Politics – Page 193 – a sibilant intake of breath

Killing animals to save them

The Inuit Tapiriit of Canada are protesting attempts in the United States to have polar bears designated as an endangered species. They argue that the bears are being killed in sustainable numbers, that a listing in the United States would cut off the supply of hunters, and that such hunting provides vital economic stimulus within their communities. Apparently, the total population of polar bears is estimated at 25,000. Between the summers of 2006 and 2007, 498 bears were killed – 120 of those by commercial hunters who paid about $30,000 for the right to do so. They also hired guides and purchased goods and services within native communities.

The situation raises a number of moral questions. The most obvious is whether it is ethical or prudent to fund conservation efforts through hunting. Unsurprisingly, The Economist says yes, at least for African game. It does make sense to say that ensuring conservation of nature depends on making such conservation in the interests of those who live in the region. After all, they are the only ones with a sustainable capacity for enforcement.

The polar bear may also be a special case. It is estimated that melting sea ice could slash their numbers by two thirds or more by 2050. In response to that, it is possible to argue that saving as many as possible from hunting is justified; it could also be argued that we may as well hunt them, since they are doomed anyhow.

The particular case of polar bears is probably not especially important. Barring dramatic and sudden shifts in the climate policy of most states, it seems unlikely that more than a handful will survive the coming Arctic melt. It is entirely conceivable that all Arctic summer ice will be gone in a few decades and that the bears will only survive in zoos, and possibly by shifting to a new habitat and food supply. The effect those changes will have upon the Inuit are difficult to over-state.

A more general moral question raised by all of this is: “To whom do species belong?” Legally, they belong to the states in which they are found. At the same time, it is part of international law that states are not permitted to take actions that impose ecological costs on other states. Clearly, Brazil or Indonesia burning or cutting down their rainforests has such an effect. The situation is less clear when it is a locally important ecosystem or a single species being considered. Do people in India or France have a right to the existence of polar bears? Is it part of the collective of nature, within which we are all trustees?

It does seem as though there is a certain force to that argument, and a parallel obligation on the part of states not to destroy elements of their natural legacy. Of course, a strong case can be made that allowing hunting to pay for conservation serves rather than violates this principle. Such are the kinds of questions that need to be hashed out within international law and politics as the clash between a notion of state sovereignty predicated on non-interference clashes with the nature of a world as interconnected and full of humans as ours is.

Democracy as constraint

One common view of the nature of democracy is a system wherein a populace seeks to advance the common interest, either through direct participation in decision-making that affects everyone or through the election of representatives to do so. This view posits the existence of a universal interest that is beyond the sum of individual interests; the aim of government is to help to pull the reality of life closer to the kind of life that would be established through the realization of that universal good.

One major problem with this view is the possibility that, with a few exceptions, no such universal interest exists. We have a universal interest in not being exterminated, but it’s not clear that there is any such thing in the realm of social policy. An alternative view of the nature of democracy highlights its procedural characteristics, two of which I consider to be the most important: the division of power and oversight.

Democracy, viewed in this way, is a system of rules designed to limit the collection and arbitrary usage of power by individuals and groups. It recognizes the fundamental difficulty of this struggle, derived from the way in which most people given the opportunity to rule will try to use that power to perpetuate their influence. It likewise recognizes that authority in the absence of oversight leads inevitably to abuse, whether by corrupt politicians, unaccountable police, or an unconstrained army. The most important institutions within a democracy, then, are things like the rule of law, courts, regulatory bodies, a free press, and elections. The last of these serve less to select a group of representatives who have the right ideas about the universal good and more to rotate people often enough that they cannot escape the shackles that democracy is meant to impose upon them. When rulers do wriggle out of those bonds, the results are corruption, incompetence, and tyranny.

A procedural view of democracy does not assume the existence of a universal good – it just acknowledges that people have life projects of their own and, unconstrained, most are happy to trample all over the plans of others. The basic idea derives from the expression: “My right to swing my fist ends where your nose begins.” Unfortunately, plenty of people are happy to swing regardless. Only by constraining individuals in some ways – especially those in positions of power – can we have any hope of living our lives unmolested.

What, then, of social programs and all the efforts government makes to cajole and convince the populace of things? It is certainly possible that such cajoling can serve worthwhile ends, such as making people aware of previously unknown dangers. It can also serve far less universal ends: the promotion of the interests of one group through a devious appeal to a universal good. Arguably, much of politics is jostling between groups with narrow interests, seeking both to gain access to power and represent their personal interests as universal. This is exactly the kind of conduct a procedural democracy is meant to check: marrying empowerment within the sphere of individual agency with constraint in realms of inappropriate interference.

