Politics – Page 143 – a sibilant intake of breath

Sarkozy’s incoming carbon tax

While Canada’s best effort at a carbon tax ended in failure, one worth about $25 a tonne seems likely to be adopted in France. The new tax is intended to be revenue neutral, with corresponding handouts to households (both those that pay tax and those that don’t) and corporations. Some expect the most significant impact to be on liquid fuel prices. Sweden has been rather more ambitious in this regard, having imposed a tax of about $100 per tonne on oil, coal, natural gas, liquefied petroleum gas, petrol, and aviation fuel used in domestic travel.

Like most carbon taxes, the French initiative includes significant loopholes – including for heavy industry and non-nuclear forms of electricity generation. Even so, it represents a bit of good news in the lead-up to the UNFCCC negotiations in Copenhagen this December. Hopefully, it will be progressively expanded to other emitting activities, at the same time as the level of the tax is progressively increased. Here, Sweden sets an encouraging example: when they imposed their carbon tax in 1991, it was at about 1/4 of its present level.

[Update: 23 March 2010] French government backs down on carbon tax plan

Environmentalism and ‘breathing underwater’

The Walrus recently published an article entitled: “The Age of Breathing Underwater.” Written by Chris Turner, it relates to a number of previous discussions here, such as the recent one about being unimpressed with humanity, when it comes to behaving sensibly about climate change.

It begins with a lengthy discussion about some of the life in coral reefs: one of the ecosystems most profoundly and immediately threatened by climate change. Indeed, even with some pretty aggressive mitigation, most will probably perish during the lifetimes of those reading this, as the result of both rising temperatures and increasing ocean acidity. The article quotes scientist J. E. N. Veron saying that by 2050 “the only corals left alive will be those in refuges on deep outer slopes of reefs. The rest will be unrecognisable — a bacterial slime, devoid of life.”

The article also discusses environmental activism, science fiction, the prospect of geoengineering, the concept of ‘resilience’ in a threatened world, and what it means to be alive in the Anthropocene – the era in human history characterized by the impacts of human beings on physical and biological systems. It makes the strong point that we can somewhat reduce the eventual impact of climate change by working to diminish other stresses; reefs threatened by warm and acidic water don’t need dynamite fishing and oil drilling to help drive them to extinction. The same is surely true of terrestrial ecosystems. Resilience is also something that can be built into human systems – the ability to stretch and change without breaking. From my perspective, that is one huge limitation of the ‘survivalist’ approach to surviving climate change. Your little armed colony might be able to sustain itself under present conditions, but it isn’t necessarily very flexible, when it comes to adapting to whatever the future will bring.

The ‘underwater’ metaphor is an interesting one. The author points out that the human capacity to remain underwater for extended periods depends fundamentally on the whole enterprise of modern industry. The author points out that we’re not really trying to save reefs anymore: we’re trying to save the ability of human beings to do things like SCUBA dive. That ability can only be maintained if we maintain an industrial society, while transforming its energy basis. The article’s conclusion addresses this, but is somewhat underwhelming. While renewable forms of energy are surely a huge part of the solution, putting solar panels on top of buildings won’t be anywhere near adequate. We need comprehensive plans of the sort David MacKay has cooked up. Making the transition from surviving underwater using a set amount of compressed air (akin to fossil fuels) in a tank to living in a self-sustaining colony (akin to renewables) requires appreciation of scale and logistics. A few houseplants are not going to do it.

In any event, the whole article is worth reading and responding to. My thanks to my friend Ann, for pointing it out to me.

Composting in Ottawa

Ottawa is starting up a citywide composting system, with pick ups every two weeks through the winter:

Starting Monday, and for the next 12 weeks, the city will be delivering 240,000 green bins and small, counter-top kitchen-catchers to households across the city.

The chief environmental advantage cited, reducing landfill usage, is not overly compelling. We have plenty of space for landfills, and they are very tightly regulated. I would be interested in knowing what the other effects of the program will be, if any, on factors like air quality, water quality, and greenhouse gas emissions.

It is interesting to note that the service will no accept ‘biodegradable’ plastics, because the term doesn’t have a standard usage and there is a risk that the compost produced would be contaminated.

The B.C. government’s forcible relocation law

In the run-up to the Vancouver Olympics, a law has been proposed in British Columbia that would allow police officers to forcibly transport homeless people to shelters during ‘harsh’ weather. Once they are at the shelters, they will be permitted to leave at their discretion. While it is never desirable for people to be harmed for lack of shelter, this law strikes me as morally and legally problematic. It is certainly seems contrary to section nine of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which provides protection against arbitrary detention and imprisonment. The question then is whether it is ‘saved’ by section one, which allows for the other rights to be subjected “only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”

Under the Oakes test, which has become Canada’s standard but unofficial way of interpreting section one of the Charter, there are a number of requirements for allowing a law that violates a section of the Charter from being ‘saved’ by the ‘reasonable limits’ clause in section one. There must be a “pressing and substantial objective” and the means must be “proportional.” More specifically, the means must be “rationally connected to the objective,” involve a “minimal impairment of rights,” and that the law be proportional to the objective. People dying of exposure could certainly be categorized as a pressing and substantial objective, but I am less sure about whether there is a minimal impairment of rights involved. Certainly, the onus must be on those advocating the law to provide a strong argument for why it is constitutional. Such an argument would have to establish clearly that existing powers on the part of emergency services are inadequate to prevent homeless people suffering and dying during extreme weather, that forcible relocation would help, and that the violation of rights is proportional to the benefit.

