Michael Lind on mineral resources; Amy Zegart on Cyberwar; Richard Hanania on the military-industrial complex; Robert Wright on Ukraine; Noah Smith on Ukraine; Wesley Yang and Shep Melnick on Title 9
Britain struggles to meet its current energy requirements from largely gas and nuke with occasional contribution from wind - at the moment, midday on 14 Apr, wind contributes 2.61% provided by over 11 000 on-shore and off-shore turbines, 52% from gas, 18% from nuke.
A transition to EVs will require additional 60% plus (at least) electricity output, but the current grid cannot handle more than a 5% increase in load. The resources required - manufacturing, construction, transportation - to upgrade and extend the electricity grid to handle and distribute this load, with charging points throughout the land have simply not been calculated, so nobody knows where they will come from. One non-Government estimation of cost of this is £3 trillion. That does not include increased generation. UK Government’s ‘policy’ is now ‘more’ off-shore turbines and (unspecified) number of small, modern nuclear reactors. There is no Government forecast of how much extra electricity will be needed or how many extra generators will be required beyond… just more.
As of 1st April, UK energy tariffs increased by 50% (following the end of years of price-caps, which - no surprise - caused supply shortfall and ten bankruptcies of retail electricity suppliers, ironically ‘sustainable’ suppliers), another 50% likely next year - and nothing to do with the Russia/Ukraine situation although this will make it even worse.
UK Net Zero (Sense) transition policy starts and ends with claims and future deadlines with no details of what is entailed, cost & consequences, or road-map for the transition.
Energy prices are increasing everywhere and that is why there are increases in producer and consumer price indexes everywhere (the increases don't amount to inflation as defined by Milton Friedman and misused by Arnold in the past several months). The shock is largely the result of the policy response to global warming --a response driven by the same people that delivered the policy response to the 2020 fabricated pandemia and whose main interest is to concentrate political power under the UN umbrella. Like the fake epidemiologists that supported lockdowns, the fake environmentalists support extreme, centralized measures to control the production and use of alternative sources of energy and will never embrace the use of Pigou taxes and subsidies to facilitate adjustment.
Energy prices - increases due to green taxes and reduction I supply - affect cost of production and transportation of consumer goods, and thus and energy prices are included in the Consumer Price Index so I do not understand what you mean they are not contributing to inflation.
Pigou taxes are in place in Western Countries, so-called carbon tax per tonne of carbon dioxide emitted. In the UK a Pigou tax paid on fossil fuel energy production, 0.46p for every kWh of gas and 0.78p for every kWh of electricity. This raises about £2 billion a year.
There are Pigou taxes on motor fuel, airline tickets too.
There is an elaborate formula (UK) of subsidies for wind and solar energy. Wind and solar are given priority - fossil fuel/nuke must drop out to be replaced by them, and buyers must pay an above market rate for their energy.
In November, December, January wind companies were paid £51.5 million ‘constraint payments’ that is, paid NOT to supply electricity, because when the wind blows at the right speed, often at night, the grid does not need the electricity. Since wind rarely produces power when the grid does need it, these subsidies are to keep the wind companies in business and fill the pockets of their shareholders. (I am currently looking to get into the Not Supplying Electricity business - it seems very lucrative.)
There have been taxes and subsidies on sources of energy for a long time but we cannot claim that today they are the key policies to facilitate adjustment to global warming. At best we can say that 30 years ago governments started to use them as signals of their commitment to some adjustment but fake environmentalists never accepted that they were enough to contain global warming.
Since energy is needed for everything we do, we should not be surprised that sharp increases in the prices of the main sources lead to increases in the cost of producing all sorts of (intermediary and final) goods and services. The increases vary greatly from place to place (towns, counties, provinces, states) and they are reflected with varying lags in price indexes according to how the indexes are fabricated in each place. Indeed, these "details" are ignored in the macroeconomic models that Arnold has been criticizing for the past 25 years.
If the war persists and so does inflation of energy and food, I'm not so sure that the Biden policy on the war will continue to be popular.
I am biased as well in that I think our policy should be to support and encourage any deal that both Ukraine and Russia can get to, even if it means we give up sanctions. As you wrote, war is no football game.
If the war is in the interest of the blob, peace obviously isn't. Sure, maybe a maximalist peace where Putin is humiliated, and maybe that will even happen. But maybe it won't, what then?
What happens if Putin does do well in the East?
Right now each side thinks they can improve their situation and so no peace. But at some point the front will solidify, wherever that might be.
When the front lines die down a deal where Ukraine says "possession is 9/10th of the law, you get what you hold" might be enough for everyone to say they won. But that wouldn't help the blob. I suspect they would try to sabotage such a deal, much as they did with Minsk before the war.
I also strongly believe that even if Ukraine signed a peace, the blob would try to keep up the sanctions indefinitely. Which of course removes the main reason to want to sign the peace, and impoverishes 140 million people.
Arnold, you say "War is no football game. There are no referees and no penalties enforced while the contest is going on."
I say "Life is no football game. Each of us trusts only a few other people because trust makes us vulnerable; we comply with rules governing interactions with people we don't trust only according to our own perception of the circumstances and risks, and we never rule out resorting to violence entirely."
"Market prices and profits provide the best incentives to conserve scarce resources. The market will not be perfect at providing for sustainability, but it will do a much better job than “green” advocates."
