climate change policy, science, and activism; photography; cartography and mapmaking
All posts on what Bismarck called “the art of the possible”
Thanks to a tip off from a new friend, I found this comprehensive collection of rebuttals written by Coby Beck and featured on the Grist website, which is itself well worth a look. The articles are sorted as follows:
Whatever your beliefs, and whatever the case you want to make, you will find some points to engage with here.
I am trying to develop some informal connections with other people in North American who are working on climate change policy or research. In particular, I would like to get in contact with anyone studying feedback effects or policies that cities are adopting. Also, I would like to get in touch with people working within Canadian federal departments other than Environment, as well as people at the US Environmental Protection Agency.
PS. Harold Coward and Andrew J. Weaver’s book Hard Choices: Climate Change in Canada is worthwhile reading for those interested in Canadian climate change policy.
For some reason, booking a trip a few days before it is going to happen makes it feel a lot more decadent. With regards to all this inexpensive air travel, you have to wonder how people in thirty years or so will look back on this period. It’s possible that it will be seen as a time of gilded luxury, with similar historical ‘lessons’ to those of the 1920s. It is also possible that it will be seen as just another step on the path to wherever humanity finds itself in 2037.
The psychology of my recent trips to places at the edges of Europe (Estonia, Turkey, Morocco) also bears consideration, though at a time when I don’t have to dash off to a meeting.
One thing I have always disliked about international relations theory is the tendency to assert a view of human nature as simplistic and unchangeable. Often, I think this is more the result of short descriptions of theories becoming caricatures, rather than the product of theories that genuinely fail to appreciate how human behaviour is (a) malleable within broad limits and (b) critically influenced by context. Lots of fascinating recent psychology has been demonstrating the latter point. Malcolm Gladwell’s work is an entertaining and accessible example. So too, the work on behavioural economics that has been attracting so much attention.
I have a chart on my theory notes listing the major alternatives: Realism, Liberalism, Neoliberalism, Marxism, Feminism, and Critical Theory. In the column for ‘human nature’ the positions given are: ‘Fixed (essentially selfish)’, ‘Fixed (essentially selfish)’, ‘Fixed (essentially selfish)’, ‘Historically determined (corrupted by changeable)’, ‘Varies according to sub-model’, and ‘No fixed nature.’ Firstly, it seems like the issue of whether people generally behave selfishly or not isn’t sufficient to assert the existence of an essential human nature. Secondly, it seems like virtually all IR theories could pretty easily stretch to accommodate how people’s thinking and actions are conditioned by the environment in which they live. It seems like this is one of the major reasons for which neoliberals can continue to hope that conflictual elements of world politics will eventually give way to more cooperative ones. (Of course, we can also question whether the six traditions listed above constitute an appropriate taxonomy of IR theoretical approaches.)
The tendency to caricature I mention is another feature of IR. Because the discipline seeks to cover so much, it is often simplified to a dangerous extent. Key points are pulled out from historical situations ranging from the Peloponnesian War to the Cuban Missile Crisis, while theorists are often understood on the basis of a few quotes and bullet points. In any case, I have never found international relations theory to be a terribly useful or worthwhile enterprise. Both political theory and history have a lot more to say about the major issues involved, and both seem to have a more defensible approach to dealing with them.
Aside: Richard Rorty, American philosopher and inventor of the concept of ‘ironic liberalism,’ died today.
PS. The sore throat and aggressive cough I picked up on the Walking Club trip is still very much with me. I hope it doesn’t distract those around me too much during the exams tomorrow.
Who would have thought – three or four years ago – that climate change would become the central focus of a G8 meeting? While the situation certainly demonstrates the problems that remain to be overcome (both American unwillingness to accept emission caps and the need to incorporate large and rapidly developing economies like India and China into such a system), the level of attention being directed at the problem is very welcome.
The sad fact is that Canada has the worst record of any G8 state, when it comes to the gap between our Kyoto commitment and our present level of emissions. For a state that prides itself on being a responsible global citizen, this is hardly a position that is tenable in the long term.