The law may also be discriminatory insofar as it is meant to apply only to the homeless. Under the law, it seems like police would treat people differently when they came across them in extreme weather, based on whether they have a ‘home’ somewhere. The law would certainly never pass if it also included provisions for police to forcibly take people with homes back to them, if they happened to be out during an extreme weather event.

It is certainly important that shelters be available for the homeless, and that they be able to access them (especially during times of harsh weather). That being said, it is not clear why police should have the power to forcibly transport people. For one thing, the law risks being abused to clean up Vancouver’s image during the Olympics. Vancouver’s problems with drugs and homelessness are certainly something the Olympic organizers would want to keep out of the media. If they did so, however, it would be a shame; it would show that the city is prepared to simply suppress the visibility of enduring problems, rather than making a serious effort to respond to them.

Arguably, most of the problem of homelessness is the product of a weak social safety net, especially in areas like mental health and the treatment of drug addiction. For people who have others who care about them, it is possible to get reasonable assistance with such problems. For people with serious mental issues and nobody to play an assisting role, things must be much more difficult. Authorizing police to round up people who have committed no crime when it is cold and rainy seems more like an awkward cover-up mechanism than like a policy motivated by genuine concern for human welfare.

Would finding extraterrestrial life matter?

The most plausible explanation for the origin of life on Earth is that physical processes created organic molecules, such as amino acids, and some combination randomly assembled that could make copies of itself. This may have been somewhat akin to the way crystals form as the result of probability and their own chemical characteristics. From there, these ‘replicators’ became more diverse and capable, ultimately branching out into the entirety of life observed on our planet today. Richard Dawkins may have expressed these ideas best, in the opening section of The Selfish Gene:

Was there to be any end to the gradual improvement in the techniques and artifices used by the replicators to ensure their own continuation in the world? There would be plenty of time for their improvement. What weird engines of self-preservation would the millennia bring forth? Four thousand million years on, what was to be the fate of the ancient replicators? They did not die out, for they are the past masters of the survival arts. But do not look for them floating loose in the sea; they gave up that cavalier freedom long ago. Now they swarm in huge colonies, safe inside gigantic lumbering robots, sealed off from the outside world, communicating with it by tortuous indirect routes, manipulating it by remote control. They are in you and me; they created us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rational for our existence. They have come a long way, those replicators. Now they go by the name of genes, and we are their survival machines.

If this explanation is basically correct, we should expect there to be a lot of life in the universe. There are millions of billions of galaxies out there, comprised of a phenomenal number of stars. We have already observed planets around some, including small rocky planets like the Earth and planets with orbits compatible with liquid water on their surfaces. The Kepler Mission may discover hundreds more. The Drake Equation expresses this idea mathematically, while the Fermi Paradox considers why extraterrestrial civilizations, which we might expect to be common, have not yet been found.

Finding other forms of life would certainly both answer and raise scientific questions (such as how different forms of life can be.) Would actually observing direct evidence of life (probably microbes) elsewhere have any effect on human perspectives or behaviour? It might for religious people who believe life on Earth to have been uniquely created, but that isn’t a terribly interesting consequence to me. Would it have any ethical, political, or moral ramifications for those who already believe that life essentially arose by accident? Would intelligent life have any effect above and beyond that of observing microbes, even if such life was too far away to ever really engage or communicate with? The question may not be such an abstract one. As described well in one chapter of Oliver Morton’s book on photosynthesis, there are several ways through which we might be able to identify unmistakeable signs of life at great distance.

Perversely, life elsewhere might actually somewhat diminish our perception of how important it is to preserve and protect life on Earth. Right now, as far as we know, we are the sole such example in the universe. Finding others might lend even more strength to the psychological pressures that make us favour immediate interests rather than long-term survival. On the other hand, it might help reinforce the point that we are here by accident and that nothing about the nature of the universe is ‘on our side’ when it comes to survival. Such a realization might prompt some serious thinking of what it will mean to endure in a universe that will endure long beyond the comparatively comfortable circumstances in which we emerged as a species.

Animal products in everything

Curious fact: apparently, crayons are non-vegan. “Fatty acids derived from pork bone fat are used as a hardening agent in crayons and also gives them their distinctive smell.” Other products that incorporate material from dead pigs include “ammunition, train brakes, automobile paint, soap and washing powder, bone china, [and] cigarettes.”