I am not willing to wholly disregard the possibility that democracies can develop projects based on the universal good, and perhaps even carry them out more effectively than other systems of government. What I am arguing is that such endeavours are a potentially valuable benefit of democracy, rather than its foundational justification. The aim is less to achieve the ‘best’ – a mode of thinking perhaps best suited to fascist states – but to moderate and avoid the worst. As such, when we abandon the principles of oversight and divided power, whether out of ambition or fear, we sacrifice a critical aspect of what it means to live in a democratic society.

Oil sands report card

The Pembina Institute and the World Wildlife Fund of Canada have a new report out on the oil sands. It is available as a four page summary or a 72 page PDF. The report is based on surveys sent to 10 different oil sands operations and focuses on the degree to which they have adopted policies to mitigate their environmental impact.

The report highlights both the greenhouse gas emissions associated with oil sands extraction and processing and the impacts upon fresh water. It also points out how the idea that land is ‘reclaimed’ after extraction is seriously faulty. Apparently, “[d]espite over 40 years of oil sands development, not a single hectare of land has been certified as reclaimed under Government of Alberta guidelines.” The permanent conversion of boreal forests ultimately belonging to the people of Alberta into fields of toxic mud is certainly cause for concern.

The report stresses possibilities for improvement, explaining how running all facilities using the best standards in other existing facilities would cut greenhouse gas emissions by 66%, and reduce volatile organic compound emissions by 47%. Nitrous oxide emissions could be cut by 80%, while sulphur dioxide emissions could be reduced by 47%. Adopting a proposed water efficiency standard would reduce annual water consumption by 60%. These figures are all based on facilities running at maximum capacity, as can probably be assumed with oil around $100 a barrel.

Depressingly, the report highlights that a currently proposed project has even worse standards than existing facilities. In order to mitigate the trend, three recommendations are made to government along with two to industry. The governmental suggestions are:

Government needs to enforce acceptable standards of environmental performance and continuously improve regulations to reflect continuous improvement in companies’ abilities to reduce environmental impacts.
Government needs to report on environmental impacts to public lands.
Government must request segregated information to enable comparison of environmental performance.

The industry recommendations are:

Companies need to implement best available practices and focus on developing and implementing new technologies and processes that lead to step-wise reductions in environmental impacts.
Companies should make project specific oil sands environmental performance information more widely available and in a consistent format.

Overall, this approach may be a productive one. Rather than highlighting the ecological costs of oil sands extraction and demanding that the industry be scaled back, demands for all firms to meet the highest existing standards might be able to mitigate some of the harmful effects without creating as much antagonism. It’s not a comprehensive solution, but it may be a clever form of harm reduction.

Anyone interested in the state of Canada’s environment is encouraged to read at least the short summary.

Canada’s nuclear waste

After being removed from a reactor, nuclear fuel is both too radioactive and too physically hot to be reprocessed or placed in dry storage. As such, it is kept in cooling pools for a period of five to six years. Given the absence of long-term geologic storage facilities, all of Canada’s high level waste is currently in cooling pools or on-site dry cask storage. On a per-capita basis, Canada produces more high level nuclear waste than any other state – a total of 1,300 tonnes in 2001.

Canada currently has eleven nuclear waste storage facilities. Among these, one is in the process of decommissioning and six contain high level waste. Four sites have waste in dry storage casks: Darlington, Bruce, Pickering, Gentilly, and Point Lepreau. Other facilities include spent fuel pools. According to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), all Canadian wastes are currently in ‘storage’ defined as: “a short-term management technique that requires human intervention for maintenance and security and allows for recovery of the waste.”

In 2002, a major review of waste disposal options was undertaken by the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO). Their final report – released in November 2005 – endorsed a system of “Adaptive Phased Management” employing both interim shallow storage and deep geological storage, with the possibility of future recovery of materials. Such recovery would be motivated either by concerns about leakage potential or a desire to process the fuel into something useful. The NWMO is currently engaged in a process of site selection, intended to lead eventually to a National Nuclear Waste Repository.

The nuclear waste problem

From both an environmental and public support standpoint, the generation of nuclear waste is one of the largest drawbacks of nuclear fission as a power source. Just as the emission of greenhouse gasses threatens future generations with harmful ecological outcomes, the production of nuclear wastes at all stages in the fuel cycle presents risks to those alive in the present and to those who will be alive in the future, across a span of time not generally considered by human beings.