When Canada ratified Kyoto, we committed ourselves to emissions 6% below the 1990 level, achieved by 2012. At present, Canadian emissions are about 26% over. The United States, by contrast, is only about 16% above 1990 levels. The only G8 state on track to meet its commitment because of policy efforts is Britain. Germany has cut emissions, but not yet by as much as they pledged. Russia has much lower emissions, but it is on account of the collapse of their economy after 1989, rather than any self-restraint. Indeed, Russia ends up in the odd position of being able to sell credits for emissions that would never have occurred anyhow (the so-called ‘hot air’).
Global emissions continue to grow at a rate even higher than the most pessimistic option modeled by the IPCC. Indian and Chinese emissions are each up by about 100% since 1990. Everyone need to do better. Hopefully, the ongoing gathering of political energy will make that come to pass.
[Update: 7 June 2007] Unsurprisingly, the G8 seem to be developing a fairly toothless joint statement on climate change.
On his blog, Lee Jones posted a link to this book review. Basically, the argument is that people are (a) exaggerating the dangers of climate change and (b) using climate change as an excuse to pursue other ends. I would not deny either claim. The Intuitor review of The Day After Tomorrow is evidence of the first, and more can be found in many places. Of course, their review of An Inconvenient Truth suggests that not everyone is guilty of misrepresentation. As for smuggling your own agenda into discussions about climate change, I suspect that is equally inevitable. The question of how to behave justly in response to climate change is fundamentally connected to the history of economic development.
In an unprecedented move, I feel compelled to quote my own thesis:
While the IPCC has generated some highly educated guesses, the ultimate scale of the climate change problem remains unknown. On account of the singular nature of the earth, it is also somewhat unknowable. Even with improvements to science, the full character of alternative historical progressions remains outside the possible boundaries of knowledge. As such, in a century or so humanity will find itself in one of the following situations:
- Knowing that climate change was a severe problem, about which we have done too little
- Believing that climate change was a potentially severe problem, about which we seem to have done enough
- Believing that climate change was a fairly modest problem, to which we probably responded overly aggressively
- Observing that, having done very little about climate change, we have nonetheless suffered no serious consequences.
Without assigning probabilities to these outcomes, we can nonetheless rank them by desirability. A plausible sequence would be 4 (gamble and win), 2 (caution rewarded), and then 1 and 3 (each a variety of gamble and lose). Naturally, given the probable variation in experiences with climate change in different states, differing conclusions may well be reached by different groups.
As such, what it means to make informed choices about climate change has as much to do with our patterns of risk assessment as it does with the quality of our science. Exactly how it will all be hashed out is one of the great contemporary problems of global politics.
In the United States, there is a Presidential tradition of pardoning turkeys. Of course, it is dubious whether the turkeys had committed any capital offenses requiring a pardon beforehand. At least the tiger executed recently in British Columbia had done something that may have been criminal if done by a human. Birds of the genus Meleagris seem guilty of nothing more than being rather unusual looking.
The White House has an official photo gallery of presidents performing the ceremony. I like the shot of Truman. George Bush Senior seems oddly distanced from the proceedings. There is something a bit sick about “representatives of the turkey industry” presenting one bird to be spared in this way, while raising millions more in utterly degraded conditions and slaughtering them. It gives one a bit of insight into why Grant Hadwin wanted to cut down the one tree in B.C. being protected by the logging industry, while they were clear-cutting the rest of the province.
Today’s meeting with Andrew Hurrell was productive and enjoyable. Aside from preparing for exams, we had an interesting realization. It relates to the donut hole that exists in historical education. You see, there are the periods of history that are so distant that they even get mentioned in high school textbooks. (I remember how my grade eight science text spoke about how “soon man will set foot upon the moon.) Since everyone has been exposed to this time and time again, it forms a common basis for conversation. What gets complicated is when there are two separated tranches of people conversing, such as the members of my M.Phil program and members of the faculty.
