January 2008 – Page 3 – a sibilant intake of breath

A partial defence of carbon offsets

Everybody compares carbon offsets with the indulgences of the medieval Catholic Church. Indeed, a good number of people seem to treat the comparison as the decisive point against them. Offsets allow one person to ‘sin’ by flying or driving a big car, then pay for it by having someone else reduce emissions by a similar amount. While there is certainly potential for abuse, the real issue here is about the intuitive sense of fairness people possess.

Obviously, if someone buys an offset that produces no real reduction in emissions, they have been bilked and the climate has suffered. There are plenty of cases of dubious offsets, including all those based around planting trees. Furthermore, it is necessary not only for the sale of the offset to lead to reduced emissions: it must lead to a reduction of emissions equivalent to the face value of the offset and, crucially, these must consist entirely of reductions that would not otherwise occur. The perfect offset is something like this: (a) a farm releases large amounts of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas (b) in the normal run of things, the farm would have no incentive to stop doing so (c) the sale of offsets changes the economics of the situation, making it most economically efficient to capture the methane, perhaps using it to generate electricity (d) this produces a quantity of real and verifiable reductions that can be sold at the marginal cost of capturing the methane.

In this situation, the argument of ineffectiveness does not apply. What we are left with is the offence against fairness – allowing one person to ‘take more than their share.’ While there is intuitive force behind this position, I don’t think it is very convincing. While it would be better to both moderate one’s consumption and help others to do so, it does seem less objectionable to emit and purchase credible offsets than to emit and simply ignore the consequences of your actions. The critical difference between offsets and indulgences is that offsets (when used properly) actually have a mitigating effect on total greenhouse gas emissions; indulgences never did anything at all, except raise money for those selling them and the ire of those opposed.

Carbon tariffs

It is only a matter of time before the first state imposes an import tariff on goods from countries that are not taking action on climate change. On one level, that is fair enough. If domestic manufacturers are paying for their CO2 emissions through a cap-and-trade scheme or carbon tax, they have some legitimate objections against imports from foreign competitors who are not doing so. That said, the actual experience with the first such tariffs is likely to be a huge legal and political mess.

Membership in the World Trade Organization – something common to most big emitters – carries a number of obligations of varying levels of obscurity and enforcement. You can bet that countries that have such tariffs applied to them will protest such treatment aggressively. It would also be fair to bet that the winner of the contest will be determined on the basis of economic power, rather than the rightness or wrongness of arguments. It is even possible that the resulting compromise will be worse from a greenhouse gas mitigation standpoint than if the argument had never begun.

That said, it is at least logically possible for the global trading system to help in the development of an effective global regime of rules, norms, and decision-making procedures around the issue of climate change. It obviously won’t have an effect on countries that don’t do a lot of trading, but they are probably not the most essential ones to get on board anyhow. What will matter most is which of the two biggest economic blocs will triumph: the United States, still in denial about what solving climate change will require, or Europe, where at least some leading states are starting to get serious.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma

Michael Pollan‘s superb book tells the stories of four meals and the processes through which they came to exist. At one extreme is a meal of McDonald’s cheeseburgers, eaten in a moving car; at the other, a cooked wild boar he hunted, accompanied by things grown or gathered. Pollan also considers two types of pastoral food systems: one on a mass scale intended to serve the consumer market for organic foods and a truly pastoral farm centred around grass feeding, healthy animal interactions, and sustainability. His descriptions of the four, and comparisons between them, provide lots of interesting new information, and fodder for political and ethical consideration.

Among these, the industrial food chain and the grass-fed pastoral are the most interesting. Each is a demonstration of human ingenuity, with the former representing the sheer efficiency that can be achieved through aggressive specialization and disregard for animal welfare and environmental effects and the latter demonstrating how people, animals, and plants can interact in a much more ethical and sustainable way, albeit only on a relatively small scale. The account of Polyface Farm – the small-scale pastoral operation run by Joel Salatin – is genuinely touching at times, as well as startling in contrast to the industrial cattle feeding and killing operations Pollan describes. While the book heaps praise on the operation, it also recognizes the limitations inherent: we cannot live in cities like New York and get our food from such establishments, nor can the big stores most people shop at manage to deal with thousands of such small suppliers. Unless you are willing to go back to a pre-urban phase for humanity, the industrial organic chain may be the best that is possible.

Pollan’s book is packed with fascinating information on everything from the chemistry of producing processed foods from corn to some unusual theories he learned from mushroom gatherers. Regardless of your present position on food, reading it will make you better informed and leave you with a lot to contemplate.

