Category: Politics

All posts on what Bismarck called “the art of the possible”

Pessimism and the Future Leaders Survey

Emily Horn in the ByTowne Cinema

Increasingly, there seems to be a strong correlation between a young person’s level of education and their level of pessimism. Arguably, this is on account of the related correlation between education level and level of interest and engagement with current events. Somebody who never watches the news or picks up a newspaper just has less to worry about.

A recent British survey has produced some numbers that support the pessimism hypothesis. The Future Leaders Survey polled 25,000 applicants to British universities. The findings demonstrate a widespread anticipation of a worsening world:

Asked about likely outcomes for humanity by 2032, the responses are gloomy to say the least. Nine out of 10 surveyed think Africa will still be starving and oil will be prohibitively expensive, and eight in 10 expect more terrorism and the effects of climate change to be hitting hard. Inequality within the U.K. and between rich and poor nations will have worsened, according to around 70 percent of those surveyed. Half expect nuclear weapons will have been used again and that the U.S. will still be in Iraq.

16% of respondents said that they expected humanity to go extinct within a century; 78% of respondents said that could only be avoided through radical lifestyle changes. Admittedly, these are people who are just starting out at university, so it doesn’t demonstrate much about the linkage between education and pessimism. It would be quite interesting to have the same group re-polled in four years time. It would not surprise me if they were significantly more dispirited the second time.

One has to wonder whether this makes today’s society an aberration. Surely, history has been full of people who never really expected the world to change, one way or the other. Periods of history have also included large numbers of people believing that big improvements were possible or even inevitable. I am not sure if the kind of apocalyptic feeling spreading through the most influential segments of the most powerful states has much precedent. One can only speculate about what the long-term consequences might be.

Carbon trading and cost curves

Emily Horn at my doorstep

When it comes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, there is a spectrum of costs associated with different options. At one extreme are measures that can be taken that would both save money and reduce emissions. At the other end are options that would reduce emissions somewhat, but only at very considerable cost. A McKinsey study discussed here previously included such a spectrum for emissions in the United States: ranging from savings of $90 a tonne for improving the efficiency of electronics to costs of $90 per tonne for hybrid cars. Doubtless, even higher cost options exist.

Domestic trading

Domestic carbon trading is meant to ensure that the cheapest reductions occur first. In the case of win-win options, the fact that a change hasn’t happened yet may reflect a lack of information, a disjoint between who is making the decision and who is paying the cost, capital stock turnover delay, or some other obstacle to action. Trading systems that grant credit for reductions could conceivably help overcome these sorts of problems, but the real purpose is to allow a company that can only cut emissions for $200 a tonne to pay $45 a tonne to somebody who can cut them for $40. That way, polluters pay and the total costs of mitigation are minimized.

International trading

There is certainly some controversy in such domestic systems, but it is relatively scant compared to the disagreement that surrounds international exchanges. For all sorts of reasons, it makes sense that the price of avoiding a tonne of emissions varies wildly globally: both as the result of different kinds of emitting activities (energy emissions, deforestation emissions, process emissions, etc) and different relative factor prices (especially relative costs of labour and capital). Domestic policymakers are thus presented with an economic logic in which the cheapest way to achieve a particular environmental outcome seems to be paying people somewhere else to do it.

Some people object to this on the basis that it is shipping money out of the economy. There is some truth to this. Forcing domestic emitters to make all their reductions domestically would probably create employment for engineers and others who actually carry out the reductions. At the same time, it is highly likely that permitting domestic reductions only would significantly inflate the cost associated with any particular emission reduction target.

While there are lots of legitimate concerns about fraud, measurement, and defining additionality, it seems pretty essential that a large-scale global transition towards a low-carbon economy will require very large international transfers. That is not to say that the US should just pay China to cut emissions by an amount equivalent to X% of American emissions, leaving things at that. The Chinese are already above sustainable levels themselves and will need to make unprompted cuts – either domestically or through trading – if global targets are to be met.

