After Growth, Economic Maturity?

1. More exponential physical growth of industrial humanity can't fit on our finite planet – we already use more than earth can sustainably provide by about half.
2. Economic growth with physical growth won't fit on our one earth.
3. Economic growth without physical growth is a mirage. It is just inflation, a zero-sum game that may alter the score but can't make the system better overall.
4. In organisms growth often precedes or leads to maturity. 
5. Economic maturity remains conceptually underexplored. 
6. What guidelines would well manage economic maturity?

From Frying Pan to Freezer

    Professor O'Ness pawed through yet another sockeye salmon juvenile on the dissecting tray. He cut a sample from the spleen, and transferred it to a waiting microtube in ice. This last sample finished off getting enough for statistical significance in the experimental struggles. Did fish spleens in ocean-bound sockeye juveniles suddenly increase in iron content some years before? Tadhg O'Ness spent hours testing iron content of all the spleen samples, then washed his hands and returned to his office. Maybe this work will finally lead, though publication, to tenure, which has eluded Tadhg, unlike middle age.
    Cold. Sudden in earth's history, in human lives it was year by decade chilling, in general, unrelenting overall, except for small variance by year. O'Ness bundled tighter in his tweed jacket and reached for that warming mug, quietly burping as he pondered in a University of British Columbia research building in Vancouver , under-equipped for the Pacific Northwest snow, brought by the  surprisingly cooling climate. How had Earth become less like Venus and more like Mars? Where had so much of air's carbon gone? Somehow the proverbial journey 'Out of the frying pan into the fire' didn't happen for earth, despite humanity's vast fossil fuel consumption, and Tadhg was chasing down why. Some things were obvious, including the now-accepted central role of air's carbon in the earlier climate crisis's sudden warming. Plants were curiously darker now and grew faster, almost all of them. O'Ness put down the cup and rubbed his temples. Salmon harvests had inexplicably rebounded vastly, even while harvesting decimated returning spawners. Much of what had been infertile ocean areas turned greener as plankton grew where little had grown before.
    The routine salmon fry surveys started by the boffins before him allowed comparison with his current work, which showed that sockeye salmon juvenile's spleen became darker about the same time that the seas seemed to become greener. But how could these be correlated, and what caused these? Was sockeye spleen iron the key to greener waters and lowered atmospheric carbon? Tadhg calculated, but the carbon estimation totals couldn't explain all the carbon fixation on earth now. There must be more puzzle pieces still missing. O'Ness pushed the computer mouse away and sighed, got up from his squeaky chair, closed doors and walked through snowy streets, home to wife, kids and dinner.
***Sidebar A: Oceanic iron, The Aleutian Eruption and the Following Salmon Onslaught.
    Oceans are remarkably diffuse in iron, with concentrations so low that even rare vanadium is more prevalent. Iron averages as low as 75 nanomoles per cubic meter in much of the North Pacific, or about 4 kilograms per cubic kilometer of seawater there. The wind has blown 98% of oceanic iron to the ocean as dust from deserts such as the Gobi, upwind of the North Pacific. The reason iron is so scarce in surface waters is that it easily forms insoluble precipitates that fall like snow to the ocean floor.
    Why does this matter? Because phytoplankton use iron as a co-factor in enzymatically transforming nitrogen, including cyanobacteria's nitrogen fixation (from dissolved air's nitrogen gas) – and because nitrogen constrains ocean photosynthesis by phytoplankton in much of the world's oceans. This limiting iron flow historically limits the North Pacific's overall productivity severely, along with other vast HNLC oceanic areas - HNLC stands for 'high nitrogen – low chlorophyll'. This fifth of the oceans has enough fixed dissolved nitrogen to nourish more plankton, yet these areas remain low in planktonic chlorophyll, showing that plankton lack something besides nitrogen. This puzzled early oceanographers, until iron was found to be the limiting nutrient in most of these areas.
    In 2008 an Aleutian island volcano eruption fed plankton downwind of the Aleuts, changing  blue seas green in the months following the eruption by depositing ash containing iron across the Northeast Pacific Ocean.
http://communications.uvic.ca/photos/ash_cloud_2008.jpg
http://communications.uvic.ca/photos/Phyto_distn_2007.jpg
http://communications.uvic.ca/photos/Phyto_distn_2008.jpg
    This plankton bloom preceded a sudden population explosion in the pink salmon population that returned to land during 2009. And the 2010 sockeye salmon return was also unexpectedly large. Pink salmon return two years after they enter the ocean as young fry, while sockeyes return about three years after they enter the sea. The trace iron that the volcano added to the salmon feeding waters caused the plankton blooms that nourished these massive returns of salmon.
    Another way to get iron to those ocean pastures might be within the sockeye salmon already heading that way to feed, by loading their spleens with iron stores before they leave shore, within the hatcheries, by feeding iron-enriched feed. Why in sockeye salmon? Pink salmon fry head to sea right after hatching, feeding negligibly in fresh water streams, but sockeye salmon fry spend a year feeding in fresh water before venturing to sea. Hatchery sockeye can be fed iron during this year. Since iron is so critically rare in the ocean, it makes sense to expect that sockeye salmon fry have adapted to sequester iron in their spleens for adult use. Natural dispersion of these stores, over the three years of sockeye salmon presence in these oceanic pastures, would supply the critical iron, inducing phytoplankton blooms that in turn nourish the same sockeyes and the rest of the sea life, too.
----------- End Sidebar***
As he opened home's door, aromas of salmon and potato wafted out, and two children ran up cheering. Later, the meal done, O'Ness pushed back his creaking chair. As he and the kids washed up after the meal, he told them tales of life before, when humanity accelerated right at certain death without blinking, by burning so much fuel that the ice melted. They didn't really follow the carbon-in-air link in that chain yet, but give them time. In their beds, the children fell asleep, and O'Ness returned to pondering.
    There had been discussion of geoengineering before, he'd read. This concept usually involved shading the warming earth to lessen the temperature change, but as we eat the sun's energy as our food, less sunlight reaching earth might have starved some of the 7 billion people then alive by shading crops, reducing yields. Hence the earth shading concepts were thought shelved. Yet the earth was cooling. Were sulfate aerosols secretly spread in the stratosphere via a contrail conspiracy, shading earth? There was one way to tell; measure current levels of sunlight getting through the atmosphere to the planetary surface. This revealed that sunlight reaching sea level was still at the same watts per square meter as before the cooling. Tadhg wondered, since there was no measurable shading of earth's sunlight, and since the salmon moving more iron to sea wasn't enough to force the cooling, what was forcing the cooling?
    His wife came up to him.
“I want a divorce.”
    Reeling, Tadhg sat down. “Why?”
“You don't really love me, nor do you care about our children.”
“That's not true. Why do you say that?”
“You walk in a daze through this house, never really seeing anyone else, never really looking at us.”
“I've just been preoccupied with work.”
“I've had enough, I want you out.”
“Honey, I work so hard because I love you, Ben and Sally, and I've just had a breakthrough in the work. That's why I've been so preoccupied. Now the hard part of the work starts; nailing down the details and getting the word out. If this works like it should, we'll earn more, and Ben and Sally will live in a world that isn't so cold. I need your support now more than ever. Please, Don't end this now, for our family and for the world.”
“Cut the crap. Pack your stuff and get out by next week. Until then, sleep on the couch. ”
    Tadhg was far too upset to sleep, couch or no couch. He went angrily back to campus and stayed awake all night working. He was in top form teaching his first class. He didn't even take it out on the students, much. Then he went to the gym and pulled his back out exercising. Tadhg hobbled through the showering and back to the office.
    Leaving the office for the day, Prof. O'Ness shuffled slowly, his back jolting him with pain occasionally when his feet slipped suddenly on ice. Where to? He ate on campus in a cafeteria and inquired after rooms to stay in. Finding none, Tadhg returned home, collected a change of clothes and trundled off to a hotel for the night. He felt attacked on many quarters, but was tired enough so that locking the hotel room door sheltered him enough that he could finally sleep.
    Tadhg returned to the office in the morning and searched listings for a room near campus.  Graduate students who shared apartments had rooms available; Tadhg picked one that seemed quiet and not too far from home and campus.
    Tadhg gingerly shuffled home again, avoiding back twinges. He met a friend and colleague, Ned, who had agreed to help move suitcases to the new room. Once at the old house, his children Ben and Sally looked at him. He sat down with them, briefly explaining the situation that they'd surely heard before, as Ned moved bedding and suitcases to a car.
    At a restaurant, later, Tadhg didn't dare drink alcohol; he would teach class in the morning, and also feared numbing what he was still trying to understand, despite the temptation. Ned shared news from the Biochemistry Department.
    “They've found that while the darkening of the plants coincided with no apparent nuclear DNA change, it did correlate with a DNA change in the chloroplast.”
