Checking in on Macron, France

(My remark about demagoguery not occurring in the USA was facetious, I hope you know.)

This is a good example of what I'm getting at. Look at the way people like Trump have used climate change and our need to respond to it globally as a species, as soon as possible. He's not only attacked the source of this unwelcome news — "elite" universities of course— he also uses it as if it were a targeted attack on the working class. Let's repeal all the environmental laws which might mean you can't drive a 4000 pound SUV to the corner store for cigarettes because, you know, "Freedom" and all that. Unsurprisingly this is very effective — it's that universal constituency of the envious and the disillusioned I mentioned earlier. That's why I raised the question about the yellow vest demonstrations — what's their solution for developing a sustainable, pollution-free energy economy which cuts carbon emissions? The corporate elite turns the average people against the liberal elite — for the benefit of itself.

Pairing those two seems a bit of a stretch. The superdelegates were not opposed to healthcare reform. But yes, I agree with you about the level of corruption and social decay — in our haste to overthrow the liberal, urban, academic elite however it looks like we're allowing the corporate elite to pick up the pieces and bribe the average people with promises of pie in the sky as profitable pollution poisons their air, land, and water.

David Sirota
‏
Verified account

@davidsirota
Follow Follow @davidsirota
More David Sirota Retweeted Neera Tanden
Macron cut rich people’s taxes while foisting the cost of decarbonization onto the working class. And yet two centuries after the Actual French Revolution, neolibs are still going with “let them eat cake” as their mantra...David Sirota added,
Neera Tanden
Verified account

@neeratanden
I don’t understand why any progressive is cheering French protesters who are amassing against a carbon tax.
5:20 PM - 8 Dec 2018

Taxes are seldom levied — or lowered — without perceived winners and losers. From the perspective of the Macron's corporatists and financiers the country was harmed by the exit of the investor class. Whether cutting their taxes would lure some of them back and encourage new investment is an unsettled question but that was the idea.

Here's an example of a country poisoned by its past. Political imagination is stuck back in the days of the Bastille. Diesel fuel goes up 10% and the response is — what else — violent demonstrations and destruction of property.

So if the people using the polluting vehicles are going to be spared a tax increase, just who the hell is going to finance the move to a decarbonated future? Or is that just something for the "elites" to worry about?


source

Should be interesting to see how Macron responds later in the week.

Right now public perception is skewed against giveaways to the rich while jacking up the cost of living to possibly insufferable levels.

I wonder if some means-testing arrangement might have been devised for those for whom the increase truly was "insufferable"? A bureaucratic nightmare I know, but probably not unprecedented for the EU which seems to thrive on that sort of thing. Fuel prices vary widely in the USA, depending on the petroleum market. When prices were hovering around $4 a gallon people said the world was going to end — yet we managed. And the highest sales of lottery tickets continued to found in communities with the lowest income — obviously a lot of people weren't experiencing insufferable conditions due to high fuel costs.

The poor express their desperation in ways the well off disparage, but the lottery is similar to going to church. You aren't likely to get anything out of it, but always there seems an illogical spark of hope.

The virtue (or lack of it ) of the narrative to which you refer has nothing to do with my motivations or the kind of politics I may wish to advance. Your evident contempt for easily provoked, fearful common people is a good deal more indicative of your elitist fantasies than were my observations of political divides that appear to be growing across the Western World of the type of political action I prefer.

Do you feel that a population of fearful, easily-provoked people susceptible to exploitation is a good thing?

What "elitist fantasies" have I propounded here?

An amusing undercurrent in this discussion is the definition of the various "elites" being referred to by various protestors. Are they the wealthy industrialists, such as the Koch brothers? Or are they the equally wealthy tech masters who, along with their dependencies, rule California? Indeed are they merely the wealthier than average urban voters in our coastal blue states?

Damn thoughtful of the well-off to provide the poor with state-sponsored gambling — an interesting variation on the old "bread and circuses" technique.

Good observation. Trump got caught up with this when he was campaigning in West Virginia a while back. He was bragging up his wealth and his properties while trying to condemn the "elite", then he realized he was actually describing the "elite" and ended up bestowing the label on his audience at the rally.

