Globalisation is a far, far bigger deal than you think
edconway.substack.com
edconway.substack.com
If we JUST look at aluminum… it’s mined in places like Australia, Chinese companies then ship it to Iceland for refining on tankers because of cheap electricity, then back across the world to china where it made into powder/sponge at basically one Chinese city, where then it may be turned into billet, shipped across ocean again to USA maybe through Panama to the east coast where a company gets it in, then CNC machines it into some low tier product that is destined for a landfill but markets it as a made in USA widget.
Between the fact that this metal was handled and shipped across the world two or three times… the regulation and necessarily environmentally dirty processes are just not happening in the USA. We have regulated ourselves into the most unearned environmentally “conscious” position.
The fact that we have people controlling narrative about climate change and they aren’t pushing to deregulate in order to move production away from China is all anyone with experience in manufacturing needs to know on this “debate”.
You let me know when “Greta” Co is pushing to make the world less reliant on China in order to not just mask the environmental costs of production.
Find a chart that shows Russia making more alumina that anyone, you won’t find it. Best case, you’ll find Iceland making it, but the unwritten subtext will be Chinese factories and loaded on to Chinese ships.
Increasing false, as demonstrated by groups like this: https://metalysis.com/
Maybe it’s possible to do cleanly, that isn’t the reality.
There's so many people on this website sitting behind Chinese made computers spitting bullshit on "well if we could just get those container ships to pull some solar panels to then grow corn onboard and create a micro climate and process ethanol for said ship, then this whole process would be negligible and carbon neutral and not matter." Give me a fucking break. The world economy is based on exploitation and consumption. There is no "carbon neutral" consumption. There is no getting rich on a USA 1800s type agrarian low human footprint economy.
Like your correct comment indicates, the fact is the global economy is logistically insanely complex, politically complex, and mostly exists for pure consumption and waste. The Greta's are making "moral" arguments and brain washing the first world in order to ship production of "dirty" industries to china, LATAM, and Russia. They are wall streets biggest lobbyists!
What is, is not all that can ever be.
I'm guessing you could have worked at any car manufacturer 15 years ago and would have said electrical cars are a fantasy. Yet someone came along and disrupted your entire world.
Electric cars aren’t ready for anything but around town. Which they are great at. I’m looking at 2030 model plans - and spoiler alert - they’re gas and diesel. Although I can tell you particulate filters are coming for pertol, that is the next big change, but other than that until you change physics or make drastically better batteries, gas cars aren’t going anywhere
Greetings from the Netherlands where EV sales share is hitting 50%!
My comments along with SV's comments is how ignorant most people are to how things are made and done, because the majority of the folks on sites like this type code for a living and argue things for arguments sake, and don't actually make real, tangible things.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/eus-use-of-fossil-fuels-for-elec...
That's "close to" 50% renewables in some regions toward replacing current electricity generation.
If all vehicles stopped using petrol | diesal tomorrow and automagically becam electric the demand for electricity would increase dramatically and renewable contributions as a percentage would dwindle.
It's good work so far but there's still a long way to go, much to do, and a few billion tonnes of mining to churn through just to provide resources for your goal.
Also, I would check your stats. It's officially 70% fossil fuel usage in Green ol EU (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/D...).
I'm sorry, but everyone is out of their mind on these issues. The only way to achieve CO2 reductions is by using nuclear power. That's the fact.
He missed an even more important point. That is, globalization's foundation is ultra-inexpensive shipping of raw goods, parts, and then finished product.
Long to short, globalization is dependent on the status quo fuel. That is oil. Lots of cheap oil. So the risk isn't simply from the bottlenecks and lack of economic diversity. It that globalization perpetuates a status quo that favors climate change.
Even without that, there are solutions.
[0] I'm not holding my breath but I'll be happy if it does work out. IMO the biggest problem isn't even making them work, it's making them safe against deliberate tampering by highly motivated people with a lot of time on their hands.
This may be a underestimate of what would actually be involved with this change.
The margins are razor thin, generally negative with boom years in between.
A 400m containership is operated with a crew of 16 + whatever maintenance technicians are on board. How du you feel about leaving a single low paid person in charge of the reactor on a 6 hours on and 6 hours off schedule?
The long distance shipping industry is looking at methanol, ammonia and hydrogen to decarbonize.
The way small modular reactors are advertised, that's not the risk I'm worried about.
Instead, I'd ask: what can Hamas/North Korea/literal pirates do if they boarded the vessel half way between ports, and are actively trying to cause problems.
Also, 10% of emissions from one single source is a lot! (Some might say a boatload)
The USA loves to brag about how bad it was in the 70s - remember the TV adverts with the Native American and a tear in his eye? - and how well we cleaned up our act. Lol. Ohhellno. When we offshored the manufacturing, the associated pollution when with it. We didn't clean up as much as we outsourced our pollution.
