Climate loss, grief and migration

The climate we grew up with is leaving. International action to slow climate chaos is not really working. National action and market innovations are having some useful impacts, but they are far too few on the mitigation side and far too weak on the adaptation side. We are going to face consequences with weak defenses.

When I moved to Amsterdam in 2010, I joked that it was going to get “California weather” due to climate change. 

For me, these climate-change impacts are somewhat mitigated by my history of living in different places (in California, traveling, in the Netherlands), but I bet you homebodies have noticed that the climate of your youth is changing:

  • The flowers and trees are responding differently.
  • The rain and cold are coming in stronger or weaker.
  • The heat is more intense, for longer.
  • New animals are arriving while old ones disappear.

These changes are affecting holidays, foods, work, play and even chores.

Do you notice these changes? Which are good? bad?

My one-handed conclusion is that all of us will need to give up on some of our values and expectations, while some of us will need to move, either for comfort or survival.

Is this the first step in our return to a nomadic life?

Interesting stuff

  1. Watch a fact-checked (=not unhinged) debate on legalized cannabis.
  2. People who don’t read books often have character issues (to read, duh)
  3. Listen to this good discussion: The End Of China’s Miracle?
  4. Listen to this nice introduction to “ecological economics” from one of its founders. I especially appreciated Daly’s point on limited resources vs unlimited utility.
  5. Read: My printer is extorting me (another chapter in the “x as a service” nightmare)
  6. Listen to Paul Ehrlich on population, sustainability, etc.
  7. Read: The death of live customer support is the agony of customers
  8. Read: People are leaving New York, so why are the rents rising?
  9. Listen to this 2016 debate over Brexit. The Leave side was deluded.
  10. Read how Vancouver has tried to reduce harm from drugs while facing a rising tide of drug problems. This public health disaster needs serious resources (you know, like the kinda $$ we spend on infertility).

Environmental justice

Back in the 19th century, economists were condemned as “dismal scientists” due to their support of equality (or freedom) for slaves. The economists argued not from justice (sorry!) but efficiency, i.e., that slavery was inefficient because it subjugated people to the will of others rather than to their own free will — and productivity.

This story is not romantic, but it illustrates how economists might “think different” on some issues, even as they come to similar conclusions.

No risk here, neighbors. Carry on!

When it comes to environmental justice (EJ), the questions are (a) “how to define EJ?” and (b) “how to deliver it?”

On (a), I would say that citizens to a particular political jurisdiction receive EJ if they are treated (or face risks) equal to others, i.e., equal risks from air, water and land pollution.

Consider a few examples to flesh out this definition:

  • Does EJ mean they are protected from harming themselves? No — assuming that they do not need special knowledge or technology to understand risks.
  • Does EJ mean that people who buy a house near an airport, pig farm or fracking operation should be protected from risks due to those activities? No, since those risks pre-exist their purchase.
  • Does EJ mean they should be protected from new risks from new or expanded operations? Yes, absolutely.
  • Does EJ mean that citizens in a different political jurisdiction have the same rights or protections? No (for good reasons) due to the realities of nation-states. No (for bad reasons) because rich states may prioritize differently than poor states or (more likely) because rich states can afford more protections.

In terms of (b), the main idea is “internalizing externalities,” i.e., using prices or regulations to reduce or prevent pollution (the threat to EJ). For economists since Pigou (1920), this prescription has been commonsense. But it’s also commonsense to pretty much anyone familiar with “don’t shit where you sleep,” which is why the problem is usually people shitting where other people sleep.

And that brings us to rights.

EJ is basically about rights — the right to not be forced to deal with air, land, light, sound, water, or other pollutions.

We have the right to not be assaulted by someone wielding a weapon, as that causes bodily harm. We do not have the right to not be assaulted by someone wielding words, as there is no agreed way to assess mental or physical harm.

My one-handed conclusion is that EJ requires the definition and enforcement of our right to be free from the pollution of others.

Interesting stuff

  1. This article on income and inequality in The Economist is really well written and insightful.
  2. Listen: Human sperm counts are down by 50 percent since 1970, and half the population is “clinically infertile.” The causes — plastic endochrine disruptors — are not going away, with current policies. (Other species are also losing fertility.)
  3. Read: Elephant poaching falls as income rises. (“shoot-to-kill” policies help)
  4. In 1968 and 1970, the American Petroleum Institute commissioned papers that argued fossil fuels would cause climate change. They’ve known for 55 years.
  5. Read: Artificial sweeteners are in many more products than you’d expect, and they are increasing obesity.
  6. Read (and comment): California’s Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA): too little, too late and too slow?
  7. Listen to the scale in which humans have expanded on the subsidy of fossil (=non renewable, from the past) fuels.
  8. Watch: Espresso has less caffeine than instant, which has less than drip
  9. Watch: Trevor Noah’s analysis of what America needs (his last show)
  10. This is the best version I’ve seen of that old H2O joke:

H/T to JH

The long shadow of apartheid

Apartheid in Dutch/Afrikaans means “apartness,” and it was the (un)official  policy of the Whites ruling South Africa for most of the 20th century.

