Politics – Page 144 – a sibilant intake of breath

Russia and the Iranian bomb

Apparently, one of the key limiting factors in the Iranian nuclear program is access to uranium. Domestic supplies are limited and of low quality. As such, Iran is heavily dependent on Russia to provide feedstock for its centrifuge-based enrichment program, as well as its Bushehr reactor. For instance, Russia provided 82 tons of low-enriched uranium in February, to allow the initial loading of the reactor.

For those who hope to do so, stopping an Iranian bomb therefore has much to do with convincing Russia to reduce support. Apparently, one thing the Russians want is for Israel to loosen the strong defence relationships it has built with Ukraine and Georgia. Given that Israel has the most to fear from an Iranian bomb – and that they are one of two states that could plausibly use military force to try to disrupt the Iranian atomic effort – this dynamic is a significant one.

As Stephanie Cooke’s book discussed, the proliferation of nuclear weapons has always been associated with the wrangling of great powers. It remains to be seen what outcome will result in this case.

(Note: It would be appreciated if commenters could refrain from any political tirades, if they feel inclined to discuss this. I am sometimes hesitant to post anything related to the Middle East, out of discomfort about the shrill responses any mention of the region can provoke.)

Are coalitions Canada’s future?

With consolidation having gone as far as it can on the right, and with continuing weakness within the Liberal Party, Canada doesn’t seem likely to see an end to minority governments soon. In other states where majorities are rare, the most common governing dynamic seems to be that of coalitions, such as you see in Germany and elsewhere. As such, I find it a bit odd that Canadian political parties have been so vociferously opposed to them, with both Harper and Ignatieff renouncing and denouncing them. The alternatives before us seem to be independent minority governments constantly making ad hoc deals to avoid no confidence votes or more durable alliances between major and minor parties. The latter option seems rather more politically mature, even if it will involve changes in how governance in Canada is carried out.

On a separate but related note, the Canadian political process is an exceedingly blunt instrument. Our elections only make it possible to convey a tiny amount of data – which candidate in your riding you prefer – and extrapolate from that the composition of parliament, the selection of the prime minister, and all sorts of assumptions about what Canadians want and what they have rejected. Opinion polls do provide some guidance, though they are not always well designed or interpreted, and they can be easy to manipulate by crafting questions strategically.

While Stephane Dion had some good and genuinely progressive ideas – most notably, shifting taxation from income towards greenhouse gas emissions – there isn’t much inspiring stuff in the current platforms of any of the parties. Given that, perhaps even a coalition government would simply continue to muddle along with some changes in tone, but few in substance. Perhaps if the Liberals showed a bit of courage and took a position on a big issue such as the deficit, an election would be a more meaningful prospect. For instance, given that the deficit is largely the result of the stimulus that was supposedly required to correct for the explosion of the markets, it would seem sensible that corporations should carry most of the burden of paying it off.

The 10:10 campaign

Previously, I complained about how setting climate targets can actually impede action, by drawing attention towards numbers rather than action, and by giving people the false sense that we can delay change. The 10:10 campaign, which is being advanced by The Guardian, seems like a good idea. It aims to have individuals, companies and institutions reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 10% by the end of 2010. I like the near-term focus. While we ultimately need to begin a deep and long process of transition to carbon neutrality, the cuts we can make today will be the most valuable. That’s because anything we emit now will still be in the atmosphere by the time humanity is (hopefully) reaching carbon neutrality. We need to change the direction of emission change – from rising to falling – all around the world, as well as begin the institutional transformations that will be needed to sustain the fall all the way to the bottom.

Individual actions are not going to save us. That said, we desperately need to move from a mindset where we expect emissions reductions in 2025 from unknown technologies to one where we are constantly striving to drive our emissions to zero.

The ICRC and neutrality

I am still in the process of reading Michael Ignatieff’s The Warrior’s Honour, written when he still had the kind of freedom of speech that puts academics at an advantage relative to politicians. One situation described therein does a good job of encapsulating the complexities involved in trying to mitigate the savagery of contemporary war.

It concerns the choices made the the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) during and after the wars that accompanied the breakup of Yugoslavia. The ICRC is a unique institution, legally mandated to implement the Geneva Conventions. A key element of that arrangement is neutrality; the ICRC does not distinguish between good wars and bad wars, nor between aggressors and victims. By not doing so, it maintains the kind of access that other organizations are denied.

In the wake of the Yugoslav wars, the ICRC had the best records on who was massacred, where, when, and by who. Such records would have aided the work of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), in seeking to prosecute those responsible. The ICRC refused to provide the records, arguing that if the combatants had thought that ICRC records might eventually be used in war crimes trials, they would not have permitted the ICRC to provide the kind of aid it was able to.

