permits on Federal land. It also calls for the repair and clean-up of existing fossil fuel infrastructure, both that in use and that which has been abandoned, to minimize its negative effects. Beyond these objects the plan will also see government enlargement of recycling efforts, not least to minimize the resource consumption required by the construction of renewable energy-production systems.
In considering all this the plan is notable for its comparative technological conservatism--its emphasis on the use of existing, proven technologies. However, it also acknowledges the areas where further research and development will be required, or helpful, specifying programs in the areas of energy storage; the decarbonization of shipping and aviation; and the production of alternatives to petrochemical-based plastics. Notable, too, is the extent to which it addresses other problems related to this transition, and to coping with climate change, including more general redress of an infrastructure which must be made more efficient and resilient, from the supply of potable water to the supply of broadband Internet (here, too, public ownership will be part of the plan), the strengthening of firefighting capabilities, the expansion of Brownfield and Superfund cleanup, and the protection of public lands.
Considering all this I must admit that I was impressed by not just the scale of the program, as previously acknowledged here, but also its comprehensiveness, its audacity, and its rigor, not a single thing so far striking me as obviously infeasible or even implausible from the technical standpoint given what I know of the issue, whether in regard to its aims or the means for realizing them. No plan previously presented by a national figure even begins to compare with it in any of these respects--and whatever I make of the details as they continue to appear, and we all continue to study them, I think I will still think what I do now, that finally we are starting to see some real acknowledgment of just what this job will take.
A 100 Percent Renewable Energy-Based Electric Grid?
6/28/19
A 100 Percent Renewable Energy World?
5/31/19
The Mendacity of the Renewable Energy-Bashers
5/31/19
Don't Believe the Trolls; 100 Percent Renewable Energy is Our Best Bet: Postscript
5/31/19
Reflections on the "Moral Equivalent of War"
5/31/19
Don't Believe the Trolls; 100 Percent Renewable Energy is Our Best Bet
4/23/19
My Notes on a Green New Deal
4/14/19
Societal Complexity, Diminishing Returns and a Green New Deal
4/14/19
The Moral Equivalent of War
4/13/19
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Bernie Sanders' Green New Deal: A First Take, Part I
As you are likely already aware, Bernie Sanders has released his document regarding a Green New Deal. In contrast with the resolution sponsored by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ed Markey earlier this year, which merely outlined the standards a plan of action ought to meet, but a detailed outline of the plan itself, presenting a comprehensive set of proposals.
As I write the plan has been available to the public for mere hours, and it is long and intricate, some 14,000 words. I do not claim to be anywhere near done close-reading and thinking about it, but it does seem possible to say some things regarding the plan in light of my earlier thoughts about such a Green New Deal.
I previously asserted here that any plan worthy of serious consideration must abide by four principles, namely scale, global thinking, pragmatism, and equity. This plan appears to abide by all four of them. The authors realize that serious action means nothing less than the production of 100 percent electricity from renewable energy by 2030, the fuller decarbonization of the energy and transport sector, and an overhaul of agriculture, which will not come cheaply, but will require that World War II-level effort of which so many speak but which few seem to actually understand. The plan acknowledges that the U.S. must do its part to solve the problem of climate change, but cannot do it alone, acknowledging the need to enlist the cooperation of the other major governments, and the revision of trade agreements, while aiding less developed nations in making the transition. Its authors do not hesitate to speak of the necessary means for carrying out such action, however squeamish orthodox opinion may be about them--going beyond pious talk of "supporting research" or somehow inducing business to do the job to public construction and ownership of the needed power capacity (via the Power Marketing Associations). And it is certainly attentive to equity, not only between rich countries and poor as acknowledged above, but in regard to working people who risk dislocation in the energy transition because of the sectors in which they happen to work; and the responsibility of the fossil fuel sector for the "externalities" it has generated.
All of that has naturally got my attention.
A 100 Percent Renewable Energy-Based Electric Grid?
6/28/19
A 100 Percent Renewable Energy World?
