Why should organic be regulated but not Fair Trade?

In the "COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE COUNCIL, THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COMMITTEE, contributing to Sustainable Development: The role of Fair Trade and nongovernmental trade-related sustainability assurance schemes" from EU Commission of 5 May, the commission "Reiterates the importance of maintaining the non-governmental nature of Fair Trade and other similar sustainability schemes throughout the EU. Public regulation could interfere with the workings of dynamic private schemes." I could not agree more. The EU has had a similar approach to environmental labelling, where it does run an own scheme, but it has not regulated or banned other environmental labelling schemes.

BUT it is very hard to see the logic why the EU thinks that organic labelling needs regulation. Fair trade labelling, eco labelling and organic are all sustainability labelling schemes and the arguments for staying out of regulation are the same for all of them. When the commission says:
"Regulating criteria and standards would limit a dynamic element of private initiatives in this field and could stand in the way of the further development of Fair Trade and other private schemes and their standards." this is equally true for the organic sector.

There will be scandals and fraud without a regulation - but they are there also with a regulation...

Shrinking marginal benefits of globalisation?

One can discuss if not the marginal benefits of globalisation and international competition are decreasing over time.

The first international trade was ecologically motivated, i.e. populations and cultures in one part of the world lacked locally available critical resources, such as flint, bronze, salt etc. So trade was an ecological adaptation totally essential for human survival.

Gradually trade has been more and more motivated by profits. Free trade and competition and in particular the lowered prices for transport from mid 1800s led to a global division of labour. A division of labour which similarly as the division of labour in the family, within a company or within a society has two functions: one is the increased efficiency in the production and the other is a increased stratification of society with increased inequality and more hierarchy. This is also what we can see in the world today, where some countries are locked in a poverty trap. And despite the promotion of globalisation as a solution they have not benefitted at all.

It also seems that globalisation itself has the effect of gradually reducing the accrued benefits. The theory in favour of globalisatoin is about competition between companies and innovation plays a big role. Innovations are now global. An innovation in Japan can result in a production in Mexico exporting to Scandinavia. This is also linked to increased standardisation on all levels from production to management. There is very little space for innovation on the production level and even when there is innovation it can be applied everywhere. This also means that there is actually little money and profit to be made in the production as such. The money to be made is upstreams, i.e. in the patents and downstream, i.e. in the marketing and branding. It is no coincidence that most successful companies have no own production any longer.

For the production proper the comparative advantages are now mainly about salaries and other components of human and social capital, as all other factors are more or less the same all over the globe (this is based on the low transport costs based on too cheap fossil energy). A factory in Thailand may very well be owned by a company from India, have an American manager and using technology from Singapore. Therefore it is not the own resources of that company that makes it different from their competitors. It is the Thai labour force and the Thai makroeconomics that shall compete with India, Germany and Brazil.

If this analysis is correct it means that it is not companies or entrepreneurs that compete with each other, but it is political systems and states that compete. States can compete by distorting the game with subsidies (such as OECD countries support to its farm sector) or by investing in human or social capital (e.g. by eductions) or by creating a good "business climate" (law and order, less red tape). And one can wonder, why it is wrong that countries compete by spending their resources where they think they make most use? The question is if we perhaps do more harm that good by trying to standardise how countries operate, wether it is done by the EU, the WTO or other mechanisms?

God and nature

Mostly, the emergence of religion is explained by the need of people to have the mysteries of the world explained to them and to understand how the human being interacts with nature. Perhaps that is true, I don't know and I don't think that there is any way to verify that assumption. But looking at the monoteist religions of today it is hard to see that link.

I think that the role of religion has a lot more to do with society and our relations among ourself, than about our relationship with nature. The early animist and polytheist religions were a lot more "democratric" and some of them included some kind of worship of nature. Gods were like people, they quarreled and fought with each other (like the Greek gods or the Nordic ones). Things changed with the introduction of the monoteist, omnipotent and judging God. Both in regard to the relationship to nature and the relationship between God and (wo)man.