    To Tadhg, the DNA story was like a balm; the tale of the DNA change calmed him. While recent events didn't make much sense, at least here was an area where sense still seemed useful. Ned dropped Tadhg at the apartment, brought the suitcases and bedding in, then, before driving off, gripped Tadhg's shoulder once, which only twinged Tadhg's sore back a bit.
    “Consolidated Fish Feed is purchased, Dr. Inouye.” Phoebe Inouye's agent Sheneilla Overburg had just signed the purchase agreement on a controlling interest in the last major salmon fry feed maker that Phoebe didn't already own.
    “Thank you, Ms. Overburg.”
     Phoebe thus assembled, in one year, a veiled colossus. By using different agents, like Overburg, and off-shore shell corporations to buy each fish feed company, no one but her knew of her stake in the salmon market, or of the junk-bond-like financing she incurred to make it all real. So started the stage in which the typical quasi-monopolist would start to squeeze both suppliers and buyers, using the clout of 'market-share' to financially bludgeon in both directions. Inouye, an ichthyologist-turned-businesswoman, was fishing for a different catch. After she acquired control of the fry feed plants, she altered the sockeye feed composition to include more trace iron. But how could this pay off the massive debt Dr. Inouye incurred?
    Amidst the entire industrial spending spree, Phoebe had sold long puts on wild salmon delivery futures, promising to sell salmon in the future at prices set today. She thus gambled in her own field, where she had inside knowledge, and now, inside power.
    A year later pink salmon returned from ocean pastures rendered fertile by the supply of the one nutrient missing; iron, brought via sockeye spleen. Salmon returned in record numbers to a fish-starved market. But Dr. Inouye's counterparts in the salmon futures market, by agreeing to buy at earlier, then-prevailing high prices, had bet with their purchases of Phoebe's long puts, that the salmon supply would continue as tight as before Phoebe's veiled iron supplementation started. Beforehand, too many trawlers chased too few fish, so thinking that this would continue seemed sensible. The put buyers that Phoebe contracted with had made a bet with what seemed like an optimistic fool; they lost, she gained by filling those earlier contracts to deliver, at high earlier prices, what now flooded the market; plentiful and cheap wild salmon.
     There had been oddly productive years of salmon returns before, but as peaks in a downward-sloping yield line. So those who bet once with Phoebe and lost in the futures market, bet again the next year, never knowing that they were dealing with the same person, or that Phoebe held the cards.
    The next morning Tadhg hobbled through class, then calculated the influence that the darkening of the plants might have on atmospheric carbon levels and flows. Combining the carbon fixation from salmon fry carrying more iron to sea with the plant darkening's increase in growth, and in air's carbon fixed, O'Ness still couldn't explain the steadily dropping air carbon levels. Where had the rest of the air's carbon gone?
    He headed back to the new flat, picking up a simple to go meal on the way. Tadhg called home and reached his son Ben.
    “How was school, Ben?”
    “OK. We studied the same old stuff; algebra”
    “Algebra? I use that all the time.”
    “You do?”
    “Yeah, today I used it to look into why it keeps getting colder. It might have to do with plants being darker now.”
    “Oh. What was it like before?”
    “Plants were mostly greenish, instead of being nearly black. In the country, apart from in winter, everything was green.”
    “Why is it different now?”
    “We're still finding out, Ben.”
    Tadhg talked with Sally too, then slept. In the morning at school he explored publishing a letter jointly with the plant scientists in Biochemistry, and with a climatology boffin as well, on this two-pronged proposal to account for missing atmospheric carbon. He also wrote email messages to colleagues, arguing for further fish spleen studies. Comments came back via email from colleagues about how difficult this change in salmon fry iron transport would be.  Tadhg invited alternate explanations and pleaded that others look into fish iron flux budgets, especially salmon's.  Tadhg had data backing up increased iron transport by sockeye salmon, and was asking others to gather more. Besides, he wasn't arguing that these transformations were easy, or likely, he was arguing that they were done.
    After a few rings, Tadhg heard a mechanical voice announcing “Central Satellite Imaging Service.” Tadhg pressed the extension mentioned in the letter in his hand.
    “Betty here.”
    “Hi, Betty, This is Tadhg O'Ness from U.B.C. following up a letter you responded to recently.”
    “Oh, Hi Tadhg, How can I help?”
    “I just wanted to check on your production schedule for the ocean chlorophyll data.”
    “Tadhg, It looks like it will be two weeks before we can get to your order.”
    “Thanks, Betty, If there are any issues, please do contact me.”
    “Will do, Tadhg. Is that it?
    “Yes, Betty, and it was good to talk with you in person.”
    “Thanks, Tadhg, and likewise. Have a good day.”
    Tadhg turned to the mail of the day, in which was a letter from his wife's lawyer. Ugh.
***Sidebar B:
    Plants use chloroplasts to catch light and make sugar and stuff. Chloroplasts are captured  remnants of independent bacteria engulfed by early eucaryotes and then integrated within the eucaryotic cells, that thus became the first plants. Chloroplasts retain just a bit of their ancestor's DNA molecules, although most of their free-living ancestor's DNA had shifted over to the plant nucleus. The chloroplasts use their DNA in conjunction with the plants' nuclear DNA to form the enzymes with which light is caught and sugar, etc. made. But the light caught is not all the light encountered – much green light bounces off chloroplasts, which basically ceased evolving independently after their engulfment by the first plants. Green light contains about a fifth of the sunlight energy reaching earth's surface.
    http://biology.mcgill.ca/phytotron/lightwkshp1994/1.1%20Geiger/Fig%20Gei%202.jpg
Outside of plants, algae and microbes have evolved to use green light. But these microbes were not the ones that the first plants engulfed, so plants still basically use only red and blue light. They use this light to pump electrons and protons across the insulating cell membrane in the 'Light' reactions, then, in the 'Dark' reactions, use the returning of those protons to power making sugar, etc. from air's carbon dioxide.
    A photon flew from the sun. Eight minutes later, half of it's fellow companion photons were absorbed or reflected within earth's atmosphere, but this one made it through. It wobbled with a frequency of 560 terahertz, travelling with a wavelength of 535 nanometers; it was green. It hit a molecule of proteorhodopsin and was absorbed, which knocked a proton across the thylakoid membrane into thylakoid space. This complemented the chlorophyll and carotenoids liberation of protons within the thylakoid space by splitting water. Both sources of protons powered the formation of ATP as it returned to the stroma through ATP synthase, mounted in the thylakoid membrane.
    Through the happenstance of accidental evolution's stumbling along in the dark, plants hit on sugar-making 'Dark' reactions with notable inefficiencies. Glyoxylate accumulates when oxygen, instead of carbon dioxide, reacts with RuBisCO, an enormous photosynthesis enzyme central to the dark reactions. Mopping that glyoxylate up takes considerable cellular energy. A few microbes, notably of the Chloroflexus genus, have evolved an alternate enzymatic pathway using oxygen-insensitive enzymes, characterized by it's 3-hydroxypropionate intermediate, and hence called the 3-HOP pathway, which avoided glyoxylate buildup. While they incidentally produce glyoxylate, they quickly metabolize it.
    Let's talk with an ATP named Adam, ringside, as he prepares to enter the 3-HOP pathway.
    “Hi Adam, how do you feel about this one?”
    “Well, Howard, I feel pretty good. It's not like the dangerous Calvin cycle, where an oxygen can mess you up, and you end up just making a two-carbon phosphoglycolate that merely becomes glyoxylate, Howard. You see, the 3-HOP bicycle's enzymes are oxygen tolerant, so I'll just shoot right through and help form pyruvate, with the able help of my four ATP teammates, of course.
    Well, good luck Adam, not that you'll need it for this one. We'll look for you after the event.”
    “Thanks Howard,”
    “Now back to you, Fred.”
    “OK, Thanks Howard, and now the event begins, as Adam sidles into the ring(s), forming the five-member ATP team. And their off, moving with that deceptive Brownian motion toward the 3-HOP enzymes, while two carbon dioxides dissolve, forming two bicarbonate ions. These are joined by two acetyl-CoA molecules and two of Adams' ATP teammates on the approach to the first enzyme, acetyl CoA carboxylase. And they're though, those CoAs are malonylated, but what a cost! Adam's first two team-mates look pretty roughed up. Over to you, Howard.”
    “Thanks, Fred. How do you guys feel?”
    “(inaudible) tired, Howard.”
    “You both look pretty dephosphorylated, guys. Back to you, Fred.”
    “OK, Howard, Now the two malonyl-CoAs are approaching the second enzyme, along with 4,  count'em FOUR, NADPHs. Wow, that's an impressive energetic line-up.”
    “Wham, Fred, they're through the malonyl-CoA reductase enzymatic reaction, and jettisoned are two CoA molecules, as two hydroxypropionates step forward...”
    “Those two are 3-hydroxypropionates, Howard. Now the two CoAs are rejoining the action, along with two NADPH, and, yes, there are two of Adam's ATP team-mates stepping up to the propionyl-CoA synthase. And when the dust settles, two propionyl-CoA are headed in two different directions, Howard, but those ATPs are doubly dephosphorylated all the way down to being adenine monophosphates. Whew. But let's follow this propionyl-CoA, as he's joined by a bicarbonate ion and..., Why, it's Adam himself, as they all approach propionyl CoA carboxylase. OK, they're done, and a methylmalonyl CoA steps forth. Let's go down to Howard, ringside, to chat with Adam.”
    “Well, Adam, How'd it go today?”
    “Like clockwork, Howard, not that it's easy. I feel...I feel...dephosphorylated, to be honest. I'm headed for the showers.”
    “Adam, we understand, and thanks for taking the time to talk with use. Back to you, Fred.”
