Politics – Page 169 – a sibilant intake of breath

Environmentalism: a faith or a fad?

If you want to seriously annoy environmentalists like me, there are two assertions that will rarely fail:

Environmentalism is a new religion.
Environmentalism is just a fad.

The first view generally arises from fundamental confusion on the part of the person making the assertion. Since they are used to seeing arguments about the morality of individual action presented in religious terms, they assume that anything that involves such arguments must be religious. The faulty syllogism is roughly: religion tries to tell me how to live, environmentalism tries to tell me how to live, therefore environmentalism is religion. This isn’t the case – both because the syllogism is fundamentally invalid, and because there are key differences in the basis for religion and environmentalism, respectively. The second argument does have some evidence to support it, but there is an overwhelming case for hoping it proves untrue in the long term.

Starting with the religion argument, the first step is to establish the nature of religion. The key element of ‘faith’ is a willingness to accept something without empirical evidence: whether it is the existence of a god, the existing of karma, or whatever. Religious beliefs of this kind cannot be empirically disproved. By contrast, virtually all claims made by environmentalists are dependent on their empirical correctness for strength. If mercury didn’t actually poison people, we would be wrong for avoiding it on that basis. The only non-empirical claims behind environmentalism are about what has value. If we didn’t value human life or the natural world, we would have no reason to be concerned about pollution or climate change, and we would have no reason to take action to prevent them.

Every environmental position and argument is open to as much empirical and logical scrutiny anyone cares to apply to it. Everyone is free to perform whatever experiments they like and, if those experiments produce interesting or unexpected results that can be reproduced by others, they can expect them to eventually become part of the body of scientific knowledge. Likewise, people are free to argue about the moral and logical premises of the ‘what should we value’ debate.

Moving on to the ‘fad’ argument, it is certainly the case that public interest in the environment waxes and wanes. Sometimes, catastrophic events draw special attention to the issue. At other times, people find their attention drawn to other happenings. That being said, I think Denis Hayes is right to argue that: “If environment is a fad, it’s going to be our last fad.” Right now, humanity is living with the following assumptions at least implicitly made: (a) the planet can support six billion of us, with more being added daily (b) at least for most of those people, material consumption can continue to rise at several percent per year. Even if we came up with some miracle machine to solve climate change tomorrow, some new issue would arise as the ratio between the total available mass and energy on the planet and the fraction used by human beings continued to fall.

We live in a finite world and, in at least some cases, we are starting to brush against the physical limitations that exist. For that simple reason, environmentalism is important and likely to be enduring. Thankfully, unlike religions which tend to get tangled up in their own history (witness all those trying to prove that the Bible is somehow historically accurate), environmentalism is generally scientifically grounded. As such, its content and prescriptions have the potential to improve as our understanding of the world deepens. For that, we should all be thankful.

“Chuckie” Taylor and torture prosecutions

An American court has convicted the son of former Liberian President Charles Taylor for committing torture, sentencing him to 97 years in prison. “Chuckie” Taylor led a paramilitary unit during the time when his father was in power. His father is currently on trial at the Special Court for Sierra Leone in The Hague. If there is any fairness in the world, “Chuckie” should eventually have some senior Bush administration officials for cellmates

The illegality of torture under international law is unambiguous. It doesn’t depend on which statutes a particular state has ratified; further, there are no exemptions granted for heads of state, senior officials, or people acting in a professional capacity. It certainly is not a legal defence to claim that the torture was necessary for purposes of national security or preventing terrorism.

The environmental and ‘anti-war’ movements

Historically, there seem to be a fair number of areas of overlap between various aspects of the environmental movement and various aspects of the ‘anti-war’ movement. It seems important, from the outset, to stress that neither is really a unified force. There are a few people who still aspire to the complete abolition of war, while most others have the ambition of either stopping specific wars or curtailing some of the worst aspects of war in general (war crimes, nuclear weapons, etc). On the environmental side, there is arguably even more diversity. People differ on areas of concern (does animal welfare matter?), on the scale of action (local? national? global?), and on appropriate solutions. Overlapping with both camps are some groups (such as Marxists) who feel that changing some underlying aspect of society will address most or all of the problems of war and environmental destruction more or less automatically.

