8 March 2017, BIEN, Stanford Panel: What do people do when they are given cash with no strings attached? The Stanford University Philosophy Department organized the first in a series of events focusing on aspects of unconditional basic income. Facilitated by Juliana Uhuru Bidadanure, Assistant Professor in the Philosophy Department of Stanford University, with an affiliation to the McCoy Center for Ethics in Society, the panel consisted of researchers in pilots and experiments of basic income: Guy Standing (Professorial Research Associate at SOAS, University of London; BIEN co-founder), Elizabeth Rhodes (Research Director of Y Combinator’s basic income experiment), and Joe Huston (Regional Director at GiveDirectly). The Bidadanure opened by setting a definition for unconditional basic income: cash, given individually, unconditionally, and universally, so people can enter an existence free from economic insecurity. She flagged some of the most common concerns around a universal income policy –too many people will withdraw from the work force, or it can be wasteful, taking away from government investments in poverty, education, roads, etc. topic for the panel discussion was “What do people do when they are given cash with no strings attached?” Read More here
Category Archives: PLEA Network
7 March 2017, The Conversation, Five-yearly environmental stocktake highlights the conflict between economy and nature. Australia’s population growth and economic activity continue to pose major environmental challenges, according to a comprehensive five-yearly stocktake of the country’s environmental health. The federal government’s State of the Environment 2016 report (prepared by a group of independent experts, which I chaired), released today, predicts that population growth and economic development will be the main drivers of environmental problems such as land-use change, habitat destruction, invasive species, and climate change. These main pressures are broadly the same as those listed in the first ever State of the Environment report in 1996. Yet since the last report in 2011, there have been some improvements in the state and trend of parts of the Australian environment. Our heritage (built, natural, and cultural) and marine environments are generally in good condition, as is the Australian Antarctic Territory. However, the Great Barrier Reef was affected significantly by Cyclone Yasi in 2011 and record high sea surface temperatures in 2015-16, resulting in extensive coral bleaching and die-off, particularly across the northern regions. Pressures and changes The new report shows that some individual pressures on the environment have eased since the 2011 report, such as those associated with air quality, poor agricultural practices and commercial offshore fishing, as well as oil and gas exploration and production in Australia’s marine environment. During the same time, however, other pressures have increased, including those associated with coal mining and the coal-seam gas industry, habitat fragmentation and degradation, invasive species, litter in our coastal and marine environments, and greater traffic volumes in our capital cities. Climate change is an increasingly important and pervasive pressure on all aspects of the Australian environment. It is altering the structure and function of natural ecosystems, and affecting heritage, economic activity and human well-being. Read More here
6 March 2017, Renew Economy, Fear and ignorance: Gas plant “explodes”, renewables blamed. It didn’t take long after the failure of South Australia’s two biggest gas plants late on Friday afternoon for the abuse to start flowing. “Renewables, absolute frigging BS,” wrote one correspondent in an email to RenewEconomy within a few hours of the sudden loss of 600MW of gas-fired generation. “What a lot of crap this renewable story is.” It happens all the time. + When a storm knocks down three power lines in September, the immediate reaction is to blame renewables; + when a condenser in Victoria hits the ground and takes out the main inter-connector, forcing rolling stoppages in South Australia, the immediate reaction is to blame renewables; + when more storms take down power lines after Christmas, causing more outages in South Australia, the blame is put on wind and solar; + and when the market operators turn out to be the only people in South Australia unaware of a pending heat wave, forcing them to miscalculate a demand surge and impose rolling stoppages, it was once again the fault of renewable energy. Friday’s events, however, took this blame game to a new level. Some sort of explosion occurred at the Torrens Island gas plant, starting fires and causing three units (totalling 400MW) to suddenly trip off and lose power, and causing the Pelican Point gas generator (210MW) to do the same…..Apparently, though, it’s all the fault of renewables, a conclusion drawn from the same twisted logic that supports the gun lobby in the US. As Don Russell wrote in The Monthly, guns killed 301,797 people in the US between 2005, and 2015 (and terrorists killed 95), but it wasn’t guns but restrictions on guns that was cited as being the fourth greatest fear in the US. Read More here
1 March 2017, Climate News Network, Spring moving forward at record rate. Spring is arriving ever earlier in the northern hemisphere. One sedge species in Greenland is now springing to growth 26 days earlier than it did a decade ago. And in the wintry United States, spring arrived 22 days early this year in Washington DC, the national capital.The evidence comes from those silent witnesses, the natural things that respond to climate signals. The relatively new science of phenology – the calendar record of first bud, first flower, first nesting behaviour and first migrant arrivals – has over the last three decades repeatedly confirmed meteorological fears of global warming as a consequence of the combustion of fossil fuels. Researchers say the evidence from the plant world is consistent with the instrumental record: 2016 was the hottest year ever recorded, and it was the third record-breaking year in succession. Sixteen of the hottest years ever recorded have happened in the 21st century. Arctic spring And the most dramatic changes are observed in the high Arctic, the fastest-warming place on the planet, according to a study in Biology Letters. As the polar sea ice retreats, the growing season gets ever longer – and arrives earlier. The pattern is not consistent: grey willow sticks to its original timetable, and dwarf birch growth has advanced about five days earlier for each decade. But the sedge, almost four weeks ahead of its timetable in a decade, holds the record, according to a study that observed one plot at a field site in West Greenland, 150 miles inland, for 12 years. Read More here