In these religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, there is very little about nature and the place of the human being in the world, and there is very little about all these scaring natural phenomena that religion is supposed to explain. Of course one can find passages in the Bible which are about nature - such as the creation- but they are really few compared to what is about the human being, society and God himself (or herself if you prefer).

Of the ten commandments in the Bible seven are about how we relate to each other and the other three about how we relate to God and to religion itself. I think that shows quite clearly the societal nature of religion.

Living roof and advanced recycling

Hi, wanted to share two pictures:



This is a boy in Uganda that has made a cap of small plastic containers in which the local liqour is sold. People throw them away and hey this coming guy makes a cap!

The picture below is of the living roof of the extension of our house. Isn't it beautiful? A living roof has a number of advantages such as:
- it keeps the heat in winter and the cool in summer
- it slows the runoff so there is less water to take care of/drain away - particularly important in cities
- it is beautiful, perhaps the most important criteria for us.

Living roofs can be made with a variety of materials, in this case it is sedum plants. It can also be grass and moss in our climate.

Plows into Swords and Swords into Plows

The links - and the competition - between food production and war is an old one and mentioned already in the Bible.

Reuters report April 20 that Algeria is suffering a potato shortage because officials have imposed strict controls on the use of fertiliser to stop al Qaeda militants using it as a bomb-making ingredient, farmers said. Security experts say ammonia, used by farmers to improve crop yields, has also been found in bombs detonated by Algerian militants affiliated to al Qaeda.State security forces in this North African country have cracked down hard on the insurgents but farmers say there has been an unforeseen consequence: a kilo of potatoes in the capital now costs more than three times what it used to.

In India the collapse of the Mughal empire lead to a lot of fighting. When Ahmed Shah Durrani invaded India 1759 the demand for buffaloes and oxen for transport of armies increased so much that their price rose five times, clearly reducing the agriculture production seriously.

In Sweden, France and Germany in the 16th to 18th century farmers were forced to deliver nitrates to the governments for the making of gunbpowder. That nitrate was extracted from the manure and meant that large quantities of nutrients were taken from farming and virtually exploaded into the air. Obviously with detrimental effects on farm production.

Peru and Bolivia even fought a long war with Chile over nitrate resources 1879 to 1883 (Chile won)

Nitrogen production got the biggest boost from World War II developments. Nitrogen is, of course, one of the main ingredients in explosives. During the 1930s, the U.S. government spent millions of dollars researching how to produce nitrogen from the air we breathe. That process requires a lot of electricity, so some of the first plants were built near hydroelectric dams in the TVA. The nitrogen produced took the chemical form of ammonia.

When World War II started, the government constructed 10 new plants to produce ammonia for munitions. All were located in the interior of the country. Several of the plants were built alongside natural gas pipelines so they could use the gas as raw material for their production. By the end of the war, these new plants and the old ones were producing 730,000 tons of ammonia each year, and had the capacity of producing 1.6 million tons.When the nitrogen was no longer needed for bombs, what were they going to do with all this capacity? The answer was, use the nitrogen-rich ammonia for fertilizing the nation's crops.

Other examples of the relationship is the immense deforestation of certain parts of the world for (war) ship building a deforestation that caused erosion and local climate change.

All through history wars have affected farming, and even today consumers in Algeria have to pay a triple price for their spuds because of war. When will this end?

Time for a soil convention!

The topsoil is one of the most fundamental assets we have, a natural capital. Soil formation is slow, to build up a cm takes centuries. To destroy it takes just a few years. Many civilizations have been ruined by their lack of care for the soil. It is high time that an international convention for protection of soils is signed and implemented. Not that I have any high expectations that such a convention will deliver so much. Changing the habits of a billion farmers is not easy, and changing the habit of cities and citizens to swallow fertile lands for infrastructure is also very hard. Nevertheless a soil convention would highlight the issues.