All this is quite aside from the question of compensation for historical responsibility – it is just a question of pragmatism and economics. Giving states the flexibility to mandate cuts at home or induce them abroad creates the best chance of large overall emission reductions; as such, politicians need to stop letting legitimate concerns about proper accounting serve as a cover for a kind of self-destructive protectionism, international trading systems should be designed to be as effective and efficient as possible, and voters should acknowledge the economic realities of carbon abatement.

Climate denial conference

Ominous Ottawa skyline

On various climate blogs, there has been coverage recently about a climate change skeptic conference run by the American Heartland Institute. DeSmogBlog and Grist have been leading the scolding, though the mainstream media seems to have started to cotton on that these people are corrupt, frauds, or seriously misguided. The New York Times and Wall Street Journal both have pieces that are somewhat critical of the validity and motivation behind the conference.

You can argue all you like about what level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is represents a tolerable level of risk. You can likewise wade into many fascinating debates about paleoclimatology, climatic feedbacks, and technological development. Nobody has an especially good answer to the question of how climate change mitigation, development, and poverty reduction can be ethically balanced against one another. What you cannot do these days, while retaining your credibility, is deny that the human burning of fossil fuels is causing the planet to warm, and that the consequences of that warming are extremely likely to be harmful to human, plant, and animal life.

The whole thing reminds me of the laughable commercials produced by the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Here are some resources for countering the misguided or disingenuous arguments made by those who challenge the rigorously demonstrated elements of climate change science.

Big picture uncertainty

Buildings in central Ottawa

Climate change policy focuses on constant attempts to make guesses about the future: about economic development in rich states and poor, about patterns of technological evolution, about climatic responses to radiative forcing caused by changes in the gas mixture of the atmosphere. One cannot always evade the feeling that too many uncertainties are being layered. Consider, for instance, the possibility that hydrocarbon fuels will peak in world output within the next few decades. If that happened, most of our ‘business as usual’ economic projections would be badly wrong.

An even more ominous consideration relates to global conflict. When the world is generally doing well, it is devilishly hard to convince states to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions for the universal good. Imagine how hard it would be in a geopolitical environment based around rising tensions and the growing expectation of great power war. We make projections for 2100 without acknowledging that making it from now to then without such a war would be a historical aberration.

In the end, I suppose, cynicism does us little good. The vast majority of ordinary people – and of powerful people – will not believe in the disastrous potential consequences of climate change until they start to manifest themselves visibly. As such, agonizing about them just makes you more marginal to the debate that exists among those not kept awake by fear about the possibility for self-amplifying positive feedbacks in the climate system. We must do the best we can, avoid confusing engagement with the mainstream debate with genuine complacency, and hope that humanity possesses more wisdom than it has ever demonstrated before.

Post-2012 climate conference

The International Institute for Sustainable Development is running a two-day conference in Ottawa about post-2012 climate change policy. 2012 is the end of the first compliance period for the Kyoto Protocol, so ‘post-2012’ is shorthand for whatever international climate regime is to be the successor to Kyoto. Notes will be published on the wiki as they become available.

Notes from previous conferences are also available:

Natural gas and Russian politics

Snowy Ottawa street

The results of the election in Russia yesterday are not surprising, though they are part of a very worrisome overall trend. Bolstered by high energy prices and strategic overstretch on the part of the United States, Russia is regaining some of its nastier old habits. Of course, it is unreasonable and unacceptable to hope that Russia will remain as powerless as it has been since the fall of the Soviet Union. As much as is the case with China, the question of how a powerful Russia will return to geopolitics is an interesting and somewhat frightening one.

Europe’s vulnerability to Russian control of natural gas supplies has been well demonstrated of late. Poorer Central European states are potentially even worse off in the medium term, if Russia manages to build pipelines that go around them. Turning off the heat in Kiev is unlikely when it means doing the same in Berlin. Being able to do the first without the second would further worsen the strategic situation presented to the states in the middle. I expect they are feeling pretty nervous right now, given how generally spineless NATO and the EU have been recently in the face of Russian bullying.