The neutrality of the ICRC was subsequently rewarded, when they ended up being the only aid organization not expelled from Bosnia during the Croat-Muslim offensive against Serbs. Ironically, this included the single greatest instance of ethnic cleansing: a term generally associated with actions Serbian forces had undertaken previously, including by using released and trained prisoners as unofficial proxies for acts that violated the Geneva Conventions.

As this example illustrates, contemporary conflicts are often deeply morally ambiguous, on everything from the role of child soldiers to whether it is truly possible for aid organizations to be impartial. To me, there seems to be considerable importance to maintaining an organization like the ICRC, simply because it can get the kind of access that others cannot. When it comes to more judgmental organizations, there are plenty to choose from, including Médecins Sans Frontières, which also has a headquarters in Geneva.

Open thread: the future of Afghanistan

It now seems entirely clear that Afghanistan will not become a liberal democratic state as a consequence of the US/NATO intervention. Where once politicians spoke of a conversion akin to those of Germany and Japan after World War II, the highest ambitions now seem to be for a state that is internally coherent, able to defend its borders, and unwilling to play host to Al Qaeda sorts. Gross disrespect for women’s rights, a theological bent to government, and the continued existence of warlords all seem to have become acceptable in the eyes of the interveners, or at least inevitable.

Given that, what should the objectives of those states currently fielding troops there be? Are there any special considerations for Canada? At this point, what would ‘success’ and ‘failure’ look like, and how good and bad would they be for Afghans, Canadians, and the world at large?

Unimpressed with humanity

I am increasingly of the sense that humanity doesn’t have what it takes to deal with climate change. We are apparently lacking not only in scientific understanding, but also in empathy and skill in managing risk. We are easily overpowered by those who use weak arguments forcefully, and slow to rally to the defence of even the most well-established of scientific facts.

These comments strike me as an especially poignant example of muddled thinking. The basic message is: “Let’s not argue about what causes climate change, because that is contentious and conflict makes me uncomfortable. Instead, let’s agree to disagree about what’s happening, but begin cutting carbon emissions anyhow.” With such thin soup on offer from those who believe we should take action, it’s not too surprising that more and more people apparently see the climate threat as overblown. People put politeness ahead of rigorous thinking and rely far too much on simple heuristic crutches (past warnings about other things have proved exaggerated, technology will save us, etc). None of this suggests that people have the will and understanding necessary to build a zero-carbon global society in time to prevent catastrophic climate change.

Of course, there is extremely strong scientific evidence that greenhouse gas emissions cause the climate to warm, along with additional consequences like charged precipitation patterns and ocean acidity. Arguably, some of these effects are already rather serious, particularly in the Arctic. We are on track to raise atmospheric concentrations of CO2 from about 383 parts per million (ppm) to over 1000 ppm by the end of the century. Decisive action is required, but politicians have correctly sensed that they are better off dithering: using rhetoric to convince the public at large that they are ‘balancing the environment and the economy‘ while privately kowtowing to special interests. These include both the old smoke-belchers (coal-fired electricity worst among them) and up-and-coming lobbies like corn ethanol producers. The politicians see quite clearly that their political futures do not depend on the habitability of the Earth in fifty years time, and they think and vote accordingly.

I certainly wouldn’t feel confident about having or raising children right now. The world continues to walk straight towards the edge of the precipice – ignoring the feedbacks and lag times that delay the impact of our emissions on the state of the climate – while patently failing to grasp the seriousness of our situation. If those alive and blogging now don’t live to see the worst consequences of that inaction, it seems highly likely that their children and grandchildren will start to, and that those consequences will be felt for thousands of years.

The military and Canada’s Arctic

Between August 6th and 28th, the Canadian Forces are staging Operation Nanook up in Canada’s Arctic: a 700-person military exercise that includes sub hunting, search and rescue, and disaster response. The operation highlights both Canada’s general claim in the Arctic region and the specific commitment of this government to asserting it, even if ambitious icebreaker plans have been scaled back.

With the prospect of large ice-free areas in the Arctic likely only decades away, it does seem as though territorial disputes over sovereignty and resources will arise. As a result, military capacity could be important. Ironically, the melting of the ice may provide access to new reserves of oil and gas: further fuelling the destruction of the unique environment north of the Arctic circle.

