From a talk by Dr. C Parenti, an excerpt which relates to your excellent column ~ Christian Parenti's newest book, 'Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the new Geography of Violence' is the subject of the film 'Extreme Realities,' which examines the link between extreme weather and global unrest. Saturday morning he spoke at a breakfast talk at the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel, about the economics of climate change and the role of government in moving companies towards new technologies, at the Waimea Ocean Film Festival.
It was fascinating to hear how government is the first generation user of most new technologies that require large investments of capital. Half the sales of the first two decades of the computer were to government. Christian Parenti explained that business looks to government for cues.
Research and development is important, but government is also a huge user of energy. Parenti described how there is presently $5,000,000,000,000. of private capital retained by firms for investment. There hasn't been this much held since 1956. Legislation has closed the window for coal plants and the industry is looking now for a new direction. Parenti believes the new investment will be green technologies.
Tania Howard, the director of the Waimea Ocean Film Festival pointed out that a line of rail costs the same as the same length of road and the maintenance of the rail is 10% of the cost of fixing the road. The rail transports as many people as eight lanes of highway. Tania said, "What could we do with that
Technology can help out here, at least with regard to cows. Several companies have been experimenting with genetically modified cows that produce significantly less methane.
From a talk by Dr. C Parenti, an excerpt which relates to your excellent column ~ Christian Parenti's newest book, 'Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the new Geography of Violence' is the subject of the film 'Extreme Realities,' which examines the link between extreme weather and global unrest. Saturday morning he spoke at a breakfast talk at the Mauna Kea Beach Hotel, about the economics of climate change and the role of government in moving companies towards new technologies, at the Waimea Ocean Film Festival.
It was fascinating to hear how government is the first generation user of most new technologies that require large investments of capital. Half the sales of the first two decades of the computer were to government. Christian Parenti explained that business looks to government for cues.
Research and development is important, but government is also a huge user of energy. Parenti described how there is presently $5,000,000,000,000. of private capital retained by firms for investment. There hasn't been this much held since 1956. Legislation has closed the window for coal plants and the industry is looking now for a new direction. Parenti believes the new investment will be green technologies.
Tania Howard, the director of the Waimea Ocean Film Festival pointed out that a line of rail costs the same as the same length of road and the maintenance of the rail is 10% of the cost of fixing the road. The rail transports as many people as eight lanes of highway. Tania said, "What could we do with that
land, instead?" (film shown in 2015)
I love your brain, Dave. Yes to all you wrote.
Technology can help out here, at least with regard to cows. Several companies have been experimenting with genetically modified cows that produce significantly less methane.
https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/climate-friendly-cows-bred-belch-less-methane-2023-08-08/