They were not alone in seeking to separate people by race or color.

Race is  a superficial concept [it’s melatonin melanin, subject to fads] that was invented to facilitate slave trade. The Portuguese Prince Henry the Navigator was a slave trader, and he paid an academic to justify his natural and moral right to ignore the differences among hundreds of African tribes, and group all these peoples into a “Black” race that deserved exploitation as a different species. (That’s “science” in the 15th century!) Listen to the “Seeing White podcast series” to learn more.

As you may know, Nazi Germany borrowed many ideas on racism, segregation and concentration camps from White Americans eager to take advantage of Non-Whites. The White rulers of South Africa also borrowed those ideas, but their British and Dutch ancestors were “inspiring” (in all the wrong ways) to Americans and Afrikaners, respectively. (Here’s a paper on the history of racism in S Africa.)

The meaning of “Africaner” has changed many times, but there’s a heavy overlap between racist rulers and people calling themselves “Africaners.”

So, that’s quite an introduction of a extremely complex topic, but what about Apartheid?

The short answer is that it was a legal system of separating “races” in terms of living, working, socializing, and other elements of normal life. People from different races were not allowed to date (let alone marry!), work as equals, go to the same schools, and so on. From what I understand, it was similar in the Jim Crow south, but reached deeper into people’s lives (southerners could move away; South Africans could not) for longer (apartheid ended in the early 1990s).

That long, cruel history matters today.

We visited Capetown and Johannesburg. In both places, people are no longer legally separated by race, but socio-economically separated by past definitions of race. You cannot just move house to a safer neighborhood to get a better job and send your kids to a better school if your parents were poor and uneducated. And you cannot get much help from the state to reduce these challenges when the state is run by a corrupt and incompetent African National Congress, and the rich are unwilling to contribute to a broken system that they are fighting to insulate themselves from. As a result, there is massive poverty and multiple development failures with respect to water, electricity, schools, health, safety, housing — pretty much anything you can imagine necessary to a good life.

A comment that sticks with me came from a White doctor: “You will enjoy the highest quality of life in the world, living in Cape Town — until you get beaten in front of your house.”

So it’s hard for many many people, and it will take decades to overthrow the ANC and build sound institutions. (The Comrades race shows that progress is possible.)

What I find interesting, given history, is how Namibians, which was colonized by S Africa for decades and also has a rich-White, poor-Black demographic reality, seem to get along better. I attribute that to their multi-decade struggle to free themselves from S. African rule. In an “us against them” contest, people on one side tend to forget their differences when facing a common enemy. (I have a paper on this dynamic!)

That was not the case in S Africa, where enemies (Whites favoring apartheid) not only live among them, but still control significant economic power. The ANC, by presenting themselves as liberators of non-Whites, have won consistent majorities in elections without showing any competence or hesitation in looting the state.

My one-handed conclusion is that apartheid left deep scars that will take decades of effort to convert into saamhorigheid (togetherness).

To get some US-centric views on S Africa, watch Trevor Noah here, here and here.

Interesting stuff

  1. Read: To focus on energy efficiency is to make present ways of life non-negotiable
  2. Read: An Aridzona suburb loses its water supply (yep, saw that coming). Related: Drying reservoirs are reducing hydropower generation
  3. Read: Twas the first iceless Christmas
  4. Read: How ChatGPT Will Destabilize White-Collar Work and how universities are changing to reduce cheating risk
  5. Listen: Being Human in the Age of AI (reminds me of my 2005 paper on how Google [search] will eliminate amateurs — and thus the next leaders)
  6. Watch: Why Amsterdam is [not really] Removing 10,000 Parking Spaces (the ideas in my parking paper make an appearance). Related: this podcast on local zoning
  7. Read: Google maps democratises spatial feedback
  8. Read: Alaska’s Arctic Waterways are toxifying due to CC
  9. Listen: The facts behind eating local
  10. Read: The rise of the scented-candle industrial complex

H/T to ED

Amsterdam’s new bike parking garage

Amsterdam’s bike infrastructure is again in the news, this time for the €60 million underwater bike parking garage.

Underwater sounds really cool, in the tradition of James Bond and Dutch canals, but let’s look a bit deeper into the why and how much, with foci on public spaces and opportunity costs, respectively.

The garage is next to the city’s Station Centraal, which has had an excess of parked bikes for decades. The mess is because parking is free and lightly regulated. Indeed, it’s a classic case of a tragedy of the commons, i.e., too many bikes for too few spaces. The city has added racks, double deckers, floating parking, etc., but “more (free) supply” does not reduce demand from wrecks, stored bikes — and many many commuters.

