1) An arsenal aimed at the atmosphere.
2) A weapon unleashed on the delicate chemistry of the atmosphere, an atmosphere that influences the planet’s temperature and makes life on the planet possible.
3) A culprit behind mercury in the soil and ocean, high CO2 levels, ocean acidification; a tool of ecological devastation.
The electricity from these plants flows right to the light switch in people’s homes.
Allies to the biosphere.
These groups seek to stop the proliferation of coal and gas burning power plants and to shut down the plants that currently exist. This makes them and the people who join them a great ally to the biosphere and the unusual but delicate conditions that support life on this planet.
These non-proliferation group make agreements with regions and countries that stop them from building these plants and give them incentives to use alternative sources of energy, such as wind or solar or even tidal energy. These groups may guarantee debt or subsidize the cost of the solar investments or deliver other terms that make solar or wind energy infrastructure investments more appealing than those for coal or gas.
Such incentives are often necessary because many benefits of wind and solar go to parties other than the energy producer (just as many costs of coal and gas power plants—such as pollution or ocean acidification or weather distortion—fall on the shoulders of people not involved with the company) and the energy producers are structurally incapable of accounting for these benefits or accepting an event short term reduction in profitability—or increase in debt—that might result from solar or wind investments.
Because many developing countries are now developing an energy infrastructure and because coal is often readily available in these areas, these non-proliferation groups and agreements are necessary in order to reduce global CO2 emissions and reduce the existential threat posed by catastrophic climate destabilization.
There are also market distortions and pricing failures that make coal and the burning of coal less costly for producers. So the burning of coal is subsidized (implicitly and explicitly) by many governments, laws and policies. Non-proliferation groups are important in the effort to make these distortions and subsidies more widely recognized and to propose reforms. One reform might be for governments to refuse new permits for coal mining operations.
Fossil energy non-proliferation groups push policies and agreements that defend existing ecosystems and deliver energy sources that free people from the current moral predicament of needing energy for daily use but not wishing to contribute to the destruction of the biosphere.
A bank carbon restriction is a law that bars banks from lending money to companies most responsible for the burning of fossil fuels, such as companies involved in oil production or refinement, coal production or companies that own power plants that burn coal or natural gas. With a bank carbon restriction in effect any bank that violated this ban will have their banking license revoked for a period of time and their access to the central bank’s discount window taken away. Such restrictions would speed the transition toward solar and wind energy.
Culture is a collection of ideas, embedded in a society, about what is permissible. For example, in most existing human cultures it is permissible to destroy the habitat of a species without a sense of responsibility or loss. In short, culture gives people permission to commit certain acts. If this permission were not granted, implicitly or explicitly, then there would be serious penalties (such as social sanction, fines, and prison) tied to that action or behavior.
The act of saying to others how important it is to protect the planet’s ecosystems because it sounds nice in conversation but failing to take action or commit to a specific action. This can occur when 1) the desire to identify ourselves as a concerned or thoughtful person is strong and/or 2) when we allow ourselves to believe that taking positive action would be difficult, feelings to which we are all susceptible.
1) The discrepancy between a person’s ability to take positive action for the planet’s ecosystems (such as reduce use of home heating oil or cease purchasing fossil-fuel intensive food products) and the positive action this person actually takes.
2) Being able to defend and protect the planet’s ecosystems and not doing it.
We can all ask ourselves, How great is the distance between what we can do and what we really do? Those who wish to reduce this distance might start by making a list of possible behavioral changes and things to do, such as lowering the thermostat in the winter or building a passive house or refusing to purchase any food grown with the use of pesticides.
The amount of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere as a result of one person’s actions and activities.
A roof is an opportunity to collect rainwater, grow plants, reflect heat out of our atmosphere or help reduce and even eliminate the need for central heating and the fuel it uses (via passive house construction).
The difference in the risk levels and possible outcomes between the decision maker—the person or entity that chose to take a risk—and the bystander who often bears the consequences for that decision maker’s actions.
In short, there are those who take risks and profit from them, and there are those people and things (ecosystems, habitats, the species within those habitats) who were excluded from the decision making process but who pay for the risks.
The duty of every company’s risk manager is to define the risks that result from the company’s activities and, as much as possible, push the costs and consequences of these risks to parties outside of the company. Another duty of the risk manager is to conceal the risks that result from their actions, and the quantification of those risks, from view, so opposition to the action cannot be organized. So because of this concealment there is, in addition to a risk asymmetry between the decision maker and the bystander, also an information asymmetry. This information asymmetry is widened by different methods of obfuscation and misdirection.
One example of a risk asymmetry: A fracking company causes an earthquake by pumping wastewater into the ground. The fracking company suffers no losses as a result but the residents of that area, who were not part of the decision to frack for oil but whose homes are damaged by the earthquakes and whose water is now undrinkable, do.
One reason for high levels of risk asymmetry is the protection afforded companies by limited liability laws.
1) A gateway to the trillions of tons of waste that human beings bury and burn every year.
2) An object that gives people permission to think that waste is acceptable; it is permission to destroy in the guise of convenience.
3) One component in a system that causes habitat destruction and pollution.
Human beings are the only species that produces waste and products that cannot be absorbed into ecosystems and used productively within them. What other species produce can be can be, usually in a short time frame, cycled back into the ecosystem and used productively within it.
This familiar object influences the perceptions of human beings by rendering a behavior that is destructive to ecosystems and the biosphere into what seems to be an ordinary and acceptable act with no negative consequences. In short, it makes normal a behavior that is unknown among all other living things.
Dropping an item into a garbage can is one of human being’s many “out of sight, out of mind” practices.
Alternative behaviors available are recycling, less consumption, composting and the use of re-usable packaging.