This is because there is a whole realm of history that a person mostly knows about as a contemporary experience. Given that most people in my program are about 25, it is plausible to say that this period begins for us with the end of the Cold War. Most of the instructors are probably about twenty years older, so their contemporary awareness begins in about 1970. As a product of this, there is a kind of donut hole in our discussions. The period between those two thresholds of awareness is not extensively covered in many introductory level texts and, where it is, is it covered without much historical distance and corresponding scope for analysis. Think about contemporary textbooks discussing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – they can hardly put them into a historical framework that is likely to stand up well over the coming decades.
This may have something to do with why I can’t recall hearing anything about the New International Economic Order before coming to Oxford, as well as why I know more about the Harding and Coolidge administrations than about the Ford or Carter ones. It will be interesting to see what happens when history from 1970 to present has gone further through the process of becoming parable.
During my second-to-last high table dinner in Wadham tonight, I got into a long conversation about Canada and climate change. The man with whom I was speaking asserted that (a) Canada would benefit directly from moderate warming and (b) Canada would benefit from activities that encourage global warming, such as the exploitation of the tar sands. Neither of these claims is unassailable on a factual basis, but the normative implications are more interesting to consider at the moment.
Let’s say that both claims are true. Should Canada act to combat climate change? To me, it seems the answer is an unambiguous yes. If I live uphill from a farm and have the opportunity to benefit from cutting down all the trees on my land, the fact that erosion will harm my downhill neighbour is not external from the consideration of what ought to be done. Depending on your conception of ethics, it may or may not be ethically appropriate for my neighbour to pay me not to cut down the trees. Regardless, the ethically optimal solution is generally to avoid impoverishing one’s neighbours to enrich oneself. This is especially true when you are much richer than those likely to be most immediately and significantly harmed. Being a mugger may be a personally advantageous course of action, but we have obligations to others that preclude it from being an acceptable choice for a member of society. Among a society of nations, there is likewise an obligation to behave with consideration for others, even if it diminishes one’s own prospects. Of course, such noble sentiments are hard to embed in policy.
As a discipline, International Relations is packed with parables. Sometimes, they are hypothetical stories and sometimes they are interpretations of historical events. In each case, they are meant to demonstrate something important about how world politics works. Almost without exception, some aspect of their validity can be questioned on either historical or logical grounds.
When it comes to global environmental politics, perhaps the most well-known such parable is the ‘tragedy of the commons.’ Garrett Hardin is generally credited with coming up with the idea in a paper published in 1968. That said, the same idea was expressed in Michael Graham’s 1948 book The Fish Gate, in which he described how fisheries where access is unlimited will inevitably become unprofitable and fail. The logic of an individual who cannot control the entirety of a resource grabbing as much as possible before its inevitable destruction is the key feature of both analyses.
Personally, I would rather give the credit for the idea to Graham, rather than to Hardin (though it probably far precedes either of them). After all, the latter thinker went on to write such logically and ethically dubious documents as Lifeboat Ethics: the Case Against Helping the Poor. In an illustrative passage, Hardin says:
A wise and competent government saves out of the production of the good years in anticipation of bad years to come. Joseph taught this policy to Pharaoh in Egypt more than 2,000 years ago. Yet the great majority of the governments in the world today do not follow such a policy. They lack either the wisdom or the competence, or both. Should those nations that do manage to put something aside be forced to come to the rescue each time an emergency occurs among the poor nations?
His assertion that affluent societies are such because their leaders have set aside a surplus in times of plenty, whereas the leaders of poor societies have not, represents a massively myopic and superficial understanding of the processes of wealth accumulation, as well as the interactions between historically dominant and historically oppressed states. Explaining patterns of development in such a simplistic way obscures important elements of world economic history. Going on to justify a cold-hearted ethic of indifference to suffering and injustice outside the rich world likewise represents inappropriate extrapolation and faulty thinking.