Not only soil eroision is problematic but also the transformation of soils into urban infrastructure, dams etc. Here global statistics are pretty wobbly, figures from 3 to 9 percent of land transformed to infrastructures appear. In fairly densly populated Denmark almost 20 percent of the land is used for human infrastructure.



Most of cities, houses and roads are built on arable land. In China approximately 600.000 hectares per year are transformed to human infrastructure. In Sweden 345.000 hectares are covered with roads, that corresponds to more than ten percent of the arable land (not all of it is of course built on arable land).

It is ironic that people are upset about land use for biofuel while they gladly drive their petrol driven cars on top of the ruined soil.
(Yes, I think that government subsidised bio fuels is dubious, no, I don't think it is ethical to take food from the poor and drive cars, yes, I think biofuels are a lot better than petrol if properly made, yes, I think high prices for agricultural products are good)

It is high time for a Soil Convention. Is UNEP the one taking the lead? Which country will suggest it?

Who said that?

"Freedom exists in the space between what there is and what is possible"
Have you heard that expression? Who said it (I don't think i did...)?
I try to trace it. It is formulated well. Or is it too obvious, self-evident?

Sobering words from Keynes

I wish that world leaders - and people in common would consider Keynes words at the time of the last depression, and perhaps look more inte the real problems of this world:

"But, chiefly, do not let us overestimate the importance of the economic problem, or sacrifice to its supposed necessities other matters of greater and more permanent significance. It should be a matter for specialists-like dentistry. If economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people, on a level with dentists, that would be splendid!"

Keynes, John Maynard, 1930, Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren

The full paper can be found at
http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf

More people, less nature

One doesn't have to be an economist to realise that we value something higher that is in short supply than something that is abundant. For a long time nature was seen as unlimited, just for us to exploit as we saw fit. Up to the industrial revolution exploitation was fairly proportionate to the growing population. With the industrial revolution we expand exploitation through the application of energy and technology at a raging pace. But we can see that resources are depleted and that we need to take better care of them. At the same time our population has exploded.

Not that I think we should compare humans and trees but to put it a bit provocatively: As we have more and more people and less and less nature, we have to value nature higher and people less, or at least human labour less."Saving" nature must have priority over saving labour. A question is how we make a system of regulations and incentives to cater for that, a system that doesn't erode respect for human rights and human values?

Or is there another logic here?

Garden Earth - a modern civilization

There is no land left to settle, the last frontier we have left to civilize is ourselves.(Jewel)

Garden Earth is my project to summarize thirty years of thoughts and a whole lot of practical experiences of environment economy and society. I have been frustrated with that most books and debates are about one issue at the time and then people try to explain and predict everything from that perspective. One year ago it was climate change, today it is the financial crisis. I have written the Garden Earth to merge political, social, ecological and economical analyses.

I look at the history of human society, how it was shaped by ecological and social conditions. As an example, I show the importance of trade for our ecological adaptation. People might believe that trade emerged as a means to make profit, but the reality is that trade is what enabled us to populate areas were some essential resource was missing. A main focus are the technical and energy development “complexes”. From the first use of fire, we harnessed energy in animals for animal traction and transport and in the wind for trade and for new conquest. Up to around 1750, wood was still the main source of energy, and that led to a very high pressure on the forests, large tracts of Europe and other developed parts of the world were almost deforested.

Coal changed all this. In the short run it saved the forest. In the long run however it was paving the way for an enormous expansion of our energy use to a level where each human use energy resources corresponding to thirty, forty people. And this has enabled the development where we now use more than 40 percent of the land surface for production of food and for our cities, and where we annually use more than 100 percent of the total production capacity of the planet – clearly not a sustainable situation.

