Ponzi vs. environment – who wins?

The following is borrowed and adapted from greenheartglobal blog

The common understanding amongst too many movers and shakers in our modern world, and those who blindly follow them, is that no matter how much garbage, pollution and climate altering gases we throw at it, the planet can absorb it - the natural systems of biodiversity will absorb the impact of our expansionism without damage and no matter how many resources we use up, there will always be more. Unfortunately, this is a grossly false understanding, the consequences of which will increasingly bite us in the very near future - not that the nibbling hasn't already started... This is why we’re now facing climate change and looming environmental devastation, resource shortages, famine etc.

David P. Barash’s, from The Chronicle of Higher Education had a very interesting article discussing how our relationship to the environment is akin to a Ponzi Scheme.

He makes the case that modern civilization’s exploitation of the natural environment is not unlike the way Madoff exploited his investors, predicated on the illusion that it will always be possible to make future payments owing to yet more exploitation down the road: more suckers, more growth, more GNP, based on the fraudulent idea of hope.

Here is a photo of the man after whom Ponzi schemes are named.

Here is the Wikipedia definition of a Ponzi Scheme to give you some context:

A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to separate investors from their own money or money paid by subsequent investors, rather than from any actual profit earned. The Ponzi scheme usually offers returns that other investments cannot guarantee in order to entice new investors, in the form of short-term returns that are either abnormally high or unusually consistent. The perpetuation of the returns that a Ponzi scheme advertises and pays requires an ever-increasing flow of money from investors in order to keep the scheme going.

The system is destined to collapse because the earnings, if any, are less than the payments. Usually, the scheme is interrupted by legal authorities before it collapses because a Ponzi scheme is suspected or because the promoter is selling unregistered securities. As more investors become involved, the likelihood of the scheme coming to the attention of authorities increases.

When you have read and digested this definition, see how closely the basic modus operandi of a Ponzi scheme matches that of the ideology of unending, ever-expanding economic growth. This is what our entire civilisation has been based on since the industrial revolution. Everything we know, every mainstream way of doing things is based on a set of beliefs that have passed their “use-by” date. Try reading “Collapse” by Jared Diamond to get an idea of how stupid humans can be in large numbers. To those who scoff at the idea that we could ruin the environment sufficiently to sabotage our civilisation – GET REAL!! Diamond’s book clearly shows that societies have done this very thing many times in the past at their local level. It’s just that now we’re again headed the same way but on a much larger scale that is entraining the whole planet.

Greenheart global finish off by saying:

Economy and Ecology follow the same fundamental principles. And one of those is that growth and development are finite. The naïve assumption of an infinite, resource rich environment is dangerous and must be addressed… It is widely assumed that a healthy, clean environment is affordable only when a country’s economy is strong. The reality is precisely the opposite: A strong economy is possible only when the environment on which it depends is healthy and strong. A related reality is that endless growth is literally impossible, for economies no less than for organisms, just as Ponzi schemes that depend on an endless supply of new subscribers are certain to be unsustainable. No one is innocent, and no one gets off the hook.

In the end, “we are also Ponzis and Madoffs who profit from economic schemes that are fundamentally unsustainable and thus, in the deepest sense, frauds. Madoff eventually got 150 years in the slammer and worldwide derision. What’s in store for the rest of us?”

Yet another in the "Crock of the Week" series

The "crock" video embedded below is about the "Oregon petition" which was supposedly signed by 32,000 “leading scientists”. It goes into some detail about the background of the initiators of the petition and their dubious values. It also touches upon the past links that some major deniers have to the tobacco industry’s previous long term denial (and deliberate deception about) the risks of smoking. It does not, however, mention probably the most misleading aspect of the petition, the whole text of which follows.

“We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, [sic] 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth's atmosphere and disruption of the Earth's climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”

Firstly, even the re-circulated (in 2007) petition still uses this text which is clearly severely out of date. Secondly, the major deceit comes in the misrepresentation of what can be called scientific philosophy in order to fool the public. When they use the term "convincing scientific evidence" in this way it should be taken to mean there is no final and certain proof that man made emissions will definitely cause catastrophic heating and disruption of the climate. This is true!! What deceitful denialist propaganda like this fails to tell the suckers is that only by "running the experiment", and seeing what actually happens, can there be final proof of the theories. By the time the theories are scientifically proved, if we are then undergoing catastrophic disruption, it will be a bit late to do anything about it.

Another crock that the author is probably working on is the "it's just a fallible computer model" canard. Senator Ferguson loves this one. I'll get around to commenting on that in due course but the basic riposte to this argument is this: seeing as we do not have perfect knowledge of how climate systems alter with varying inputs, nor could we without hundreds of years, possibly thousands, of actual experimental science, the computer models we have, flawed as they may be, are our very best idea of what may happen.

When the best available peer-reviewed scientific prognostication method states that there will be a problem that will range from moderate to catastrophic, it should be basic risk/benefit analysis that we use to show us what to do. Are you feeling lucky, punks?

It is not simply that there is one model anyway - there are at least twenty and they all broadly agree. Even if they are all wrong, policy makers and people generally, and deniers in particular, have to take into account that they can be wrong either way when deciding what to do to mitigate the risk. The models and majority science may be wrong and global warming could turn out to be benign, even ultimately beneficial, compared with our current climate - or it could turn out to be the end of our civilisation and the prelude to one of those mass extinctions of species that happen when some major outside disturbance assaults the planetary systems, like an asteroid slamming in. It would be pretty stupid of the so-called intelligent human race to do that sort of destructive planetary engineering all by itself wouldn't it? Acts of God are one thing but how much dumber would be this “Act of Man”? Jared Diamond would be able to write a much more dramatic sequel to "Collapse”!