5/31/19
The Mendacity of the Renewable Energy-Bashers
5/31/19
Don't Believe the Trolls; 100 Percent Renewable Energy is Our Best Bet: Postscript
5/31/19
Reflections on the "Moral Equivalent of War"
5/31/19
Don't Believe the Trolls; 100 Percent Renewable Energy is Our Best Bet
4/23/19
My Notes on a Green New Deal
4/14/19
Societal Complexity, Diminishing Returns and a Green New Deal
4/14/19
The Moral Equivalent of War
4/13/19
What Might a Green New Deal Involve? A Few More Notes
4/12/19
What Might a Green New Deal Involve? Additional Notes
4/12/19
What Might a Green New Deal Involve? Some Notes
4/9/19
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As I write the plan has been available to the public for mere hours, and it is long and intricate, some 14,000 words. I do not claim to be anywhere near done close-reading and thinking about it, but it does seem possible to say some things regarding the plan in light of my earlier thoughts about such a Green New Deal.
I previously asserted here that any plan worthy of serious consideration must abide by four principles, namely scale, global thinking, pragmatism, and equity. This plan appears to abide by all four of them. The authors realize that serious action means nothing less than the production of 100 percent electricity from renewable energy by 2030, the fuller decarbonization of the energy and transport sector, and an overhaul of agriculture, which will not come cheaply, but will require that World War II-level effort of which so many speak but which few seem to actually understand. The plan acknowledges that the U.S. must do its part to solve the problem of climate change, but cannot do it alone, acknowledging the need to enlist the cooperation of the other major governments, and the revision of trade agreements, while aiding less developed nations in making the transition. Its authors do not hesitate to speak of the necessary means for carrying out such action, however squeamish orthodox opinion may be about them--going beyond pious talk of "supporting research" or somehow inducing business to do the job to public construction and ownership of the needed power capacity (via the Power Marketing Associations). And it is certainly attentive to equity, not only between rich countries and poor as acknowledged above, but in regard to working people who risk dislocation in the energy transition because of the sectors in which they happen to work; and the responsibility of the fossil fuel sector for the "externalities" it has generated.
All of that has naturally got my attention.
A 100 Percent Renewable Energy-Based Electric Grid?
6/28/19
A 100 Percent Renewable Energy World?
5/31/19
The Mendacity of the Renewable Energy-Bashers
5/31/19
Don't Believe the Trolls; 100 Percent Renewable Energy is Our Best Bet: Postscript
5/31/19
Reflections on the "Moral Equivalent of War"
5/31/19
Don't Believe the Trolls; 100 Percent Renewable Energy is Our Best Bet
4/23/19
My Notes on a Green New Deal
4/14/19
Societal Complexity, Diminishing Returns and a Green New Deal
4/14/19
The Moral Equivalent of War
4/13/19
What Might a Green New Deal Involve? A Few More Notes
4/12/19
What Might a Green New Deal Involve? Additional Notes
4/12/19
What Might a Green New Deal Involve? Some Notes
4/9/19
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Wednesday, July 31, 2019
The First Review is In! (The Military Techno-Thriller: A History)
My book The Military Techno-Thriller: A History hit the market earlier this month.
Fuldapocalypse Fiction has just reviewed it, and I am pleased to say its assessment of the book has been favorable.
Its review praised the book's history of the field as a "multi-century tour de force" of "not only the books themselves but also the cultural context behind them," even as it manages to be "both long enough to be . . . and short enough to be easily readable, making it the best of both worlds." Altogether Fuldapocalypse rated it
It's the more meaningful, too, for having come from this blog specifically. As a longtime reader (and fan) of Fuldapocalypse Fiction, and the affiliated Coiler's Creative Corner--both of which I regard as must-reads for those interested in military techno-thrillers, action-adventure ficion, and related thriller genres across the media spectrum from print to gaming--I have consistently found the author a deeply informed, incisive and tough (but fair) critic of work in the field.
The Military Techno-Thriller: A History
6/25/19
The Evolution of the Thriller
6/24/19
Announcing . . . A Century of Spy Fiction: Reflections on the Genre
6/17/19
Announcing . . . The Military Techno-Thriller: A History
6/6/19
THE MILITARY TECHNO-THRILLER: A HISTORY
6/6/19
The Action Film's Transitional Years: Recalling the 1990s
6/6/19
'Nineties Dreams
6/6/19
Looking Past the Hardcovers: Techno-Thrillers in Other Media
6/6/19
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Fuldapocalypse Fiction has just reviewed it, and I am pleased to say its assessment of the book has been favorable.