Unless environmentalists embrace the use of pigou taxes and subsidies to make market prices reflect the total costs and benefits of market transactions.
Britain struggles to meet its current energy requirements from largely gas and nuke with occasional contribution from wind - at the moment, midday on 14 Apr, wind contributes 2.61% provided by over 11 000 on-shore and off-shore turbines, 52% from gas, 18% from nuke.
A transition to EVs will require additional 60% plus (at least) electricity output, but the current grid cannot handle more than a 5% increase in load. The resources required - manufacturing, construction, transportation - to upgrade and extend the electricity grid to handle and distribute this load, with charging points throughout the land have simply not been calculated, so nobody knows where they will come from. One non-Government estimation of cost of this is £3 trillion. That does not include increased generation. UK Government’s ‘policy’ is now ‘more’ off-shore turbines and (unspecified) number of small, modern nuclear reactors. There is no Government forecast of how much extra electricity will be needed or how many extra generators will be required beyond… just more.
As of 1st April, UK energy tariffs increased by 50% (following the end of years of price-caps, which - no surprise - caused supply shortfall and ten bankruptcies of retail electricity suppliers, ironically ‘sustainable’ suppliers), another 50% likely next year - and nothing to do with the Russia/Ukraine situation although this will make it even worse.
UK Net Zero (Sense) transition policy starts and ends with claims and future deadlines with no details of what is entailed, cost & consequences, or road-map for the transition.
Energy prices are increasing everywhere and that is why there are increases in producer and consumer price indexes everywhere (the increases don't amount to inflation as defined by Milton Friedman and misused by Arnold in the past several months). The shock is largely the result of the policy response to global warming --a response driven by the same people that delivered the policy response to the 2020 fabricated pandemia and whose main interest is to concentrate political power under the UN umbrella. Like the fake epidemiologists that supported lockdowns, the fake environmentalists support extreme, centralized measures to control the production and use of alternative sources of energy and will never embrace the use of Pigou taxes and subsidies to facilitate adjustment.
Energy prices - increases due to green taxes and reduction I supply - affect cost of production and transportation of consumer goods, and thus and energy prices are included in the Consumer Price Index so I do not understand what you mean they are not contributing to inflation.
Pigou taxes are in place in Western Countries, so-called carbon tax per tonne of carbon dioxide emitted. In the UK a Pigou tax paid on fossil fuel energy production, 0.46p for every kWh of gas and 0.78p for every kWh of electricity. This raises about £2 billion a year.
There are Pigou taxes on motor fuel, airline tickets too.
There is an elaborate formula (UK) of subsidies for wind and solar energy. Wind and solar are given priority - fossil fuel/nuke must drop out to be replaced by them, and buyers must pay an above market rate for their energy.
In November, December, January wind companies were paid £51.5 million ‘constraint payments’ that is, paid NOT to supply electricity, because when the wind blows at the right speed, often at night, the grid does not need the electricity. Since wind rarely produces power when the grid does need it, these subsidies are to keep the wind companies in business and fill the pockets of their shareholders. (I am currently looking to get into the Not Supplying Electricity business - it seems very lucrative.)
There have been taxes and subsidies on sources of energy for a long time but we cannot claim that today they are the key policies to facilitate adjustment to global warming. At best we can say that 30 years ago governments started to use them as signals of their commitment to some adjustment but fake environmentalists never accepted that they were enough to contain global warming.
Since energy is needed for everything we do, we should not be surprised that sharp increases in the prices of the main sources lead to increases in the cost of producing all sorts of (intermediary and final) goods and services. The increases vary greatly from place to place (towns, counties, provinces, states) and they are reflected with varying lags in price indexes according to how the indexes are fabricated in each place. Indeed, these "details" are ignored in the macroeconomic models that Arnold has been criticizing for the past 25 years.
If the war persists and so does inflation of energy and food, I'm not so sure that the Biden policy on the war will continue to be popular.
I am biased as well in that I think our policy should be to support and encourage any deal that both Ukraine and Russia can get to, even if it means we give up sanctions. As you wrote, war is no football game.
If the war is in the interest of the blob, peace obviously isn't. Sure, maybe a maximalist peace where Putin is humiliated, and maybe that will even happen. But maybe it won't, what then?
What happens if Putin does do well in the East?
Right now each side thinks they can improve their situation and so no peace. But at some point the front will solidify, wherever that might be.
When the front lines die down a deal where Ukraine says "possession is 9/10th of the law, you get what you hold" might be enough for everyone to say they won. But that wouldn't help the blob. I suspect they would try to sabotage such a deal, much as they did with Minsk before the war.
I also strongly believe that even if Ukraine signed a peace, the blob would try to keep up the sanctions indefinitely. Which of course removes the main reason to want to sign the peace, and impoverishes 140 million people.
Arnold, you say "War is no football game. There are no referees and no penalties enforced while the contest is going on."
I say "Life is no football game. Each of us trusts only a few other people because trust makes us vulnerable; we comply with rules governing interactions with people we don't trust only according to our own perception of the circumstances and risks, and we never rule out resorting to violence entirely."
"Market prices and profits provide the best incentives to conserve scarce resources. The market will not be perfect at providing for sustainability, but it will do a much better job than “green” advocates."
Unless environmentalists embrace the use of pigou taxes and subsidies to make market prices reflect the total costs and benefits of market transactions.