    “Thanks, Howard. Now methylmalonyl CoA heads toward methylmalonyl CoA epimerase, then to L-methylmalonyl CoA mutase, and out of that fray comes the familiar Succinyl-CoA, of TCA cycle fame.  Now this could go two ways, right, Howard?”
    “That's right, Fred. Succinyl-CoA can go left into that TCA cycle in which...”
    “Wait, Howard, he's going right, toward the enzyme called succinyl CoA - malyl CoA transferase, liberating CoA.  Now the succinate's going into succinate dehydrogenase, Then to fumarate hydratase, yielding malate, which combines with CoA within ...  Howard, that's our old friend succinyl CoA/malyl CoA transferase again.”
    “Whew, a bifunctional enzyme, Fred. Amazing. Now malyl CoA hits the lyase.”
    That's right, Howard. That's malyl/methylmalyl/citramalyl lyase, Howard, a real metabolic powerhouse.”
    “OK, now out from lyase comes a glyoxylate careening into the air and... Well, it's the familiar acetyl-CoA again, Fred.”
    Howard, we'll return to that glyoxylate in a minute. Let's get back to the action.”
    Thanks, Fred. Now the acetyl CoA joins with another acetyl CoA and enters... Why it's right where we started!”
    “That's right, Howard. Now let's cut back to that flying glyoxylate.”
    “ OK, Fred, the glyoxylate's fallen beside that other propionyl CoA from earlier in the cycle, and... Hey, they've re-entered the lyase, and out comes methylmalyl CoA, heading toward methylmalyl CoA dehydratase, from which comes mesaconyl-C1 CoA, which transferase makes into mesaconyl-C4 CoA, which in turn mesaconyl-C4 CoA hydratase forms into citramalyl CoA. Now that amazing tri-functional lyase steps in, forming the other original acetyl CoA and the whole goal of this process, a three-carbon pyruvate.”
    “That's the big prize, Howard. And thus end our enzymatic ringside coverage, folks.”
    Atop a German charcoal-making pile grew a Streptomyces like no other known – in this warm, carbon-rich aerobic environs it alone fixed nitrogen at near-ambient temperatures and thrived, by virtue of an oxygen-tolerant nitrogenase, who's encoding DNA was almost lost with the loss of the organism in a lab mishap.
    In nanoinjection, DNA is electrostatically stuck to a positively charged microscopic lance, which, jammed into the chloroplast, released that DNA to transform the chloroplast once the electrostatic charge is reversed.
    -------- End Sidebar***
    Decades earlier, William Jackson desperately scoured the microbial photosynthesis literature for ways to improve photosynthesis and plant growth, in earlier times, to bind air's troublesome carbon increase. He was obsessed with trying to ameliorate the climate crisis, and why not? He had time, ambition, good intentions and maybe a little psychosis, so it seemed possible to overcome his lack of high academic status or significant capital. As a son of a biology department faculty member, he had some access to tools and a tiny bit of lab materials, and that might be all he needed. He recognized the opportunity; nearly a fifth of sunlight reaching earth went unused by plants - mostly green light. Sure, some green light was utilized, especially lower in the canopy, but much was lost. In plants of that era the 'Light' reactions missed out on much of green light's considerable power, and the 'Dark' reactions were inefficient when leaves were hot. Furthermore, fossil fuel price hikes had boosted nitrogen fertilizer prices worldwide, at a time when over a quarter of the world's population ate at all thanks to the crop yields dependent on that artificial nitrogen fertility. William sought to change all that by engineering a viroid to bring three microbial pathways to plants; first, a rhodopsin that powered cell growth with  green light; second, the  improved oxygen-  and heat-tolerant 'Dark' pathway called '3-HOP'; third, an oxygen-tolerant nitrogenase.
    William hastened to finally nanoinject chloroplasts with the darkening viroid, then introduced the aphids into the growth chamber. Will the darkening spread within the plant? Will the viroid also infect the aphids? Will the aphids spread any viroid to the experimental plants?
    There was a knock on the basement laboratory door, then a crash of splitting wood as the whitecoats kick the door in. They stumbled rapidly through the breach and grabbed William as he turned from the growth chamber. William had his hands torn from the isolation glovebox. In the confusion they knocked the crudely built growth chamber right off the counter. It's light wooden frame broke and the plastic film panels tore. Soil mix and plants tumbled into a heap, and infected aphids flew through the eddies of air out into the world. As the whitecoats drag William out the cellar door, leaving it open, William realized with shock that the aphids are free and the viroid with them. The process might have begun.
    Months go by slowly in the asylum for the now-drugged William, but through the window one day he noticed plants outside becoming darker, he thinks. Maybe it's just the light that day. Drugged and bemused, William wondered groggily whether earth's plants are darkening with proteorhodopsins, whether the engineered nitrogenase and 3-HOP pathways work.
    After many years, in which the darkening takes hold outside of Williams' window, William was transferred to a less restrictive facility, where he learned through his old college buddy of Tadhg's interest into plant darkening. William is allowed to write to O'Ness, and now awaits a reply.
    At Prof. O'Ness's office, Tadhg's phone rings.
    “Professor O'Ness?”
    “Speaking.”
    “This is Sally and Ben's principal. Your daughter's gotten into fights again, which this time also involved your son. Unfortunately we've had to suspend both of them for three days.”
    “Oh. I guess I should come by and pick them up.”
    “There's no need – your wife is coming. I just wanted to let you know.”
    “Well, thank you, and sorry for the trouble.”
    Tadhg turned back to calculating estimations of the additional carbon fixed through the darkening of the plants.
***Sidebar C:
    The vision: Much coastal desert area might be converted by dikes, not to keep seawater out, but to keep it in. This damming might flood extensive desert areas, which could bloom with aquaculture, incidently fixing carbon as sealife and as seashell carbonates. the shallow ocean waters could host much greater productivity and amounts of life than the deserts beforehand. Vast windmill farms might ring coastal deserts, pumping seawater up and over dike after dike, into the deserts. Above each dike would lie a pond; within each pond the seawater would grow saltier via evaporation, - the farthest ponds would be saltpans churning out salt by the railcar-load. Before the final ponds an additional band of windmills might split water into hydrogen and the hydroxide which precipitates magnesium in these penultimate ponds. The magnesium produced becomes cement of a type that uses MgOH2 instead of CaOH2. Using this cement avoids the carbon released during conventional cement preparation, an energy-intensive high-temperature process.
    Coastal deserts are often beside upwelling ocean waters, which are arctic-cold and relatively fertile. With the addition of even more fertility within the dams, this dammed seawater could support vigorous plankton and algae growth. The algae could itself be food types, and the nourishing plankton might feed edible fish. While the deep ocean is often very unproductive due to lack of nutrients, shallow waters are hundreds of times more productive. People could insure such productivity happened in seawater-flooded coastal desert aquaculture.
    Another carbon removal effect could occur as a side effect of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion installations in the hot tropical oceans.
http://www.lockheedmartin.com/content/dam/lockheed/data/ms2/photo/alternative-energy/otec/OTEC-ResourceMap2009-1290x860.jpg
    These OTEC machines use the difference in temperature between hot tropical surface waters and frigid deep ocean water to drive generation of power, fresh water and ice, but their biggest financial boon comes from the fertility of the cold deep water, which fertilizes mariculture worth sixty times the energy yield of these OTEC plants in the plant outflow at the sunlit surface of the fertile deep water brought into the sun by the OTEC plants. The Mist-Lift OTEC design is not well-known, yet it was devised in the 1970s. It worked with smaller heat differences between hot surface and cold deep water than other OTEC designs, so this extended the OTEC plant use to the limits of the hot tropics' warm ocean water's range.
http://www.brianhorst.com/OTEC/Mist_Lift_OTEC_Concept_files/shapeimage_2.png
http://www.makai.com/image/mist_lift_lg.jpg
    In this 'Mist-Lift' design a partial vacuum is drawn in an enormous hollow chamber, which is about a hundred meters tall. At the bottom of the chamber 22 degree Celcius tropical surface waters are drawn in, where they burst through mist nozzles into 'steam', forced into water vapor by the vacuum. The vapor roars upward in the vacuum chamber, drawing with it droplets as a mist, all at about 18 Celcius, cooled and driven upward by the vapor expansion. Then ocean deep water, naturally near 4 Celcius, is drawn into the chamber's midpoint through mist nozzles as well, where its cold temperature condenses the warm vapor of the mist, but it doesn't eliminate the upward movement of this water, resulting in an upward stream of water at about 11 Celcius. The expansion of the warm tropical surface water vaporization powers the lifting of all that ocean water, warm and cold, to the top of the chamber, where it percolates up and over a rim into the last smaller chamber. There, huge vacuum pumps, by continually removing uncondensable gases that were dissolved in the seawater drawn into the OTEC plant, establish both of the chambers' vacuum levels. While these pumps, and the pumps lifting the cold deep water, require vast amounts of energy, the OTEC plant makes that energy and more, in that the 11 Celcius outflow from the last chamber's top has been lifted a considerable height in its initial expansion, flight, and later condensation. By falling back through a turbine, the outflow supplies more than enough power for drawing the vacuum and raising the cold deep water. These OTEC plants were built on ships deployed in the hot tropical oceans worldwide. As valuable as their power output was in isolated tropical areas, the mariculture nourished by the deep fertile water outflow from these plants would be worth 60 times that. Some of the increase in sunlight transformed by the mariculture's photosynthesis might be lost back to the deep ocean as bound carbon, and to seashell formation as carbonates, all removed from the air dissolved in the ocean's surface.