Unmanned aerial vehicles

In most of the world’s militaries – and even in paramilitary groups like Hezbollah – drones and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are playing increasing roles in combat and intelligence gathering. They are running ahead of convoys in Afghanistan and Iraq to try to spot or jam improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Even as far back as the first Gulf War, they were being used by battleships to target fire from naval guns. Some Iraqi troops even surrendered to them.

Some even go so far as to say that the era of manned fighter aircraft is drawing to a close, and that the American F-22 may be their last such craft. They can be more manoeuvrable than manned craft, since the physical limitations of pilots are no longer an issue. This is an increasingly serious problem as surface-to-air missiles continue to become faster, more advanced, and more widely employed. Due to not being limited by pilot fatigue, UAVs can also have a much more enduring presence. Missions lasting several days have already been undertaken, and future vehicles may be able to remain airborne for weeks or even months. The US Navy has a ‘Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS)’ program, which aims to provide intelligence coverage of most of the world’s strategic ocean areas, with vehicles capable of loitering for 24 hours.

Of course, the new technologies raise issues beyond military strategy. The ethics of programming machines that employ lethal force will probably become an increasingly important element of international law.

Fish certified to be sustainable may not be

The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) was launched in hopes of making it possible for firms and consumers to select sustainably-produced seafood. Unfortunately, recent events have seriously undermined its reputation:

Their plan to certify Peruvian anchovy is dubious.
The MSC-certified Alaskan Pollock fishery is collapsing.
The same goes for the Hoki fishery, off New Zealand.
The MSC is considering certifying Pacific Hake, over the objections of Oceana and the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Jennifer Jacquet, of the Guilty Planet blog, goes so far as to say that “the MSC certification process has been co-opted by industry.”

Those who have been salving their consciences by buying certifiably ‘sustainable’ fish should now give some thought to whether the only truly sustainable option is to abstain from seafood altogether, as both Jennifer and I have reluctantly done.

Two interesting Mars space travel tidbits

Firstly, a nice demolition of the idea that a one-way mission to Mars makes sense, written by Oliver Morton, whose excellent book I reviewed. The best concise point:

Most importantly, in terms of costs, there’s the ongoing commitment. A set of Mars missions you can cancel is a much more attractive than a set of Mars missions that you cannot cancel without killing people (“Launch the next rocket or the kid gets it”). To fund a single one way to Mars mission is more or less to sign up to funding them for as long as the colony lasts. That is a far larger spending commitment than required for a small number of return trips.

I certainly wouldn’t want to be one of the decision-makers responsible for keeping a Martian colony alive, while billions are watching via high-definition video links. Watching the astronauts slowly (or quickly) die would be awfully depressing, after all, especially if it was because of budget cuts.

Secondly, a Science article on the importance of not contaminating Mars with terrestrial organisms: Biologically Reversible Exploration. In essence, it argues that contamination from terrestrial spacecraft could forever eliminate our chances of studying life that evolved independently on Mars, if any such organisms exist. It argues that future missions, including any manned missions, adopt protocols so as to be ‘biologically reversible.’ As countless examples of terrestrial invasive species demonstrate, the concerns are not unwarranted, when it comes to microorganisms that might be able to survive or thrive in the Martian environment.

Obama changing tack on missile defence

In a surprising announcement, it seems that the United States may give up plans to put RADAR sites and/or interceptors in Poland and the Czech Republic. These sites would have been ideally suited to track and intercept ballistic missiles launched towards the United States from Iran. This is a reversal of the position President Obama adopted in April, when he gave a speech in Prague. The most plausible reason for the shift is an accommodation with Russia, which has always staunchly opposed US ballistic missile defence (BMD) plans, and which holds key levers when it comes to Iran and nuclear technologies. Notably, the sites in Poland and the Czech Republic would not be especially well placed to aid in the interception of Russian missiles, which would anyhow be too numerous and sophisticated to be plausibly neutralized through a BMD system.

The shift probably signals both the resurgence of Russia as a regional power and the decline of American flexibility that has accompanied ongoing involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US may also be reckoning that it is a better strategic move to try to block Iranian acquisition of nuclear weapons, with Russian help, than to try to field a system to destroy deployable versions of these weapons if and when they exist. Iran’s successful satellite launch in February suggests that they could develop nuclear-capable missiles with a long-range capacity, provided they are able to sufficiently miniaturize their nuclear weapons: an undertaking that proved very challenging even for the United States.

While Poland and the Czech Republic are usefully positioned between Iran and the east coast of North America, Japan is best positioned between North Korea and the west coast. Given the strength of the US-Japanese alliance, and the domestic concern about North Korea and China in Japan itself, it seems likely that the Pacific version of the BMD system will continue to develop. When I visited USNORTHCOM, the US Strategic Space Command, and NORAD, all of their missile defence examples concerned North Korean launches.

[Update: 4:24pm] To clarify the above, it seems the American plan was to put X-band RADAR facilities in the Czech Republic and ten SM-3 interceptor missiles in Poland.