Politics – Page 186 – a sibilant intake of breath

Border guards and copyright enforcement

According to Boing Boing, Canadian border guards may soon be in charge of checking iPods and other devices for copyright infringement. If true, the plan is absurd for several reasons. For one, it would be impossible for them to determine whether a DRM-free song on your iPod was legitimately ripped from a CD you own or downloaded from the web. For another, this is a serious misuse of their time. It would be a distraction from decidedly more important tasks, like looking for illegal weapons, and probably a significant irritant to both those being scrutinized and those waiting at border crossings.

Hopefully these rumours of secret plans – also picked up by the Vancouver Sun are simply false.

Monbiot to King Abdaullah

British journalist and climate change agitator George Monbiot has written an interesting open letter to King Abdaullah of Saudi Arabia. He comments on the degree to which remaining oil supplies in Saudi Arabia are one of the biggest geopolitical mysteries out there, and how Saudi Arabia retains a unique influence to manage oil prices. He also comments on the contradictory policies of western leaders who both assert that they want to solve climate change and continue to envision a world in which oil is cheap and plentiful:

In other words, your restrictions on supply – voluntary or otherwise – are helping the government to meet its carbon targets. So how does it respond? By angrily demanding that you remove them so that we can keep driving and flying as much as we did before. Last week, Gordon Brown averred that it’s “a scandal that 40% of the oil is controlled by Opec, that their decisions can restrict the supply of oil to the rest of the world, and that at a time when oil is desperately needed, and supply needs to expand, that Opec can withhold supply from the market”. In the United States, legislators have gone further: the House of Representatives has voted to bring a lawsuit against Opec’s member states, and Democratic senators are trying to block arms sales to your kingdom unless you raise production.

This illustrates one of our leaders’ delusions. They claim to wish to restrict the demand for fossil fuels, in order to address both climate change and energy security. At the same time, to quote Britain’s Department for Business, they seek to “maximise economic recovery” from their remaining oil, gas and coal reserves. They persist in believing that both policies can be pursued at once, apparently unaware that if fossil fuels are extracted they will be burnt, however much they claim to wish to reduce consumption. The only states that appear to be imposing restrictions on the supply of fuel are the members of Opec, about which Brown so bitterly complains. Your Majesty, we have gone mad, and you alone can cure our affliction, by keeping your taps shut.

The letter is a somewhat cheeky way for Monbiot to make his points – appealing to the autocratic ruler of a foreign state to help temper the bad policies of his own government – but it does share the intriguing quality of most of his writing.

More and more, people need to gain an appreciation that concerns about climate change and energy security do not always push us in the same policy direction. Concern about climate change tells us to change our infrastructure, cut back on energy use, and use the energy we have more intelligently. Energy security often presses us towards a desperate search for alternative fuels, regardless of what environmental consequences their production may have.

Climate ethics and uncertainty

Climate Ethics has a thoughtful post up about climate change, scientific uncertainty, and ethics. While not particularly novel, the arguments are well and concisely expressed. Key among them is the basic ethical point Henry Shue has made about revolvers and the heads of others: even if you only have one bullet chambered, pulling the trigger is still an immoral act. It is the possibility of severe harm, rather than the probability of the harmful outcome, that is most ethically relevant.

The uncertainties of climate change are primarily about how bad it will get how quickly, as well as how quickly we need to act to stop it. There is also very strong consensus that the climate can change in ways that would be disastrous for humanity and that present activities materially contribute to the risk of that taking place.

On ethical grounds, it does not seem as though there are any remaining arguments for total inaction in the face of climate change. The question now is the degree to which our moral obligations to future generations compel us to make massive and rapid changes in our lives.

Tundra dangers

One of the biggest climatic dangers out there is that warming in the Arctic will melt the permafrost. The tundra is heavily laden with methane – a potent greenhouse gas. In total, the ten million square kilometres contain about 1,000 gigatonnes of carbon (3,670 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide). The permafrost contains more carbon dioxide equivalent than the entire atmosphere at present.

If even a fraction of a percent of that gets released every year, it would blow our carbon budget. Even with enormous cuts in human emissions, the planet would keep on warming. Right now, humanity is emitting about 8 gigatonnes of carbon a year, on track to hit 11 gigatonnes by 2020. If we were to stabilize at that level, emitting 11 gigatonnes a year until 2100, the concentration of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere will surpass 1,000 parts per million, creating the certainty of a vastly transformed world and a very strong possibility of the end of human civilization.

As such, it is vital to stop climate change before the planet warms sufficiently to start melting permafrost. This is especially challenging given that warming in the Arctic is more pronounced than warming elsewhere. There is also the additional challenge of the sea-ice feedback loop, wherein the replacement of reflective ice with absorptive water increases warming.

The actions necessary to prevent that are eminently possible. Unfortunately, people have not yet developed the will to implement them to anything like the degree necessary. Hopefully, the ongoing UNFCCC process for producing a Kyoto successor will help set us along that path before it becomes fantastically more difficult and expensive to act.

[Update: 4 February 2009] Here is a post on the danger of self-amplifying, runaway climate change: Is runaway climate change possible? Hansen’s take.

[Update: 19 February 2010] See also: The threat from methane in the North.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

I was feeling kind of down as I went in to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull but that situation could not persist. Every scene challenges your mind with something even more ludicrous: whether it is non-sensical plot points, egregious physics, or absurdly over-the-top scenarios. It is no exaggeration to call the plot incoherent and trivial, and most of the acting wooden. Indiana’s James Deanish young foil is particularly flat and uninteresting. This is no thinking man’s film; nor is it one for the DVD library.

