"the cost of phasing out fossil fuel production and expanding renewables is not large. Decarbonizing the world economy is technically and financially feasible. It would require committing approximately 2.5 percent of global GDP per year to investment spending in areas designed to improve energy efficiency standards across the board (buildings, automobiles, transportation systems, industrial production processes) and to massively expand the availability of clean energy sources for zero emissions to be realized by 2050. The IEA reckons the annual cost has now risen to $4trn a year because of the failure to invest since the Paris COP five years ago. But even that cost is nothing compared to the loss of incomes, employment, lives and living conditions for millions ahead.

But it won’t happen because, to be really effective, the fossil fuel industry would have to be phased out and replaced by clean energy sources. Workers relying for their livelihoods on fossil fuel activity would have to be retrained and diverted into environmentally friendly industries and services. That requires significant public investment and planning on a global scale.

A global plan could steer investments into things society does need, like renewable energy, organic farming, public transportation, public water systems, ecological remediation, public health, quality schools and other currently unmet needs. And it could equalize development the world over by shifting resources out of useless and harmful production in the North and into developing the South, building basic infrastructure, sanitation systems, public schools, health care. At the same time, a global plan could aim to provide equivalent jobs for workers displaced by the retrenchment or closure of unnecessary or harmful industries.

All this would depend first on bringing the fossil fuel companies into public ownership and under democratic control of the people wherever there is fossil fuel production. The energy industry needs to be integrated into a global plan to reduce emissions and expand superior renewable energy technology. This means building renewable energy capacity of 10x the current utility base. That is only possible through planned public investment that transfers the jobs in fossil fuel companies to green technology and environmental companies.

None of this is on the agenda at COP26."

https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2021/10/28/cop-out-26/

"The great feat of neoclassical economics has been to convince people that there is a vantage point to view society, separable from concerns with equity and distribution. This vantage point, defined as economic efficiency, supposedly allows one to see if society as a whole is better off, such that decisions to produce a particular array of goods and services could be made in the interests of everybody, irrespective of how little one had, thus separating efficiency decisions from equity ones. However, if prices are not defined according to the exact dictates of what economists call “perfect competition,” then private profitability tells us nothing about the comparative social advantages and the consequent “efficiency” of producing, let’s say, more yachts for rich people instead of more rice and beans for poor people. Similarly, to argue that the allocation of resources can be “efficient” even if half the world is starving to death is ridiculous, but that is exactly what neoclassical economics says.

I find this legerdemain of inventing a concept of efficiency separate from equity, based on a completely unreal, obviously untrue, abstraction, is absurd on the face of it. If the absurdity of this framework is not obvious, one only has to look at what NCT calls “second best theory.” The “first best” world is that of perfect competition; “second best” refers to a world with at least one “imperfection,” say, one monopoly in a world that was otherwise perfectly competitive. Second-best theory essentially asks: “If we don’t live in the first-best world of perfect competition but have, let’s say, only one imperfection in an otherwise perfect world, what are the results?” It turns out, reluctantly admitted by neoclassical economists – second best is their own theory, not a plot by critics – that with just one imperfection, there are ripples so that all market prices become distorted, and Adam Smith’s famous invisible hand is no longer a good guide to the social interest, and the system is no longer efficient — nor is there even any sense of whether it is close to efficiency. In the real world of multiple imperfections – where none of the assumptions of perfect competition hold – even if the neoclassical concept of efficiency had some meaning in theory, in practice, it is an abysmal failure, a completely empty idea."

https://evonomics.com/klees-neoclassical-economics-failed-what-comes-next/

How badly is cryptocurrency worsening the chip shortage?
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"One of my favorite stories along these lines is Jim Bridenstine, who was a U.S. Congressman a few years back, who is a rock-ribbed conservative. On the floor of the US House, he gave a speech against climate change, saying all the things that climate change deniers say. And, of course, Trump appointed him to be the head of NASA [...]. About a month or two into his new job as head of NASA, he changed his mind publicly, came forward and said, I was wrong. Climate change is real, and human beings are causing it.
[...] he met the scientists. They were not the other anymore. He was not alienated from them. He was their boss. And all of a sudden, they were warm and trustworthy people and the evidence and facts that they were presenting were not just things that he didn’t understand, from a journal that he couldn’t reach. They were somebody down the hall, people he actually knew personally"

"“In virtually every account I’ve read of anti-vaxxers, climate change deniers, or other ideologues who have changed their minds, they have done so on the basis of face to face encounters, where evidence was presented by someone with whom they had a trusting relationship. Kindness, empathy, and listening work. And people acquire knowledge by consulting those they trust and understand. It takes hard work, face-to-face, and over time engagement. Trust, relationships, and values are the key to real belief change.”"

" I would drop that question that you mentioned earlier, the Karl Popper question. So tell me, if your view is based on evidence, what evidence if I had it in my back pocket could convince you to give up your views? And then I let them sit with the discomfort that they could not answer that question. I planted the seed of doubt."

www.currentaffairs.org/2021/10/how-can-you-talk-effectively-to-anti-vaxxers-flat-earthers-and-climate-deniers/