Wastes like Plutonium-239 remain highly dangerous for tens of millennia: a span roughly equivalent to the total historical record of human civilizations. Furthermore, while most states using nuclear power have declared an intention of creating geological repositories for wastes, no state has such a facility in operation. The decades-long story of the planned Yucca Mountain repository in the United States demonstrates some of the practical, political, and legal challenges to establishing such facilities in democratic societies.

Dry cask storage is not an acceptable long-term option, as suggested by its CNSC categorization as “a short-term management technique.” When dealing with wastes dangerous for millennia, it cannot be assumed that regular maintenance and inspection will continue. Storage systems must be ‘passively safe:’ able to contain the wastes they store for the full duration of their dangerous lives, without the need for active intervention from human beings. To date, no such facilities exist.

Per capita emissions and fairness

As mentioned before, the Stern Review cites a figure of five gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent as the quantity that can be sustainably absorbed by the planet each year. Given the present population of 6.6 billion people, that means our fair share is about 750kg of emissions each, per year. Right now, Canadian emissions are about 23 tonnes per person per year. They are highest in Alberta – 71 tonnes – and lowest in Quebec – 12 tonnes. Even in hydro-blessed Quebec, emissions are fifteen times too high.

Everybody knows that emissions in the developed world are too high. The average Australian emits 25.9 tonnes. For Americans it is 22.9; the nuclear-powered French emit 8.7 tonnes each. The European average is 10.6 tonnes per person, while North America weighs in at 23.1. One round-trip flight from New York to London produces the amount of greenhouse gas that one person can sustainably emit in three and a half years. These are not the kind of numbers that can be brought down with a few more wind turbines and hybrid cars; the energy basis of all states needs to be fundamentally altered, replacing a system where energy production and use are associated with greenhouse gas emissions with one where that is no longer the case.

What is less often acknowledged is that emissions in the developing world are already too high. Chinese per capita emissions are 3.9 tonnes, while those in India are 1.8. The list of countries by per-capita greenhouse gas emissions on Wikipedia shows three states where per-capita emissions are below 750kg: Comoros, Kiribati, and Uruguay. Even the average level of emissions for sub-Saharan Africa is almost six times above the sustainable level for our current world population.

And our world population is growing.

All this raises serious questions of fairness. Obviously, people in North America and Europe have been overshooting our sustainable level of emissions for a long time. Do developing countries have a similar right to overshoot? How are their rights affected by what we now know about climate change? If they do have a right to emit more than 750kg per person, does that mean people in developed states have a corresponding duty to emit less than that? Even if we emitted nothing at all, we couldn’t provide enough space within the sustainable carbon budget for them to emit as much as we are now.

The only option is for everyone to decarbonize. The developed world needs to lead the way, in order to show that it can be done. The developing world needs to acknowledge that the right to develop does not trump other forms of legal and ethical obligation: both to those alive now and to future generations. People in both developed and developing states may also want to reconsider their assumptions about the desirability of population growth. Spending a few centuries with people voluntarily restricting their fertility below the natural rate of replacement could do a lot to limit the magnitude of the ecological challenges we will face as a species.

Advertising over-fishing

This evening, I was surprised to happen across a billboard advertisement condemning fisheries subsidies. It declared that: “Subsidies are fishing the world’s oceans to death” and “It’s time to cut the bait.” The sentiment is an accurate one, particularly when it comes to the operation of the subsidized fleets of the developed world in the waters of developing states. Still, it was interesting to see a public display about a subject that is of considerable interest to me, but seemingly ignored by most of the population. You do see a bit of lobbying through advertising in Ottawa; for instance, there are piles of backlit signs personally thanking Prime Minister Harper for supporting ethanol and biodiesel. It was good to see something advocating the protection of a common resource, rather than seeking rents for private enterprises.

I was curious who would be behind such an advertising campaign, but then I noticed the logo of the Sea Around Us Project at the bottom. They have been mentioned here fairly frequently before and do good work. Shifting Baselines – a favourite blog of mine – is run by a doctoral student associated with the project.

[Update: 13 January 2007] I finally got around to uploading the low quality photo of the ad I took on my phone.

Why the Allies Won

Among the hundreds of books I read at Oxford, Richard Overy’s Why the Allies Won stood out as an especially engaging piece of historical argumentation. It is one of a handful of books I was determined to re-read when I had more time available. Given the fundamental importance of the Second World War in the establishment of the contemporary international system, the question is a rather important one. Overy’s explanation is well-argued, convincing, and consistently interesting.

