From: Paul Cockshott (wpc@dcs.gla.ac.uk)
Date: Fri Feb 15 2008 - 17:19:20 EST
Patrick wrote Hi folks, Your pro-nuclear position is untenable from our vantagepoint in SA, Paul, given that in 2006 we had our main power outage (affecting all of Cape Town for a few days) due to a loose bolt that shut down the giant Koeberg nuclear station, and that we're campaigning like mad to stop the next-generation 'Pebble Bed' reactor technology. A chapter in a book (Climate Change, Carbon Trading and Civil Society) I coedited by my friend Muna Lakhani is available if you aren't convinced by proliferation risks; he covers the full gamut of arguments. --------------------- Please send me the chapter so I can assess your arguments. There is also a certain hypocrisy in the arguments against proliferation. If American and Britain can have nuclear weapons why should Korea and Persia be denied them? --------------------- The idea of 'trading rations' is a dangerous concession (made by Contraction&Convergence and EcoEquity people) to the market, which is a giant mess already, and cannot be cured by attempts to inject Rawlsian equity, especially in the climate of neolib-neocon fusion we're now suffering (and indeed will continue suffering thanks to the failure of all the major Northern electorates, perhaps Norway excepted, to generate even a single genuinely pro-peace government - and all because of oil). Moreover, you buy into way too many neoclassical assumptions about value measurements and efficiencies - and distract attention from the much more substantive - and achievable - means of reducing emissions. ------------------------- Paul I would agree that in a socialist economy one would not need tradeable rations, however what is likely to be introduced is either carbon trading of the EU variety in which the rations are handed out free to big companies who then trade them between each other, or alternatively as system of carbon taxation. Both of these have severely regressive implications on income distribution ------------------------ The transitional demands - I love that phrase (but please let's think of them as non-reformist reforms, as Gorz had it, so that options like nuclear quickly fall away) - would surely include payment of the vast ecological debt y'all up North owe the South for using the rainforests as a free sink, right? Or do you want to continue that form of accumulation by dispossession unhindered? Nah. ----------------------------------- Paul I am not sure what reasoning you are using here. You talk as if rainforests were economic agents that have to be paid for absorbing co2, but that is what forests do naturally. I would understand it if you accused the north of being hypocritical for cutting down their own forests hundreds or thousands of years ago and then criticising the south when it does the same. However in the last decade or so, satellite data shows increased afforestation in Europe and North America. ------------------------- _______________________________________________ ope mailing list ope@lists.csuchico.edu https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/ope
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