Point being, when we see the photos of Beijing and the smog, that's not China's smog, we, and the rest of The West "owns" a good chunk of that smog. But the politicians and the corporate leaders aren't going to be transparent about it.
Do the math... Of course shipping costs may have changed, but parents' point stands:
The energy consumption (and labour costs) embodied in many products' fabrication, is much higher than energy consumed to ship 'em around the world. And thus those products will be fabricated where it's cheapest and/or most efficient.
If an alternative form of economic planning does not come about, since Global Capitalism introduces so many externalities it will destroy itself relatively quickly. Such self-destruction seems inevitable at this point, but we are not given real alternatives: Communism is a spectre, it haunts discourse since it exists as the only alternative posited that seeks to increase productivity and global wealth. Others are simply regressive, right-wing policies that emphasize a return to communal life (whose advocates forget, or perhaps are simply unfamiliar with, the extraordinary poverty of traditional rural communities).
And yet not once has communism been shown to out-compete capitalism in terms of wealth generation and the destruction of poverty. Capitalism has been adapted so severely to social concerns that it is difficult to tell (especially in China, which still calls itself communist) where the social policies end and the wealth generation begins. Though it is not and cannot be the end of history. But then how could our future be anything but at the same time both fantastically wealthy and horrifically dystopic? Out of that extreme chaos, what could come but more chaos, more terror, more luxury and more suffering. Magnitudes of pleasure and displeasure vacillation, desire inversion, operational schizophrenia, than we could even comprehend today. The alternative is already a lack of an alternative.
It wouldn't surprise me if the huge cargo ships produced more emissions than cars globally.
(Shipping, there, does include some stuff other than cargo, but it’s mostly cargo).
https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector
Shpping is 1.7% of global emissions. Much less than I had expected from reading the OP article.
When the power plant can't get a spare part, because the shipping truck can't get gas, because the pump in the gas station doesn't have electricity. - and on and on.
The entire infrastructure of the world is intertwined.
During the last two years I was on projects where one single part could no longer be sourced, and it held up millions of dollars of other inputs. It doesn't take everything collapsing, it only takes just enough.
Doesn't mean some specific things would not be difficult to get.
Also, even in wars with heavy and broad destruction there wasn't a collapse of civilization.
This is something that has puzzled me before. Like when I'm reading about the destruction in Ukraine, the active targeting of their electrical grid by Russian airstrikes, in juxtaposition with stories and photos in which it seems that day-to-day life for much of Ukraine is much closer to "normal" than "collapse of civilization."
To be clear, I don't mean to downplay what has happened there, or suggest that everything is fine. I'm just surprised by the apparent robustness of the infrastructure, civilization, etc.
Doesn't mean they are completely wrong or have bad motives either: some problems are avoided because they are pointed out.
Also, there is a difference between having grids run 24x7 with no interruptions and war time with interruptions.
Collapsing the opponents power grid is a way to reduce the opponents ability to respond, to subdue them. Then once subdued and occupied, then re-build it.
I think you would find there is always a balancing act in 'how much to destroy' in order to win, and also limit 'how hard will it be to rebuild once we've won'. But collapse is always part of it, because you are trying to win by hurting the other country.
Globalisation keeps the world at peace - as long as world leaders see the scales of the choice between maintaining trade and starting a war tilted toward trade, the world is a better place. Fossil fuels for transport and coal burning in China likely contributes the most massive amounts to global pollution. Thus innovation in nuclear would be massive, and improvements in battery storage would increase the utility of seasonal renewables as well as electric transport.
Humans are benevolent when they are fed, warm, and secure. The most important effective innovation keeps humans from getting on each other’s throats.
Kinda. It also means certain in-countries can do whatever they want to certain out-countries.
It's all explained in Dead Kennedy's excellent "Kinky Sex Makes the World Go Round"
China’s economy is not too strong in fact and they have few allies with strong economies or militaries.
> One obvious takeaway from the paper: whoa, America is far more reliant on China than it thought. But actually this underplays the complexity. Think back to our Brandauer electrode. The chances are that it was made of metals which were originally refined in China (I’m guessing here, but given China is the world’s biggest metal refiner this is not implausible). Those metals were then shipped to the UK where they were turned into the micron-accurate electrodes I saw being turned out of the machines in Birmingham. Then they were shipped back to another factory, probably in China, where they were put inside a rear view mirror.
Now I'm not saying China's not capable of manufacturing that electrode, probably of the 45% not made by Brandauer some or all are from China anyway, but the point is it shows the kind of disruption it would cause to any country. Some like China less than others like the UK, sure, but still disruption. Globalisation isn't quite 'we all get everything from China now'.
- the economic damage to china will cause the overthrow of the CCP
- any serious escalation would be met by a naval blockade of china and mass starvation
America is slowly entering an era of reshoring our factories to control low value manufacturing and high value products.
