After the Corona-Crisis: A New & Green Deal for the World?

Foto: Nuon/Jorrit Lousberg

While the Corona-Pandamic is indeed far from over, speculations about the future giving hope in these dark times. Even the large EU rescue plan, which also includes a strong green component seems to be not enough as Greta Thumberg point out (in the Guardian). Joe Biden announced a plan for Green Energy, which will nevertheless will be diffucult to implement. (both links Guardian) Are Greta Thumberg or Oliver Milman too strict or too pessimitic? No, that is not the problem, but hope alone is not enough for creating a change in the problem of climate change. There are real complexities involved. Recently Jeff Gibbs and Roger Moore tried to show some of the problems "Green Energy" is going to face (youtube-link to the film), but they really showed is that it is not easy to make a film about such a complex matter (as the critics of "debunked" showed, see also the Wikepedia-page for more backgronds). While there are films about climate change and environmental problems, e.g. "A Fierce Green Fire" or the "4.Revolution", about a shift in the energy production (in German), these matters are not easy to explain in a film. Wikipedia-pages (not one page alone) can convey a better picture, but for this several pages has to be combined. At first there is no page called "climate change", there is the page "climate variablity and change", if one searches for "climate change", there is a direction to "Global warming" (see the link), which is the effect of climate change globally, not locally. There might be place, which acutally get colder, an example could be Europe, if the North Atlantic Current would get weaker, not only because of Global warming, but also changes in ocean. In short: "Global warming" is only a headline of a much more complex process. The complexity is also affecting the discussion about climate change, which is indeed a very complex change, a much better conceptual tool is the Anthropocene debate. But how should the New & Green deal? For the reduction of complexity I have to concentrate one factor, which seems to of central importance: energy denisity (Wp). Solar power has, compared to coal or Gasoline, a low energy density. The means you need to create very big solar panels to create the energy, that is saved in a liter of fuel (Homer-Dixon 2006). And more problems:  1. solar power is difficult to save. Batteries are still expensive and their lifespan is not so long. 2. Intermittency: If it is cloudy the sun is weaker and there is not so much energy. 3. EROI (=Energy return on investment, Wp). Solar energy needs large investments and there is less money coming back, compared to fossil energy. Fossil energy is developed since over 150 years and EROI is still large. All these four reason are not strong enough to impede thenecessary transition from fossil energy to renewable energy, but they show the complexity of this transition. It can be seen in Germany, which was one of the first countries to start an Energy transition (an URL about some of the problems), but still a lot of problems are unsolved. But these arguments are largely not heard in public, specialists of course know some of the problems, but maybe it is difficult to find ONE specialist, who has the solution for all the problems, because there are not only technical, but also social (see social engineering) or political. It seems to be, that a more decentral energy supply would be helpful, for a transition to renewable energy, but here are massive economic interests involved, which make such transitions difficult (even in Sweden, see the case of the rafinery Lysekil). And an international deliberation is more needed than ever. Not only for specialists, but for the international public as well.                                               

Reference

Homer-Dixon, Thomas (2006), The upside of down, Resource and Conflict Analysis, (Souvenir press), London  

patterns of social engineering (not only masks...)

Social engineering (WpE), in "Applied"Social Sciences, is multidmensional concept see Disambiguation pages in Wikipedia. Here used as an attempt of institutions to change the culture, in the sense of the social behaviour of the cultural agents. This article will demonstrate dimensions of social engineering related to three aspects:

1. individual behavior, especially wearing masks
   
2. the new corona warn app
3. some findings on testing and vaccination    

1.Although the Covid-19 pandemic is far from over, the numbers are showing clearly distinct cultural patterns: this was discussed briefly in a post before and more in depth analysis about France, Germany and Japan can be seen here (showing presentations from June 18., organized by the Maison Franco-Japanese and Deutsches Institut fuer Japanstudien, both in Tokyo). Discussing the previous post in my seminar, I learned that the wearing of face masks is in Japan introduced in school during the delivery of the school lunch meals, by the students. To prevent the spread of influenza germs the elementary school students are trained to wash their hand thoroughly and wear masks. This influenza protection hygiene in Japan seems to be one (cultural) factor very important for the relatively low death rate of Covid-19 in Japan.   

2.Corona Tracing Apps are one another important aspect, closely related to social engineering in the 21st century. But in this context an explicit definition of "social engineering" is needed, because searching (on Google) the terms "social engineering corona apps" is showing some interesting results: "What COVID-19 teaches us about social engineering?" (Blog "Dark reading"), but here "social engineering" is meant in the sense of information security, while this post is covering "social engineering" as a concept in the social sciences, which talks about possibility to change the social behaviours of people (= the culture) through technical measures. But is the Coronoa tracing app really social engineering? i.e. Is the Corona tracing app designed to change the behaviour of persons? The answer can only be: It depends on the app! There are various Covid-19 apps (Wp) around. Some countries are using the Covid-19 pandemic to expand mass surveillance (Guardian) on their own population. The Norway example (tech-crunch) shows that in this country the warnings of Data protection Agency is this country is taken seriously. And other Apps are specially designed not to be violate the privacy of its users. The swiss developted app (BBC, see also, in German, Spiegel online and the NZZ about the app-development) designed in cooperation with Apple and Google is built to avoid data-storage at a central place. The App can therefore only used to inform about the possibility of a Covid-19 infection. In the case of this app, the level of social engineering is deliberately low. The app called COCOA (see Mainichi-article 28/6/2020) in Japan (The Verge, 19/6/2020) developed in cooperation with Microsoft follows the same principles. Not all countries developed an own app in the UK (Guardian) the Google and Apple will be used directly. But in countries, where the decentral Bluetooth-approach is applied the social engineering aspect of the apps is (in the moment) very small, the users only have to install the new app, but they do not have to change their behaviour in other ways.

3. Testing and vaccination is not all aspects linked to individual behaviour. Only when a person decides to go to doctor and get a vaccination (e.g. against Influenza), this would be a relation to individual behaviour. But epidemic outbreaks shape social behaviour, as one can see in Covid-19 pandemic, therefore the prevention of pandemics also has great influences. And the prevention of pandemics was after the 19 century: vaccination. Vaccination policies (Wp) were rolled out to prevent epidemics and create immunity in the population ("herd immunity"). But mandatory vaccination has also be a controversial issue, as the history of anti-vaccination shows. (History of vaccines, Blog). In a lot of countries the population does not trust their governments, because of the history of oppression and it not surprising that the trust of population to their governments is in some african countries very low.  (Médecins Sans Frontières = MSF, see also the Interview of Karline Kleijer of MSF in Spiegel online, in German).