Politics – Page 114 – a sibilant intake of breath

Two kinds of adaptation

When people talk about ‘adaptation‘ in the area of climate change, they usually mean all the activities by which human beings can reduce how vulnerable they are to the expected and unexpected consequences of greenhouse gas emissions. This includes everything from developing drought-resistant crops to designing infrastructure to be able to tolerate sea level rise.

In his essay “Ethics and Global Climate Change” University of Washington professor Stephen Gardiner highlights how human adaptation in response to climate change can take two forms: we can adapt to the unpredictable physical consequences that arise from humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions, and we can set up regulatory structures that restrict greenhouse gas emissions, requiring firms and individuals to adapt their lifestyles and business practices to be appropriate in a carbon-constrained world.

As he points out, the latter type of adaptation is preferable to the former in many ways:

On the one hand, suppose we allow global warming to continue unchecked. What will we be adapting to? Chances are, we will experience both a range of general gradual climatic changes and an increase in severe weather and climate events. On the other hand, if we go for abatement, we will also be adapting but this time to increases in tax rates on (or decreases in permits for) carbon emissions. But there is a world of difference between these kinds of adaptation: in the first case, we would be dealing with sudden, unpredictable, large-scale impacts descending at random on particular individuals, communities, regions, and industries and visiting them with pure, unrecoverable costs, whereas in the second, we would be addressing gradual, predictable, incremental impacts, phased in so as to make adaptation easier. Surely, adaptation in the second kind of case is, other things being equal, preferable to that in the first.

Gardiner, Stephen. “Ethics and Global Climate Change” in Gardiner, Stephen et al. Climate Ethics: Essential Readings. p.12 (paperback)

That strikes me as an elegant way of presenting the situation in which humanity finds itself. Governments can either take the lead and drive a preferable kind of adaptation, or they can ignore the problem until unfolding natural events force a more painful sort.

How to meet Canada’s climate targets

The biggest problem with Canada’s climate change policy is that our plans are not sufficient to meet our targets. Furthermore, our plans aren’t even being implemented.

The government says it wants to cut Canadian emissions to 17% below 2006 levels by 2020, and to 60-70% below by 2050. If they really wanted to do that, they could achieve that outcome simply by doing the following:

Choose a series of annual emissions targets, starting this year and running out to 2050 and beyond.
In each of those years, auction a quantity of permits for the production and import of fossil fuels. Also require permits for activities that generate other greenhouse gases, such as methane. Anybody who wanted to produce fossil fuels, import them, or emit greenhouse gases in other ways would require a quantity of permits equal to their emissions. The price of the permits would be determined by auctioning.
Take the auction revenues and send an equal share to every Canadian each quarter by direct bank account deposit or cheque.

This approach would be simple and fair. It would not cost much to administer, since the permits would be auctioned at as high a level as possible. It would conform to the polluter pays principle, since they would do just that. It would send price signals to consumers, as the firms that bought permits passed along the cost. And the whole system would be revenue neutral, since all the revenues would be returned to Canadians. Critically, it would ensure that Canada hit its greenhouse gas emission reduction targets, each and every year.

This kind of approach is known as cap and dividend.

So, why doesn’t the government just go ahead and do this? The major reason is that people who have emitted greenhouse gases in the past feel that gives them the right to do so in the future. If this plan was put in place, all the industries that have been using the atmosphere as a free dumping ground for CO2, methane, and other greenhouse gases would suddenly need to pay for their waste disposal. This could seriously affect the growth prospects of some industries.

That said, since the cap would begin at current levels and gradually shrink down toward the target, no businesses would get obliterated immediately. They would simply need to adapt, in a fair way, to the kinds of business models required to meet the government’s stated climate change targets. The fact that the government is not pursuing an approach that would cause them to do so is the clearest indication that Canada’s government is not serious about dealing with the issue of climate change.

The history of guns in America

Back in 1999, The Economist published an interesting historical account of the emergence of America’s current gun culture. It debunks a number of myths, such as that the American populace in general has always been widely armed, that militias were important defensive forces, and that the ‘Wild West’ involved a lot of gun violence. It also includes interesting passages on the marketing of guns and gun ownership, first by manufacturers and later by the National Rifle Association:

[Gun maker Samuel] Colt was a self-publicist of genius. When his brother, John, unfraternally chose a mere axe with which to commit murder in 1841, Samuel persuaded the court to let him stage a shooting display inside the courtroom to demonstrate the superiority of the new revolver over the axe as a murder weapon. Using these publicity skills, and displaying precocious evidence of lobbying ability (he gave President Andrew Jackson a handgun and pioneered the practice of wining and dining members of Congress), Colt aimed his campaign at the growing middle class. He devised advertising campaigns showing a heroic figure wearing nothing but a revolver defending his wife and children. His guns were given nicknames (Equalizer, Peacemaker and so forth). Since most of his customers did not know how to use a firearm, he printed instructions on the cleaning cloth of every gun. His initial success shows up in the probate records: the percentage of wills listing firearms among their legacies rose by half between 1830 and 1850.

