tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5261748503426298041.post735033835030286164..comments2023-10-21T13:04:34.038-07:00Comments on Our Place in the World: A Journal of Ecosocialism: 3122. An Ecosocialist Path to Limiting Global Temperature Rise to 1.5°CKamran Nayerihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13737979861971221811noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5261748503426298041.post-15021341046490358052019-01-10T09:02:10.221-08:002019-01-10T09:02:10.221-08:00Sarl Sarkar, the Indian-German ecosocialist, has a...Sarl Sarkar, the Indian-German ecosocialist, has asked me to post his comment to Richard Smith's essay above because he had difficulty doing it so himself. Below Please find Sarkar's comment:<br /><br />====<br /><br />I feel a lot of sympathy for the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). I hope they can build up enough support and momentum to effect the defeat of Trump and the Republicans in 2020. If I were living in America, I would even support them with my labor-hours. But why has Richard become a “proud member” of this group? After all, there is a Grand-Canyon-like chasm between the vision of a good society of Democratic socialism of Bernie Sanders/Cortez and that of eco-socialism. Or has US eco-socialism now reduced its vision to a modern socialist industrial society with an average global temperature only 2 degrees Celsius higher than that of the year 1800? Kamran or Richard may please inform us in the form of a reportage-like article.<br /><br />I have two more comments to make:<br /><br />(a) Richard, like many others, seems to think that transition to a 100% renewable energy system (a decarbonized economy) is only a matter of large investments. In reality, the difficulties are many more than that. It is still questionable whether an industrial economy can be wholly -run on the basis of renewable energies, the EROI of the latter being very low, if not even negative. The latest I have read that touches on this issue is a paper by some Finnish biophysical economists: Global Sustainable Development Report 2019<br /><br />https://bios.fi/bios-governance_of_economic_transition.pdf<br /><br />where the authors speak of renewable energies having a lower EROI than oil etc. I request Richard and others to pay a little attention to this question.<br /><br />(b) I do not quite understand the logic behind Richard’s and AOC’s economics. The Green New Deal promises to “eliminate poverty in the United States and to make prosperity, wealth and economic security available to everyone… .” Is that serious? I know what these terms mean in the USA compared to, say, in India. We have learnt in economic history lessons that the secret of the present-day high productivity of developed societies (hence of their prosperity and wealth) is, apart from neo-colonialism, the discovery and use of abundant and cheap fossil fuels. Now Richard, Ocasio and others want to kill the goose that has been laying the golden eggs all these decades (albeit polluted/dirty golden eggs). That is, they want all fossil fuels to henceforth remain underground. How can they then make prosperity, wealth and economic security available to everyone? Or do they mean frugality when they say prosperity? Clarification requested. [Saral Sarkar]Kamran Nayerihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13737979861971221811noreply@blogger.com