Our society faces a lot of challenges. On the one hand, the pressure on the natural resources, in particular all the ecosystem services. On the other hand poverty and inequality. Our society has no mechanisms to value the services of nature. This has led to large scale depletion. One way of dealing with this is to “liquidate” these resources and services, e.g. with carbon payments or payment to farmers for environmental services. There is a certain logic to that, but it also means that we let the same system that actually created the problem, capitalism, fix it. Is that wise. Capitalism and market economy has gradually expanded to bigger and bigger parts of life. From markets for goods, then to labor and soil. Later on financial markets – buying money for money – developed. Lately we have seen a large scale “marketization” of social capital, when public goods have been transferred to private ownership and management. To also let nature itself, the air we breathe, the water we drink be managed by markets seems like a very risky venture.

My study has a special focus on energy and farming, both critical for our survival. And farming is all about energy, our food is the basic energy source. In early societies it was obvious that we had to produce more energy than we consumed, otherwise we could not work and reproduce. With the introduction of fossil fuel this all changed. Now we use some 15-150 times (figures vary a lot depending on how it is counted) as much energy to produce our food than we get from farming. Hey, that is a extremely inefficient system!

Our society and the capitalist market economy has failed in creating wealth for the many. Big parts of humanity are as poor today as they were fifty years ago, despite an unprecedented growth. We have failed to create an equitable society. In addition, the economic system, supposedly managing itself through the “invisible hand”, is in constant need of corrections and controls, simply because it doesn’t work as it is supposed to work.

The capitalist economy and its associated values – such as the vision of constant growth – were perhaps appropriate for a world bent at expansion and colonization. But we have now colonized what there is to colonize and spread ourselves on all parts of the globe. Even if economic growth perhaps is still possible (we can always create some new virtual globes on the internet, can’t we?), biological, physical and geographic growth isn’t. Therefore we need new values and paradigms. Most likely we also need a new economy and new forms of social capital.

We have changed the globe so much that Nature can’t make it without us anymore. On contrary, more and more wild life is dependent on us for its survival. There is no point in looking back to the time when we were equal to the elk, the carrot and the sheep. Today, weather we like it or not, we must act as gardeners for the whole Garden Earth. And we must manage the planet as a garden.

The thoughts above are some of the essential parts of my thinking. Garden Earth is currently a 400 page book in Swedish, where those thoughts are elaborated. My plan is to make an English edition - I am looking for a publisher.

200 billion slaves

A human needs around 2500 kcal per day (2.9 kWh, most of it, around 80 percent is used just to stay, alive, think, sleep etc, so around 600 Wh are used for work as a power output. But let’s say that a person who is really doing physical work – which this is about anyway – generates some 800 Wh per day. On a yearly basis a person consumes some 1.16 MWh in the form of food.

Let us contrast this against how much other energy we have put to use in this modern world. The Swede use 5.65 toe (toe is ton oil equivalents, i.e. the energy in one metric tonne of oil), the American 7.71, the Britton 3.8 and the Senegalese use 0.20. Let’s look at the Swede: 5.65 toe corresponds to 65.7 MWh which means that we use ”external energy” corresponding to the energy of 57 human beings. But that is brut. If we look at hour conversion rate we said that we use only 20 percent of the food energy for actual work, so then we would use more than 250 peoples’ power. On the other hand, the external energy also has a lot of conversion losses. If we assume them to be 40 percent (this is now a bit of ”back of the envelope calculation) we are down to 100 energy slaves as I would call them. If we look at the global average energy use it is about one third of the Swede’s which means that there are about 200 billion energy slaves working for us all year round. It is not surprising that we can produce a lot more things than our savage ancestors. And it is not surprising that we also can make much greater mess than they could by using those forces in the wrong way!

Another way to look at the same condition, but adding an economic perspective is that one barrel of oil corresponds to 25 000 man-hours of work (around 12 man-years). The cost to actually produce this barrel is some few dollars per barrel. One can see that even with a price of 200 dollars per barrel that is a very cheap price to get 12 man-years of work done. Of course the barrel of oil is not as intelligent as the 12 humans and its use is thus a bit more limited…

Warning messages on consumer goods.

