Category: Politics

All posts on what Bismarck called “the art of the possible”

Daybreak

At Massey College last night I got the chance to play Daybreak: a cooperative board game about solving climate change.

I played with another couple of beginners, but got two crucial strategy tips. Like in real life, greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning in the past persist and accumulate, creating an important incentive to cut quickly as a higher priority even than building green energy to keep up with growing demand. Second, since it’s a cooperative game, all the players should be working to help keep anyone from getting in too much trouble.

As Europe, my two big contributions to the game were stressing the strategy of rapid cuts right from the beginning and using an ability to rescue ‘communities in crisis’ anywhere in the world. It’s nice to see a game that demonstrates the huge range of solutions which can help humanity control the problem, although the game structure where everyone accepts cooperation and works together exists in painful contrast to actual global climate negotiations.

I enjoyed the game a lot and took considerable inspiration from it both in terms of physical game design and implementing game mechanics. I’d like to make a tactile version of my Rivals sim where each player’s completion card goes in a mini-briefcase which can be closed during breaks to keep it secret, and where the steps toward weaponization are represented as physical tokens that get added to the briefcase.

I’m grateful to have had the chance to play a game like this, and to meet more of sort of people interested in playing. This likely creates new avenues toward finishing development on Rivals and getting people playing.

Carney caving on Keystone

More evidence is emerging that Prime Minister Mark Carney is choosing to ignore what he knows about climate change economics to do precisely the wrong thing. He is thinking of reviving the Keystone XL pipeline.

As a world expert on climate change economics, Carney could tell you that the crucial thing is to avoid locking in inappropriate long-term investments in fossil fuels which we will need to scrap early and which will delay and raise the costs of dealing with climate change. Unfortunately, the political imperative to cater to the planet-wrecking industry has overpowered his expertise, honesty, or integrity. The sad fact is, once built, even the dirtiest projects are politically agonizing to shut down. Carney is ignoring the most elementary requirement of controlling climate change: to stop building the fossil fuel infrastructure that causes the problem.

Related:

Poverty and forced obedience

Nothing stands out from the autobiographers’ testimony more strongly than the way in which rising levels of employment pushed up family incomes in meaningful and much appreciated ways. Yet the autobiographies suggest that there was something else at stake. Poverty forced our writers’ hand in other walks of life. The decision to marry, the timing and content of their sexual lives — such things could be controlled to some degree by more powerful neighbours when a couple’s outlook for raising their children by their own labour was poor. And how did a man challenge the religious or political views of his employer in an era of low employment? Offending one’s master meant certain dismissal — a risk that could not be taken when there were no other employers to whom one might turn. Low levels of employment obviously meant low incomes, but it also restricted the personal and political expression of the labouring poor. It continued to restrict working women’s scope for self-improvement and political activity well into the twentieth century. And it is perhaps here that we see most clearly the grounds for emphasising the ways in which the industrial revolution enhanced rather than destroyed patterns of life. Critics will argue that the material gains for most families were small. But they were just enough to drag wage-earners out of the servile submission that poverty had forced on them since time immemorial.

Griffin, Emma. Liberty’s Dawn: A People’s History of the Industrial Revolution. Yale University Press, 2013. p. 246-7

350.org activities largely suspended in the US

Very sad news from Politico:

Environmental group 350.org, which spearheaded the movement to block the Keystone XL oil pipeline, will “temporarily suspend programming” in the U.S. and other countries amid funding woes, according to a letter obtained by POLITICO.

The move comes as environmental groups have struggled to find their footing and raise money under President Donald Trump, whose threats to investigate left-leaning organizations and rapid-fire dismantling of environmental rules have hamstrung green groups.

The letter to outside organizations from Executive Director Anne Jellema said 350.org had suffered a 25 percent drop in income for its 2025 and 2026 fiscal years, compelling it to halt operations. The group will keep three U.S. staff members in hopes of reviving operations in the future.

“In making these very tough choices, we considered a range of factors, including the political context, the relative need for 350’s work based on the strength of other actors in the ecosystem, the presence or absence of an enabling environment for civil society, and the ability to resource the work needed,” the letter said.

Climate change has never been more serious, and our leaders have never been more unserious about controlling it. It’s a disturbing time to see a group advocating for a better future be forced to cut back.

Open Process Manifesto

This document codifies and expresses some of my thinking on cooperation on complex problems, for the sake of the benefit of humanity and nature: Open Process Manifesto

It is based on the recognition of our universal fallibility, need to be comprehended, and to be able to share out tasks between people across space and time. To achieve those purposes, we need to be open about our reasoning and evidence, because that’s the way to treat others as intelligent partners who may be able to support the same cause through methods totally unknown and unavailable to you, across the world or centuries in the future.