It's not an exact term, georgeob1 — it's purposely left undefined so that it can be used loosely and pejoratively.

There are, at least arguably, a number of such groups in most countries. Some, in authoritarian countries are likely fearful for good reason and exploited in fact. Other situations vary a great deal. In addition I believe there is more than just material welfare involved: In many nations, large segments of the population chafe at real restrictions on their freedom by increasingly totalitarian governments of all kinds, including some that view themselves as very progressive and egalitarian. Human nature is, like most things in the real world, exceedingly complex. (There's a wonderful segment in War and Peace in which the hero of the novel, Pierre Bezukhov, then a prisoner of Napoleon's freezing and starving Army in its winter flight from Moscow, decides he has discovered a secret of life.... namely that "There's a limit to joy and a limit to sorrow, and a man suffering from a crumpled petal in his bed of roses, suffers just as much as he.) I've long suspected that the irritability of the French and their apparent long-term proclivity for sometimes violent mass reactions to labor, welfare and related tax issues may arise from something like that.

Beyond that, in the western world we are seeing fairly widespread public disenchantment with established elites: examples abound, Germany, France, Italy, and the United States come quickly to mind. There are also many others including Brasil, Iran, Mexico, etc. In most of these cases the (now mostly former) ruling elites saw (or see) themselves as the champions of the people's real interests and appear bewildered at the unrest from the "poor, fearful and angry: people who once supported them. Which side is right and which is wrong here? I wouldn't be so quick to write off a large population segment as too stupid to know their real self-interest. Such a viewpoint is laughably typical of detached elites that have lost their way and legitimacy ("let them eat cake...") Indeed my reference to your "elitist fantasies" was mostly a reaction to your several expressions of complacent contempt for the fearful and mindless people who don't agree with you.

For all his vulgarity and lack of self discipline, Trump has indeed struck a resonant chord with a large segment of the American Public, many held in similar contempt by their blue state, urban, and coastal betters. Moreover he has taken on issues that his predecessors feared to touch or merely finessed, kicking the can farther down the road, and in the main delivered better results.

Like it or not the technical advances of directional deep drilling and fracking (for both oil and gas) have in a few years reduced our carbon emissions by far more than have the regulations and subsidies (some evident, others hidden) for wind and solar power for several decades.

Meanwhile the Federal infusion of cheap capital into student college loans has created a generation of young debtors and the largest inflation of university overhead and tuition costs in a century. Exactly the opposite of the intended effect: Sometime the academic elites aren't nearly as smart as they imagine themselves to be. (Could it be that the progressive, self-styled intellectuals who designed and supported these programs have less understanding of human nature than the poor, fearful, dumb truck owners they hold in such contempt?)

I resent (mildly) your characterization of my observations as contemptuous. It's silly to laud or condemn whole classes of people. My contempt is reserved for particular individuals.

It's way too early to be talking about "better results". And while I recognize the that there was a need to reform the business tax and to deal with China's trade policies I think Trump went way overboard the tax cuts and the trade war may end up causing great damage to the global economy. Both could have been handled differently and more expertly.

As far as fracking goes, there's no reason such technology can't be pursued alongside renewables — why does it have to be "either/or"? And any claim of reduced carbon emissions runs counter to his short-sighted support for coal. Worldwide, greenhouse emissions are climbing more quickly than ever.

I agree; it's a mess. But, as with our health care system, it didn't happen overnight and I'd be cautious about dumping all the blame on "progressive, self-styled intellectuals", as if all the members of this group, whom you seem to hold in such contempt, bear responsibility for a too-cozy relationship between government and higher education.

I'm glad to learn that. Look back - several of your previous statements rather clearly gave me the opposite impression.
I believe that substantial results in terms of economic growth, employment, and business investments are already reliable. Nothing, however, lasts forever. It's easy to say the trade issues could have been handled better, but very hard to prove or demonstrate. The simple fact is that previous Administrations and his current political opponents didn't even try ( no points for that). Same goes for the immigration issue.