Positive labeling, such as organic labeling and eco-labeling have had a good impact. It also has a certain appeal within the capitalism paradigm. It is about giving the consumer accurate information. So far so good. However, we also know that the impact of these kinds of labeling schemes is limited. In addition, they have the perverse mechanism that those that are doing a good thing, such as organic farmers, are penalized with costs and scrutiny for an labeling, inspection and certification system. Those costs are passed on to the consumers who then are also penalized for making a benign choice. For those who see these schemes solely as marketing gimmicks this is perhaps considered as being fair. But if you see them as delivering public goods it is hard to defend – and this is also the reason that some governments take on the costs.

However, negative labeling could also fulfill the same role, or even more forceful role. We have seen the labeling on tobacco with unsympathetic warning messages – in some countries such as Thailand also with very repulsive pictures. In Sweden there is also warning messages on alcohol advertisements – but not on the product. This kind of negative labeling should be considerably expanded in my opinion. The first step would be to have a competition on what kind of messages there should be for selected damaging products.

Cars:
-1.2 million people die per year in car accidents, many more are maimed for life.
-Cars emit 200 dangerous chemical compounds to nature every time you drive it.
-The car infrastructure (roads, garages etc.) destroys ??? m2 of land per car sold. In total cars have occupied an area corresponding to two France.
-regardless of which fuel you use for this device it will always take away resources that could be better used by poor people.
-Driving a car make you lazy and fat.

A conventional chicken:
- This chicken is fed with antibiotics and the consumption of chicken may increase risks for antibiotic resistance in bacteria
- This chicken is fed with hormones, which may cause reproductive disturbance, development of breasts in males, increased deformities in infants
- These chicken have never seen the light of day and have not been given the possibility to exercise their natural behaviors

A CD player
- this item is not likely to make you a happier person.
- this CD player contains 162 different dangerous chemicals. Most of them will end up in nature, some of them in your body when this item is used and disposed of.
-use this device only in aerated room for the first five months to ensure that most of the flame retardants and other substances emitted from by this item will not cause you damage.

Personally I find that this kind of labeling is a lot more interesting than labeling of origin, or carbon labeling or other labeling ideas that flourish.

Towards a new materialism!

We have been told, and I have said it myself, that this society is too materialistic. That the root cause of many of the problems is that we constantly want more "things" and that we don't care enough for nature our fellow humans or future generations. The antidote to this is supposedly a new spiritualism, perhaps inspired by earlier animistic or panteistic religions - God is everywhere, a proposal that also many Christians subscribe to, and which seems to fit well with e.g. Buddhism and Hinduism (perhaps Islam as well I just don't know enough about islam to know).

I think there is a certain point there, but that it is missing animportant perspective. We don't need more spirituality to balance materialism, we need a sound materialism.

What currently is called "materialism" is just "consumerism". It express itself by complete disrespect of "materials" and the mother of all "materials" - nature. I churns out millions of pretty useless objects per hour, most of which are soulless, have no history and no future. They are just there for a while before they become waste. It is "capitalism" in the sense that all resources have a price and that that price reflects the "value" of the resource. But all this averts our eyes for the materials themselves. Let us not throw out the baby, the feeling for the materials, with the bathwater, capitalism and consumerism.

Instead we need to release the "materials" and "nature" from our consumerism and capitalism and look upon them with different eyes. A real materialism would respect the materials, the quality, the inherent information: the millenia of history embedded i a piece of nature or the geological processes embedded in a piece of rock, or in that barrel of oil. A real materialism would represent the difference between good handicraft and crap from the indsutrial mills. A real materialism see to the tastes and smells of the food and value it for what it is. A real materialism would choose a wooden house or a stone house over a concrete block. Let us celebrate, birch wood, marble, iron, yes let us even celebrate oil as a wonder of nature and respect its real value. A real materialism would value the beauty of nature. A real materialism would not accept cruel treatment of animals or people, and not of nature at large. A real materialism would value things for their inherent quality, not for their market values. A real materialism would recognize the pricelessness of the world, rather than trying to allocate costs or values to everything. A real materialism would make us revel over the wonder of that little flower, that little grain of sand and oursleves.