Our entry into Lyra’s world

I have long considered the opening chapter of Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass to be a masterful lesson in worldbuilding in speculative fiction. He does a magnificent job of introducing a subtly different alternative world, without ever relying on crude exposition or just telling the reader that some things are different and what they are. The biggest obvious difference with our world — that the people in hers have daemons — is revealed unobtrusively and naturally from the perspective of characters who consider it normal. We learn everything crucial about Lyra’s bond with Pantalaimon just from the character of their conversation in this short timespan.

Yesterday, during a discussion with ChatGPT about Lyra Bellaqua and Sherlock Holmes, I had the assisted realization that what the chapter also achieves, even more importantly, is to establish Lyra’s character through the same method of compelling and unobtrusive narrative storytelling. When we meet her, she is conniving to sneak in to the exclusive Retiring Room for Jordan College scholars, which is forbidden to her, driven by her consuming curiosity about what happens there. Right away, we see that she is inquisitive and bold, willing to defy the rules to learn, and unwilling to defer to stuffy authority. Then, when she observes the Master’s attempt to poison Lord Asriel’s wine, her choice is to intervene: revealing the fundamental moral framework that drives her. Even at a risk to herself, she will make a substantial effort to save someone else, as later revealed at a much grander scale with her Bolvangar rescue.

It is said that all speculative fiction is really a commentary on the present, and Pullman’s is sharp and relevant. The Golden Compass reveals the monstrosities that emerge from the unchecked power of the heartless, and presents selfless individual moral courage as a response. Comfortable and exclusionary systems of power which are free from outside oversight drift into seeing right and wrong in terms of their self-interest, if they even persist with thinking about morality at all. Lyra reminds us that, while it is never safe, we always have the choice to resist and to assert a standard of morality based on respect for the individual and repugnance at their exploitation and sacrifice for outside agendas. The arc of that demonstration all begins with the insight into her mind provided by that opening chapter, and that’s why it stands out as some of the strongest worldbuilding in fiction.

America is demolishing its brain

From NASA to the National Science Foundation to the Centres for Disease Control to the educational system, the United States under the Trump administration is deconstructing its own ability to think and to comprehend the complex global situation. A whole fleet of spacecraft — each unique in human history — risks being scrapped because the country is ruled by an anti-science ideology. They are coming with particular venom for spacecraft intended to help us understand the Earth’s climate and how we are disrupting it. Across every domain of human life which science and medicine have improved, we are in the process of being pulled backwards by those who reject learning from the truth the universe reveals to us, in preference to ‘truths’ from religious texts which were assembled with little factual understanding in order to reassert and justify the prejudices of their creators.

The anti-science agenda will have a baleful influence on the young and America’s position in the world. In any country, you are liable to see nerds embracing the NASA logo and pictures of iconic spacecraft — a form of cultural cachet which serves America well in being perceived as a global leader. Now, when an American rover has intriguing signs of possible fossil life on Mars, there is little prospect that the follow-on sample return mission will be funded. Perhaps the near-term prospect of a Chinese human presence on the moon will bend the curve of political thought back toward funding space, though perhaps things will have further decayed by then.

The young are being doled out a double-dose of pain. As Christian nationalism and far-right ideology erode the value of the educational system (transitioning toward a Chinese-style system of memorizing the government’s official lies and doctrine rather than seeking truth through skeptical inquiry), young people become less able to cope in a future where a high degree of technical and scientific knowledge is necessary to comprehend and thrive in the world. Meanwhile, ideologues are ravaging the medical system and, of course, there is a tremendous intergenerational conflict brewing between the still-young and the soon-to-be-retired (if retirement continues to be a thing for any significant fraction of the population). Whereas we recently hoped for ever-improving health outcomes for everyone as technology advances, now there is a spectre of near-eradicated diseases re-emerging, in alliance with the antibiotic-resistant bacteria which we have so foolishly cultivated.

What’s happening is madness — another of the spasmodic reactionary responses to the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution which have been echoing for centuries. Unfortunately, it is taking place against the backdrop in which humanity is collectively choosing between learning to function as a planetary species and experiencing the catastrophe of civilizational collapse. Nuclear weapons have never posed a greater danger, and it exists alongside new risks from AI and biotechnology, and in a setting where the climate change which we have already locked in will continue to strain every societal system.

