Another Monday Message Board. Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.
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John Quiggin 
Worthwhile Swiss, Californian, giant clam initiatives
A couple of boring headlines.
“Swiss Post makes deliveries with new electric vans” https://mobilityportal.eu/swiss-post-new-electric-vans/
It is scarcely shocking that Swiss Post is getting its electric transition right, but there are always things to be learned from observing competent people at work. For my money, these include:
1. Setting realistic but ambitious goals and targets: “CO2-free in its in-house operations from 2030 and reaching net zero from 2040.”
2. Splitting the problem into two, letters and small parcels delivered by scooters, and larger parcels and bulk mail, delivered by vans, with completely different strategies.
For the scooters, Swiss Post simply replaced the entire fleet of 6,000 gasoline models with electric ones (actually trikes with trailers): https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Gereon-Meyer/publication/321295540/figure/fig72/AS:564683137654826@1511642359875/ The-Kyburz-DXP-continously-replaces-petrol-scooters-at-the-Swiss-Post-photo-Kyburz.png ). This was complete by 2017. All over Switzerland, these must now be a familiar sight.
For the vans, Swiss Post took a very centralised modular approach, replacing complete fleets city by city. Zurich and Bern were first in 2023, Geneva and Basel have been added this year. These are the four largest cities, IIRC the only ones with significant metropolitan areas. There is only one more city with a population over 100,000, Lausanne. This decision has great advantages. Starting with the biggest cities gives a large big hit to emissions, and allows early economies of scale. Going modular – as recommended by megaproject guru Bent Flyvbjerg ( https://hbr.org/2021/11/make-megaprojects-more-modular ) – means that learning can be rapid. We can be pretty sure that Basel was much easier to convert than Bern.
My only beef with the plan is that implementation is now running ahead of targets. There are no technological and few organizational obstacles to accelerating the timetable. Falling battery prices are making the economics look better all the time. Electric vehicles are nicer and healthier to drive, and we can assume the workforce is on board.I expect that Swiss Post will be internally at net zero by 2028 – as a postal service. It also runs a large fleet of rural buses, of which only 100 will be electric in 2024, with a pedestrian net zero target of 2040. Buses in mountains do need a lot of power and the Swiss have reason to be picky.
From California, “Berkeley Plans New Strategy To Eliminate Methane” (https://cleantechnica.com/2024/09/05/berkeley-plans-new-strategy-to-eliminate-methane/ )
Steve Hanley: “Five years ago, Berkeley introduced the nation’s first ban on methane gas hookups in new construction. […] Praised as an innovative way to cut carbon emissions and reduce air pollution by environmental advocates, Berkeley’s gas ban inspired similar laws in dozens of California cities [..]. But in 2023, the policy was struck down by the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit [JW: notoriously packed by Trump] following a lawsuit from the California restaurant industry. In January, the same court declined to revisit its decision, dealing a final blow to the city’s effort.[…] Undaunted, Berkeley thinks it has found a new lever to move its agenda forward [….] On November 5, residents of Berkeley will vote on a ballot measure that proposes taxing the owners of buildings of 15,000 square feet or larger based on the amount of natural gas consumed each year.”
The legal strategy is based on longstanding jurisprudence, even from Trump judges, allowing sin taxes on alcohol and tobacco. It’s a pity the proposal excludes houses and small fast food joints: a comprehensive flat tax on methane could be collected directly from the gas company, as with alcohol, but the homeowner lobby is all-powerful. The proceeds of the tax will be earmarked for “retrofitting homes and buildings in the city with electric HVAC and appliances”, doubtless larded with cutting-edge PC spin about disadvantaged and minority communities. If approved, it should be pretty effective – in cutting methane leaks, not virtue signalling on LGBTQ+ rights. Alcohol and tobacco are pleasant and addictive; nobody has strong feelings about gas apart from a few chefs who dislike induction cooktops because Tradition. So shifting incentives ought to work. Berkeley can also turn up the heat with annoying safety inspections.
Decarbonising buildings is straightforward technically, but politically it’s trench warfare. Berkeley’s obstinacy is a salutary model.
I was going to keep you entertained by news of PV research drawing inspiration from the quantum efficiency of giant Pacific clams in harvesting light energy underwater. https://physics.aps.org/articles/v17/106 But whether humanity wins or loses in the ongoing energy transition race (megathlon?) depends very little on photosynthetic symbiotic algae and a great deal on postal vans and methane taxes.
It should not really be necessary to point this out, but homo sapiens is not very like the giant clam (genus Tridacna) , except for longevity, weight and laziness. Clams start their sedentary life as pure filter feeders, but as they mature they depend increasingly on symbiotic photosynthetic algae housed in their gills. Clams open up in daylight to catch more sun, but the catchment area is constrained by their hard shells that cannot photosynthesize. The only way evolution could help them to harvest more solar energy has been to increase efficiency, so that’s what it’s done.