The axe, it seems, was a surprisingly popular murder weapon at certain times in history. Between 1800 and 1845, it came fourth. Beating, strangling, and drowning were in the lead, followed by stabbing, then guns, then axes.

The article describes how the first federal gun control law (banning sales by post) was only enacted after the Kennedy assassination, and mentions the subsequent role of the NRA in preventing more ambitious legal control over firearms.

It certainly makes for interesting reading.

The state of Canada’s civil service

Alex Himelfarb, a former Clerk of the Privy Council (Canada’s top civil servant), recently published an article in The Mark talking about public policy and Canada’s civil service. He is candid about how he sees the role of the civil service developing, calling it an institution “increasingly described as in crisis, trying to serve in a climate of blame and mistrust masquerading as accountability.” He expresses concern about partisanship and the superficial character of politial debate, and warns about how policy can drift in damaging directions. Finally, he suggests that there is hope in the emergence of increased public debate:

What we need now is a public discourse that neither dismisses nor panders to our private concerns, but rather links them to public issues. It’s time we override our impulse to paper over our differences and demand that our leaders participate with us in the dialogue, however difficult, we so need. We cannot let Canada change without a fight – or at least a vigorous conversation.

To some extent, this mirrors the enthusiasm of the present Clerk for Web 2.0 – though government in general may not yet be willing to allow the level of freedom, individuality, and independence required for that shift to be meaningful.

Himelfarb also wrote another piece, in the same newspaper, about ‘Why We Vote Against Our Interests‘. As further discussed in an interview on The Commons, the former Clerk expresses concern about the diminished role of expertise in policy-making:

There is something unseemly and even dangerous about the assault on evidence and experts especially coming from our political leaders. But it has resonance with many because government seems distant from and irrelevant to our lives, a “foreign thing” where decisions are made about us but without us. The distance between citizen and state must be reduced.

We can only hope that the public policy debate in Canada evolves back towards reasoned discussion on the basis of sound logic and evidence. To make policy Stephen Colbert style – from the gut – doesn’t equip Canada to deal with the challenges ahead, or take advantage of upcoming opportunities.

The ethics of eggs

I have long been of the view that vegetarianism is smart for three major reasons: because of the hygienic problems with how almost all meat is produced, because of the animal suffering associated, and because of the unsustainable character of modern agriculture, especially meat production. That being said, I do think that meat can be ethical to eat, when it is produced in ways that do not have these problems. Indeed, choosing to eat ethical meat may be morally preferable to eating no meat at all, because doing so could encourage the emergence of a better food system.

One problem with the hygiene/suffering/ecology justification is that it applies to things other than meat, including dairy products and leather. As The Economist points out, egg production may be an especially egregious violator of all three sets of ethical norms:

Over the past few decades every sector of American agriculture has undergone dramatic consolidation. The egg industry is no exception. In 1987, 95% of the country’s output came from 2,500 producers; today, that figure is a mere 192. Though the salmonella problem appeared to affect two dozen brands, those were all traced back to just two firms in Iowa, the top egg-producing state. Critics suggest that this shrivelling of the supply chain leaves consumers vulnerable to bad luck or bad behaviour. Inspectors from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reported this week that a recent visit to Wright County Egg, one of the Iowan firms responsible for the recall, found rats, maggots and manure piled several metres high at or near the egg-producing facilities. Robert Reich, a former labour secretary in Bill Clinton’s administration calls these “corporate crimes” and argues that “government doesn’t have nearly enough inspectors or lawyers to bring every rotten egg to trial.”

That points to the other culprit: poor regulation. Shockingly, state officials do not inspect eggs in Iowa, and federal authority is fractured among several supervisory agencies. This bureaucratic tangle is a well-known problem. Bill Clinton promised stronger regulations for eggs in the 1990s. Broader reform is needed, advocates have long insisted, as more Americans eat food that is imported, prepared in restaurants and produced at huge plants. In March 2009 Barack Obama created a “food safety working group” to study the existing maze of regulations and suggest improvements. But reform has been too slow. Officials at the FDA argue that stricter regulations that came into force on July 9th would, had they been implemented earlier, have probably prevented the egg crisis. An “unfortunate irony”, declares Margaret Hamburg, the FDA’s boss.