There are a few reasons for which the anti-war movement is a natural fit for the environmental movement. For one thing, they tend to galvanize the same type of people: predominantly students and older people of an anti-establishment bent. More concretely, there is also strong evidence that war causes environmental destruction and that some types of environmental degradation can encourage wars.

That being said, there are also reasons for which the environmental movement might be wise to distance itself from anti-war campaigners. For one thing, there is the danger of getting drawn into debates that are largely irrelevant from an environmental perspective: dealing with climate change is hard enough without needing to factor in the rights and wrongs of the Gaza Strip or Kashmir. For another, a lot of the anti-war movement functions in an extremely confrontational way. Of course, the same is legitimately said about elements of the environmental movement. While such agitation might be necessary to get things started and keep people honest, it tends to become counterproductive once you reach the point of implementing any specific policy.

Finally, there is a bit of a dated quality to the anti-war movement. It feels bound up with Woodrow Wilson, on one side, and the LSD of the 1960s on the other. Certainly, the idea that war can be eliminated as a phenomenon (or even as a tool of policy for rich democratic states) is no longer considered plausible by many people. Similarly, the idea that all wars are fundamentally unjust is hard to maintain given evidence of recent occurrences that (a) could have been stopped through the just application of force and (b) were themselves significantly worse than an armed confrontation would have been. What seems sensible in a post-Holocaust, post-Rwandan genocide world is the advancement of a ‘just war’ agenda, focused on using law and evolving norms of behaviour to avoid unjust wars as well as unjust behaviour in a wartime environment. In practical terms, this involves mechanisms like the arrest and trial of war criminals, interventions to stop genocide, and agreements to eliminate certain weapons and tactics.

A ‘just war’ movement would certainly find areas for profitable collaboration with environmental groups. Many kinds of weapons are of both ecological and humanitarian concern, for instance. What is necessary is a higher degree of nuance and consideration than exist on the activist side of both movements. Hopefully, more mature and sophisticated arguments and tactics will be able to generate progress in reducing the harm from both armed conflict and environmental degradation.

The Economist on the dire state of the world’s oceans

A recent issue of The Economist features a leader and a special report on the state of the world’s oceans. As with a lot of their environmental coverage, it sits awkwardly beside the rest of their analysis. It is astonishing that the newspaper can argue that “the mass extinction, however remote, that should be concentrating minds is that of mankind” while not doing a lot more to advocate effective action. Like most of the policy-making community, they haven’t really internalized the fact that climate change is an issue of over-riding importance, and that nothing else can be durably achieved until it has been addressed. In addition to highlighting the dangers of climate change, their coverage includes discussion of how overfising risks rendering sharks and tuna extinct; how the oceans would require tens of thousands of years to recover from the pollution already released into them; how the Greenland is “on track” to melt completely, raising sea levels by seven metres; and how acidification, pollution, and climate change threaten to eliminate coral reefs.

Clearly, it is one thing to have accepted the collective judgment of the scientific community. It is quite another to have fully incorporated the consequences of that judgment into your structure of beliefs and behaviour.

A human spider, climate change, and economic systems

Alain Robert – a man famous for climbing absurdly tall buildings with his bare hands – is also something of a climate change campaigner. A website he runs endorses a three-stage plan for dealing with the problem:

Stop Cutting Down Trees. Plant More Trees.
Make Everything Energy Efficient.
Only Make Clean Energy.

What this speaks to is a central question of the climate change debate: how much do the economic and philosophical bases of society need to change in order to deal with it? Can climate change be successfully addressed through targetted policies that do not fundamentally alter liberal capitalist democracy, or is it only possible to address it through something more ambitious, such as switching from an economic system based on growth to one based on a steady state of wealth?