Hopefully, concerns about access to gas will help to advance the drive towards renewable energy in Western Europe, eventually reducing the economic vulnerability of those states to Russian machinations. Such an outcome would have positive consequences in relation to the state of the global environment, and may embolden Europe’s democracies in relation to an increasingly assertive and unapologetically totalitarian Russia.

Obama on gay rights

Billboard frame, Ottawa

Whereas John McCain thinks that it is a principle of “Human Dignity” that the “family represents the foundation of Western Civilization and civil society and… believes the institution of marriage is a union between one man and one woman,” Barack Obama has issued an open letter calling for equal rights for lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgendered individuals.

Unfortunately, Obama doesn’t come out and call for the legalization of gay marriage: doubtless due to a political calculation about what homophobia might cost him in a general election. While that is probably smart politics, it is a disappointing thing to see from a candidate that tries to paint himself as so progressive. In fifty or one hundred years, I am convinced that people in liberal societies will see restricting gay marriage as equally unjust as restricting interracial marriage or marriage between different social classes. It’s a shame that even progressives in the United States cannot recognize this now.

In truth, even McCain probably doesn’t have a problem with two people of the same sex getting married for the same reasons – and under the same laws – as any mixed sex couple might. The politics of the American conservative movement simply make it suicidal to acknowledge that.

Previous posts on gay marriage:

Pickton should face another trial

PCO building, Ottawa

The decision of the British Columbia Attorney General not to prosecute 20 additional murder charges against Robert Pickton seems like a failure to strike the proper balance between the good use of government resources and the pursuit of justice. It has frequently been pointed out that had his victims been less marginalized members of society their initial disappearances would have been much more thoroughly investigated. Similarly, the failure of the police to appreciate what was occurring and put a stop to it over such a long period of time would have been deemed negligent and unacceptable. By choosing not to prosecute all the murders for which the Crown has evidence, the marginalization of these women is being further entrenched. It is inconceivable that the second trial would not occur if the victims had been wealthy residents of Shaughnessy or the British Properties.

The creation of a detailed public record of what transpired has societal value: both for those who knew the victims and for those who hope to improve the future operation of the police and justice systems. The argument for having a trial is therefore similar to the case I made previously for completing Slobodan Milosevic’s trial after his death. In such cases, the point is not to punish the offender; it is, rather, to make the facts of the situation known, demonstrate places where errors were made, and provide some guidance for future behaviour. On an important but less practical level, a second trial would also be an assertion of the equal human worth of the second group of victims: an especially important message to send given the ways in which the supposed equality of law is not always as meaningful or substantial as it ought to be.

Contraction and convergence

The interim version of the Garnaut Review (mentioned earlier) includes a numberless graph illustrating what the principle of contraction and convergence in per capita greenhouse gas emissions would resemble:

Contraction and convergence graph from the Garnaut Review

A few features are especially notable. The first is the relative trajectories in the opening years. States with very high per capita emissions, like Australia and Canada, would have to reduce emissions sharply right from the outset. Rapidly growing poor states like China would be allowed to grow until per capita emissions are comparable to those in relatively low emission developed states, such as the EU. Gradually, everybody’s per capita emissions become lower and more similar.

This approach becomes a lot more politically feasible when you take these lines to represent emission allocations rather than actual emissions. Developing states would have a choice about how to use the extra space allocated for their development. They could opt to use the allocation for their own emissions, allowing the growth of GHG emitting industry; alternatively, they could sell the allocations to more developed states at a globally established market price. That way, poverty reduction and development goals could be served at the same time as total GHG emissions trend towards a sustainable level. The big advantage of allowing global trading is that it should equalize the international marginal cost of abatement. In simple terms, that means that it will ensure that the emissions that can be avoided at the lowest cost will be addressed first, minimizing the overall cost of mitigation.

The Garnaut Review rightly highlights that it would be incredibly politically difficult to establish such an international regime. At the same time, it is probably also right to say that a general approach that embraces contraction and convergence has the best chance of stabilizing global greenhouse gas emissions at a level that avoids dangerous anthropogenic interference in the climate system, and does so in a way that minimizes total costs and manages the distribution of costs and benefits in an acceptably fair manner.