Klimaschutz auf österreichisch

17. Dezember 2020

(Wie heben wirs auf Ver­fas­sungs­rang, alle ande­ren machens ja auch.)

Öffent­li­ches Exper­ten­hea­ring des Umwelt­aus­schus­ses zum Kli­ma­volks­be­geh­ren vom 16. Dezem­ber 2020.

Hier als Video ein­seh­bar. (OTS)

Initia­to­ren des Volk­be­geh­rens wol­len vor allem ’sym­bo­li­schen Akt’ dann aber wie­der doch nicht, weil ja nur sym­bo­li­scher Akt, und es sol­len ja KMUs dazu bewegt wer­den auf Soll einzuschwenken.

Dr. Mar­tin Kocher, Ver­hal­tens­öko­nom, IHS (Seg­ment star­tet bei 2:06:28), die Zie­le ken­nen wir ja, alter­na­tiv­los, wür­de teu­rer wer­den wenn wir nichts tun (mit tat­säch­lich erho­be­nem Zei­ge­fin­ger) ansons­ten dro­hen fis­ka­li­sche Kos­ten, und da sind noch nicht mal die Hit­ze­to­ten im Som­mer dabei. In Öster­reich. Wie gut, dass es dann das Volks­be­geh­ren gege­ben hat. Die öster­rei­chi­sche Poli­tik wüss­te ansons­ten gar­nicht an wem sie sich ori­en­tie­ren soll­te. Dazu noch die Schaf­fung einer neu­en unab­hän­gi­ge Insti­tu­ti­on zur Prü­fung der Ver­fas­sungs­mä­ßig­keit wirt­schaft­li­chen Han­delns, nach­dem dem Kli­ma end­lich auch Ver­fas­sungs­rang zuge­bil­ligt wird. Es wäre bereits jetzt gut zu über­le­gen, wie die denn aus­ge­stal­tet wer­den sol­le (eher als Prüfinstanz).

(Star­tend bei 2:15:30) Univ.Prof.Dr. Sig­rid Sta­gl, WU Wien, kann - aus öko­no­mi­scher Sicht - nur ergän­zen, da wirds nicht viel Wider­spruch geben, has­tet durch Foli­en mit Para­dig­men­wech­sel, fett mar­kiert, und sufi­zi­enz­ori­en­tier­te Stra­te­gien (Redu­zie­rung von wirt­schaft­li­cher Pro­duk­ti­on und Kon­sum), fett mar­kiert, hand­ge­trie­be­ne Web­stüh­le, Pfer­de­kut­schen, struk­tu­rel­ler Wan­del ist ein Teil einer dyna­mi­schen Wirt­schaft und auf ‘Ent­kopp­lung vom BIP’ auf der ers­ten Folie, braucht man nicht wei­ter ein­zu­ge­hen - nächs­te Folie, bitte.

DI Dr. Diet­rich Wertz, Exper­te, das Umschwen­ken auf aus­schließ­lich erneu­er­ba­re Ener­gie­quel­len sei ein ’net posi­ti­ve’ für die Außen­han­dels­bi­lanz, da brauchts kei­ne Ener­gie­im­por­te mehr, das rech­net sich ja von selbst. (Das wird die Ener­gie expor­tie­ren­den Staa­ten freu­en, wie gut dass wir an deren poli­ti­sche Part­ner so gut wie nichts expor­tie­ren, naja - viel­leicht doch ein wenig…)

Leo­no­re Gewess­ler, Bun­des­mi­nis­te­rin - der euro­päi­sche Rat hat sich ver­gan­ge­ne Woche auf eine 55%ige Reduk­ti­on von THG Emis­sio­nen gegen­über 1990 geei­nigt, das ist rich­tig, das ist wich­tig, denn im Kampf gegen die Kli­ma­kri­se ist Schei­tern ein­fach kei­ne Opti­on. (Nen­nen in wel­chem Zeit­raum die Reduk­ti­on zu erfol­gen hat zumin­dest in dem State­ment auch nicht. (2030))