    The orangeite deposits in which diamonds are found are 'ultrapotassic' and so alkaline that the mining wastes could absorb air's CO2 once finely ground and moistened, by forming carbonates of the original rock minerals. Use of finely ground orangeite as fertilizer also might supply potassium to soil, and thus built soil and plant life, so this can fix carbon in two ways. But orangeite deposits are rare, while ultramafic mantle rock, high in magnesium or iron oxides, while somewhat rarely protruding to the land's surface, underlie the continent's crustal rock, lie below the bottom of the oceans, and form the mantle of rock that continental crust rides on. Ultramafic rock is therefore quite common, and like orangeite, can form carbonates, looking away air's carbon dioxide. If just a little of this were ground and spread, huge amounts of carbon could be removed from air.
    -------- End Sidebar***
    The telephone rings again.
    “Doctor O'Ness, Central Satellite Imagery Service here. Would you care for, in addition to the chlorophyll change data covering the sea, data covering the recently diked coastal desert areas?”
    “Oh, yes indeed. That'd be wonderful. Thank you. When will this all be available?”
    “It'll take a bit longer to include the diked desert data. Probably a week from now.”
    “That long. Well, I'm eager for the data, and will be waiting. Thanks.”
    A week later, Prof. O'Ness stood before the college tenure committee, sweating and quaking a bit.
    “Tadhg, you haven't published for years now. The college ratings give us little choice...”
    “Samuel, I'm gathering final data for a significant article that ought to be accepted within months.”
    “That's all well and good, but if the department's tenured faculty publications per year drops below the number of faculty, the entire department is at risk of being axed. We can't afford to risk that, so we're not granting your tenure request now, but we will put it on hold, and will reactivate it if publications are accepted.”
    Tadhg's stomach twisted.
    Back at the office, Tadhg dialed the young journal's editor, who answers in person after quite a few rings.
    “Betty Travois speaking.”
    “Ms. Travois, This is Professor O'Ness again of the University of British Columbia.”
    “Yes, Professor,”
    “I'm calling you about a draft article which I emailed to your firm earlier.”
    “Prof. O'Ness, we've received the piece, but without further data, I'm unwilling to take reviewer's time with it.”
    “I understand, and hope to have the data in and analyzed by next week.”
    “Good. Let's talk then.” Click.
    “Central Satellite Imagery Service. If you know your party's extension...”.
    Tadhg gets through to his contact there, Samir.
    “Samir, Is there any chance the data on chlorophyll within HNLC areas and diked deserts is ready yet?”
    “Tadhg, I'm sorry, It will probably be a week more. There's quite a few projects in the pipeline.”
    After hanging up, Tadhg started to wonder about other greenhouse gases that he might be able to get data on more rapidly, and thinks specifically of methane. Tadhg found Joseph Fosjocki's old article on transforming cattle salivary glands to produce alpha-galatosidase.
***Sidebar D:
    About 1995,  livestock produced about seventy eight million tons of methane per year, produced within their guts and manure by organisms capable of digesting galactose oligosaccharides by using alpha-galactosidase. These galactose oligosaccharide sugars are built by legumes. The ancestors of mammals somehow lost the ability to digest these oligosaccharides eons ago, with climate-scale effects. While methane over a century has about 35 times the warming effect of carbon dioxide, over twenty years it has about 85 times carbon dioxide's effect, according to the 2013 IPCC reports. A mumps-like viroid might be engineered to implant a transgene into salivary gland cells, to secrete alpha-galactosidase in saliva, so oligosaccharide sugars like raffinose, stachyose and etc. are digested and utilized by cattle, etc. for additional growth before hindgut microbes can make methane from them.
    ----------- End Sidebar***
     Two decades earlier, Joseph Fosjocki completed the assembly of a mutated mumps virus designed by Joey to induce salivary gland secretion of alpha-galactosidase in cattle, so cattle could start digesting oligosaccharides from legumes directly. Then his lip itched, so he scratched it with the gloved hand he'd been working with. 'I really should get lip balm' he thought, 'on my way home', licking his lip. He ate a late lunch, and finished off other work the rest of the week, then on Friday sneezed all the way home on the subway. By a week from the Monday exposure date his cheeks ached, and the next week was painful, but soon afterwards he could eat rice and beans without gas. The same fate befell those near him on the subway, and soon the world's people could eat beans without gas, and cattle of the world grew more rapidly and passed much, much less gas. Joey's company couldn't sell what the world got for free, whether the world wanted it or not, so the company folded, closing it's doors for good. Joey was out of work.
    Tadhg scribbles on the back of yet another envelope, his fingers chilled. The Vancouver cold exceeded the building's heating capacity, which had been designed for a milder climate. Still not enough cooling accounted for, even with gasless cattle and people. What else had changed air's carbon?
    ***Sidebar E:
    Some grain sorghum varieties might replace much rice in tropical paddy fields since they cook like rice and yield more per hectare. But there's prejudice for rice over these grain sorghum varieties known as 'poor man's rice'. And grain sorghum might be developed to use Gluconacetobacter to fix nitrogen inside the plants, as was discovered occurring in Brazil in sorghum's close relative, sugarcane.
    A reduction in methane release to air might follow from the switch, in many flooded pond fields, or 'paddies', from growing rice to growing grain sorghum. When grown in flooded soils Sorghum's close relative sugarcane induces a more than ten-fold reduction in 'paddy' soil methane release, by altering the redox state in the pond field's rhizosphere, according to Dr. Snehi Dwivedi. This might reduce 'paddy' methane emission worldwide by 50 billion tons of methane per year, while the grain sorghum's greater yields would increase food carbohydrates from flooded fields as well. We hungry seven plus billion humans might appreciate that, especially considering that many of us eat today thanks to artificial nitrogen fertilizing, which is unsustainably threatening climate-dependent agriculture.
    ---------- End Sidebar***
The short half-life of atmospheric methane and it's enormous impact on global climate within a twenty year period, Tadhg realized, made it particularly likely as a cause of the recent cooling. Tadhg thought slowly as he ate an Indian meal at a nearby restaurant. Then he stopped, looking at the meal. The grain was the newly prominent, yet quite ancient grain sorghum that cooked like rice. Perhaps here was another clue to climatic change. Back at the office, O'Ness scoured Pubmed, then the entire internet for works on altered paddy methane emissions, and found Dwivedi's 1980s article on sorghum's close relative, sugarcane, in paddy fields and it's effects on methane emissions as compared with rice. Luckily the data on the effect on methane emissions of the rice-to-grain-sorghum crop conversion were quicker to get than the satellite data.
    Checking his email, Tadhg came across the satellite data, finally in from the satellite service. O'Ness began a flurry of analysis, plugging satellite data into spreadsheets and programs he'd prepared.  The transfer of data went as planned, so soon Tadhg hd tallied the cumulative greenhouse gas changes from sockeye's iron shuttling, plant darkening, increased aquaculture via OTEC and diked deserts, magnesium-based cement substitution, gasless cattle (and people) and sorghum adoptation in ex-rice paddies. The combined effects could explain the cooling of earth. He sent the results to the journal editor.
    Betty liked what she saw and sent the piece out to peer reviewers. Meanwhile Tadhg called his wife, who reported on their children. Ben's been arrested again for drug possession, while Sally was charged with shop-lifting. O'Ness and his wife set a date to meet with the divorce lawyers.
    For a change of pace, Tadhg glances at the backed-up campus mail. He notices William's letter from the asylum.
    “Dear Professor O'Ness,
    It has come to my attention that you are estimating the climatic effects of the darkening of the plants. You might be curious to know how this occurred......Anyhow, if you do discover an effect, I hope you will document it's source, and the sanity of the effort, given the then-prevalent overheating of earth. This might help free me from the asylum.”
    Tadhg replied, asking William to go on the record with the aphid viroid work.
    Later, Tadhg opened the paper as he eats lunch and finds reports of Phoebe Inoue sued for price-fixing, despite no evidence that she conspired to alter prices in her now-revealed near-monopoly. Overburg had came forward with suspicions of Phoebe cornering the fish feed market, stimulating an investigation that showed the conglomerate Phoebe hid for so long. Now Tadhg had the agent of the sockeye spleen darkening documented too. Also in the newspaper was the tale of the mumps epidemic of some years ago. Joey Fosjocki's work was revealed, and his professional life was over, but for Tadhg, the article just added background depth for his article submission.
    Tadhg's phone rang. It was Samuel from the tenure committee. Tadhg has tenure as soon as he can publish the current article. No sooner did Tadhg hang up, than his wife called, with news that she'll enter marriage councelling if the tenure issue is successfully out of Tadhg's life. His wife went on to say that she'd heard from Ben and Sally. If the family stays together, Tadhg's son Ben says he'll quit drugs and his daughter Sally will commit to putting off suicide.