In some ways, this debate is reminiscent of other debates about capitalism. It certainly seems as though some of the harmful aspects of capitalism can be curbed through good laws, without eliminating the capitalist system itself. Such problems include things like local air pollution and child labour – if we really care about eliminating them, it is entirely possible within our current general economic approach.

For the oil sands, PR is not the problem

In a bizarre story, The Globe and Mail is reporting on how representatives of the oil sands industry are claiming to have “‘dropped the ball’ in engaging with the public about the environmental effects of its energy developments.” This is a bit like saying that the industry has thus far been unsuccessful in deceiving people about the environmental impacts of oil sands operations, which definitely deserve the filthy image they have earned.

The problem with the oil sands certainly isn’t their public relations: it is their greenhouse gas emissions, their destruction of the boreal forest, their contamination of water, and so forth. Altering those aspects of the industry cannot be achieved through media messaging. It is dispiriting – though unsurprising – that the companies involved are keener on giving people the sense that their operations are clean (or at least improving), rather than actually raising standards. While oil sands production cannot be made into an environmentally benign activity, having all facilities adopt the best standards in other existing facilities could make a significant contribution towards reducing the level of harm they produce.

How can the government spend to fight climate change?

Partly for reasons of political acceptability, most approaches to pricing greenhouse gas emissions aim to be revenue neutral. This includes cap and trade and carbon tax systems where new revenues are offset by decreases in existing taxes; it also includes tax-and-dividend systems, in which that process is more fully automated. That being said, fiscal neutrality has gone out the window as governments seek (whether wisely or not) to offset the recessionary consequences of the credit crunch. That leaves us with a question: if you want to spend government money fighting climate change, how should you do so?

One option business is happy with is big subsidies for the development and deployment of big new technologies like next-generation nuclear reactors and carbon capture and storage (CCS). While such an approach may yield long-term benefits, it does risk simply funneling money from taxpayers to polluters in the near and medium term. It is also an approach that firms have already been very effective at advocating for themselves.

A more attractive option is to help finance the up-front costs of projects that both save money and mitigate emissions. This includes all kinds of unglamorous things, such as improving insulation and the efficiency of boilers, capturing waste heat in hot flue gasses, and replacing windows. Such an approach might be especially effective if directed towards public buildings such as schools, hospitals, government offices, and military facilities. That way, the government is investing in something that will improve its own medium-term financial position (important if existing debts are to be repaid, and future crises are to be managed), while also making a start towards a serious greening of government operations.

In the end, a lot of the most effective tools governments can employ cost very little. Improving building codes, requiring that vehicles be more efficient, and implementing carbon taxes all require only modest government expenditures – though they may cause other actors to incur major expenses. Approaches that are light on regulation and heavy on government spending are probably more likely to be wasteful than those based on compulsion through prices and regulation but, given the inevitability of additional fiscal stimulus in much of the world, it seems sensible to devote some of that directly to mitigation activities, while ensuring that spending not directly motivated by climate change doesn’t contradict climate change mitigation goals.

How else should a government that is feeling the urge to loosen the purse strings spend money on reducing emissions? With a new Canadian budget being tabled in ten days, it is a pertinent question.

‘Third hand smoke’

In the last couple of days, I have seen a number of news sources talking about ‘third hand smoke.’ This refers to the blindingly obvious fact that smokers stink, as do their clothes, homes, furniture, cars, etc. Before the UK smoking ban, just spending a night in a pub would leave your clothes smelling appreciably of tobacco for several days (and often several washes) afterwards. Anyone who has spent a lot of time riding in buses or airplanes will be able to tell you that a heavy smoker can usually be identified from a couple of seats away, even if they don’t happen to be smoking during the voyage. It is similarly obvious that those breathing the rank odour of stale tobacco are probably inhaling some of the toxins that come along with it, as well.

