Climate Change/Mass Extinction Megathread

[The Larch]

What a beautiful city.

The Maldives are likely a doomed nation, sadly.

Going to Maldives is unbelievably expensive.  The costs aren't third world at all. 

Interesting. I guess with all those Arab billionaires and all of India close by their tourism market must be booming.

I believe most visitors to the Maldives are European, although Chinese are the first overall. Their tourism industry has been booming for several decades already, they're not a newly discovered place in any way.

[Grey Fox]

A couple of friends went to the Maldives for honeymoon. What a waste of money. Just fly to the caribbean for 10% of what you spent idiots.

Plus they speak French there.

Just came back from Martinique. I can;t believe my parents picked Montreal over Fort de France 30 years ago 

That's how I feel about my ancestors too!

[viper37]

A couple of friends went to the Maldives for honeymoon. What a waste of money. Just fly to the caribbean for 10% of what you spent idiots.

Plus they speak French there.

Just came back from Martinique. I can;t believe my parents picked Montreal over Fort de France 30 years ago 

lol
I blame Cartier and Champlain.  Most of their men died in their first winter, yet, they kept coming for more!

[Malthus]

I blame Cartier and Champlain.  Most of their men died in their first winter, yet, they kept coming for more!

It is funny to live in a great country founded almost entirely because of a strange fashion for beaver hats. 

[crazy canuck]

A couple of friends went to the Maldives for honeymoon. What a waste of money. Just fly to the caribbean for 10% of what you spent idiots.

Plus they speak French there.

Just came back from Martinique. I can;t believe my parents picked Montreal over Fort de France 30 years ago 

lol
I blame Cartier and Champlain.  Most of their men died in their first winter, yet, they kept coming for more!

Could be worse, your ancestors didn't settle in Saskatchewan or Northern Manitoba.

[Oexmelin]

It is funny to live in a great country founded almost entirely because of a strange fashion for beaver hats. 

[Malthus]

It is funny to live in a great country founded almost entirely because of a strange fashion for beaver hats. 

If everyone in Europe wore wool tuques for the past four hundred years ... 

[Oexmelin]

If everyone in Europe wore wool tuques for the past four hundred years ... 

They'd still be eating cod...

(I understand the good-natured joke. But Standards of Professional Conduct force me to raise a skeptical eyebrow at the lousy history behind the quip.)

[The Minsky Moment]

Greece didn't have debt in it's own currency.

You're confusing the argument about whether a country can monetize its own debt with the argument about whether investors will continue to purchase government debt as the debt/GDP ratio approaches infinity.  Joan and I were discussing the second point.

Japan has 250% of it's GDP in debt.

And dozens of countries have defaulted with debt in the 40-60% range.  Some multiple times.

Which gets to the point that debt/GDP ratio has its limitations as a metric for national financial health and stability.

MMT, as I understand it, is not a free lunch theory, it is just a different way of thinking about the decision matrix and trade-offs that national economies face with respect to macro policy.
The way I would put it is:
1) MMTers see mainstream macro as an "as if" theory - i.e. mainstream macro views the economy and the available policy instruments "as if" there is a binding budget constraint and a limited stock of lendable funds when in fact that isn't strictly true.
2) the response is that the mainstream policy regime can still work within an MMT framework, and that the alternative regime - using discretionary fiscal policy as the regular and principal tool of demand management -- makes assumptions about institutions that control that policy tool that are not realistic.

[Admiral Yi]

Which gets to the point that debt/GDP ratio has its limitations as a metric for national financial health and stability.

MMT, as I understand it, is not a free lunch theory, it is just a different way of thinking about the decision matrix and trade-offs that national economies face with respect to macro policy.
The way I would put it is:
1) MMTers see mainstream macro as an "as if" theory - i.e. mainstream macro views the economy and the available policy instruments "as if" there is a binding budget constraint and a limited stock of lendable funds when in fact that isn't strictly true.
2) the response is that the mainstream policy regime can still work within an MMT framework, and that the alternative regime - using discretionary fiscal policy as the regular and principal tool of demand management -- makes assumptions about institutions that control that policy tool that are not realistic.

There may not be a hard, universal cap on debt that applies to all countries, but that's not the same as saying there is no cap and countries can borrow to infinity.  At the most extreme end point there is the cap of debt service consuming 100% of GDP, and all your tax payers have died from starvation or exposure.*

You may say MMT is not free lunch, but then you need to disregard the claim that "countries with their debt denominated in a currency of their own issuing can borrow as much as they want."

If you eliminate that claim then all I can see remaining is a preference for managing the business cycle through fiscal policy as opposed to monetary policy.  Which is actually a pretty conservative macro system, not least for the reason that it means running consistent surpluses in inflationary periods.

Except for those debt holders still receiving their coupons. 

[dps]

A couple of friends went to the Maldives for honeymoon. What a waste of money. Just fly to the caribbean for 10% of what you spent idiots.

Plus they speak French there.

Just came back from Martinique. I can;t believe my parents picked Montreal over Fort de France 30 years ago 

That's how I feel about my ancestors too!

GF, depending on when they came over, you should be glad they didn't pick the Caribbean--back in the day, Europeans who settled there tended to die off fairly quickly from malaria and the like.  By the 1980's, Zoupa's folks wouldn't have had that excuse.

[mongers]

So what are 'we' going to do about *this?





* but this I mean climate change, not the debate about where French people go for extended holidays. 

[Admiral Yi]

So what are 'we' going to do about *this?

Right now, not much. 

Or do you mean what should we do?

[crazy canuck]

Sadly, the "we" has to be at the level of the nation state to recruit the resources needed to restructure how electricity is produced. delivered and used.  The "we" as individuals need to elect governments who will do that.  Ideally all political parties would compete for votes on the basis of having the best plan to identify and achieve what needs to be done.  But, again sadly, very few political parties are doing so in any meaningful way.

[The Minsky Moment]

You may say MMT is not free lunch, but then you need to disregard the claim that "countries with their debt denominated in a currency of their own issuing can borrow as much as they want."

They can but at the limit the price is potential hyperinflation, i.e. early Weimar Germany or late Mugabe Zimbabwe as opposed to Greece.