Flo­ri­an Schle­de­rer (Retur­ner - Sti­pen­di­at Forum Alp­bach 2020), und tol­ler Red­ner, sie mei­ne ver­ehr­ten Damen und Her­ren könn­ten, mit einer fal­schen Ent­schei­dung heu­te, ent­schei­den Öster­reich zurück­fal­len zu las­sen, im Cli­ma­te Race, Spit­zen­tem­po, Tem­po­ma­cher, dafür brauchts den ‘Kli­ma­rech­nungs­hof’ (dens noch nicht gibt, aber dann eh bald), der wird uns dann prü­fen. Kli­ma­mut, sehr ver­ehr­te Mit­glie­der die­ser Sit­zung! Wir dür­fen uns den Zeit­fort­schritt bei den Inves­ti­tio­nen nicht vom Brot neh­men las­sen. Es inves­tie­ren jetzt alle!

Dazu die Washing­ton Post von vorgestern:

But of cour­se, the United Sta­tes will not get to net zero in pre­cise­ly the ways descri­bed in the report, Jenkins ack­now­led­ged, nor is it likely to get the­re pre­cise­ly in 2050. Rather, the docu­ment lays out the exac­ting details, and the peop­le deci­de how many of them to accept — and when.

src: click

Ein wei­te­res High­light (bei 3:17:10) Ant­wort­run­de der Exper­tin­nen und Exper­ten, Pro­fes­sor Kocher (IHS) - 

Natür­lich kann die Ver­hal­tens­öko­no­mie das Ver­hal­ten (der Unter­neh­men, und der Individuen/Konsumenten) nicht voll­stän­dig ändern, ohne dass es Preis­si­gna­le gibt […], aber man kann es beglei­ten. Wich­tig is, dass die umwelt­scho­nen­den Ent­schei­dun­gen kogni­tiv ein­fach sind, wich­tig ist, dass man die­se Ent­schei­dun­gen unter­stützt, dass die Infor­ma­ti­on bereit­ge­stellt wird - dass man viel­leicht auch ein paar Din­ge ein­setzt wie Gami­fi­ca­ti­on usw. es gibt also eine Rei­he von Ideen, die ich jetzt nicht aus­füh­ren kann, die wir ger­ne auch als Ver­hal­tens­öko­no­men ein­brin­gen - an der ein oder ande­ren Stel­le machen wir das auch schon, wie man eben die Ent­schei­dungs­ar­chi­tek­tur der Leu­te -- ver­ein­facht - und wenn das 5% Ein­spa­rung bringt ist das schon sehr, sehr viel, weil die Kos­ten für sol­che Maß­nah­men viel gerin­ger sind. Die poli­ti­schen, als auch ande­re Kosten”.

Nud­ging so naiv und ehren­wert wie eh und je.

Der Rest ist ein Sam­mel­su­ri­um aus Pro­fa­ni­tät und Plat­ti­tü­den­haf­tig­keit, dass es sich gewa­schen hat.

Nach­trag: Pri­mer für sufi­zi­enz­ori­en­tier­te Ansätze.

Embedded journalism is allowed to ask a question

17. Dezember 2020

… sad­ly gets a PR ans­wer, but oh well.

Wer ist Tho­mas Sei­fert, Redak­teur Wie­ner Zei­tung?

Like a single organism

16. Dezember 2020

This is based on my quick­ly sket­ched down notes on an inter­view with Enri­co Gio­van­ni­ni given at this years Forum Alp­bach. Which means, dou­ble check all of it, this is fil­te­red through me, and then my lou­sy note taking. 🙂

GDP was ‘inven­ted’ as an eco­no­mic indi­ca­tor at Bret­ton Woods 1944 fol­lowing a deba­te of main­ly two eco­no­mic schools, one of which repre­sen­ted by Simon Kuz­nets basi­cal­ly lost out. (Kuz­nets wasnt invi­ted back, star­ting from day two).

