Blog

From time to time, I have shared reports on new technologies which can de-accelerate global warming or even, with carbon removal and sequestration, reverse it.

My thesis is that technology, a product of capitalism, got us to where we are today and that technology, again, can get us to where we want to be.

The only questions are: who will invent the technology and who will take it to scale?  The history of the Industrial Revolution down to today is that the private sector (including now non-profits and researchers) and markets are better designed to invent and scale technology than are governments.

Here is an update on some developments supporting the cogency of my thesis:

Graduate students at Purdue University came up with an ultra-white paint which reflects up to 98.1% of sunlight, cooling down buildings painted with that paint.

Direct air capture uses chemical filters to trap CO2 out of the air.  The captured CO2 can be converted to fertilizer or fuel or pumped underground to be trapped in rock formations.  A Swiss company, Climeworks, now mixes captured CO2 with water and pumps it underground.

Another company, Biochar, uses a kiln to heat agricultural waste without oxygen to make biochar, which traps the CO2 in the waste to prevent it from re-entering the atmosphere.

A company in Somerville, Massachusetts, is making batteries to store electricity by using iron and air.  When iron and air combine, rust is created and energy is released.  Apply an electric current to rust, it changes back into iron and stores energy.  The company’s batteries are charged with an electric current.  Then, when air is pumped in, energy is released as the iron rusts.  This technology, the company says, stores electricity much more cheaply than current batteries.

American Airlines is buying credits from a new company that uses bricks of carbon-absorbing plant material.  The company collects sawdust and tree bark and compresses that biomass into bricks sealed to prevent the plant matter from decomposing and releasing CO2.  The bricks are then buried.  The plants use photosynthesis to remove carbon from the air, so this technology piggybacks on nature itself.

Trees remove from the air each year some 2 gigatons of CO2.

Though the private sector is at work bringing forth new technologies, government transfer payments from taxpayers to companies finance the costs of developing the new processes.

Since the Earth produces hydrogen a fuel – from iron-rich rocks and radioactive rocks – such hydrogen can be extracted from those rock formations.  Iron-rich rocks react with very hot water to produce iron oxide and hydrogen.  A Canadian firm, Hydroma, is searching for the gas.

Extractable hydrogen has been found in France, America, Brazil, Australia, Colombia and Oman.  The search for hydrogen has attracted millions of dollars in private investments.

Private sector ventures need capital.  There is a market for carbon credits – some reduce carbon and get rewarded by society (government) for doing so with credits that can be used by others, which generate greenhouse gas release.  The generators can buy the credit from the reducers.

The total value of assets in global carbon markets was roughly $950 billion last year, with Europe accounting for most of that value.

But who will be a willing buyer and seller of such credits to make a market open to buyers and sellers, facilitating the creation and use of such rights created by government?

In the U.S., to facilitate growth in the trading of carbon credits, State Street Bank is now providing back-office services to clients who want to invest in carbon credits, expanding the market for such securities.  State Street is providing its usual custody and fund administration, including handling and valuing assets, gathering prices and maintaining investment records.

Markets need confidence and trust, which come with reliable custody of assets and transparency of pricing arrangements.

Concrete is the second most consumed substance in the world after water.  Around 3 tons per person are poured each year.  The production of 5 billion tons of concrete produces 8% of man-made CO2 per year.  The Materials Processing Institute has claimed to have made the first zero-emissions cement in northern England.

The key ingredient of cement is limestone – composed of oxygen and carbon.  A chemical reaction drives the carbon from the limestone, producing lime and CO2.  Roughly, one ton of carbon is produced when making one ton of cement.

A professor at the University of Cambridge proposes to recycle old cement into new cement and side-step use of lime.

In Germany a steel firm is using wind-generated electricity to run electrolyzers that split hydrogen from oxygen.  The hydrogen can then replace coke with its carbon in reducing iron ore into iron.

In Woburn, Massachusetts, a company, Boston Metal, proposes to use electrolysis to separate iron from its ore compound, avoiding any use of carbon to produce iron from iron ore.  This approach produces oxygen as the byproduct of the chemical reaction.  Iron ore is dissolved in a molten mixture of metal oxides.  Passing an electric current through the molten mass heats it and splits the iron oxide into its component molecules.  The liquid iron produced is chemically pure and homogeneous.  The impurities from the ore are left in the molten electrolyte.

There are also other new technologies that would give better protection to our environment.
A biochemist has suggested feeding insects on the waste – discarded barley and yeast – of beer breweries.  Such insects could become feed stock for beef cattle.

Sway, a small company near San Francisco, extracts cellulose from seaweed and turns it into a plastic-like substance, which can be used in plastic manufacturing equipment and then biodegrades when disposed of.

Solugen makes chemicals from boring ingredients, such as corn syrup, to replace ingredients that disrupt the environment or the climate.  The company’s founders used AI to design new biomolecules.  They invented a “biofuge” – a 60-foot-tall tank that keeps harmless ingredients, like sugars, trigger them with biochemical reactions and aerates them with a dense stream of microbubbles.

The machine creates a biomolecular alternative to phosphates, which reduce corrosion in water systems, but cause life-killing algae blooms.

