Politics – Page 191 – a sibilant intake of breath

Monbiot on British carbon capture plans

Of all the comprehensive plans I have seen to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from developed states, the one in George Monbiot’s Heat is the most ambitious. Whereas most people aim at stabilizing atmospheric GHG concentrations by 2100 or so, he thinks it must happen before 2030 is we are to avoid a mean temperature increase of more than 2°C and the very serious (potentially catastrophic) consequences such an increase would have. Part of Monbiot’s plan does involve continued use of fossil fuels, specifically the use of natural gas coupled with carbon capture and storage (CCS) for electricity generation.

While Monbiot stands behind the belief that CCS can work and can contribute to climate change mitigation efforts, he is increasingly critical of how the British government is planning to use the technology:

In principle, carbon capture and storage (CCS) could reduce emissions from power stations by 80% to 90%. While the whole process has not yet been demonstrated, the individual steps are all deployed commercially today: it looks feasible. The government has launched a competition for companies to build the first demonstration plant, which should be burying CO2 by 2014.

Unfortunately, despite Hutton’s repeated assurances, this has nothing to do with Kingsnorth or the other new coal plants he wants to approve. If Kingsnorth goes ahead, it will be operating by 2012, two years before the CCS experiment has even begun. The government says that the demonstration project will take “at least 15 years” to assess. It will take many more years for the technology to be retro-fitted to existing power stations, by which time it’s all over. On this schedule, carbon capture and storage, if it is deployed at all, will come too late to prevent runaway climate change.

He also suggests that using CO2 from power plants for enhanced oil recovery risks actually increasing emissions. On the one hand, that is because it will allow extra oil to be extracted from declining fields, which will subsequently emit CO2 when burned. On the other, he touches upon concerns that CCS using depleted oil and gas fields will not be safe or permanent enough to effectively and indefinitely sequester carbon.

As with nuclear power, the issue of timelines is critical. Even good technology, when installed at a plodding rate, could propel us into very serious danger. Even if it does prove possible to start slow and late and still make the transition to a low-carbon economy, it seems highly likely that the total costs of adjustment will be much higher: a crash-building program akin to the one undertaken by Russia after Germany turned against it during WWII, rather than an economically optimal trajectory towards a low-carbon global economy.

Adding Dennis the Menace to the crime bank

Apparently, Scotland Yard wants schools to collect DNA samples from five year old children who “exhibit behaviour indicating they may become criminals in later life.” While there are plenty of reasons for opposing the Orwellian scheme, the more interesting implication is that the police think they can anticipate criminality in adulthood on the basis of the behaviour of five year olds. If so, to what extent can we consider a predisposition towards criminal behaviour to be a manifestation of an individual’s choices? The premise behind our justice system is that people generally commit crimes as an act of will, and it is the wilful disobedience of law that is being punished. If the police believe that crime can largely predicted on the basis of problematic behaviour beginning in childhood, it calls into question the overall validity of our concept of what crime and criminals are.

Cooperation tipping points?

All regular readers of this blog will be familiar with the idea that there are physical tipping points in the climate system: places where one additional unit of warming produces much more harm to people and natural ecosystems than the previous units did. Politically, it is worth considering the possibility that another kind of tipping point exists, namely one beyond which the willingness of various actors to cooperate on climate change alters dramatically on the basis of some critical increment of climate change effects.

It’s possible that the effect could be one of rallying – the world suddenly realizing the seriousness of the issue and thus taking immediate action. States previously obsessed with exactly who should pay how much and exactly what timeline should be followed might just buckle down and do what needs to be done. A fair number of people seem to think that only a pretty substantial disaster will make the threat of climate change sufficiently concrete for enough people for the hard work of stabilization to begin.

The other possibility (mentioned here) is that the world will pass from hesitation and avoidance of the issue directly into conflict, accusation, and counter-productive action. Severe climatic impacts could drive states and individuals to focus on their own short term internal and external security, rather than making serious efforts to address the root of the problem. This is a classical prisoner’s dilemma scenario and, unless it flips to a state of desperate cooperation once things got really bad, it could push the world across the physical thresholds that are so worrisome.

In any case, it is as necessary to be aware of the existence of hidden feedbacks within public sentiment and government planning as within ecosystems or patterns in air and water currents. Of course, that just adds additional uncertainty to a very threatening brew.

Lady Chatterley’s Lover

In many ways, Lady Chatterley’s Lover reminds me of Anna Karenina. Each uses a relatively straightforward narrative as a means of conveying philosophical positions about the changing nature of the world – often through nakedly analytic passages. Chatterley seems largely concerned with the question of how to endure in an unnatural world: how to persist in humanity despite the challenges brought by capitalism, industry, and global interconnections. The major conclusion seems to be that the best one can hope to do is opt out, rejecting societal expectations and returning to some kind of natural intimacy with a fellow refugee.