What pre­vai­led was the bri­tish solu­ti­on of going with an indi­ca­tor based on pro­duc­tion. This was important to US inte­rests at the time, becau­se that would favor the capi­ta­list eco­no­mic model over the com­mu­nist model more­so than Kuz­nets approach of having an indi­ca­tor based on con­sump­ti­on and well being.

For this one source is cited, name­ly: click

Addi­tio­nal quick sources pul­led up via google:
Source 1
Source 2

Why is GDP so important? Rough­ly: Becau­se it is a num­ber ’seen as important’ that is tracked/stated qui­te fre­quent­ly. So other indi­ca­tors, that may­be are rene­wed once a year get a back­se­at posi­ti­on to GDP at the poli­cy making stage.

Why may GDP cur­r­ent­ly be ‘unwan­ted’ as a mea­su­re of deve­lo­p­ment? Main­ly: Becau­se it doesnt inclu­de envi­ron­men­tal action, and becau­se it “regis­ters it as some­thing eco­no­mi­c­al­ly posi­ti­ve, if you buy a com­pu­ter, but some­thing nega­ti­ve (expen­se) if you hire a bunch of peop­le” - this is rough­ly an ana­lo­gy for, it doesnt repre­sent a lar­ge part of eco­no­mic acti­vi­ty that is pro­jec­ted to grow in the future - name­ly the ser­vice sector.

Why is GDP so hard to get rid of? Becau­se it has a ‘good’ ‘enough’ cor­re­la­ti­on to job crea­ti­on. So in times of eco­no­mic cri­sis, ever­yo­ne is prio­ri­ti­zing get­ting GDP up again so more jobs are crea­ted. The­re were efforts in the past, but they all kind of pete­red out as soon as the next eco­no­mic cri­sis came along.

And now for the tech­no­cra­tic visi­on of future government (we are still tal­king about Enri­co Gio­van­ni­ni mind you.. 😉 ). So here is what you do. 🙂

You DONT crea­te one repla­ce­ment num­ber like Gross Natio­nal Hap­pi­ness, becau­se that one espe­cial­ly only reflects on ‘cur­rent per­cei­ved sta­te’ and is useless when it comes down to poli­cy plan­ning or projecting.

You can invent a who­le list of eco­no­mic indi­ca­tors, nor­ma­li­ze them, make sure that they are con­nec­ted in a “com­mu­ni­ca­ting ves­sels” fashion (whe­re one of them can snuff out chan­ges in ano­t­her one, if its impact is big­ger). Issue: That might snuff out cer­tain indi­ca­tors that might be important from a dif­fe­rent van­ta­ge point. So you dont just crea­te the one sin­gle num­ber indi­ca­tor model - you crea­te several ones of tho­se (several groups of indi­ca­tors (still fol­lowing the com­mu­ni­ca­ting ves­sels con­cept wit­hin a group).

Next, indi­ca­tors alo­ne are not enough. You need models that say what will hap­pen, when you input indi­ca­tor values. This is whe­re you look at sci­ence to deli­ver, respec­tively - or to look at it the other way around, to get sci­ence inte­gra­ted into the sys­tem as well - becau­se don’t for­get, we are sket­ching out the crea­ti­on of an alter­na­ti­ve to the Bret­ton Woods sys­tem here.

And then you make sure you imple­ment it in a way that dic­ta­tes to future governments in a coun­try - not necessa­ri­ly ‘what to do’ but what indi­ca­tor values to reach. You do that by drawing up poli­cy that requi­res them to run their eco­no­mic and social plans against your indi­ca­tors and models - with a requi­red out­co­me, befo­re they are ‘allo­wed’ to govern.

So once sci­en­tists are hap­py and you crea­ted the new gover­nan­ce dog­ma, whats left?