Date: -----------
From: Samir Osiris, Syndicated Science Publications
To: Prof. Tadhg O'Ness
Subject: Congrats, the last reviewer approved!
Body: Tadhg, your article's been accepted for publication, and will in fact lead a special issue on earth's surprising recent cooling.....


The End.

Energy vs. Jobs: Quoting Hazel Hendeson

"...The basic nature of the painful transition involves a necessary shift from economies based on maximizing labor productivity (and thereby continually increasing the capital and energy intensity of their industrial production), which heretofore has been based on non-renewable energy, to economies that must now conserve capital, energy and materials and more fully employ their human resources. This shift will require the development of a newly designed, more efficient production system based on renewable resources and managed for sustained-yield productivity.
      This is a tall order for today's economists acculturated during a brief period of fossil-fuel-based abundence, which provided the slack that allowed massive Keynesian pump priming and demand-stimulation without instant inflation."

Hazel Henderson, 1981, _Politics of the Solar Age_, Anchor Press, NY, :31

Peanut plant in Boston

Boston Peanut plant, 'Black' variety, Sept 30th 2013, with index card and forming pod on peg.

Tarwi in Massachusetts

Tarwi flowers in blurry foreground, young pods backlit in center midground.

Peanuts in Massachusetts

Hope and Sanity?

Those before us brilliantly eliminated use of then-scarce labor with use of then-plentiful resources. Think Industrial Revolution and fossil fuels.

Now we live in a world emptying of resources and brimming with laborers and pollution. Think resource depletion, 7 billion of us and climate crisis.

Shifting technologies to reduce resource use, by using more labor, could create needed jobs, while sparing now-rare resources, all while yielding less industrial pollution. It's a win-win-win.

And taxing 'bads', like resource use and pollution, instead of 'goods', like paying payroll, can lead us toward a workably sane world by inspiring a different type of technical innovation, that eliminates, not labor, but pollution and rare resource use. Think carbon tax instead of payroll tax.

With great ingenuity our forebearers devised ways that suited their world as it was, empty of people; and full of energy, other resources and room to pollute. They made do by incrementally progressing innovations that suited their then-current technics. We can continue that tradition by recognizing as they did, the limitations and features of the world about us. But our world and theirs differ. By understanding our circumstances we can better suit them.

Our world in 2015 averages a hectare of dry land per couple; that is 14.8 billion hectares divided by about 7.4 billion of us. Yet during the early days of industry, say 1860, there was 14.8/1.4 = 21.2 hectares per human couple. To stretch then-scarce human power in guiding and harvesting twenty-one hectares of land’s productivity, industrialists turned to what was then plentiful, the natural resources that now power and substantiate our industrialized world.

While we cannot do both, we can either imitate early industrialists technology, or imitate their ingenuity in solving one scarcity with another existing abundance. Today’s world is relatively scarce of some ores and of room to pollute, but brimming with us willing workers.

Techniques of manufacturing constantly evolve, partly in response to physical constraints, but also as constrained by imagination. Let’s imagine our world working well with over seven billion of us, yet with only the ores and feedstocks, and pollutable space that we have on hand. Now, how can we get there from here with least pain and adaptation? Can we forecast scarcity, and anticipate it? Can we inspire each other to begin adapting before we encounter more extreme scarcity? Can we understand and adapt to our current circumstances, or will we persist in only imitating the extreme resource dependence of the early industrializers, instead of their ingenuity?

We can face future scarcity today by anticipating future steepening resource costs via current resource taxes. But many are wary of governments rasing only taxes, and not raising provision of services as well. So in British Columbia a carbon tax returned all revenue generated by reductions in income taxes as well as direct cash outlays. This was so successful that the carbon tax is increasingly popular even years after it’s start.