In contrast, human hunters of solar energy are not materially constrained by available space. We can very easily get all the energy we are ever likely to need from silicon pv panels at the current 21% efficiency. That will use only a fraction of the available and unloved deserts, car parks, industrial roofs, reservoirs, canals, roads etc. etc. If we really needed to, we could pave over the Barrier Reef and the Red Sea with floating PV and steal the clams’ sunlight. But this vandalism won’t be necessary, and these cute layabouts are safe.
Monetary policy has always had a narrow focus. The statutory aims of monetary policy are contradictory. On the one hand it aims to achieve stable prices; but on the other it is tasked with maintaining stable employment. In times of global inflationary pressures, these two aims may be mutually exclusive. Often the central bank will split the terms for completing these aims. In the short run they will persue price stability by raising official interest rates. This makes stable unemployment almost impossible to achieve in the short run. So central banks make this their long run aim. But as John Maynard Keynes once famously quipped
”In the long run we are all dead.”
Monetary policy has failed often in trying to achieve its long run aim; once a deep recession has set in to an economy or global environment. The metaphor of pushing sting uphill is used to emphasise how hard it is to restore lost jobs with only one lever of policy action.
In trying to stabilise the sick economy, monetary policy risks putting it in to a coma. This is why fiscal policy must, at some times, act to restore stable employment after a deep recession.
In the debate with Trump, Kamala Harris defended fracking. That summed it up for me. Of course, I don’t want Trump to win. That would be disastrous. Of course, I want Kamala Harris to win. Her, or rather her backers’, policies are more enlightened across the board. It’s not difficult after all, to be more enlightened than a sociopath.
But if Harris and her backers are defending fracking and by extension, pro fossil fuel policies in general at this eleventh hour, then this simply demonstrates our situation is hopeless. CO2 emissions will never be reduced in time. Climate heating will run away. And civilization will collapse. It’s as simple as that. It’s a done deal now.
Leon Simons tweeted on Sep 12:
Also, Leon Simons tweeted on Sep 12, beginning with:
The Earth’s Energy Imbalance has doubled in the past 20 years. We should expect accelerated warming. Surface air temperatures are showing signs of accelerated warming but it may be a while for it to be statistically significant enough to draw hard conclusions.
There’s another post at the Crude Oil Peak blog by Matt today (Sep 12) headlined OPEC12 peak 2016-2018. It seems data indicates OPEC12, which includes the five foundation members Islamic Republic of Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, plus later members Libya (1962), the United Arab Emirates (1967), Algeria (1969), Nigeria (1971), Gabon (1975), Equatorial Guinea (2017) and Congo (2018), is showing crude production peaked around 2015-2018. Matt looks at crude production country by country and which events shaped the production profile. The conclusion is:
The Albanese government’s aged care reform package will be an even bigger disaster than the NDIS. The NDIS has been and is being rorted for billions per year and Aged Care provision will be rorted for even more. That is my prediction.
“… criminals are rorting the National Disability Insurance Scheme and it’s costing taxpayers billions of dollars. In some cases, Australians with disabilities are being manipulated into helping criminals steal money. The scheme was set up to help vulnerable Australians but the government acknowledges maybe 10 per cent of the scheme around 4 billion dollars this year, is being ripped off.” – ABC.
The entire model of paying private providers to provide health, welfare and education services has been and continues to be an utter disaster. Theft by all forms of rorting and outright criminality has been and continues to be chronically in the many billions. The services provided (if provided at all) are almost always sub-standard and always over-priced, often by multiples of a true fair price.
The private health providers are slavering at the prospect of the free government (and consumer/retiree) money. They are saying, essentially, “now we can invest”. They only invest if they get free money; subsidies from government and dragooned “user pays” money from not-rich pensioners/retirees whose entire (relatively small) nest-eggs and home equity will be vacuumed up by the new system. When wealthy private enterprise people are happy with government legislation it means they are getting what they want. Essentially, that always means they are getting large subsidies to increase their profits.
The scheme to keep aged people, old people, in their own homes by putting in semi-subsidised and semi user-pays systems will also be rorted. A new and even more rapacious “home service” industry will spring up, worse than the one which already exists. There will be poor servicing, lack of oversight, lack of service compliance checks. Lack of health and safety checks for the elderly, the old, whatever term you like to use. There will be elder-abuse, elder-exploitation, theft from elders. The incentives to cut corners, cheat, steal and abuse vulnerable people will be high and as I say there will be little to no effective oversight.
So long as we keep the private providers model for all these services, for health, welfare and education, the criminal rorting will multiply and the services provided will decline continuously and likely precipitously. I predict an eventual complete catabolic collapse of our entire society on this path, with inequality continuing to skyrocket while and so long we are on this neoliberal trajectory.