Arguably, the book is at its weakest when it comes to ethics. Pollan rightly heaps criticism on factory farms, but seems to pre-judge the overall rightness of eating meat. Some of his arguments against vegetarianism and veganism – such as that more animals are killed in fields growing vegetables than in slaughterhouses – are simply silly. No sensible system of ethics considers it equivalent to kill a grasshopper and to kill a pig. I also think that he places too much emphasis on the relevance of whether an animal anticipates death or not. I don’t see how the inability of animals to “see is coming” makes their deaths qualitatively different from those of human beings.

That said, his arguments are generally coherent and certainly bear consideration. He never explicitly spells out the wrongness of eating industrial meat, though it is clear that his implicit argument is based around the conditions under which the animals live, rather than the fact of killing them. This is a sensible position and he is right to contrast Polyface farm with industrial farms on the basis of how they allow or do not allow animals to express their “characteristic forms of life.” Rather than press his argument to a conclusion, he abandons his consideration in a bout of fantasy: talking about how much better the treatment and slaughter of animals would be if farms and slaughterhouses had glass walls.

I highly recommend this book to almost everyone. Modern life is very effective at concealing the nature and origin of what we are eating. This book helps to pull back the veil to some extent. It is also a reflection of the ever-increasing politicization of food. What you choose to eat is an important signal of your ethical and political views, to be judged accordingly by others. Whatever position you end up taking, it will be better informed and illustrated if you take the time to consider Pollan’s thoughts and experiences.

For my part, the book has convinced me that I should strictly limit or abandon the consumption of eggs. His description of egg operations is especially chilling and supports his assertion that: “What you see when you look is the cruelty – and the blindness to cruelty – required to produce eggs that can be sold for seventy-nine cents a dozen.” Other resolutions stemming from reading this book include to try eating more types of mushrooms, improve my cooking generally, and remember that under no circumstances should one accept an invitation to collect abalone in California.

Good for eating, and good for thinking

Thanks to the Herb and Spice Shop on Bank Street, I have been able to check off the longest serving item on my running to-do list. Many months ago in Oxford, Antonia introduced me to a sweet soy sauce called Ketjap Manis. I have since sought it in countless stores in several countries, though unsuccessfully until tonight.

I got lots of other good ethical stuff, also: hot curry paste, something called ‘kefir,’ organic salsa and feta cheese, tofu, nice looking bagels, veggie pate, some interesting snacks, and a big bag of oats.

Now, all I need is some St. Peter’s Organic Ale.

Scenic spot

Yesterday evening, I was walking around the Bytown Market and wandered up to Champlain Hill. The panoramic view of Ottawa in the orange-pink light of the setting sun was really lovely. From that spot, you can see most of the important buildings in the capital: from the Supreme Court past Parliament to the canal, then over to the American embassy and the National Gallery.

All told, it is probably the most scenic spot in the city, and it is very well suited to snowy sunsets.

Meat eating and ignorance

Here is an ethical argument I have been pondering recently:

Most people, if forced to witness the entire process through which a piece of meat is produced, would choose not to eat the meat.
Some people are never put off by this because it never occurs to them to think about, or they have a notion of where meat comes from that is quite at odds with reality.
Some people are aware of where most of our meat really comes from, but choose to ignore this because they want to eat meat anyhow.
Therefore, meat eating in our society is usually the product of true ignorance or wilful ignorance.

I can only see two responses to this argument: questioning the first point or saying that the conclusion is true but unimportant. You could argue that we find the way in which animals are raised and slaughtered unappealing simply because we aren’t used to it. We don’t generally visit factory farms or abattoirs. We rarely even go to butchers with recognizable animals on display. Arguably, we are simply queasy at an unfamiliar sight, rather than genuinely morally repulsed.

That counter-argument has strength, to a degree. I think it can be applied pretty effectively in the case of a meat production chain that doesn’t require large amount of animal suffering and isn’t worrisomely unhygenic. As I have argued before, however, the industrial meat system is both. I maintain that most people forced to sit in a jury on the question – presented with evidence and arguments on both sides – would conclude that considerable animal suffering occurs in the production of the meat people eat, and that factory farming is profoundly unhygienic from the perspective of the animals, those who eat their meat, and the environment as a whole.

So what about the argument that meat eating is ignorant, but that this doesn’t matter? Perhaps it isn’t wrong to act on the basis of ignorance. While true ignorance seems more defensible than the wilful sort, we cannot automatically assume that it is wrong to act on the basis of misinformation, or even intentionally suppress information we feel will inhibit our actions. Alternatively, a utilitarian might say that the net utility of meat eating is greater than that of vegetarianism or veganism – though that becomes a lot harder to argue if the utility of the animals is considered as well. People dead-set upon arguing the appropriateness of eating meat will be able to find a detour around this argument that suits them well enough for them to dismiss it. For those a bit more open-minded from the outset, I think it creates relatively profound problems.