What this means in practise? Hey, I have no idea, I am not in the business of selling a new brave world - at least not yet.

The wind and nuclear marriage - a coincidence?

I see quite a lot of wind mills here in Turkey. When I asked about it I am told that the new energy policies are promoting both wind energy and nuclear power. Does that sound familiar? For a Swede it surely does. Just less than a month ago the Swedish government launched a new policy which exactly had the same cute little marriage. Nuclear AND renewables. No more either or! I am not normally inclined towards consipracy theories, but when I hear the same story in countries like Turkey and Sweden, which current energy situation and mix are very different I get a bit freightened that somebody is behind pulling the strings? How is it in your country? Has the energy magicians suddenly also realised that nuclear and renewables is an invincible match?

A Global Apartheid

When the Berlin Wall and the iron curtain crumbled, most people were happy. Finally people in the East would be free to move as they wished. Before the fall of the wall the few that managed to come over were allowed to stay and were perhaps interesting in the political game. But after the wall came down, suddenly the people from the former Communist countries were not welcome anymore. Now there are no longer any political reason to let people from Russia, Ukraine or Kazahkstan come here. The funny thing is that we criticise dictators for not allowing their population to travel, but if we don't give the visa to come here, how can we put the blame on the dictator. Blatant hypochrisy.

Similarily we honor those that helped Jews flee from the Nazis, and we honor other heros, real or invented, as the Scarlett Pimpernell who helt French nobles to flee from the revolution. But how is it today. Any person that helps a refugee from another country is guilty to trafficking, human smuggling or whatever it is called. As such they are subject to sever prison sentences. I am aware of that some of them - perhaps the majority - are crooks that take benefit of desperate people. But that misses the point. Firts there are also real saints among them, and secondly and perhaps more important, it is our refusal to allow these people entry that is the breeding grounds for these crooks. You might claim that those that are real refugees can always get asylum. But that is in theory. Most of them will never get the opportunity to even apply for asylum unless they get into the country illegally. Airlines don't let them on the plane, and if they do they are punished.

The limitation of free movement of people is a global Apartheid. I and most other rich people can go where we want, live were we want, work were we want. How can we deny other people the same rights.


Movement of people would have a major impact on the appaling inequality of the world.
1) Movement of people has an equalising impact on salaries. They go up in the countries from which people move and they go down in countries where they go
2) The remmittance of migrants to their home countries play a major role. In some countries it corresponds to 10 percent of the GDP.
3) Many migrants go back home. They often come with funds for investments, technical know-how, innovations and entrepreneurship
4) Migrants often maintain links in their old country, links that can be used for trade or investment.

Yes, I know about "brain-drain". But brain-drain is a problem of the existing system. We aleady allow medical doctors, nuclear scientists and top-notch professionals to come and live here.

On my way

I am on my way now. For another two month trip. I go by train now to Istanbul. From Istanbul ferry to Bandirma and then bus to Kyccukuyu wjere mybicycle is wating. I will stay a few days with friends and then contoinue along the Turkish coast. Proceeding over to some Greek Islands, towards Italy and home in some way.

How the cow and the wheat conquered the human being

We all know the story. We, the humans domesticated plants and animals and thereby created agriculture. Have you ever thought about taking the opposite perspective? That is to see it as an evolutionary strategy of the cow or of the wheat.

The cow saw these humans roaming the plant with forceful weapons (that is a bow and an arrow). She was afraid that she could be exterminated. And "if you can't beat them join them" as Mother Cow always told her subjects. So the cow decided to make the human being dependent on her. In this way she could give the human som service - meat, milk and hides - in exchange for protection.

And even more important, the human would expand the glory of the cow to almost all the corners of the planet. Cows don't like rubbing noses with polar bears or swimming in the ocean very much, so there were limits for cow expansionist. In India we can still see the traces of the religion the Cow so insidiously established to sway the lowly humans to take care of her. So now the cows fills the earth. The wheat had a similar strategy.