Until and unless we dump neoliberalism, tax capitalist profits properly and fully re-nationalise natural monopolies, health, welfare and education, we will remain on this collapsing trajectory. The toll on human life and health, and on the climate and environment too, will be enormous.
To introduce a very valid analogy, catabolism, in biology, is the breakdown of complex structural molecules in living organisms to form simpler ones, together with the release of energy. It is also termed destructive metabolism. Catabolism is distinct from the breakdown of complex ingested molecules in the digestive tract and when such products or their downstream products are distributed and utilised elsewhere in the body.
Catabolism of the body politic, the body social, the body institutional and the body infrastructural means the breakdown of the entire legacy of society; the breakdown of all its legacies, the breakdown of everything good that it ever built. This is true whilst not implying that everything the society built was good. Much, but certainly not all, of what Australia built was good. Now, all that is good is being catabolised by neoliberalism for elite profits. Everything that was good about our system is being broken down for elite profits. It’s the same as burning the furniture for firewood during a cold winter, then burning the floor boards, then burning the weatherboard cladding, then burning the structural timbers and so on. There will be nothing left but dead people in the mud and naturally selected, homeless, but still tough and resilient living people in the cold rain. Then I guess they will turn up to tear the mansions down.
Hiya James!! Lovely to see you as always.
It’s interesting what you say about stoves – it’s my impression that this is one of the rare times when it’s possible that some quality may be lost in the transition. (I wouldn’t really know, myself. I’ve almost always had electric stoves, and I am not a gourmet, either.) Still I know that barbecue often tastes quite marvelous! Of course, it is a rare treat. (Well not least because I don’t know how to work it and it’s intimidating.)
Also, candles and fires have a visceral attraction. For various reasons, these too are rare here.
Whereas … on the happy day when we get electric appliances instead of our gas clothesdryer and water heater, no quality will be lost. When will this happen? Well … I am between jobs, and the ones we have still work. (Meanwhile, I air dry most everything except socks and towels.) I never thought of them as “methane” btw – and, I’m not even sure what kind of gas it is, actually.
I don’t know if it makes me a materialist? But to me, most of these issues are financial, not political. Who will pay and how much? The significant confusion of which one to buy. The fact that appliances are cr*p now and don’t last 10 years. Etc etc. And, would it make more sense to try to join a community solar group, or try to get panels ourselves? I lose focus very quickly. Maybe when Ikea sells panels, I will get some.
Want to hear a weird factoid? I was helping a friend research heat pumps, and the hvac person said that we were not eligible for a rebate because she wasn’t replacing a gas system. However, I do not know if this is correct, bc her old system used freon. Isn’t that a gas? (This system is totally broken and is never used now.) Anyway, it is expensive to do. There are tax credits but somehow a rebate seems more appealing. I will keep trying to get somewhere with all this. But, I am not good at it. (Maybe no one is?)
I like to think that there are usually two ways to solve a problem. One is the quick, expensive way – throw money at a problem and it goes away (either via personal, or hired efforts). The non-exorbitant way always seems complicated and slow and usually frustrating. And uncertain. But as you say, perhaps that is only in the beginning.
Hope is alive.
South America is burning.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/no-one-should-be-surprised-that-south-america-is-burning/ar-AA1qxfz2
The continent has had a record number of forest fires this year. Large swathes of the continent normally considered wet, rainy environments, at least in the “traditional” wet season, are suffering climate change induced droughts. The major ecosystems of South America are rapidly collapsing under this pressure. This signals the indisputable start of runaway climate change for planet earth. It signals a new rate of continuous catastrophic change in climate and its effects which will be noticed and felt by humans globally in spans measured in years, not even spans measured in decades.
I guess people reading my last comment will think I am being completely negative and unhelpful. I don’t intend to be so. I think our only chance is for people to be shocked out of their complacency and misplaced optimism about our trajectory. Our only chance is for people to realise that we are in a “one minute to midnight” crisis.
Of course, words are very, very unlikely to produce this realisation in people either via a basic factual base laced with alarming rhetoric or with reams of incontrovertible hard facts delivered in measured, logical argument. It seems the only thing that will shift the needle of public opinion and political/elite willingness to act will be a series of salutary natural catastrophes.
Nothing else is working to change our trajectory: not alarmism, not optimism, not democracy, not economics, not political economy, not moral suasion, not honeyed words, not vinegar and vitriol. Nothing.
In this situation, the least that honest, informed prominent people can do, in my opinion, is tell the hard truths about how dangerous our global situation really is. When the salutary natural catastrophes commence, as they inevitably will, those who told the truth might have some standing and might be listened to from that point. Or they might blamed for the whole thing, given the irrationality of humans. Death or glory, eh?