Macbeth at the NAC

Recently, I saw a production of Macbeth at the National Arts Centre. It was very professionally staged, with World War I era costumes and props, the minimalist set design common in modern renditions of Shakespeare, good sound and lighting, and competent acting from all concerned. The blocking was especially well done, with creative use of an unusually shaped stage and almost cinematic interludes of voiceless combat between the later scenes.

While the play felt highly polished, it was somewhat lacking in intensity. Perhaps a play as well known and frequently performed as Macbeth doesn’t present professional actors with sufficient challenge or interest to generate a passionate performance, or perhaps it was just a night when they were a bit off. Some of the big set-piece speeches of the play (Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking, Macbeth’s ‘Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow’ speech) were neither performed with straight drama or in a way that was interestingly unusual – they hung between directness and experimentation in a way that satisfied neither. That being said, the play was well worth seeing and a good introduction to theatre in the capital.

One thing I had forgotten about the play is the scene (IV, iii) where Malcolm goes on and on about what a bad king he would be. Perhaps it is unsurprising that he is succeeded by a ruler not his heir.

Canadian emissions by province

The chart above breaks down Canada’s 1990 and 2005 emissions by province. It shows emissions of all greenhouse gasses, measured in megatonnes of CO2 equivalent. It is interesting both in terms of totals and in terms of rates of change. The only jurisdiction where emissions declined was the Yukon, where they fell from 0.6 to 0.4 Mt CO2e. One obvious fact demonstrated by this chart is that it is possible to address Canadian emissions to a significant extent by focusing on just two provinces, with another three making more modest but still substantial contributions.

This chart shows the population distribution between the provinces in 2005:

Of course, it is unfair to directly compare emissions with population. When a driver in Ontario drives using gasoline extracted from the oil sands, Ontario bears some responsibility for those emissions. This is akin to the relationship between emissions and world trade, as discussed before. Even so, there is an obvious disjoint between the level of emissions in Alberta and their share of the Canadian population.

To reach a sustainable level of emissions, it will be necessary for everybody to cut their emissions significantly. That being said, the disaggregation of data can help us to make better choices about where to prioritize. From that perspective, the provincial policies of Ontario and Alberta start to look very important indeed.

Unlimited play in the Midnight Pool demo

When I got my phone (a Nokia 6275i) from Bell, I was disappointed to see that it only included one game: Midnight Pool. Worse, the game was a demo version that only allowed you to play for sixty seconds before automatically quitting, offering to let you buy the game for an unknown sum. Downloading things from the internet onto a Bell phone is shockingly expensive: four cents a kilobyte. As such, downloading a half-megabyte application would cost $20.00 in transfer fees, plus whatever they charge for the game.

Thankfully, I accidentally discovered a method that lets you play Midnight Pool for as long as you want. I don’t know if its a bug or something hidden by the programmers, but it is certainly helpful on long bus rides.

How to circumvent the one minute time limit in the Midnight Pool demo:

Start the program
Select ‘Language’ from the main menu
Switch to ‘Francais’
Select ‘Lancer le demo’ from the main menu
Perform a normal break
While the computer is taking a shot (when their cue is on screen, but before they hit a ball), enter the game menu
Select ‘Options’
Toggle son/musique to ‘Non’
Close the game menu

Once this has been done, you are free to take as long as you wish to complete the game. This works with version 1.1.2 of the game, at least on my phone.

Costly cod

If you want evidence of serious overfishing, look no further than Billingsgate Fish Market in London. Apparently, the price of a kilogram of cod has increased from £6 (C$11.87) four years ago to £30 (C$59.36) today. This is despite how fish is being brought in from ever-father away, concealing the degree to which local waters have been depleted.

Since 2000, cod has been considered an endangered species by the World Wide Fund for Nature. According to one of their reports, the global cod catch has fallen by 70% during the past thirty years and the fish could be commercially extinct as soon as 2020. The WWF report claims that:

[T]he world’s cod fisheries are disappearing fast, with a global catch that has declined from 3.1 million tonnes in 1970 to 950,000 tonnes in 2000. In the North American cod fishery, the catch has declined by 90 per cent since the early 1980s, while in European waters, the catch of the North Sea cod is now just 25 per cent of what it was 15 years ago.

This is consistent with the study in Science by Worm et al. that projected “the global collapse of all taxa currently fished by the mid–21st century.”