<html>
<head>
<style><!--
.hmmessage P
{
margin:0px;
padding:0px
}
body.hmmessage
{
font-size: 10pt;
font-family:Tahoma
}
--></style></head>
<body class='hmmessage'><div dir='ltr'>
There goesw my full support for that point of view, blends in nicely with mine on an awful lot of topics.<br><br><br>Antonio.<br><br><div><div id="SkyDrivePlaceholder"></div>> Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2012 03:31:13 +0200<br>> From: maxime.rouquet@partipirate.org<br>> To: pp.international.general@lists.pirateweb.net<br>> Subject: Re: [pp.int.general] Global heating: 2 degrees of heating is 16 years away<br>> <br>> On 07/24/2012 12:49 AM, Richard Stallman wrote:<br>> > Agreed. Next question: what we can do from a pirate POV without being a<br>> > Green spin-off?<br>> > <br>> > If other parties are concerned about an issue, does that make it<br>> > desirable for the Pirate Parties to be silent on that issue? It does<br>> > not follow.<br>> <br>> In France, the Green party is appreciated by some because it takes the<br>> right position on most subjects. But it is criticized for two reasons :<br>> being a bad pedagogue, and eventually oversimplifying most problems.<br>> <br>> We should first focus on identifying and explain the causes and<br>> consequences of human activity on Earth.<br>> <br>> If there is no or not enough independent data on the subject, we should<br>> defend that means are given to scientists without conflict of interest<br>> to make studies.<br>> <br>> If there is no or not enough international cooperation on the subject,<br>> we should defend that no restrictive copyright is put on scientific data<br>> (at least from public-funded research), and that no patent or anything<br>> of that kind is used to prevent or limit such research.<br>> <br>> If there is evidence that there is an ecological problem (hint : there<br>> is), we should make sure the impact on short and long term will be<br>> taught to the public (on Wikipedia, in schools, etc.), depending on how<br>> the humanity behaves. Everybody should know what we are going to deal<br>> with from a wide and complete perspective.<br>> <br>> This is the first part of being a good pedagogue : explaining causes of<br>> consequences of our current and potential behaviour on Earth.<br>> <br>> Then we have to identify rightly the problems we have to fix, and the<br>> way we propose to fix them.<br>> <br>> Global warming can be a problem, coming from a very large variety of<br>> causes, to which most of the time pirates could find very good solutions.<br>> <br>> I was once in a debate with Greens supporters who challenged me on the<br>> fact that technology can have dramatic impact on ecology, in particular<br>> global warming. They took the example of Google or Facebook servers that<br>> have a huge consummation of energy : pirate are "pro" technology, so<br>> they advocate such bad behaviour, right... ?<br>> <br>> ... wrong ! We pirates like decentralization, so we do not support<br>> massive concentration of servers that generate global warming. More : we<br>> defend privacy, so we do not advocate blindly cloud computing and<br>> everything that makes citizens give their private data to big companies<br>> and put it under legislation of foreign more-or-less democratic states.<br>> <br>> I explained we would mostly promote things like the FreedomBox project<br>> where everybody would install a basic micro-server at his home where he<br>> could stock the data he might like to share on Internet, while keeping<br>> total control over it. Such box could be built without cutting up<br>> mountains to get silicon or make 12 year old children work 70 hours a<br>> week in factories, just by recycling existing electronic components.<br>> <br>> It would not need particular amount of energy, in fact most of our<br>> modems already waste more energy than would be needed, and at the level<br>> of a house the warming effect would be negligible (if not simply<br>> compensated by a decrease in the house heating system use).<br>> <br>> I then wanted to go deeper and present the PP-FR vision on "nuclear<br>> energy". This is a hot topic in France as a large majority of our<br>> electricity comes from nuclear energy. Most people advocate it because<br>> it makes us "independent" from other countries, but "putting an end to<br>> nuclear power" is almost Greens' slogan since 50 years. But they forget<br>> to teach people why, and they fail because of that.<br>> <br>> In last elections I wrote on my program that I promoted "energy<br>> independence", by using energy that does not depend on any foreign<br>> producer (and nuclear energy comes from Uranium which we mostly buy from<br>> Nigeria...). I spoke about renewable energy, and in particular of<br>> geothermal energy.<br>> <br>> Isn't the idea of producing energy from heat particularly interesting ?<br>> Well, there are many places where we could develop geothermal energy,<br>> but curiously no big energy company is promoting it. Why ? Because they<br>> all sell a consumable product (petrol, gas, coal, etc.), not simply the<br>> power plant. Buying a power plant to them is ensuring them we will also<br>> buy their energy for the next fifty years or so... Therefore, we think<br>> we should develop such energy sources, even if big energy company do not<br>> promote them.<br>> <br>> We also want to decentralise the energy production. Citizens and local<br>> communities should be encouraged to exploit geothermal or wind turbine<br>> energy at their scale, rather than depending on big power plants. (By<br>> the way, we could get rid of most of the big power lines too...)<br>> <br>> In this direction, you would quickly face (at least in France) monopoly<br>> problems. You can indeed produce electricity but... you have to sell it<br>> to Électricité de France before buying it back ! This is how EDF keeps<br>> its monopoly on electricity distribution. If you want to buy gaz, you<br>> legally cannot buy a cylnder from Germany or another country where it<br>> would be less expensive, it is forbidden by law. There are a lot of<br>> things made in the law to protect what have become giant monopolistic<br>> private companies that do not help that much ecology (apart from in<br>> their cute good looking advertisements of course...)<br>> <br>> Such a decentralized renewable energy production can be told in a few<br>> words that are plainly compatible with the pirate spirit.<br>> <br>> Decentralization, privacy, fight against monopolies, copyright<br>> softening, patent abolishment... these fundamentally pirate topics can<br>> lead to positions that are the same than the Green movement (or should<br>> be), but with a very different approach.<br>> <br>> I think taking a global approach of ecological problems is not a good<br>> way of doing. We must not fight global warming because "it is in our<br>> program" or "we are against it". Greens did not really succeed in<br>> fighting nuclear energy because of such a negative approach.<br>> <br>> Instead, we should promote better knowledge of the citizens of<br>> environment considerations, and promote good behaviour, all by<br>> explaining them with our core ideas. As long as ecology is a consequence<br>> of our ideas, nobody can discard us as a Greens spin-off.<br>> <br>> My 2 cents,<br>> <br>> Maxime<br>> <br>> PS : There are a lot of examples of good policy we could promote that<br>> would have positive environmental effects. Think about the deployment of<br>> optical fibre that we could promote in order to strengthen the access to<br>> information and the ease of communication : it is made of glass, coming<br>> from sand (low cost + no negative impact on environment) instead of<br>> copper (increasing cost + huge thermal dissipation)...<br>> ____________________________________________________<br>> Pirate Parties International - General Talk<br>> pp.international.general@lists.pirateweb.net<br>> http://lists.pirateweb.net/mailman/listinfo/pp.international.general<br></div> </div></body>
</html>