Its review praised the book's history of the field as a "multi-century tour de force" of "not only the books themselves but also the cultural context behind them," even as it manages to be "both long enough to be . . . and short enough to be easily readable, making it the best of both worlds." Altogether Fuldapocalypse rated it
an excellent book that examines an overlooked genre through a variety of interesting perspectives in a highly readable way. I cannot recommend The Military Techno-Thriller: A History enough for fans of the genre.That's very high praise from any source--and the more meaningful because so much of his characterization of the book ("long enough to be comprehensive . . . and short enough to be easily readable, making it the best of both worlds") is exactly what I aimed for.
It's the more meaningful, too, for having come from this blog specifically. As a longtime reader (and fan) of Fuldapocalypse Fiction, and the affiliated Coiler's Creative Corner--both of which I regard as must-reads for those interested in military techno-thrillers, action-adventure ficion, and related thriller genres across the media spectrum from print to gaming--I have consistently found the author a deeply informed, incisive and tough (but fair) critic of work in the field.
The Military Techno-Thriller: A History
6/25/19
The Evolution of the Thriller
6/24/19
Announcing . . . A Century of Spy Fiction: Reflections on the Genre
6/17/19
Announcing . . . The Military Techno-Thriller: A History
6/6/19
THE MILITARY TECHNO-THRILLER: A HISTORY
6/6/19
The Action Film's Transitional Years: Recalling the 1990s
6/6/19
'Nineties Dreams
6/6/19
Looking Past the Hardcovers: Techno-Thrillers in Other Media
6/6/19
Tweet
Monday, July 22, 2019
The Regime Change Fantasists
Those who flatter themselves that they are statesmen, looking at a regime they hate and want to overthrow, always imagine that it is just so much rotting wood which a swift kick would bring down, with the population subsequently welcoming them as liberators, making it easy and cheap for them to do as they please. They never imagine that the regime they so dislike may nonetheless command its people's loyalty, rallying them round the flag in a time of national crisis (even as they count on exactly that in their own country); that given a choice between an indigenous government, even one they would like very much to change, and the foreigners dropping bombs on them or marching into their streets with ideas of their own about how they will live, they will commonly choose the former rather than the latter (even as, again, they count on exactly that same inclination in their own country).
This is called "extreme stupidity." History is littered with its disastrous results. And its prevalence (such that the neoconservatives whose stock in trade this is are back) is a reminder, if any were needed, that politics is not a meritocracy, that those in charge are never the "best and brightest" as their fawning courtiers tell them and the world, but careerist mediocrities who picked their parents well, and played the filthy game of getting ahead slightly better (or at least, with a little more luck on their side) than the other careerist mediocrities who made up the competition.
The Cheap and Easy Option Never Is
7/22/19
A Return to the Draft? Crunching the Numbers
7/12/19
An Occupation of Iran? A Second Look at the Numbers--and Much Else
7/12/19
Assessing Iran's Air Defense Capability
6/28/19
An Occupation of Iran? Crunching the Numbers
6/28/19
Understanding Neoconservatism
6/28/19
Announcing . . . The Long Drawdown: British Military Retrenchment, 1945-1979
6/26/19
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This is called "extreme stupidity." History is littered with its disastrous results. And its prevalence (such that the neoconservatives whose stock in trade this is are back) is a reminder, if any were needed, that politics is not a meritocracy, that those in charge are never the "best and brightest" as their fawning courtiers tell them and the world, but careerist mediocrities who picked their parents well, and played the filthy game of getting ahead slightly better (or at least, with a little more luck on their side) than the other careerist mediocrities who made up the competition.
The Cheap and Easy Option Never Is
7/22/19
A Return to the Draft? Crunching the Numbers
7/12/19
An Occupation of Iran? A Second Look at the Numbers--and Much Else
7/12/19
Assessing Iran's Air Defense Capability
6/28/19
An Occupation of Iran? Crunching the Numbers
6/28/19
Understanding Neoconservatism
6/28/19
Announcing . . . The Long Drawdown: British Military Retrenchment, 1945-1979
6/26/19
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