Just kidding. But yeah I think Zeihan is one of the most outspoken on the issue. I've seen a few others as well and assume it isn't just groupthink coming from Zeihan. As a counter example to his points about China not having any high value would be a recent PBS Nova episode on China's tech sector that goes over some success stories like Huawei. Nobody can tell the future, so take what I said further above with a grain of salt. I think the demographics angle is pretty important though as well as China's need to import food due to bad geography that requires a large and fairly manual workforce that no longer exists after urbanization. Interesting stuff.
There's a lot of tit-for-tat actions that the US (or the global West, for that matter) could take that would cripple China socially. A bunch of starving, young, educated men with no job prospects and no family prospects is the CCP's nightmare scenario. That sort of thing generally leads to revolutions.
The problem is that both actors have some serious leverage, and either side using that leverage in a serious, combative manner would harm the both the aggressor and the recipient. Nobody wants that.
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/ranking/trade-gdp-rati...
Ok, USA trade isn’t vital you say (disagree, but let’s go with it). The USA is has outsourced aluminum, steel, a lot of composite production. Even if you wanted to spool more up, we lack the ability to make chips, we lack the rare earth metals that China took world control over.
Even if USA isn’t massively dependent on paper - the practical effects of that 25/38% makes 100% of our capability happen.
In November of 2022 Chinese leaders found the limit of their control over Chinese people, and were so worried about rebellions that they precipitously dismantled almost all covid protections. Data suggest this killed 2 million people after China had previously exhibited among the lowest covid fatality rates in the world.
The internal politics related to China’s recent economic decline remain very muted, for now. One of the causes of this slowdown is the increased focus on geopolitical competition at the expense of economic relationships with the rest of the world. At some point, further economic decline that also results in food shortages, would seriously test its internal political stability.
A rapid decline in quality of life would challenge the US political system, too, especially with democracy in the US looking less resilient than it did 20 years ago, but food security would be much less of an issue.
We largely understand the failures that killed a million people in the US; China was not confronted with the same issue that would have resulted in well over 4 million deaths there.
No need to speculate. Australia pulled this stunt this decade. It's notable enough to get it's own Wikipedia entry https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia%E2%80%93China_trad...
Australia lost billions in exports. We were treated to the site of ships fully laden with Australian coal queued outside Chinese ports with nowhere to go, and reports of Chinese provinces literally freezing in the dark. It was caused by mind boggingly godsackingly daft behaviour from politicians at the highest levels in both countries. And, surprise surprise, none of it would have happened without a some help from Trump.
Three years and a change of Australian government later, and the restrictions are being lifted. It hurt at the time. Some exports like wine and lobsters never did find alternate markets, but most did, and notably Australia didn't suffer a recession after losing it's largest trading partner without warning.
I presume China found alternate sources of most things. It would be a higher price of course, just as Australia was forced to accept lower prices. Unsurprisingly both countries look to be very keen to renew normal relations.
In fact they mostly have. But very little has changed trade wise because each country has now signed trade agreements that bind them for a year of two, which I guess is testimony to how fluid globalisation is.
So back to your question about China starting a trade war. They could, but it would hurt them as much as the other country. It would leave them a little bit poorer, and would not achieve much beyond symbolism.
One thing WFH advocates fail to recognize is that, if companies embrace it - now they have the ability to replace super high paying US based WFH employees with low cost WFH (anywhere in the world employee).
WFM advocates don’t realize that they are effectively advocating for offshoring their own job.
If that means I get replaced by a talented hacker from India someday, the tradeoff is still far north of worth it.
Be careful for what you wish for, is all I’m saying.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_countries_b...
We engineers tend to take for granted just how specialized our knowledge has been, till recently. It seems unrealistic to expect this privilege to last forever. The rest of the world is catching up, and tools like ChatGPT might rapidly accelerate this race.
The way to survive is to adapt. It’s always been key.
That, and a brain drain from America to other countries may occur. I would expect the government to step in.
Besides the Capitalists have already made things terrible for people. “Give up more or they might make it more terrible” isn’t really convincing.
Like affording a house is impossible, kids are seen as a status symbol (like owning a BMW 20 years ago, or having a pet tiger or something). The retirement age goes up and up.
I say we call their bluff already.
And if it ever did become a serious threat, we could just resort to blatant racism and stereotyping against foreign workers and that is enough to kick the can down the road a bit longer. Many companies simply will not hire offshore Indians because they believe they do inferior work compared to Americans, and Chinese are corporate spies/leakers.
Making carbon fiber weave is three hundred steps.
We are in a complexity crisis and almost no one sees it. There isn’t a human on earth that could single handedly remake a factory that produces high quality carbon prepreg sheets.
We made world massively complex, but humans are absolutely no smarter than 10,000 years ago. This is extra bad for our below average types.
The kid working at Jiffy Lube flurry years ago could be competent at that, he had to know three oil filter styles, and four oils. Now, his generational equivalent has to know so much more and do it while globally connected to an attention-addiction.