The cows are now getting quite worried for several reasons. One is that some people don't think there should be no cow-man cooperation in the future. They believe man should free himself from the dependency of the cow. Another issue is that man blame the cow for causing climate change. In Denmark the cows will now pay a special green house gas tax, as if cows ever liked greenhouses. But ultimately the cow is mostly worried for that in the process she has become so dependent on man. And man seems bound to exterminate himself by wreckless behaviour. And if man goes, cows will also go. Representatives of all cows are about to meet in a big cow-how to try to figure out what to do to save the human being from herself.

dangerous or good?

I found this diagram about increase of productivity in the Swedish Forestry sector. I am a bit unsure about property rights so I don't dare to put the picture itself in my posting, but please look at it.
http://www.skogforsk.se/upload/13777/Produktivitetskurva_large.jpg

It expresses the number of kubic meters of timber that is "produced" per work day.

I think there are many different reactions on such a picture, such as:
- What an amazing productivity increase! We humans are really smart and our wealth increases all the time. Old time forest work was really hard and people broke their backs, sawed themsleves in the leg or got frost bites. Now they can sit comfortably in a nice machine. The moderna technology uses all parts of the tree in an efficient way.
- Ha, compare this graph with the salaries of the forest workers - how much did they get and how much was just increased profits.
- This is the danger of technology in a nutshell. Of course we can and will hurt nature more when we increases our powers ten times. Instead of a small-scale mosaic forestry this kind of mechanisation leads to large scale devastation. This increase of productivity has also led to the depopulation of the country side.
- Why do we cut down trees? Couldn't we let nature just be and make paper out of oil, power out of nuclear?
- The Swedish forestry sector is healthier than ever, but for some reason my investment in Swedish forestry stocks are just plummeting. why is that?

What do you think?

We are the happy owners of about 40 hectares of forest and I am currently busy taking down next year's firewood - with 1960s techologies......

Which climate do you want ?

I sent the following as a letter to the editor to Financial times.


Humans have always dreamt about controlling the weather. Raindances, prayer and rituals have been used to call rain, to protect the crop from frost to avoid earthquakes etc. When we cut forests in the tropics what was earlier a tropical forest becomes a dry grassland. When we drain fields and wet land we create floods. On the big scale global warming shows that we can indeed influence the climate, even if it is not an effect of a explicit desire of a warmer climate. This means that we now have to agree on what weather we want to have. Should it be 2 degrees warmer or 5 or shall we keep it as it is. All is possible it just depends on what we want to pay. Can we get 5 degrees warmer here in Sweden and keep it like it is in the tropics and deserts. This kind of production is the real growth market. Instead of seeing it as a cost we should see it as a production for humanity, similar to the production of parks and other public goods. I can already see how the capalists rally for taking care of this growth segment in the market, and how they call for privatisation of the service. GDP increases, welcome to the new world.

Solar energy in Sahara?

We hear about that a rather small area of the Sahara desert would suffice for the whole European energy needs. This is still more an theoretical example to show the pootential of solar energy, rather than a real proposal. But the example also shows that the pattern of colonialist thinking doesn't disappear so easily.

Now, we don't want these people here in "our" Europe. We are afraid of their habits, culture and religion as well as the possible impact on our salaries and jobs. But we do, once again, see that they might have something that we could use and then we are all for "cooperation".

Why would we not cover parts of Spain, Italy or Greece with those solar panels? If the Libyans and Algerians could produce cheap electricity with solar panels, wouldn't it make more sense to use that electricity to desalinate water and use for irrigation, and sell that grain to the hungry Europeans? Or for them to produce the aluminium of the world, or the chemical fertiliser....

It is tiring that Europeans and Americans tend to see other people mainly as suppliers of things we need or consumers of stuff we want to sell. And not as fellow human beings.

Now, this posting is surely not against the development of photovoltaic cells, I think they are great and they do have potential. The posting is about the imbalanced thinking.