This complex book has a number of general themes, each of which is based around a necessary but insufficient cause for the victory of Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union over Germany, Italy, and Japan. Overy goes into detail on the Battle of the Atlantic – particularly the importance of American supplies for Britain, the U-boat menace, and the tactics that turned the tide in that theatre. He likewise covers the war on the eastern front: from early German successes to the battles at Stalingrad and Kursk that marked the watershed point of the war. In the Pacific theatre, he does an excellent job of explaining the significance of the Battle of Midway, including the considerable role luck played in the victory. The outcome was largely decided by ten bombs in ten minutes that struck Japanese aircraft carriers while they were refueling their air wings.

An entire chapter is devoted to the cross-channel invasion from Britain into occupied France. Of particular interest is the role played by intelligence, a subject Overy arguably neglects to some extent in other circumstances. The ways in which the Allies kept German defences spread out through misdirection make for especially interesting reading.

Overy also covers more thematic reasons for the Allied victory: mass production, especially in the United States and Soviet Union; technology, especially air power; the surprising unity between the Allies; and the moral contest between the Allied and Axis states. Unlike many historians, he highlights Allied bombing as an effective military strategy. He remains ambiguous about whether the military utility justified the bombing of German and Japanese civilians, but argues relatively persuasively that attacks on oil facilities and other key bits of industrial infrastructure served an important strategic purpose.

Midway is not the only example of good fortune Overy highlights – partially in an attempt to undermine the argument that the war could only have ended the way it did. Adding external fuel tanks to the fighters escorting bombers into German airspace dramatically reduced losses, substantially bolstering the effectiveness of the strategic bombing campaign. Likewise, equipping a few aircraft to close a small ‘Atlantic gap’ helped secure the end of the U-boat threat. Even the devastating trap sprung by the Soviets upon the German supply lines approaching Stalingrad could not have succeeded without the incredible success of a few thousand isolated troops occupying the entire German 6th army.

This book is enthusiastically recommended to anyone with an interest in military history generally or the Second World War in particular. It is also a good general disproof of the idea that the outcome of wars is decided by basic material facts like the relative sizes of economies, or the idea that there aren’t decisive turning points in history where the world is pressed along one path as another is closed off.

The implied right to pollute

In today’s news, there is some talk about the new report from the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy. Much of it has surrounded the possibility of a carbon tax as a vehicle for assisting the with reduction of Canadian greenhouse gas emissions. One comment from the CBC struck me as especially wrong-headed. In relation to a carbon tax, a person being interviewed said that it “would specifically impact western oil producers who might have to carry the brunt of such attacks.”

The fallacy here is that western oil producers have the right to emit as many greenhouse gasses as they like, for free. If your neighbour was running a pulp mill in his back yard, allowing toxic chemicals to ooze throughout the neighbourhood, nobody would call it an ‘attack’ when he was made to stop. Arguments implying that industry or private individuals have the right to impose ecological harms upon others need to be challenged in terms of fairness and ethics. Otherwise, they obscure the true character of the situation and help to perpetuate the status quo.

A grand solar plan for the United States

The latest issue of Scientific American features an article about a ‘grand solar plan.’ The idea is to install massive solar arrays in the American southwest, then use high voltage direct current transmission lines to transfer the energy to populated areas. The intention is to build 3,000 gigawatts of generating capacity by 2050 – a quantity that would require 30,000 square miles of photovoltaic arrays. This would cost about $400 billion and produce 69% of all American electricity and 35% of all energy used in transport (including electric cars and plug-in hybrids). The plan depends upon storing pressurized air in caverns to balance electricity supply and demand. The authors anticipate that full implementation of the plan would cut American greenhouse gas emissions to 62% below 2005 levels by 2050, even assuming a 1% annual increase in total energy usage.

The authors stress that the plan requires only modest and incremental improvements in solar technology. For instance, the efficiency of solar cells must be increased from the present level of about 10% to 14%. The pressurized cavern approach must also be tested and developed, and a very extensive new system of long-distance transmission lines would need to be built. While the infrastructure requirements are daunting, the total cost anticipated by the authors seems manageable. As they stress, it would cost less per year than existing agricultural subsidy programs.

Depending on solar exclusively is probably not socially or economically optimal. The authors implicitly acknowledge this when they advocate combining the solar system with wind, biomass, and geothermal sources in order to generate 100% of American electricity needs and 90% of total energy needs by 2100. Whether this particular grand plan is technically, economically, and politically viable or not, such publications do play a useful role in establishing the parameters of the debate. Given the ongoing American election – and the potential for the next administration to strike out boldly along a new course – such ideas are especially worthy of examination and debate. It is well worth reading the entire article.

Category: Politics