But, the cessation of 'the war on coal' notwithstanding Natural gas is continuing to replace coal and emissions in America are declining far faster than those in Europe. I fully agree there's no reason that technological advances can beneficially be pursued along with renewables. However, very oddly. environmental zealots tend to REQUIRE that restrictions on beneficial economic activity MUST accompany subsidies for renewables. This, I believe, reveals an underlying hatred for human progress among them. (How do you explain their intense opposition to nuclear power? - waste disposal and effects on public health are decidedly non problems.) Moreover such emission subsidies are no more effective for (say) wind power than they are for student tuition loans. The first effects of such subsidies are (1) disincentives for needed investments to improve efficiency; and (2) the creation of an organized lobby to preserve the subsidies. Both violate the public interest.


I agree; it's a mess. But, as with our health care system, it didn't happen overnight and I'd be cautious about dumping all the blame on "progressive, self-styled intellectuals", as if all the members of this group, whom you seem to hold in such contempt, bear responsibility for a too-cozy relationship between government and higher education.
[/quote]

Perhaps so. However the enormous debt taken on by both our government and a generation of students have indisputably been accompanied by levels of growth in University administration costs and tuition that leave education as unaffordable now as it was before the fiasco started. Moreover the obvious effects of these subsidies in reducing price competition among universities cannot be denied -- and this effect is visible as well in the cases of other such subsidies. The government and its hired academic advisors are notoriously bad pickers of economic winners and losers. In short the evidence so far is overwhelming and the caution you advise looks rather silly in view of it.

In the same vein I dread the consequences of increased government involvements in our health care system. Decreased individual freedom. increased bureaucratization of our lives, and decreased service availibility and quality will be the consequences.

I wouldn't underestimate the potential damage of an accident or natural disaster involving nuclear waste — witness Fukijima. (Chernobyl was a bad design compounded by human error.) It's interesting that for years the government pursued the construction of a nuclear waste depository at Yucca Flats and when that became politically impractical we were suddenly informed that nuclear waste could continue to stored at reactor sites around the country. I don't blame people for being a bit suspicious.

I think the biggest problem with fission power is the huge cost, not only for construction, but over the operational life of the power plant. I think future energy needs would be better served by smaller power sources spread around the country rather than gigantic heavily-regulated mega-plants. Reactors are often situated near rivers for cooling purposes and rising sea levels will definitely need to be taken into consideration. I've heard of designs for new nuclear reactors which are less capital-intensive and possibly safer — I don't know if any of these are on line yet.

I happen to have a lot of knowledge and experience with Nuclear powerplants, both in design and in their operation, and, as well, with high level radioactive waste disposal.

Most of the issues with respect to nuclear power involve far more psychological and fear mongering content than actual risk. The psychological problem arises from extremely low probabilities of large scale damages and risks that are unseen and little understood.

Consider the following;
1. About 15,ooo Japanese people were killed in the tsunami that brought about the Fukushima reactor failures. However there were zero fatalities associated with the reactor accident there - even though the name has come to refer to the nuclear accident exclusively. Based on Japanese government data, the most exposed worker at Fukushima got an external radiation dose of about 2 REM (or 20 Sieverts in the new units). That's about what one would get in a single CAT scan of his torso, or about what everyone gets from natural radiation every five years ( half that if you live in Aspen CO.)

Oddly Japan has a rather poor record of nuclear safety compared to the U.S. and major European users. They've had a couple of criticality events in their fuel reprocessing center and the Fukushima event was a consequence of the lack of vertical elevation for their Emergency diesel generator and coolant supply ( both required in U.S. regulations), and, in addition there was twice the design limit of radioactive spent fuel stored above the two reactors that failed - a fact that contributed significantly to the subsequent failure. I doubt that any utility could get away with anything approaching that here.

2. The public health impact of our Three Mile Island Reactor accident has been determined to have been zero - zero deaths or injuries in the accident and zero detectable impact on public health after thirty years.