To me, the appropriate response to all of this seems to be threfold:

When possible, avoid purchasing or consuming animal products that are produced in problematic ways
Consider buying such products when they are produced according to high ethical standards, in order to encourage the emergence of producers who use such approaches
Encourage the emergence of laws, regulations, and policies that curb the most problematic practices

Given the way in which most of the world’s meat, eggs, milk, etc come from very problematic sources – and given the degree to which there are animal products in everything – every person who is trying to be conscientious needs to choose a balance point, with convenience and the risk of offending friends and family on one side and ethical ideals on the other. Exactly where that should lie is a personal choice, though information like that in the quoted article certainly provides a stronger factual basis for favouring one side over the other.

Farming, Brazil, and fossil fuels

The Economist recently decided to praise the high-output intensive agriculture of Brazil, claiming that it offers a sustainable model for global agriculture in the decades ahead:

So if you were asked to describe the sort of food producer that will matter most in the next 40 years, you would probably say something like this: one that has boosted output a lot and looks capable of continuing to do so; one with land and water in reserve; one able to sustain a large cattle herd (it does not necessarily have to be efficient, but capable of improvement); one that is productive without massive state subsidies; and maybe one with lots of savannah, since the biggest single agricultural failure in the world during past decades has been tropical Africa, and anything that might help Africans grow more food would be especially valuable. In other words, you would describe Brazil.

The briefing also derides “inefficient hobby farms” as a purported alternative to Brazil’s “productive giant operations.”

While there are definitely economies of scale in agriculture, this analysis leaves out the crucial issue of fossil fuels. Within the next few decades, it must be hoped that humanity begins a serious process of moving beyond fossil fuels, in order to reduce the harmfulness of climate change. Even if we are not so enlightened, it is possible that peak oil will massive increase prices and reduce supply.

When planning out how the world will feed itself during the decades ahead, a key consideration must be how we will do so without the cheap liquid fuels that power our industrialized global food system.

Climate change and nuclear war

In Gil Elliot’s Twentieth Century Book of the Dead, the Scottish writer seeks to estimate how many human beings died as the result of mass violence during the 20th century, concluding that the toll was about 110 million. Even without a nuclear winter, he also estimates that a thermonuclear war between the United States and Russia could have killed two billion, back in 1982.

His conclusions about the ethics of this have relevance to the question of climate change:

The moral significance is inescapable. If morality refers to relations between individuals, or between the individual and society, then there can be no more fundamental moral issue than the continuing survival of individuals and societies. The scale of man-made death is the central moral as well as material fact of our time.

With nuclear weapons and anthropogenic climate change, humanity has engineered two possible calamities, each of which could potentially eliminate the species. The moral obligation to curb both risks is immense, and ought to be a top political priority everywhere.

The Making of the Atomic Bomb

Richard Rhodes’ Pulitzer Prize winning 800-page account of the history of the atomic bomb is a comprehensive and highly important book. He covers the science, from the earliest theorizing about the structure of the atom through to the early stages of the development of thermonuclear weapons. He also covers the political and military history associated with the Manhattan Project, and touches upon attempts to develop nuclear weapons in Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Rhodes also goes beyond straight history to examine the scientific and military ethics associated with the development and use of the bomb, while also raising questions about what the existence of nuclear weapons means for global politics in the long term. The book goes beyond being a detailed historical account, by also engaging in serious ethical questioning about the implications of this dreadful technology. The book is also quite philosophical in places, such as when contemplating the nature of science.

One overwhelming message from Rhodes’ book is the horror of modern war – from ingenious combination poison gas attacks during WWI through to strategic bombing of civilians in WWII and the ongoing threat of thermonuclear annihilation. While nuclear weapons have certainly increased both the actual and potential horror of war, Rhodes uses appalling examples to show how they are not at all necessary for people to treat one another atrociously. That in turn affects the ethical status of using atomic weapons: was doing so preferable to invading Japan with conventional forces? Were any other alternatives available? Regardless of how you answer such questions for yourself, Rhodes’ account of warfare is one that cannot fail to produce revulsion in whoever reads it. His extensive use of primary documents and quotations – particularly when describing the destruction wrought by the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs – is effective both at conveying the history and providing some understanding of how people were thinking at the time. Colourful anecdotes also give a human quality to the account, such as when Rhodes describes personality clashes between military officers, or the existence of a women’s dorm at Los Alamos that was “doing a flourishing business of requiting the basic needs of [the] young men, and at a price.”