The bioforges produce enormous volumes of chemicals at a profit, using renewable energy and removes more carbon from the atmosphere than they emit.

Solugen wants to produce enough bioplastic to remove from commerce 5 billion non-degradable plastic bottles.  Though a private business, the owners want government to use its regulatory power to create incentives for customers to demand their new products.

Finally, a company in Norway wants to put 8 million young Atlantic salmon in tanks.  Fish farming is the fastest growing method of food production, now accounting for 17% of the world’s protein intake.  The World Bank estimates that 90% of the world’s fisheries are fished either at or over their capacity to regenerate.

But aquaculture in net pens creates serious pollution of surrounding waters.  And rearing lots of fish in close proximity to one another risks outbreaks of diseases and parasites.  That demands that the fish farmers use antibiotics and other drugs.

In tanks, a new technology continuously cleans and recycles water for the tanks.  Water cleaning machines dispose of the waste produced by fish living in the tanks.  This technology was largely borrowed from the sewage treatment industry.

Standard salmon farming requires about 50,000 liters of water per kilogram of salmon, when the new technology might need only 150.

Tank farming also has the advantage of being close to consumers in urban areas.  But the capital costs of using more technology are high.

Human ingenuity – for good and for evil – must not be underestimated.  But eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

Yesterday’s decision of a jury in New York City to find Donald Trump guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records with the intent of covering up a crime puts before the American people this question: how much do they want their constitutional republic to survive?

One notable and now relevant historic precedent was the factional self-destruction of the Roman Republic.

A second relevant and most notable precedent was Maximilien Robespierre’s terror during the French Revolution to cleanse France of “enemies of the people.”  The law which established the tribunals seeking out those “enemies of the people” and killing them was the Law of 22 Prairial (10 June 1794)

That law legalized the following procedures:

…

The Revolutionary Tribunal is instituted to punish the enemies of the people.

The enemies of the people are those who seek to destroy public liberty, either by force or by cunning.

The following are deemed enemies of the people: those who … have sought to disparage or dissolve the National Convention and the revolutionary and republican government of which it is the center.

…

Those who have deceived the people or the representatives of the people in order to lead them into undertakings contrary to the interests of liberty.

Those who have sought to inspire discouragement.

Those who have disseminated false news in order to divide or disturb the people.

Those who have sought to mislead opinion and to prevent the instruction of the people, to deprave morals and to corrupt the public conscience, to impair the energy and the purity of revolutionary and republican principles or to impede the progress thereof, either by counterrevolutionary or insidious writings or by any other machination.

…

The penalty provided for all offenses under the jurisdiction of the Revolutionary Tribunal is death.

The proof necessary to convict enemies of the people comprises every kind of evidence, whether material or moral, oral or written, which can naturally secure the approval of every just and reasonable mind; the rule of judgments is the conscience of the jurors, enlightened by love of the Patrie; their aim, the triumph of the Republic and the ruin of its enemies.

…

If either material or moral proofs exist, apart from the attested proof, there shall be no further hearing of witnesses, unless such formality appears necessary, either to discover accomplices or for other important considerations of public interest.

…

The law provides sworn patriots as council for calumniated patriots; it does not grant them to conspirators.

We should note in this law that those accused had no right of defense.  If there was evidence against them, they could not contravene it with counterevidence of their own. And no legal counsel could assist them.

More importantly, the standard for conviction was whatever the jurors might believe, no matter how false such beliefs were or how prejudiced the jurors were.

In the criminal proceeding against Donald Trump and in line with the Law of 22 Prairial, the judge left it to the conscience of the jury to find a crime.  His jury instructions encouraged them to indulge in speculation and prejudice.

Nor, during the trial, did the judge permit Trump to have effective assistance of counsel.  The judge even refused to let the jury hear germane and material testimony from an expert witness that no crime had been committed under federal election laws.

Trump’s trial, in other words, was a diluted measure of French revolutionary terror seeking to destroy an “enemy of the people.”  The revolutionary faction on the hunt for its enemies being the Democrats in the White House desperate to crush through state repression those whom they fear as “counter-revolutionary” activists.

Fear of such opposition to the moral hegemony asserted by the Democrats has been given the name of “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” a kind of elite psychosis.

Looking back, we might even say that Robespierre, Saint Just and other Jacobins also were under the influence of some derangement of mind and heart.

The dynamic of breaking the law in order to defend the law was presciently described by James Madison in his 10^th Federalist Paper on factionalism.

Madison considered any propensity for the “violence of faction” to be a “dangerous vice.”  He reasoned:

“The instability, injustice and confusion introduced into the public councils have, in truth, been the moral diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished.” …

“The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society.  A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good.” …

“It is in vain to say that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these clashing interests and render them all subservient to the public good.  Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.”

John Locke, in his 1690 second treatise concerning civil government, had previously rendered an opinion as to abuse of lawful authority as we have seen accomplished in the criminal trial of Donald Trump.

According to Locke, the purpose of civil government is to protect us from “the corruption and viciousness of degenerate men.”  Thus, a government may be directed to no other end but the peace, safety and public good of the people”.