At the heart of the book are contrasts between situations and personalities: between coal mines, the literary world, high society, and a simple pastoralism. Also, between Constance’s crippled husband and her intentionally unsophisticated lover; between Constance herself and her sister; between Constance and Mellors’ relationship and that between her husband Clifford and his nurse and confidant. By setting these things against each other, Lawrence gains both an opportunity to share insight and a platform from which to issue condemnation. Usually, the crime a person or situation stands accused of is being compromised in nature and inauthentic. Constance’s return to authenticity is thus a triumph, even if it does little to alter any of the societal forces that led her initially to a hollowed-out life.

The book also has a certain ecological concern, though more in the spirit of a lamentation for the passing of pastoral life than in the form of an argument for social reform and improved behaviours and conditions. The coal mines are condemned – and the kind of lives that the miners have built around them – but the situation is treated as one almost fated. Similarly on the issue of class separation, some negative aspects are identified, but the book never really rallies for reform. It is all about individual resurrection despite society, not any hope that society might change so as to better foster and accommodate authentic individuals. Connie chooses to withdraw from her place in society, though never considers sacrificing the automatic income that makes her an aristocrat to start with: an income as tied to the stratification and industrialization of society as Clifford’s coal wealth.

No short review can cover all the insightful flourishes that pepper the book, arising, as they do, from a slightly odd omniscient point of view that happily flits through characters both major and minor. The books is intriguing, convincing, and clearly written. To a greater degree than I would have expected, it also speaks directly to some of the major tensions in the modern world. Though a venerable classic of literature, it is in no sense dated.

Space-related fatalities

I never appreciated just how hazardous spaceflight really was. Everyone knows about the Challenger, Columbia, and Apollo 13 disasters. Many people know about Apollo 1. I doubt anyone reading this is aware of all of these. Soyuz 23, for instance, crashed through the ice of Lake Tengiz and had the crew saved only through an elaborate underwater rescue. Apollo 12 was struck by lightning during launch and would have been destroyed if disabled computers in the crew compartment hadn’t had backups in the rocket itself.

Of the 439 people who have been strapped into a vehicle intended to eventually go into space, 22 (5%) have died as a result. American astronauts were statistically about four times as likely to die as their Soviet counterparts, though that is partly a result of how the large crew of the Space Shuttle means a catastrophic accident kills seven people. The Space Mirror Memorial in Florida commemorates Americans who have died in the space program; their cosmonaut contemporaries are buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis. No Russian has died in relation to space travel since the fall of the Soviet Union, so it is unclear how they would be memorialized now.

Evolution and Ben Stein

It is always surprising when a seemingly intelligent person adopts a hopelessly indefensible position. This seems to be the case with Ben Stein’s new anti-evolution movie. It is still possible to argue that some kind of deity must have created the universe. What is not possible is to argue convincingly against the central elements of the theory of evolution: namely how mutation and selection drive change and how all life on earth is descended from a common ancestor. There is simply too much evidence for both claims, and it is too good:

The fossil record shows overwhelming evidence for a branched tree of life, connecting existing organisms to ancient ones that preceded them.
Comparative embryology provides good anatomical evidence of both evolution and common descent.
Concrete examples of evolution on human timescales can be easily found. These include plant domestication, moths that darkened in response to coal soot, and antibiotic resistant bacteria.
The geographic distribution of species provides evidence for speciation and adaptation to new biological niches.
Both nucleic and mitochondrial DNA provide excellent evidence for both common descent and evolution through selection.
Common aspects of biochemistry are demonstrative of both claims: especially those features which are arbitrary yet consistent among living things

I haven’t seen the film, and it probably argues something more sophisticated than “the world is 6,000 years old and every creature that has ever lived is alive now, in the exact form in which it was created.” Even so, it is depressing to see someone commonly associated with intelligence fuelling a false debate centred around ignorance.

There are certainly many incredible mysteries that remain in biology – including many of the details on how evolution functions and has proceeded. Similarly, a questioning attitude is essential to scientific advancement. Those things freely admitted, purporting to challenge things with so many strong and independent collections of evidence supporting them is much more likely to retard the advancement of human knowledge than it is to advance it. This is especially true when a contrived debate runs the risk of forcing sub-standard education on children.

Tomorrow Today report

A group of Canadian environmental NGOs has put out a 28 page list of suggested areas of action and recommendations for Canadian policy. Tomorrow Today (PDF) is divided into sections on energy, wild species and places, oceans, water, food and agriculture, human health, and economic signals. The report reflects the work and positions of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, David Suzuki Foundation, Ecojustice, Environmental Defence, Equiterre, Greenpeace Canada, Nature Canada, the Pembina Institute, Pollution Probe, Sierra Club Canada, and WWF Canada.