At that point you come to the striking con­clu­si­on, that you cant model social sys­tems. Or at least that social sys­tems are very hard to model - which you still try (see: click ) with the quo­te from the inter­view that sum­ma­ri­zes all this being “we cant pre­dict revo­lu­ti­ons”. But you can still try - which is basi­cal­ly whe­re PR should come in. (Make sure peop­le are enga­ged in NGO acti­vi­ties give them ‘owners­hip’ over issues, …)

Part of this was alrea­dy inte­gra­ted in ita­ly (government has to adhe­re to indi­ca­tors of eco­no­mi­c­al and eco­lo­gi­cal well­being) on a natio­nal level (tech­no­cra­tic expe­ri­ment 😉 ), part of it Gio­van­ni­ni sees com­ing into action with this EU government making it man­da­to­ry to report adhe­rence to indi­ca­tors found in the SDGs (sus­tainab­le deve­lo­p­ment goals), so revi­sing the stra­te­gy for man­da­to­ry non finan­cial repor­ting. This fol­lows less of a (strict) con­cep­tu­al model, but should pro­du­ce simi­lar results. (Sor­ry for being so vague here, my notes got thin… 😉 ).

Tho­se ide­as still dont have a poli­ti­cal majo­ri­ty (not the domi­na­ting view) - so, is that a dealbreaker?

No, becau­se lar­ge finan­cial funds and pri­va­te funds have deci­ded to use indi­ca­tors of sus­taina­bi­li­ty to asses long­term via­bi­li­ty of com­pa­nies (their long term capa­ci­ties) and this pro­du­ces inter­nal pres­su­res wit­hin the capi­ta­list system.

Black­rock for examp­le (so Gio­van­ni­ni) has recent­ly publis­hed a list of com­pa­nies whe­re they are on the board and whe­re they voted against bonu­ses for mana­gers who ‘had­n’t done enough for sustainability’.

On imple­men­ta­ti­on the major pro­blems the initia­ti­ves are facing are poli­ti­cal - so what does Gio­van­ni­ni pro­po­se? First, pro­du­ce poli­ti­cal move­ments with the aim to dri­ve noti­ons of ’sus­taina­bi­li­ty’ into coun­tries con­sti­tu­ti­ons. (So whenever you hear this, this is more than nai­ve bab­b­le. This is seen as an ave­nue to stop the pro­fit maxi­miz­a­ti­on man­tra in small and medi­um enter­pri­ses.) Second, for­ce more dis­cus­sions about several of tho­se indi­ca­tors (eco­no­mic ine­qua­li­ty, health, crime, ine­qua­li­ty bet­ween gen­ders, …) at the public level. Then fol­low up with an imple­men­ta­ti­on like with man­da­to­ry repor­ting on SDGs on the EU level.

First you can do this on the natio­nal level, but all future frame­works are aiming for a shared view inter­na­tio­nal­ly. (In my notes I’ve noted down OECD 2011 bet­ter life index, life initia­ti­ve, next to it but I havent loo­ked that up yet). Anec­do­tal­ly Gio­van­ni­ni sta­tes, that the­re are encou­ra­ging results on meta stu­dies on several of tho­se indi­ca­tors, that they arent ‘cul­tu­ral­ly dri­ven’ - so that you could basi­cal­ly make that work for a lar­ge group of peop­le, fol­lowing the same model.

To make that work you need to invest in the deve­lo­p­ment of ’sta­tis­ti­cal means’ in a lar­ge num­ber of coun­tries, but appar­ent­ly this is alrea­dy part of the 2030 SDGs agenda.

Also, so Gio­van­ni­ni, it is very encou­ra­ging, that you can gather much of the data nee­ded for indi­ca­tors through ‘crowd sourcing models’, which are cheap, and hey - you have a form of public par­ti­ci­pa­ti­on atta­ched to it as well.