3. Chernobyl was a unique event. It was a carbon moderated reactor, designed for the production of plutonium and used collaterally for the production of electrical power. No Western nation has ever allowed the use of such reactors for power generation, because of some vulnerabilities in the physics of their operation. In addition unlike all U.S. French, German, British and even Chinese reactor plants, Chernobyl had no containment structure around the reactor. The Three Mile Island and Fukushima reactor failures involved no fatalities and no long term radiation doses precisely because their required containment structures did the job they were designed for.

4. The capital cost of new reactors here has indeed risen to new heights, but that's largely because the current NRC is run by Nuclear power opponents who have knowingly created a regulatory burden designed expressly to prevent the construction of any new plants. Despite this there were six new plants in the licensing process when the Fukushima disaster made these investments too risky. Interestingly the operating costs for existing reactor plants in this country are a good deal lower than those for equivalent coal plants. As a result, through 2010 at least (Last time I checked), the then 95 plants operating here have a long-term average capacity factor (= actual power output over a year's time as a % of their theoretical output on a continuous 24/7 operating basis) of over 90%, including shutdowns for refueling or maintenance. In comparison our coal plants averaged less than 60%. partly because they were preferentially throttled back or shut down during periods of low demand because of their relatively higher fuel costs. Wind and Solar plants are limited to about 34% because the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine all the time. Interestingly the propaganda about their output ignores this altogether, citing only the maximum installed capacity for these sources.

5.Our nuclear power generating industry has the best long-term OSHA record for worker and public safety of any large industrial establishment in the nation.

6. The spent fuel issue is a solvable problem from both economic and safety perspectives. All the high level nuclear waste generated for nuclear power generation in this country since 1950 would fill a football field (including end zones) about 5 Ft deep - hardly an intractable problem. My company recently completed a large scale asbestos-impacted soil removal action at a site in Oregon. We removed enough soil in that one to fill the same football field to 180 Ft. (then times 2 for backfill). Additionally the amount of high level waste is proportional to the mass of fuel in the reactor - higher concentrations of U-235 mean less total mass of fuel and less high level waste. Natural uranium is about 0.56% U 235. Our commercial reactors use fuel enriched to between 6% and 9% U-235, and have several tons of reactor fuel. U.S. Naval reactors use fuel with nearly 100% U-235 and require a much reduced fuel mass as a result. The reactors in the GHW Bush, our newest aircraft carrier, are fueled by about 600Kg of U-235, and are good for the entire 50 year service life of the ship, without refueling ! They generate very little radioactive waste. The point here is that by using more highly enriched fuel we can eliminate most of the high level waste issue entirely. Unfortunately 35 years ago Jimmy Carter got us out of the industrial scale Uranium enrichment business due to his obsessive fears about proliferation. We exited the market and the UK, France, Japan and Russia immediately replaced us - an idiotic situation that continues today.

7. The Yucca Mountain waste repository was killed by Sen. Harry Reid after meeting all design requirements and just before its scheduled opening ( with Obama's willing consent). Interestingly Sen Reid had been a strong proponent of Yucca Mtn. ( which is located in the middle of the former Nuclear Weapons Test Site in Nevada) for 20 years during its development and construction. I had personal encounters with him in the mid 1990s in which he forcefully expressed his strong support for the Project and threatened any who would oppose the several billion annual budget expenditure for the project, which employed many people in Nevada. In response the Nuclear utilities, which had paid for the project in special taxes. sued and got their $50 billion back. A very interesting story.

8. New, in hand, advanced modular reactor designs, permitting off site assembly, and with advanced safety features (Fukushima and TMI type failures would be eliminated entirely) promise significantly reduced capital costs and the further reduction of already very low operating costs (only dams and compound cycle gas turbine plants are cheaper to operate on a per unit of energy produced basis. In contract wind and solar are very expensive, requiring Federal subsidies to compete even with coal.

9. Finally we have enough stored fuel to meet the country's power needs for a century and uranium is an abundant ubiquitous mineral world wide.

Thanks! It's great to read the words of someone who knows what he's talking about.

I’ve really enjoyed following this conversation. Thanks to both of you.

Beware what you read online, as usual.


https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/russian-accounts-fuel-protesters-outrage-online-xx2f2g8th

Dessin de Herrmann paru dans la Tribune de Genève, Suisse.