Paths to geoengineering

For a number of reasons, geoengineering is all over the news. The basic idea is to counteract the effects of climate change induced by greenhouse gasses. This can be accomplished in two basic ways. One is to use a separate mechanism to reduce the amount of energy the Earth absorbs from the sun. Orbiting mirrors and sulfate injection seek to do this. This approach is not ideal, partly because it would cause unknown side effects and partly because it would not stop the oceans from becoming more acidic. A more appealing route focuses on actively removing greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere.

The first way to do this is to encourage the growth of biomass. This is relatively easy, but has limited potential. Biomass is like a giant carbon cushion: it can be thick or thin, but it cannot keep growing forever. Increasing the amount of biomass on Earth could draw down the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere a bit, but only if we also manage to cut our greenhouse gas emissions to practically zero.

The second way – mentioned before – is to draw greenhouse gasses from the air and bury them, using carbon capture and storage technology (CCS). This could be done in two basic ways: (a) draw carbon dioxide (CO2) directly from the air and bury it or (b) grow biomass, burn it, collect the CO2, and bury that. The major limitations here are cost and technology. It remains unclear whether CCS can be made safe, effective, and affordable. It is also unclear whether it could be ramped up to a big enough scale to stop catastrophic climate change, in the absence of strong mitigation action.

The third option is to enhance the weathering of rocks. In the long term, this is where atmospheric CO2 actually ends up going. Some people are talking about speeding up the process, using various suitable types of rock and various mechanisms for increasing its rate of reaction with atmospheric CO2. Once again, the uncertainties concern scale and cost.

The three options that actually remove CO2 from the atmosphere are much more appealing than options that try to interrupt incoming sunlight. Each acts directly on the cause of anthropogenic warming, rather than trying to counter it by proxy. This is a bit like removing poison from a person’s body, as opposed to administering a supposed antidote with unknown effectiveness and side effects.

It remains unknown whether there will ever be a point where geoengineering is less costly per tonne of CO2 than various mitigation approaches. Right now, there are certainly greater opportunities in areas like energy efficiency and building design. That being said, research into CO2-removing technologies strikes me as having merit. They may eventually prove economically comparable to more expensive mitigation options; they may allow us to counteract activities that inevitably produce emissions, such as air travel; and they could give us some last-ditch options, if we find ourselves experiencing abrupt, catastrophic, or runaway climate change as a result of past emissions.

Coal, mercury, and CFLs

Those concerned about the mercury in compact fluorescent light bulbs should consider what the primary source of mercury contamination in North America is: coal-fired power plants. A report prepared earlier this year expects mercury levels in the Pacific to double by 2050, as the result of emissions from new coal plants.

This is especially relevant in places where summers are hot, since we might be paying a double climate and mercury price for the heat being produced by incandescent bulbs. If air conditioning is being used to get rid of it, the bulbs may well have negative efficiency in addition to their role in poisoning water supplies through those coal plant emissions.

All this is yet another reason why coal is the enemy of the human race.

Right about obstacles, wrong about consequences

I was recently reminded of a common but worrisome mental phenomenon, when it comes to how people react psychologically to the challenge of climate change. They have a strong understanding of the basic political dynamics at work – short term versus long term, special interests versus the general interest, money talks, etc – but lack an appreciation for just how bad unmitigated climate change would be. They are cynical about the prospects for an appropriate political response, but not seized with the importance of producing one despite the difficulties.

As mentioned before, the business-as-usual case is 5.5°C to 7.1°C of temperature increase by 2100, with more to follow. Accompanying this would be ocean acidification, changes in precipitation patterns, and other impacts. This is a more significant difference than exists between our present climate and that of the last ice age, when much of North America was covered with kilometres of ice. In the somewhat understated language typical of scientists, the head of the Met Office has said that warming of this scale would “lead to significant risks of severe and irreversible impacts.” That isn’t a worst-case scenario, but rather their best guess about where we will end up unless we change course. It should also be noted that there are positive feedbacks not incorporated into models such as that of the Hadley Centre: notable among them methane from permafrost. With such feedbacks factored in, a significantly worse business-as-usual warming profile is possible.

In practical terms, it is challenging to converse with people who have this pair of outlooks. Their cynicism about politics is largely justified, and they are right to see climate change as a problem of unprecedented complexity and difficulty. Trying to make them aware of just how dangerous climate change could be is challenging, because it is easy to come off sounding like you are exaggerating things. People just aren’t psychologically prepared to accept what 5°C of warming could plausible do to human civilization, even within what are now rich states.

What communication strategies have the most promise for getting people to accept the dangerousness of climate change, and subsequently the need to push hard against the political status quo, so as to produce timely change? This isn’t an issue where we can roll over and let special interest politics win. The future of the human race is quite literally at stake.