This should be it, sideno­tes I have left are:
To look up: Alan Kru­ger, Oba­mas GDP speech, the 2009 Stigliz report (to what insti­tu­ti­on if havent noted down).
That a live model of several com­plex indi­ca­tors in action can be found some­whe­re on a ASVIS/Gruppo API website.
Istan­bul world forum (indi­vi­du­al visi­ons) [wha­te­ver that means.. 😉 ]
The report on sus­tainab­le equa­li­ty for the social demo­cra­te fraction/group in the EP (euro­pean parliament)
And to look up the Sus­tainab­le Solution(s) network

End of info dump. 😉

Today:

Emma­nu­el Macron wants cli­ma­te goals in French constitution 

A refe­ren­dum could for­ce a chan­ge in the French con­sti­tu­ti­on to add pled­ges to com­bat cli­ma­te chan­ge. Pre­si­dent Macron has come under fire for a per­cei­ved lack of effort to pro­tect the environment.

src: click

Like a sin­gle orga­nism. Whats a con­sti­tu­ti­on here and there…

edit: Equi­va­lent for Aus­tria (ger­man): click

_censored_

16. Dezember 2020

The next PR initia­ti­ve. Towards a goal, thats not poli­ti­cal­ly defi­ned, but sounds wonderful.

Whats that? 80% of the world are hea­ding into degrowth, and glo­bal tra­de gets redu­ced to a fifth?

Bet­ter call on the Har­vard philosophers.

Con­text: click

Ger­ma­ny is loo­sing half of its tra­de per­cen­ta­ge until 2050, in an over­all shrin­king glo­bal economy.

How much overflow do you make?

06. Dezember 2020

e-Euro white­pa­per

One opti­on to be inves­ti­ga­ted would be to allow users to hold digi­tal euro only up to an indi­vi­du­al thres­hold at any given time. To ensu­re that a user can always recei­ve a pay­ment in digi­tal euro and no infor­ma­ti­on is dis­c­lo­sed on cur­rent indi­vi­du­al hol­dings, a “water­fall” approach would be pos­si­ble wher­eby any inco­m­ing digi­tal euro in excess of the hol­ding limit would be shifted auto­ma­ti­cal­ly to the payee’s account in pri­va­te money. Howe­ver, this would requi­re all payees to hold such an account.

Our next mone­ta­ry poli­cy only con­cern your “over­flow income”. 😉

Demand for a digi­tal euro could also be con­trol­led through incen­ti­ve sche­mes under which less attrac­ti­ve inte­rest rates or ser­vice fees are app­lied when indi­vi­du­al hol­dings exceed the afo­re­men­tio­ned threshold.

Be crea­ti­ve with nega­ti­ve inte­rest rates to incre­a­se compliance.

It does not seem fea­si­ble, under cur­rent cir­cum­s­tan­ces, to offer unli­mi­ted hol­dings of digi­tal euro to cor­po­ra­te enti­ties at zero inte­rest rates. In line with the cur­rent mone­ta­ry poli­cy stance of the ECB, the nomi­nal remu­ne­ra­ti­on rate of risk-free euro invest­ments (for examp­le AAA-rated government bonds with a short resi­du­al matu­ri­ty) achiev­a­ble by cor­po­ra­te enti­ties and domestic and inter­na­tio­nal inves­tors is cur­r­ent­ly below -0.5%. Uncons­trai­ned access of the­se enti­ties to a digi­tal euro could not be offe­red cur­r­ent­ly at more attrac­ti­ve rates without dis­rup­t­ing finan­cial flows and the mone­ta­ry poli­cy stance.

Star­ting at below -0.5%.

Bey­ond Zero lower bound: Remu­ne­ra­ti­on of digi­tal off­line money, alt­hough tech­ni­cal­ly dif­fi­cult - might not be out of the question.

It could be argued that the non-remuneration of bank­no­tes crea­tes unin­ten­ded effects, as the oppor­tu­ni­ty cost of hol­ding bank­no­tes varies with cen­tral bank and mar­ket inte­rest rates. From this per­spec­ti­ve, it would seem natu­ral to over­co­me this cons­traint once tech­no­lo­gy allows the cen­tral bank to remu­ne­ra­te its money. Howe­ver, designing a digi­tal euro that is avail­ab­le off­line would face addi­tio­nal chal­len­ges if it was remunerated.

src: click