Some might say that if we shift from industrialism in this way, say, from cars to bicycles, we will injure and kill ourselves more. But we hurt ourselves so often today because, to do even simple, common things, we use enormous and dangerous forces, from vast stores of fossil fuels and such. If we apply less force and more evolved techniques, we may well cause less damage, and not just to ourselves.

I hope the preceding captures and shares insights I’ve come across in the writings of E.F. Schumacher, Hazel Henderson, John Michael Greer and Herman Daly.

Proposed Green-Rainbow Party Regions

Greater Boston - South

 Central - South

East-Southeast

 

 Greater Boston - North

 North - MetroWest

 Northeast

 South - MetroWest

 Southeast

 West

 Central - West

Garden Shots, May 28th, 2013

Flowering Yellow Vetch, also called Bigflower Vetch.

Mid: Growing Orach, Onions, Zukes foreground, With a Tarwi or two before dying tulips.

Top: Flowering Yellow Vetch
Mid: Growing Orach, Zukes foreground, With a Tarwi or two behind.
Bottom: Right to Left: Peas with Naked Oats, walkway, Painted Mt. Corn/Carrot, Pac Choi/Wax Pole, Tatsoi/ Pole Lime, Walkway..., and lots of weeds....

A Massachusetts carbon tax shift might create 81,000 new Mass. jobs.

Official Massachusetts unemployment figures currently run about 6.5-7%, but the percentage of us actually working is 49%. That's 3,240,000 working out of 6,646,000 of us. Now some of us are at school, others retired, but many of us have just been left off of the unemployed rolls. And the average work week of those of us working is only 33.7 hours. It's hard luck for us short of work, but it's also a missed chance for us all, as that's a lot of needed work not getting done lately. Now and in the future we will all suffer because that work didn't get done. What we could have made won't be available as tools for further building of infrastructure, etc.
How can we encourage private hiring by existing businesses? We could start by countering what discourages hiring. When bosses hire, they pay payroll, plus some payroll taxes to Uncle Sam. These payroll taxes on employers discourage hiring. Let's discourage something else instead. Let's rebate to Massachusetts bosses what they paid to Uncle Sam in payroll taxes.

Cleverly eliminating scarce labor use by using resources with technology was a brilliant solution in a world that was short on labor and full of resources, but now we're running out of resources and have plenty of eager workers. So to save some resources for our childrens' generation while creating jobs for us now, let's discourage resource use with taxes instead of discouraging hiring with payroll taxes. How do we do that here in Massachusetts?

We in Massachusetts can rebate to employers their Federal payroll taxes paid per hour worked, raising those revenues from carbon taxes.
What would happen? As businesspeople, we'd find it cheaper to hire than to use energy resources to the extent that we've used them before.
That would slow the loss of cash paid for energy imports to our state, so there would be more left in our state economy to spend again on each other.
Let's look at math:

The employer share of
FICA OASDI    6.2%        Social Security
FICA HI        1.45%        Medicare
FUTA        0.6% or less    Federal Unemployment
----------------------------------------------------------------
Total         up to 8.25%        of wages paid, is paid by bosses to Uncle Sam.

How much is that in Massachusetts?
With 3,240,000 workers earning $24.55/hr. average, over an average workweek of 33.7 hours, over 52 weeks of the year, about $139 billion in Massachusetts wages were paid, thus about $11.5 billion in taxes was paid to Uncle Sam by bosses. If we replace that with a carbon tax on the approximately 14 tons of CO2 we each used last year, with 6,646,000 of us releasing that carbon, we could rebate that private hiring tax payment with a carbon tax of $150 per ton of CO2. This would significantly inspire new hiring, and also significantly discourage resource use. Per year, it would cost us on average $2,100 in higher fuel prices, and pay bosses an average of $3,586 per worker per year working 33.7 hrs/week.

This would change our society for the better, and we can do it here in Massachusetts without federal co-ordination or permission. How much hiring can we expect by rebating that 8.25% otherwise paid by bosses to Uncle Sam? Well, in Hamermesh's Labor Demand, the consensus elasticity of labor demand is -0.3, so for every 1% decrease in wage cost to employers, bosses will increase jobs by -0.3%. Hence an 8.25% decrease in wage costs to bosses would increase hiring 2.5% If the average workweek were to stay the same, 81,000 new jobs would be created in Massachusetts.

Fuel costs would rise an average of $2,100 per person, with carbon-rich coal rising most in price. CO2's oxygen comes from air, and won't be taxed, so all the $150 will fall on the carbon sales, and carbon's percentage mass in CO2 is 1x12.01 /1x12.01 +2*16.0= 12/44, or 27%, so If coal is pure carbon, a tax of $150 per ton of CO2 would add to coal's price per ton a tax of about $556. This would vastly increase coal prices. In October 2010 coal sold for about $80/metric ton, so coal would increase in price about seven-fold.

Natural gas, if all methane (usually it is 70-90% methane, most of the balance being other hydrocarbons http://www.naturalgas.org/overview/background.asp), would have a mass ratio of about 3/4ths carbon and 1/4 hydrogen, so it's tax per ton would be about $417, or $0.068 tax/thousand cubic feet Natural Gas(http://energyworksus.com/carbon-calculator.html). Massachusetts residents averaged 58,400 cubic feet of natural gas per person per year in 2006(http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/naturalgas/per_capita_consumption.html), and so would pay $3,971 per average person per year as new carbon tax.

Electricity rates would rise as well. MA residents average 8,591 kwh/yr.(http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/electricity/us_per_capita_electricity-2010.html)
About 0.000742 tons of carbon dioxide are released per kwh, so through electricity use we of MA average 6.4 tons of CO2 released per year, which would be taxed (at $150 per ton) $960. Since coal is used to generate some electricity, these figures overlap somewhat.

These higher rates for energy would strongly inspire us to conserve resources by using labor, and to lead the world technologically with less carbon-intensive infrastructure, so we could export these valuable new technologies even more than we already do.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
 The original article, corrected above, was based on an elasticity of labor demand estimate that has proven anomolous. The more accepted estimate is -0.3, so that 8.25% drop in wage costs would increase employment by 2.5%, not ~20% .

On Raising Massachusetts Revenues.

We check the forecast before traveling - Will we need an umbrella? When one makes plans, it's good to have an idea of the situation that plan will probably deal with. Mass. Governor Patrick's 2013 budget and transportation plans are built on some assumptions of how the future will be. There are projections of how much we will drive our cars, how much we will work, earn and spend, etc. To plan, we make assumptions about fuel prices and use, about employment, wages and interest rates, and about weather. If these are stated, we can discuss how these projections were created, how they match what we know of today's world and how it's changing. A ten year transportation plan expecting yesteryear's fuel prices would be like sunglasses for a rainstorm. "The Way Forward:" must have an expectation in mind of what the future will be like, but it's unstated in these plans. What's the forecast?
Usually we assume things will continue as they have been. But our future will not be like our past, because of what's going on in the rest of the world, where increasing numbers of people are earning and spending increasing amounts of money, and using increasing amounts of resources, emitting increasing amounts of carbon into air, increasingly altering the climate we rely on for our agriculture and food supply.
Our future in Massachusetts, the one we'll be traveling in, will either have rapidly weirding weather or rapidly rising fossil fuel prices, and probably both.
How would we respond to European-level transport fuel prices? Would we drive as much, or would we move closer to work, or work from home?
How will higher fuel prices affect the transport choices we make? Will we choose public transport instead of our cars, and to what extent?
These are difficult questions, but ignoring them won't help us plan well. It would be tragic if we fixed roads with borrowed money, only to find that we can not afford to use them as planned, because we can not afford to drive private cars as much as we do now. What we spend on new roads could be spent on new buses, or on new business's equipment.