Locke proposed that all power is given to public officials as a trust and that whenever that trust is manifestly neglected or opposed, the powers which have been given in such trust must be forfeited and returned to the people.  A public trust may never be used to further personal ambitions.  Making use of power not for the good of those who are under it, but for one’s own private, separate advantage, is tyranny.  “Wherever law ends, tyranny begins,” he said.

Locke insisted that whenever rulers “make themselves or any part of the community, masters or arbitrary disposers of the lives, liberties or fortunes of the people,” they forfeit their trust and lose their authority.  They, thus, “put themselves into a state of war with the people.”

“Great mistakes in the ruling part, many wrong and inconvenient laws and all the slips of human frailty will be born by the people without mutiny or murmur.  But if a long train of abuses, prevarications and artifices, all tending the same way, make the design visible to the people and they cannot but feel what they lie under and see whither they are going; it is not to be wondered, that they should then rouze themselves and endeavour to put the rule into such hands which may secure to them the ends for which government was at first erected.” (Sec 225)

“The end of government is the good of mankind and which is best for mankind, that the people should be always exposed to the boundless will of tyranny or that the rulers should be sometimes liable to be opposed, when they grow exorbitant in the use of their power and employ it for the destruction and not the preservation of the properties of their people?” (Sec 229)

“Here, it is like, the common question will be made, who shall be judge, whether the prince or legislative act contrary to their trust? … To this I reply, the people shall be judge; for who shall be judge whether his trustee or deputy acts well and according to the trust reposed in him, but he who deputes him and must, by having deputed him, have still a power to discard him, when he fails in his trust?” (Sec. 240)

With the conviction of Donald Trump, no matter how the case finally comes out after appeal courts have considered its lawfulness and fairness, the American people now face a watershed November election in their political history: will this abuse of power by the Democrats be ratified by the people or will the Democrats be found to have forfeited their public trust?

At stake for the American is nothing less than the rule of law and their constitutional order.

The Caux Round Table Principles for Government accept the righteousness of the rule of law, looking at precedents in different wisdom traditions – Ezekiel 34 in the Old Testament, Cicero, the Buddha’s middle way, Qur’anic guidance in keeping one’s trusts (Amanah) and serving as God’s steward (Khalifa), Mencius on the right of revolution, Confucius on the need for virtue (te).

Our principles include the following:

Public power is held in trust for the community.

Power brings responsibility.  Power is a necessary moral circumstance in that it binds the actions of one to the welfare of others.

Therefore, the power given by public office is held in trust for the benefit of the community and its citizens.  Officials are custodians only of the powers they hold.  They have no personal entitlement to office or the prerogatives thereof.

Holders of public office are accountable for their conduct while in office.  They are subject to removal for malfeasance, misfeasance or abuse of office.  The burden of proof that no malfeasance, misfeasance or abuse of office has occurred lies with the officeholder.

The state is the servant and agent of higher ends.  It is subordinate to society.  Public power is to be exercised within a framework of moral responsibility for the welfare of others.  Governments that abuse their trust shall lose their authority and may be removed from office.

Justice shall be provided.

The civic order and its instrumentalities shall be impartial among citizens without regard to condition, origin, sex or other fundamental, inherent attributes.  Yet, the civic order shall distinguish among citizens according to merit and desert where rights, benefits or privileges are best allocated according to effort and achievement, rather than as birthrights.

The civic order shall provide speedy, impartial and fair redress of grievances against the state, its instruments, other citizens and aliens.

The rule of law shall be honored and sustained, supported by honest and impartial tribunals and legislative checks and balances.

I just read a clever little human-interest story which brought me up short.

The story was about Peter Barton Hutt, of whom I had never heard.  He apparently introduced to the American consumer systemic learning of the “truth” about what they bought to eat – the mandated nutrition labels that sellers of food products must put on their packaging to inform customers of what is in the food they are buying.

Five decades ago, Hutt wrote the rules on disclosure of ingredients for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.  Disclosures of ingredients have since appeared on billions and billions of packages in legible typeface.

But consider: how can a moral capitalism ever work if there is no truth?

Running capitalism on “your” truth or “my” truth just won’t cut it.  Such a system of illusions and delusions, of random guestimates, will never gain traction among human persons.  Who will trust whom about what something is or is not?

If there is not truth, how can any good, service or company be given a sound and sensible valuation?  Governments impose a requirement for telling the truth on those who issue securities.  Donald Trump is in big legal trouble for allegedly not telling the truth about the value of his ownership interests.  The courts impose liability on those who lie, cheat, deceive and misinform and so harm others.

Markets need flows of trusting buyers to survive from moment to moment.  Unquestioned reliance on the probity and honesty of sellers makes markets possible.  Caveat emptor – “buyer beware” – is an age-old caution putting a drag on market dynamics.  Not every seller tells all the truth all the time.

Alan Greenspan’s quip about the dangers of “irrational exuberance” – a form of truthlessness – has caused many a market bubble to form and then pop, leaving buyers sorry and angry over their unexpected losses.

If truth drives markets to produce the “wealth of nations,” as Adam Smith observed, who then can we find to always be truthful and keep our markets working for the best?