That being said, the film does a good job of redeeming itself as a piece of entertainment. It may feel like an awkward, alien-obsessed re-imagining of the original trilogy, but there is still some humour and charm. The main appeal of the film is that it provides you with ample fodder for internal joking criticism, as well as plenty of mindless sequences in which to mull it over.

One side note on the graphics: for some reason, the set design, lighting, and computer graphics were all strongly reminiscent of the Harry Potter films. Both the indoor sequences and the outdoor shots had the same distinctive feeling, less cartoonish than untextured early computer graphics, but still inescapably false.

[Update: 12:53am] Emily has also written a review.

Historical emissions and adaptation costs

It is widely acknowledged that developing countries will suffer a great deal from climate change. They are vulnerable to effects like rising sea levels and increased frequency and severity of extreme weather. They also have more limited means available to respond, as well as other serious problems to deal with. Providing adaptation funding is therefore seen as an important means of getting them on-side for climate change mitigation. It could be offered as an incentive to cut emissions.

That being said, there is a strong case to be made that developing countries should not need to do anything in exchange for adaptation funding. Making them do so is essentially akin to injuring someone, then demanding something in return for the damages they win against you in court. The historical emissions of developed states have primarily induced the climate change problem; as such, developing states suffering from its effects have a right to demand compensation.

Very roughly, the developed world as a whole is responsible for about 70% of emissions to date. The United States has produced about 22% of the anthropogenic greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere; Western Europe is responsible for about 17%; Canada represents something like 2% of the total. It can be argued that – by rights – states like Bangladesh and Ghana should be dividing their total costs for adaptation and sending the bill to other states, on the basis of historical emissions.

That being said, it is only fair to say that developed states are only culpable for a portion of their total emissions, on account of how the science of climate change was not well understood until fairly recently. Exactly where to draw the line is unclear, but that doesn’t especially matter since developing states simply don’t have the power to demand adaptation transfers on the basis of past harms. States that developed through the extensive use of fossil fuels will continue to use the influence they acquired through that course of military and economic strengthening to make others bear most of the costs for their pollution.

The monarchy and Canada’s citizenship oath

When my mother became a citizen of Canada, I remember noting the absurdity of the citizenship oath:

I swear (or affirm) that I will be faithful
and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty
Queen Elizabeth the Second, Queen of Canada,
Her Heirs and Successors, and that I will faithfully
observe the laws of Canada
and fulfil my duties as a Canadian citizen.

The monarchy is a sad reminder of Canada’s imperial past, not something that should be at the heart of becoming a Canadian citizen. It would be far better to have those who are becoming citizens assert their support for the Constitution, democracy, and the rule of law only, rather than giving such prominent treatment to an irrelevant legal hangover. To paraphrase Monty Python: supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical tradition of bloodline descent.

It is certainly an excellent thing that the monarchy has been pushed to the symbolic edge of Canadian law and society, represented by mere remnants like a titular governor general, the queen on currency, and legal conventions like Regina v. Whoever for legal cases. That being said, it makes sense in this day and age to finally eliminate the trappings of family-line rule and become a proper republic. Of course, there are those who disagree.

Hofmann’s ‘problem child’

As an additional offering to see readers through my canoe-induced absence, here is an interesting article from The New York Times about lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) – the ‘problem child’ of Albert Hofmann. It includes a description of his remarkable first experiences, when experimenting with the medical potential of ergot derivatives, as well as his later observations and reflections upon the molecule he introduced to the world.

Hofmann, who died last week, has an obituary in The Economist. It takes a somewhat interesting position: essentially, that LSD was a promising chemical that ended up universally banned because of the excesses of Timothy Leary and company.

Polar bears ‘threatened’

As of today, the American Department of the Interior has listed the polar bear as a ‘threatened’ species, on account of the ongoing disappearance of the Arctic ice cap. In making the announcement, Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne stressed that the decision is not meant to compel the regulation of greenhouse gasses:

Listing the polar bear as threatened can reduce avoidable losses of polar bears. But it should not open the door to use of the ESA [Endangered Species Act] to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles, power plants, and other sources. That would be a wholly inappropriate use of the ESA law. The ESA is not the right tool to set U.S. climate policy.

In a sense, that is fair enough. Creating something as comprehensive as a greenhouse gas mitigation strategy in response to concern about a single species is definitely a backwards-seeming way to go about it. At the same time, one is reminded of how somewhat awkward justifications have sometimes been used in the past to secure legal outcomes: for instance, the use of the ‘interstate commerce’ clause in the US Constitution to assert federal jurisdiction, or even the indictment of Al Capone on tax evasion charges, rather than those directly associated with organized crime.

The point here is less whether concern about polar bears does or does not create a legal obligation to act on climate change. Rather, this is another demonstration of how virtually all conservation planning now requires the consideration of climate change effects. This is just one of a thousand cuts through which federal reluctance to effectively regulate greenhouse gasses will need to be eliminated.

Keeping the bombs in their silos

Back in 2005, former US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara wrote an article in Foreign Policy about the danger of the accidental or unauthorized use of nuclear weapons. The issue remains an important one: particularly given trends like Russia’s increasingly assertive behaviour (putting more nuclear weapons out where accidents or miscalculations could occur), as well as ongoing nuclear proliferation.

Writing for Slate, Ron Rosenbaum has written an article on steps the next US President could take to reduce ‘inadvertence.’ The danger of nuclear war may seem like a dated Cold War concern, but the sheer number of weapons on fifteen minute alert, the pressure on leaders to make an immediate decision when the military thinks an attack is taking place, and the growing number of states with nuclear technology all mean that it should remain a contemporary concern and area for corrective action.