Together, we, the people of Massachusetts, have made our home state a nice place. Hence most people moving or living here really want to buy land here. 'Location, location, location' they say, controls real estate value. That location is in relation to the rest of us, and in relation to the communities we've built together. It is that location that gives most market value to land, and it is that location which our communities made valuable in the first place. Returning a portion of the market value we have created through our communities to maintain our communities makes sense. A state tax on land purchases would return a portion of the value we created when we built these fine communities.
We tax retail sales at the state level, yet we haven't taxed real estate sales statewide. It's only fair that we tax purchases of the rich as well as purchases of the poor, if we are to tax purchases at all. The proposed 4.5 percent sales tax, applied to real estate sales, would generate about $1.5 billion, so state revenues would increase about 1/30th.

Outer space, where we can not breath, is closer to us on earth than Dorchester is to Medford. With only about 7.5 miles of air above us, and about 400 ppm of CO2 now in our air, there is no longer airspace above earth for all the carbon in the fuels we could burn. We need to encourage each other to burn less, so as to maintain the climate, the agricultural systems and thus the food we all rely on. Those before us, to eliminate labor, substituted energy resources, which was brilliant in a world empty of people and full of resources, but now we're running out of resources and have plenty of labor. It now makes more sense to use more plentiful labor and less rare resources, which will yield less pollution and more jobs.
Nothing says 'Slow down' like taxes. A carbon tax will encourage all of us to develop the methods and the equipment all the world will need tomorrow, for our food system to continue to yield our meals. So a state carbon tax can prepare our state to supply the world tomorrow with exports of goods and services. Carbon taxes inspire this needed change in technology to proceed faster, preserving resources, jobs and the environment. In Massachusetts, we each release about 14 tons of carbon dioxide per person per year. If taxed at $30/ton, as in British Colombia now, state carbon tax revenues would be raised by about $2.6 billion/year, or about a twentieth of existing state revenues.

These two new taxes would add about $4.1 billion to state revenues, about as much as higher ed. state revenues. These revenues would be relatively easy to collect. There are but a few sources of carbon entering Massachusetts; coal, natural gas, motor fuel etc. And real estate transfers are clear through county deed records.

As Massachusetts transitions to a more carbon-efficient future, access to public transit will be increasingly valued. One of the leading ways public transit is valued is through increases in real estate value due to nearby public transit access. This value increase is not due to the actions of the individual owner, but to the community's actions, is fair to tax, and taxing this neighborhood increase in value can pay for all or some of the cost of extending public transit into new neighborhoods.
To do this, laws forming special tax districts surrounding newly transit-served neighborhoods would pass, so land value increases occurring as new public transit arrives would be taxed.

 Brian Cady

Yellow Vetch, Winter 2012-13

Young Yellow Vetch growing in the Fall of 2012, in Boston, MA USA. Now their half covered with snow, but still looking healthy where they're visible.

See?

Dear Naomi,

Re: 'Geo-engineering: Testing the Waters'

I've read and think quite highly of _The Shock Doctrine_. and just heard you join Bill McKibben on the Boston segment of the 'Do the Math' tour, where you spoke of the great strategy of divesting ourselves from fossil fuel foolery. I feel that your efforts here have been very well thought through.

I also read your 'Geo-engineering - Testing the Waters' NYT article, and it stimulated in me some thoughts and questions. I see this article as addressing very important issues. As you know, the response so far by humanity as a whole to the climate crisis has been underwhelming, and thus we're all endangered: the many innocent along with the industrial guilty. You have called out geo-engineering as too risky, and named geo-engineering as being intentional efforts to affect our climate. But isn't it still geo-engineering even if we didn't mean to? Is not our unprecedented current raising of the earth's temperature geo-engineering, even though inadvertent?

Why does this matter? We need to understand just how risky our current trajectory is as we compare the risks of preceeding as we are, versus attempting to ameliorate this disaster. The 'Do nothing' response has been left behind. We've continued to release carbon every time we raise the thermostat from 'off', every time we switch an electric light or computer on, and every time we drive an automobile. When we compare the risks of geo-engineering we really have nothing to compare this to. We're already altering the climate, we've been doing so for some time, we're accelerating the pace of change as we speak and no one of us has the 'off' switch for this earth-wide process within our grasp.

So what? So we're experimenting without a control, risking our bets without a hedge: What does that have to do with considering geo-engineering concepts proposed to lessen the risk of catastrophic climate change? Here's the nub; if we were comparing new geo-engineering ideas with truly doing nothing; with all humanity unplugging from industrialism completely, then dismissing geo-engineering as risky would clearly be the sane choice. Why risk possible disaster?

But that is not the choice we face, now that an out-of-control USA has been exceeded in GHG emission rates by an even more out-of-control China.
We do not have a 'do nothing' option to choose from, since we're geo-engineering this one and only living planet at ever-accelerating rates as we speak.

It's like we've woken up to find ourselves bicycling but falling, when we don't know how to steer a bike. Attempting to move the handlebars is possible disaster, but doing nothing as we fall is certain disaster. It makes sense to try to steer, because we're already falling. Some say that were we to simply cease all industrialism-based fossil-fuel use tomorrow, we would still face unacceptable climate change, even though we returned to Stone-age human climatic impact levels. So since we can't seem to avoid risk completely, our choices are continuing to accelerate our disasterous ways, or looking into hedging our bets by considering also-risky conscious, intentional geo-engineering.

So let's consider the geo-engineering options carefully. Don't these seem to separate into two main groups? First are the attempts to shade earth; to reduce sunlight falling to earth. Second are attempts to capture atmospheric carbon by increasing photosynthesis. These each have completely distinct outcomes, apart from both cooling the earth.

The first catagory, reducing sunlight reaching earth's surface, will reduce photosynthesis on earth. The wild plants and plankton will grow more slowly and crops will yield less - earth's carrying capacity will be reduced. As a result, less of us will have enough to eat. Examples of this approach include reflective umbrella satellites and high atmosphere sulfate aerosols. Let's consider other options.

The second catagory of geo-engineering increases earth's photosynthesis by various means. This leads to more food for wild and tame, to a greater carrying capacity for earth, to more of humanity going to bed fed. Some examples of this approach are growing seaweeds, etc. on seawater-flooded deserts and iron fertilization of oceans, the very topic that stimulated Ms. Klein to write 'Testing the Waters'.

So while I agree with Naomi Klein that some geo-engineering efforts should be avoided, I disagree that all geo-engineering can be safely avoided. Indeed, we're already geo-engineering earth, albeit unthinkingly. Let's consider just how unteniable the 'do nothing' option is, and then very carefully and thoughtfully investigate intentional geo-engineering approaches within our reach.


Brian Cady

Jobs, Earth and Humanity

Jobs: Each of us needs work, yet now one of five of us is out of, or short of, work (shadowstats.com). Each willing worker should have a job open to them. This is only fair, since we generally must work for what we need.  
Labor versus Resources: We now use resources to eliminate labor via clever technology, which, in a world empty of people and full of resources, brilliantly complemented limited labor. But now we live in a world full of people eager to work, and running empty of resources. We can use more labor and less resources and thrive more. This will reduce pollution from resource use, as well as provide more equal opportunity to work for the the less fortunate among us.  
Growth versus Maturity: We relied on economic growth to provide more jobs, more opportunity for the less lucky, but now our world is full of us people, and more growth can't fit well. Like a growing child becoming adult, humanity as a species has become mature. Further physical growth of our society is unhealthy, since we must all fit together on this limited planet. We still have enough now for each of our needs, yet not enough for our greeds. And if we grow economically while not growing physically, we produce only needless inflation. Now what?  
Fuller Employment and Tax-Shifting: We can have enough jobs without unhealthy continued growth through inspiring more labor use and less resource use, via different technologies and different incentives. How can we inspire replacing resource use with labor? Now we tax labor use through income taxes, but don't tax resource use. We can switch this, taxing use of resources to cover the revenues from now-eliminated income taxes. Then labor will be cheaper for bosses. This will inspire more hiring and less buying resources, saving rare resources for our children, while reducing subsequent pollution, and inspiring creation of more of the jobs we all need. Furthermore this helps reduce costly resource imports and damaging trade deficits, all while maintaining or increasing governmental revenues.  
In Massachusetts: Not only can we shift our state taxes from income to resource use, but at a state level we can reverse federal income taxation with state rebates, and pay for the rebates out of further resource use taxation. Thus we can lead the US in building a sustainable economy here in Massachusetts, inspiring extensive hiring and resource conservation.  
Worksharing: But tax-shifting will take time to affect employment decisions, and meanwhile one of five of us is short of the labor we need. So we can expand worksharing to levels so successful in Germany and other countries. What is worksharing? Worksharing spreads work among all of us by temporarily shortening the workweek to stimulate hiring unemployed people. Those already working, who's hours are cut, receive some unemployment insurance so that their take-home pay stays nearly level. Worksharing has been done here in Massachusetts on a trial basis, and can be expanded. Worksharing is a temporary measure to make hard times fall more fairly across all our shoulders, to preserve civil society while economies adjust.

