Amory Lovins on Winning the Oil End Game

His book

Corporations Having Individual Rights

excerpt from Paul Hawken's "Ecology of Commerce."

The Civil War had transferred great amounts of wealth to corporations, and with this concentration of power they began to clamor for "equal rights" and new simplified chartering laws that would treat every corporation equally. (This is the means of incorporation we have today: anyone can do it, and for a nominal fee.)

There quickly followed a wholesale reinterpretation of the Constitution by the judiciary, granting new powers and rights to corporations. The primary thrust behind these precedents was the "due process" clause of the Fourteenth Ammendment. This amendment protected the rights of freed slaves, but it was subsequently interpreted to give corporations the same status before the law as that of a natural person. On that basis, judges reversed hundreds if not thousands of state laws controlling wages, working conditions, ownership and corporate tenure.

Contributions to Politicians and PACs and Special Interest Groups

I was thinking about how corporations make these contributions to promote their interests, and it is fundamentally on a different scale from contributions from civic groups. When an individual makes a contribution to a PAC, the money comes out of his or her salary, but a corporation makes contributions on behalf of its employees, and it comes out of all their salaries. However, the employees themselves have no say in this. My friend was telling me about fiduciary duties, which may present a legal framework for corporate actions. Perhaps I'd be interested in reading more about corporate law.

Green Fees and Government Programs

While it seems to make sense that increasing the costs of polluting would optimize the market for sustainable business, it contradicts the message of the Breakthrough Institute which is that making dirty energy more expensive is politically impossible. Instead, they champion government investment in clean energy research and in general, they believe that increasing people's living standards will cause them to have fewer children and also care more about the environment. This does not explain how the economy and industrial processes will become more sustainable, though.

I should also write up a summary of the Administrative Law class I took and try to describe the Ashford school of thought.

Global Frequency Told Me

Whooo 8 bit reggae music.

Review of Ecology of Commerce

I just finished The Ecology of Commerce by Paul Hawken, 1993.

It was really interesting and had a lot of good stuff. It is also popular within the sustainability and environmentalism community so in that context, it is important background reading to better understand where the movement is today.

Stylistically, Hawken seems like he wants to talk about the facts and make rigorous policy arguments, but he frequently slips into flowery righteous and tender prose. This sort of makes it difficult to read since there is a lot to wade through and since his points are not as salient or structured as it could be.

I'm going to do a basic overview of his main points, and then list some of his case studies and projects that I want to investigate more.

1. Main point of the book - we need a "restorative economy." In other words, for our processes to produce no waste. Every by-product of industry should be the inputs for another process just as all natural processes are cyclical.

2. As a corollary, the economy does not NEED to grow. Hawken hates the argument that economic growth is needed in order to have enough profit to protect the environment, asserting that it is a contradiction. I was glad that he said "'Environmental' companies that limit the damage done to the environmnet and to human beings by other companies, stricktly speaking, do not add value. Reducing the harm caused by 'growth' is a self-cancelling contribution at best, no more a factor in real economic growth than the rescue of a man who has been thrown overboard is an act of mercy."

3. He makes a good case for why "cleaning up" our dumps and chemical byproducts is a losing strategy since it usually just involves putting chemicals such as organochlorines in barrels and then burying them. Incinerating our trash is especially bad since it creates even more "dioxins." We have no way of detoxifying them.

4. Describes and promotes "industrial ecology" (Robert Frosch and Nicholas Gallopoulos in "Strategies for Manufacturing."), "dematerialization" (Buckminster Fuller), and "intelligent product design" (Dr. Michael Braungart and Justus Englefried of the EPEA in Hamburg, Germany). Braungart and Englefried had a idea that Hawken likes a lot, which is to have the state rent space in "parking lots" to companies to temporarily store their waste. This way, the waste remains tied to the original polluter instead of being left to local communities. It would also make sense to have a severence tax for virgin resources since currently multinational companies get resources from developing nations in a sort of perpetuation of colonialism and exploitation.

5. Hawken is adamant that the costs of pollution are internalized by companies in order to drive innovation and the creation of a truly sustainable marketplace. He refers to this as Pigou's solution, and it basically amounts to imposing hefty taxes on carbon and pollution. The idea is that a market can only function if all the costs to humanity and the environment is reflected in its price.

6. Globalization has been bad for developing peoples and the environment. Hawken talks about the various treaties and how they make it difficult for local communities to protect themselves. He also summarizes the history of the rise of the corporation and how they have become much more powerful than individuals to the detriment of people and the environment. They have taken over the political system and it is up to grass roots efforts to take it back from the ground up.

7. Small businesses have an opportunity to explore new restorative business models and practice industrial ecology to one day replace the current corporations which are resisting change.

8. Hawken describes his view of government's role. "Society can be viewed as encompassing two moral syndroms, the 'guardian' (government) and the 'commercial.' (trading) " (Jane Jacobs in Systems of Survival). Governments should impose green taxes that must be revenue neutral.

9. Utlities should be created as a good system for meeting the needs of the people while stewarding the environment.

Examples/proposals
- industrical ecology - Kalundborg, Denmark started by the Asnaes Power Plant in the 1980s.
- utilities - "negawatts" - Amory Lovins
- green fees - have the UN tax military sales

irony

MIT Radio

Heard a good station yesterday on WMBR, Global Frequency. I started getting my groove on in the car. Kind of embarrassing, kind of unsatisfying since I am sitting in a car and can't use the rest of my body, but also makes me feel kind of like a puppet since I suddenly don't have control over my body.

Update: Oh wow, I just found out that this station is run by Beth Coleman, and MIT professor in Comparative Media Studies, her husband and her students. No wonder it's so good. She also runs Soundlabs, where they all make music.

Rediscovering the Joy of Grocery Shopping

Thank you Whole Foods, for making me excited about grocery shopping again, even though I always end up overspending. (Turns out, I spend about $600/mo on food). Of course, I'll always really like shopping at Asian grocery stores like Kamman, but Whole Foods is definitely the best for white people food.

I definitely have a style of shopping, which is to browse and get whatever looks good and can fullfill my food needs. By food needs, I'm talking about planning out my meals for upcoming days while I'm shopping. Like, oo, weird mushrooms, maybe I can use it for dinner today and tomorrow if I also get some beef. I need something for lunch, ooo deli meat. I should get some bread, then. Shopping with a list totally gets me down. I sort of wonder if this is a genetic thing because I am pretty sure this is how my mom shops. In fact, I think my dad does it, too. They are better at it than me, though. The problem for me is that I tend to forget what my ten day forcast was by the time I get home. The planning while shopping part is such a thrill, but then I often end up throwing a lot of stuff away since I forget about them and they go bad. On the other hand, this happens less if I have plans for the things that are exciting, not like, oh I will probably need a veggie later in the week, I should get broccoli.

Plus, at Whole Foods, everything looks so delicious with their fancy yuppie packaging. But also, I think their produce and meats do look and taste better, but maybe I'm just fooling myself. I also like the variety, especially the availability of higher-end stuff like Applegate deli meats.

Weekend Circuits?

something to play around with. using an LED to sense and emit light.