Some of the more interesting recommendations include:

Carbon prices of “$30/tonne CO2e in 2009 and increasing to $50/tonne by 2015, and to $75 a tonne by 2020,” with revenus from taxes or auctions to be “directed mainly towards investments in further actions to reduce GHG emissions.” (i.e. not revenue neutral like the new B.C. carbon tax)
Reduce total GHG emissions to 25% below 1990 levels by 2020, and 80% below by 2050.
“A Nuclear Accountability Plan that includes legislation requiring full-cost accounting of nuclear energy; fully shifts the liability and cost of insurance for nuclear power and long-term waste disposal facilities onto electricity rates; moves oversight of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission from Natural Resources Canada (where the department is in a conflict of interest overseeing sales and safety of reactors) to Environment Canada; and eliminates all direct and indirect taxpayer subsidies to nuclear energy.”
“In 2008, announce a federal initiative to reconnect children with nature by providing outdoor natural experiences for all children in grades 4 to 6.”
“Immediately prohibit bottom trawling and other harmful forms of fishing in sensitive areas, prohibit expansion of bottom trawling into previously untrawled areas, and restrict its use to areas that have already been heavily fished for decades.”
“By 2010, implement mandatory labelling policies that include comprehensive nutritional information, country of origin, fair-trade, organic standards and genetic modification content. And amend Canada’s Food Guide to provide information about the climate impacts of food choices.”
“By 2012, implement a comprehensive program to encourage organic agriculture, the production and consumption of locally produced foods, and to educate Canadians on the health advantages of low-meat diets.”
“Immediately implement the precautionary principle by regulating toxic chemicals in the federal Chemicals Management Plan. In particular, implement bans or phaseouts for all non-essential uses of substances known to be harmful where safe alternatives exist and maintain such restrictions until credible evidence is presented that the chemical can be safely used or released.”
Reducing existing subsidies for the mining and oil-and-gas industries and committing to a ban on any new subsidies or financial incentives for mining or oil-and-gas projects, such as for the Mackenzie Gas Project.

Clearly, some of the suggestions are more feasible and realistic than others. It is interesting to see what priorities and approaches NGOs agree on when they collaborate.

Given how slick the report overall is, the PDF is of rather poor quality. It has a bunch of layout calibration marks all over it, and selecting text doesn’t work properly because of large, irregularly shaped invisible elements.

Climate change ‘delayers’

There is a good post over at Grist on the proper nomenclature for what are generally called ‘climate skeptics’ or ‘climate deniers.’ It argues that calling them skeptics is inaccurate, since they don’t actually treat information with skepticism:

Skeptics can be convinced by the facts, but not the delayers [the author’s preferred term]. Skeptics (and real scientists) do not continue repeating arguments that have been discredited. Delayers do. Skeptics believe in science, in well-tested theories backed up by real-world observations, but delayers do not.

“Denier” is also problematic, both on its own and as a half-reference to Holocaust deniers. This is both because they don’t generally outright deny the existence of climate change and because their ‘denial’ concerns something ongoing, on which action must be taken, rather than something that has already passed.

The piece makes some good points about the state of the discussion:

By calling them “deniers” we are making the focus of our response the climate science; we are fighting on their turf, so they still win. In fact, the science has long since passed the realm in which the delayers try to debate it. The key question for humanity today is not whether human-caused global warming does or does not exist — it is not even whether human-caused global warming is a serious problem. It is already past a serious problem. The only serious question facing the human race now is whether we will act strongly enough and quickly enough to avert a catastrophe that is both beyond historical comparison and probably irreversible for centuries, if not millennia.

Despite the unambiguous nature of the science, that really doesn’t seem to be the understanding that is dominant within popular culture. It is not clear whether additional scientific evidence or reports would ever change that. As such, the kind of rhetorical arguments that this post is addressing have considerable importance.

In general, I see good reasons for using the term ‘delayer’ but, unless it catches on fairly widely, it will always be necessary to explain it. I plan to do so by linking back to this post.

Sectoral solutions

Yes! Magazine has an interesting series of short articles describing climate change efforts that can be undertaken in four major areas:

Breaking down the problem by sector is a useful way of assessing the most important areas for action, as well as those where the most improvement can be made for the least expenditure of resources. In an ideal world, simply internalizing the externalities associated with climate change would create the proper incentives for the market to sort out the problem. In practice, law-making is too slow, inconsistent, and unconcerned with future generations for that approach to work alone.

Kosovo and Quebec

A recent (and very unscientific) poll in The Globe and Mail suggests that many Canadians see the Kosovar declaration of independence as a “precedent that could be used in Quebec.” Personally, I found the question ambiguous. If anything, the situation in Kosovo is a demonstration of why Quebecois succession is a poor option.

Since at least the end of the first world war, there has been a profound tension between civic and ethnic nationalism. At best, ethnically defined nationalism has been a means of peacefully dividing empires into groups of states that get along decently; at worst, it has been a significant cause of genocide and ethnic cleansing. Virtually all states have minorities. Many have minorities in border regions, alongside states where those people have a majority. Given the difficulty and bloodiness of adjusting national borders, it is generally preferable to maintain states capable of accommodating members of ethnic minorities as full and equal members of the society – a possibility only likely to be manifest when the society has some philosophical basis other than ethnicity.

Normally, then, we should hope for pluralistic states that base their legitimacy around popular consent. What Kosovo exemplifies is a case where this has not occurred: where a central government has undermined its legitimacy in an entire region (as Russia has done in Chechnya) and has thus made it impossible for that area to be a legitimate portion of the state. The Kosovar case shows just how far such abuse must generally go before it constitutes good cause to break up a civil federation. Quebecois grievances are not on the same level, and thus do not constitute a license for succession.