One design of solar hot water heater can work right through a power failure. Called 'geyser pumping', the mechanism percolates like a coffee maker, using the sun's power to drive bubbles up through the panels. Bubbles that form in the panels lift the working fluid up out of the panels, where the bubbles are released. This allows the fluid to travel down through a long loop that takes it down through the basement-mounted hot water storage tank, where it gives off its heat to the cold water entering the tank. Then the now-cold fluid continues back up to the panels, where, joined by the bubbles, it enters the panels to be heated again. The fluid in the panels is freeze-proof, and is separated from drinking water by copper heat exchangers, so the system will withstand New England winters without trouble. While a little complex to first explain, these systems are in fact simple in operation, in that they do not depend on electric pumps, motors, valves, switches or any electricity at all. This means sun can heat your water when there's no electricity, providing an additional margin of security in tomorrow's uncertain future. Moreover, this simplicity provides outstanding reliability, and eases diagnosis and repair on the rare occasion of failure. Decades ago I helped install a predecessor to this type of solar hot water system. This newer system shares with it's predecessor the ability to shut itself down once all the tank water is hot, preventing damage and extending reliability. This is also done without switches motors valves or electricity, so this system will not overheat in a power failure. A tank below the panels accepts most of the working fluid when the system's heat fills the panels with vapor, which occurs when the basement tank has been completely heated through. Then when hot water is used, cold water replaces it in the bottom of the storage tank. This cools the working fluid returning to the panels. This cold fluid cools down the panels again, drawing the rest of the fluid back up out of the overflow tank beneath the panels, and returning the system to operation. I am really impressed with the careful thought guiding this system's design, and recommend it for Jamaica Plain residents seeking trouble-free solar hot water. For more information, see Sunnovations' archived site.

Finishing Unemployment for Good

Economists understand that we don't need growth to solve unemployment. We can put more of us to work, getting more work done in the world, at the cost of increasing the money supply. This is said to cause inflation, but there's a cure - reduce the money supply back done again with land and wealth taxes that most affect the one percent. Thus we can have full employment and balanced budgets while acknowledging that infinite growth aboard a finite earth is suicidally cancerous, all while reducing the inequality that makes us all miserable. But won't an increase in employment inevitably cause an increase in pollution? No, because we use polluting resources to substitute for labor, when we have too much labor and pollution and not enough resources. Slowing resource use will lessen pollution, preserve resources and increase employment. Hence the push to tax 'bads' instead of goods, and instead of taxing labor; This tax shift can shift consumption patterns so we'll all be better off. For more, see the 16 minute Joshua Farley video:

Transportation transformation

Joshua Farley explains Money, Debt, and Ecological Economics

Now is the Time to Start Building the Boston Urban Ring Transit Line.

The Urban Ring is a planned public transport service to encircle central Boston, connecting the existing subway line 'grid' so as to allow quicker routes around Boston's center. It is expected to move 40,000 passengers each day in phase I, to about 275,000 per day in phase III in 2025, speeding commutes and relieving central transit congestion.
Because most business doesn't know now what to do with capital, interest rates are near historic lows, so it's a great time to raise building capital via municipal bond sales.
And it is a great time to hire transit builders, amidst this seemingly endless recession, and to thus stimulate the greater Boston economy.
The land-owners of the to-be-connected new stops on the Urban Ring stand to gain tremendously in financial terms from the Ring's connecting these sites right to the existing subway and busway system, and it would thus be fair to partly fund Urban Ring construction by taxing the increase in land value created at and near these new stops with special taxation zones. There’s an annotated bibliography about paying for public transit building with taxes of the increased land value created by the new public transit at: http://www.vtpi.org/smith.pdf
Boston's Urban Ring could be a step forward into a greener future for Boston, replacing private auto traffic, speeding many commutes, reducing air pollution and the resulting health costs for asthma, etc. in Boston, while helping to lessen greater Boston's Carbon footprint.
Here are some links to more information:

http://app1.massdot.state.ma.us/theurbanring/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_Ring_Project_(MBTA)

http://www.abettercity.org/transportation/urbanring.html

Fairly applying Mass sales tax to real estate, too.

Here's a graph of current US state and local revenues in this recession compared to recent recessions, from page 8 of http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/82978022 which is 'Housing, Monetary Policy, and the Recovery' by Michael E. Feroli, JP Morgan Chase, Ethan S. Harris, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Amir Sufi, University of Chicago Booth School of Business and NBER, Kenneth D. West, University of Wisconsin and NBER,February 2012

As we can see, state and local tax revenues are plummeting; which is unique in recent recessions.
To maintain Massachusetts civil society, we must currently increase revenues. and one way we could do that is to extend the application of Mass sales tax to land transactions.


It is only fair to tax the sales of the rich as well as the poor.

This could be done simply by clarifying http://www.malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleIX/Chapter64H/Section6 part (g) to specifically tax real estate sales, in addition to the deed excise tax. Indeed, it is not clear to me from the law that real estate sales are currently in fact exempt from Massachusetts sales taxation, so this might be just a policy decision.

This might be expected to generate, at a median price of $293,500, and a count of 34,952 home sales on the MLS in 2011, taxed at 6.25%, yearly revenues of around $641,000,000.

In effect, taxing real estate sales collects some of the location value provided to the seller by the community.

What about also cutting the sales tax?

Expand the scope of the sales tax to include real estate but also cut the sales tax to 2-3%?
patrick

How that might work

[2011] “Receipts from the sales tax totaled $4.905 billion,” /0.0625= $78.48billion + ($293,500 * 34,952 = 10.26billion) = $88.74billion * 0.025 =$2.22 billion

So going from sales tax of 6.25% without real estate to 2.5% on everything loses (4.905 -2.219)billion = a loss in state revenues of $2.687 billion in 2011, of $20.5 billion 2011 state revenues collected.

Building a civil society adds value to real estate via location effects.

We can either let our communities erode further, thus futher eroding the value of our real estate's location, or we can act to have a civil society by creating a means to pay for it, and perhaps add more than $18K of value to a median property by having it be in a place you’d like to live.

If sales tax is bad for the rich, how is OK to charge to the poor who never buy homes? we are paying on average about $750/yr. (=4.905b/6.5million pop'n.) a piece in nickels and dimes on every taxable purchase now, which is a logistic nightmare.
A real estate sales tax would be easy to collect - the property isn't going anywhere, and the number and size of the payments to be taxed would make it easier to keep track of.

Why are Mass homes so pricey?

The idea of raising real estate sales taxes in Massachusetts raises ire as well. Many seem to feel threatened by rising home costs, yet do they feel threatened by degrading education, fire and police protection? Perhaps we feel safe in our homes, until costs rise, yet unsafe in our neighborhoods, as if we're unattached to the events beyond our door. Are our homes certain protection from fire, from increasing crime (due to both worsening unemployment and worsening education)? Of course not. Much of the protection we enjoy in our homes is due to the efforts of the community within which our homes lie, including town, state and national communities.

Why is a median Massachusetts home worth about $350K while in Maine the median price is about $175K? It's mostly location. What about location provides so much value? It is that location is location in regards to community: in other words the difference in value between the median house in MA and ME, or between MA and Bosnia or Korea is to a great extent due to the work of communities of people, often through their governments. And that community-provided-value, while it can taken advantage of by an individual's real estate sale, can not be created by an individual acting alone, or a family acting alone. That value is due to the communities' work, and as the representative of the community, the government has a moral claim to some of that community-provided value.