NB: Paid (€1/ day) parking under the tracks is available with no wait.

So the issue is not a lack of parking places, but parking places that are too cheap.

The new garage promises might change this situation by providing converting the parking commons into a club good.*

So, a club good because riders need to “check in” when they use the new garage. This means that people can be excluded “from the club.” This system will probably also be popular because the first 24 hours are free; additional time will cost something per day.

Some people are complaining about “privatizing the commons” with this garage, and they’re right, but it’s not like anything else has worked in the past 70 years!

Besides that change, it seems possible* that there will be fewer bikes stored around centraal, which will free a lot of space for other uses. Are there 200 stored bikes? 2,000? We’ll find out.

Now, to opportunity cost. I am sure that the engineers had a great time building another underwater garage, but how much does that €60 million represent?

Well, it’s €3 per Dutch citizen or €8600 per parking place. That’s cheap compared to the €50-100,000 per parking place for the two underwater car garages that I described in my paper on (car) parking in Amsterdam, but that’s faint praise — to be cheaper than a boondoggle subsidizing those rich enough to have a car in Amsterdam.

What else could you do with €60 million? Given that around half of Dutch students do not ride bicycles to school — either because they do not have them or are driven or lack training — it would make sense to subsidize lessons (even more) and bikes for kids. That would work out to around €300 per child in Amsterdam, or enough for a  bike (and lock!) and training.

And then there are the car parking garages near Centraal. Oosterdok, for example, has 1,700 spaces. Assuming 6 bikes per car space and then allowing for double decking, that’s enough space for over 20,000 bikes! But let’s be reasonable and only convert 600 car spaces to fit 7,000 bikes. Will the cars be able to fit into 1,100 remaining spaces. Probably, given that the garage advertises €10 per day parking!

My one-handed conclusion is that the city built an expensive club good rather than fix its commons. That was easier for the bureaucrats, but it left a bunch of kids without wheels and an excess of cheap car parking that ruins the city for pedestrians and cyclists.


* I say “might” because it’s not yet clear that the city will remove 7,000 street spaces and push bikes to the underwater garage, but that would make a lot of sense.

Addendum (19Feb): Subsidies for e-bikes get more riders… and a push for safer streets (Denver, USA)

Interesting stuff (to read)

  1. Bike helmets are not as safe as protecting bicyclists from cars. Related: Cities are fighting to keep car-free spaces
  2. 3D-printed houses are coming
  3. Bomb Cyclone? Or Just Windy with a Chance of Hyperbole?
  4. A 20-something hustles JP Morgan out of $175 million
  5. How Musk destroyed Twitter
  6. Trying to Live a Day Without Plastic (nope)
  7. The Rise of Mass Social Engineering (Hitler wasn’t first)
  8. The key to human happiness? More face-to-face meetings with friends
  9. Instagram threw $millions into useless video content
  10. Big screen TVs are cheap because they are selling your data. Related: How consumer demand results in cheap, disposable products

The iceberg of identity

How do you describe yourself to others?

Me?

I am a white American 53-year old male, of average height and weight, mostly white hair (a touch of pepper), green-blue eyes, and a decent tan.

That description is perhaps 90 percent of my outside appearance, but 10 percent of my interior spirit, mind and soul.

I’ve eaten out of dumpsters (for 2 years), gone from fundamentalist Christian to agnostic, spoken bits and pieces of six languages, traveled in many places, dated many women (and married one), gone from wanting five kids to zero, gone from anorexic (114 pounds/52 kg) to normal weight as a vegan, gone from vintage British convertibles to two bikes and two boats, earned a PhD but failed to play any musical instruments.

So do you know me now?

No.

We — all of us — contain multitudes. Don’t judge or assume from the surface. Explore and appreciate what’s underneath.

Interesting stuff

  1. Read: Americans don’t have a lack of free speech, they have a lack of listening.
  2. Lex Fridman’s podcasts are really long (sometimes 3-4 hours), but these are interesting:
  3. Listen to how police used the blockchain to identify and arrest dozens of men abusing children (and sharing videos of that abuse). A little less of that disgusting evil.
  4. Read: Wanna save the environment? Empower indigenous people to protect (and own) their traditional lands. (I’m seeing examples of why this is necessary in the southern African countries I am visiting, where aggressive locals displaced hunter-gatherers and colonizers destroyed everything to extract resources.
  5. Read: The implications of tech mayhem in 2022.
  6. Low-tech Magazine has a lot of deep, insightful stories:
  7. How novelists are using ChatGPT (AI) to write
  8. Watch: The great places destroyed by suburbia
  9. Listen: Freakonomics rediscovers the “real” Adam Smith