I maintain that smoking is one of the most vile habits a person can have (as well as being a singularly idiotic affront against your own health). Hopefully, the increasingly society-wide rejection of the practice will spread, become more firmly entrenched, and eventually emerge as the worldwide norm.

Are embassies still necessary?

This Vanity Fair article discusses the evolution of American embassies from open glassy structures intended to be a concrete reflection of American values into fortresses that almost completely isolate those inside from the country hosting them. This is certainly true of the new embassy in Baghdad. It has its own electricity and water supply and it is sharply isolated from even the ‘Green Zone,’ which is itself a fortress for foreign occupiers. The article goes on to ask whether embassies are even really necessary, in this age of mass communications:

Faced with the failure of an obsolete idea—the necessity of traditional embassies and all the elaboration they entail—we have not stood back to remember their purpose, but have plunged ahead with closely focused concentration to build them bigger and stronger. One day soon they may reach a state of perfection: impregnable and pointless.

There is certainly something to the argument. If the people working there are completely out of contact with the local population, they may as well be located in their home state. Due to security concerns, day to day matters like visas and assistance for tourists are increasingly handled at locations aside from embassies. Perhaps all ambassadors need these days is some secure office space, a home in a well defended gated community, and the ability to rent facilities where large social functions could take place. Eliminating embassy compounds would remove a tempting target for terrorists, and allow a lot less diplomatic and local staff to be retained.

In the end, the two key questions seem to be:

Do embassies still do anything that couldn’t be accomplished by fewer people in less specialized secure facilities?
Do any of those enduring purposes justify the risk and expense now associated with embassy construction and operation?

It seems to me that the answers may be ‘not much’ and ‘often, no.’ The most important remaining role for many embassies may be in espionage: snatching up nearby radio transmissions and providing some land that operates under the legal regime of the ambassador’s home state.

Internet footprints and future scrutiny

Both The Economist and Slate have recently featured articles about the increasingly long and broad trails people are leaving behind themselves online: everything from comments in forums to Facebook profiles to uploaded photographs. Almost inevitably, some of this content is not the kind of thing that people will later want to see in the hands of their employers, the media, and so forth. I expect that more savvy employers are already taking a discreet peek online, when evaluating potential hires.

The two big questions both seem to concern how attitudes will evolve, both among internet users in general and among scrutinizers like employers. It’s possible that people thirty years from now will view our open and informal use of the internet as roughly equivalent to the famously uninhibited sex had by hippies in the 1960s: a bit of a remarkable cultural phenomenon, but one long dead due to the dangers inherent. It is also possible that people will come to view the existence of such information online as an inevitability, and not judge people too harshly as a result. Less and less human communication is the ephemeral sort, where all record ceases once a person’s voice has attenuated. As a result, more of what people say and do at all times of their lives (and in all states of mind) is being recorded, often in a rather durable way.

Personally, I suspect that the trend will be towards both greater caution and greater tolerance. Internet users will become more intuitively aware of the footprints they are leaving (especially as more high-profile cases of major embarrassment arise) and employers and the media will inevitably recognize that almost nobody has produced a completely clean sheet for themselves. Of course, there will still be a big difference between appearing in photographs of booze-fueled university parties and appearing at KKK rallies. The likely trend is not that a wider range of activities will be excusable, but rather that more evidence about everything a person has done will be available.

We can also expect the emergence of more private firms that seek to manage online presence, especially after the fact. Whether that means bullying (or bribing) the owners of websites where unwanted content has cropped up, creating positive-looking pages that outrank negative ones, or stripping away elements of databases through whatever means necessary, there will be a market for data sanitation services. While some people are likely to push for revamped privacy laws, I don’t see these are likely to be much help in this situation. When people are basically putting this information out in public voluntarily, it’s not clear how legislation could keep it from being scrutinized by anyone who is interested.

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