Perhaps I have watched too much Aaron Sorkin, but when I was watching the live coverage of the January 6th U.S. Capital take-over, I expected that once security forces had restored order politicians from both sides would condemn the political violence and wake up to the dangerousness of the far-right populist movement. When they instead jumped right back to partisan mudslinging, I concluded that the forces pulling the United States apart are stronger than those holding it together. There is a kind of implicit assumption about the science and tech world, that it will continue independently and separately regardless of the silliness that politicians are getting up to. This misses several things, including how America’s scientific strength is very much a government-created and government-funded phenomenon, going back to the second world war and beyond. It also misses the pan-societal ambition of the anti-science forces; they don’t want a science-free nook to sit in and read the bible, but rather to impose a theocratic society on everyone. That is the prospect now facing us, and the evidence so far is that the forces in favour of truth, intelligence, and tolerance are not triumphing.

Nuclear risks briefing

Along with the existential risk to humanity posed by unmitigated climate change, I have been seriously learning about and working on the threat from nuclear weapons for over 20 years.

I have written an introduction to nuclear weapon risks for ordinary people, meant to help democratize and de-mystify the key information.

The topic is incredibly timely and pertinent. A global nuclear arms race is ongoing, and the US and Canada are contemplating a massively increased commitment to the destabilizing technology of ballistic missile defence. If citizens and states could just comprehend that nuclear weapons endanger them instead of making them safe, perhaps we could deflect onto a different course. Total and immediate nuclear weapon abolition is implausible, but much could be done to make the situation safer and avoid the needless expenditure of trillions on weapons that will (in the best case) never be used.

Nuclear powers could recognize that history shows it only really takes a handful of bombs (minimal credible deterrence) to avert opportunistic attempts from enemies at decapitating attacks. States could limit themselves to the most survivable weapons, particularly avoiding those which are widely deployed where they could be stolen. They could keep warheads separate from delivery devices, to reduce the risk of accidental or unauthorized use. They could collectively renounce missile defences as useless against nuclear weapons. They could even share technologies and practices to make nuclear weapons safer, including designs less likely to detonate in fires and explosions, and which credibly cannot be used by anyone who steals them. Citizens could develop an understanding that nuclear weapons are shameful to possess, not impressive.

Even in academia and the media, everything associated with nuclear weapons tends to be treated as a priesthood where only the initiated, employed by the security state, are empowered to comment. One simple thing the briefing gets across is that all this information is sitting in library books. In a world so acutely threatened by nuclear weapons, people need the basic knowledge that allows them to think critically.

P.S. Since getting people to read the risk briefing has been so hard, my Rivals simulation is meant to repackage the key information about proliferation into a more accessible and interactive form.

The environmental movement and young people’s rage

During my childhood, I remember a book circulating around the house called 50 Simple Things Kids Can Do to Save the Earth.

It included activities like putting a milk carton underneath a dripping tap to measure the rate at which it was dripping, and leaving elastic bands stretched and exposed outside to supposedly measure air pollution.

Much later, I realized how fucked up the implications of the book and its genre are.

The buried premise is that the Earth needs “saving” — which is horrifying and terrifying. The book takes it for granted that the one life-sustaining planet known in the universe is imperiled by human activity. If something needs saving and doesn’t get it, that means it dies or gets destroyed. The book comes right out and takes for granted that all known life is at risk unless humanity changes its conduct and attitudes and that this won’t happen through the existing political, economic, and legal systems.

The next implication is that the appropriate resolution to this, at least in part, depends on kids. It’s up to kids to save the Earth. Furthermore, they need to do it through some sort of resistance to or reform of the political and economic systems which embody and sustain the ecological crisis.

So not only does the book imply that it is the responsibility of kids to save all the life in the universe, but it goes on to give them a series of trivialities as action items: find a way to avoid wasting a carton of water, check the pH of a local stream… It sets up a colossal threat, then gives some arts-and-crafts activities and low-impact personal lifestyle changes as the solutions available.

Of course, my bitterness about this arises from the decades of utter betrayal toward young people which have characterized my life. Given the choice between perks today and not wrecking the Earth, all our leaders choose the former with lip service to the latter. Young people have grown up in a world where they expect catastrophe, and understand that their leaders prefer that outcome to changing the self-serving status quo.

I was part of that youth movement at least from my experiences with LIFE in the mid-1990s until the fossil fuel divestment movement at universities after 2012, and saw how it was systematically patronized, treated in bad faith, and ignored by those who set policy. Adults told kids that it was up to them to save the world, then knowingly and purposefully undermined those efforts in order to protect their own interests, all while portraying themselves as sage decision-makers moderating the unreasonable requests of radical activists. This process is ongoing.

This dynamic has produced a great deal of apathy and political disengagement, but I think there is also an underlying rage arising from young people understanding that they have been put in lifelong peril by a society which systematically disregards their interests — to say nothing about how the prospects for their potential children have been ravaged. It is hard to guess how that rage will manifest, but it seems very implausible that it will be through the sort of long-sighted planetwide cooperation which provides the only path to curtailing the climate crisis.