In addition to providing the broad strokes of history, Rhodes provides fairly detailed accounts of the lives and personalities of the key scientists, military figures, and politicians. Indeed, one of the most interesting things about the book is how it draws together timelines that would normally be treated separately: scientific discoveries alongside social and geopolitical developments. Seeing them described in parallel gives the reader a strong sense of context, and hints at some of the linkages between scientific advancement and other aspects of history.

I have some minor quibbles with The Making of the Atomic Bomb. It doesn’t always define terms at first usage, which could make some passages difficult to understand for those who don’t have a pre-existing familiarity with the subject matter. He also provides extremely little information on the spies within the American nuclear weapons program who provided so much critical information to the Soviet Union, greatly speeding the development of their nuclear and eventually thermonuclear weapons. He also only hints at how a permanent nuclear institution emerged in the United States. While many at Los Alamos scattered at the end of the war, there were those who realized as soon as the theoretical possibility of nuclear weapons arose that they would profoundly alter the security of states and the relationships between them.

Ultimately, Rhodes shares the conviction of the physicist Niels Bohr that nuclear weapons have fundamentally changed world politics. He argues that they have “destroy[ed] the nation-state paradoxically by rendering it defenseless” and calls upon states to accept the necessity of “dismantl[ing] the death machine”. Specifically, he argues that nuclear weapons make the settling of disputes between states by armed conflict impossible, creating the need for some form of world government. Rhodes stresses the risk of accidental or unauthorized war – a risk that can only grow in severity as more and more states acquire nuclear weapons of their own. Unfortunately, it is hard to share his conviction that such a transformation is really possible. For people of his generation, the fact that most of humanity could be wiped out in less than an hour in a major nuclear exchange is a novel and terrifying feature of life. For those who were both during and after the Cold War, it is a reality that most have been aware of since childhood. Still, there is every reason to continue to try to reduce the risks associated with nuclear weapons. Doing so includes working to prevent the proliferation of such weapons to new states, as well as working to reduce the danger of accidents and the sheer number of weapons deployed.

Rhodes continues the history of nuclear weapons with a successor volume on thermonuclear bombs: Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb. In the course of reading Rhodes’ book, I was also compelled to write posts on cancer and the neutron, anti-Semitism, the nature of human rights, Pearl Harbor, and the distinction between nuclear ‘devices’ and deployable weapons. Rhodes also has a third book on nuclear weapons – The Twilight of the Bombs – which I certainly aim to get around to reading eventually.

Spies and the media

Earlier, I raised the question of whether spies are useful given that you cannot fully trust them.

The other night, I realized that much of what spies did for monarchs in the past is now done by the media. Rather than having a person in a foreign capital who you trust to relay current information, you can count on a vast media apparatus doing so in a reasonably open and effective way. The media is better than a spy because they have more resources and are unlikely to be feeding false information specifically to you (though they do get things wrong at times).

Indeed, it is a fair bet that most of the fantastic volume of reports produced by America’s new intelligence apparatus are primarily recycled from unclassified news sources and the internet.

Ottawa’s mayoral election

I have never had much interest in municipal politics. For one thing, the policy areas I am most concerned about aren’t ones over which municipalities have too much control. For another, I have generally not expected myself to live in one place for long. Finally, it just hasn’t seemed worth the effort to track municipal politicians, platforms, etc.

Ottawa is now in the midst of a mayoral race between (at least) incumbent mayor Larry O’Brien and challenger Jim Watson. I don’t know much about the platforms of either. That said, I do acutely remember the awful bus strike that happened on O’Brien’s watch. I think the union deserves to be punished for abusing their monopoly power over the general population, but O’Brien probably deserves to be punished too for not managing things better.

That said, I suppose I will have to investigate the candidates more comprehensibly before I decide how (and whether) to vote.

[Update: 25 October 2010] The Ottawa Citizen has a good website with information on this election. The general sense seems to be that Watson will win the mayoral race. Another thing I’ve discovered is that it is rather difficult to learn which school district zone you live in, much less find much information about the candidates online.

[Update: 28 October 2010] While the candidates on offer didn’t inspire much enthusiasm for me, I was pleased with the physical process of voting.