Politics – Page 215 – a sibilant intake of breath

The Economist on climate change

Catching up on the reading that accumulated in my absence, I have just gone through the Survey on Climate Change in the September 9-15 issue of The Economist. Their basic argument is that the possibility of catastrophic harm is sufficient to justify the costs of stabilizing the level of carbon in the atmosphere around 550 parts per million, compared with 280 ppm before the industrial revolution, 380 ppm now, and an estimated 800 ppm by 2100 is current policy goes unchanged. The most plausible dangers identified are disastrous shifts in ocean currents, dramatically cooling Europe, and the prospect of rising sea levels. Even modest amounts of the second could do enormous harm both in the coastal cities of the developed world and the lowlands of places like Bangladesh. Other problems include the possibility of an increase in the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, and large scale species migration or extinction.

Canada is singled out several times as unlikely to meet its Kyoto targets. We are committed to reduce emissions to 6% below 1990 levels by 2012, but seem likely to be 23% above. The survey quotes Environment Minister Rona Ambrose as saying: “it is impossible, impossible for Canada to reach its Kyoto targets.” The Economist had not previously been a supporter of Kyoto, though they surely support countries living up to commitments they have made. With this survey, the magazine seems to have changed tack from general opposition to the Kyoto Protocol to recognition that it may be a valid stepping stone towards a better organized and more all-encompassing climate change policy.

At the very least, the editorial change of heart signals strongly that climate change is no longer an issue whose reality is disputed, not suited to serious consideration by scientists, policy-makers, and the media. With my thesis in mind, it is largely the first group that I paid most attention to while reading this. At several points, the article asserts that it is at the 550ppm level that scientists in aggregate start to become seriously concerned about adverse and irreversible problems associated with climate change. That said, the survey also highlights a number of scientific disagreements and failed predictions. The interplay between science and politics is basically portrayed as a simple relationship between two internally complex dialogs. That is a model I certainly mean to unpack further in my thesis work.

As I didn’t actually manage to go see An Inconvenient Truth at the Phoenix yesterday, I am making another foray tonight for the 7:00pm show.

Blood and Belonging

While flying home, I finished Micheal Ignatieff’s Blood and Belonging. The main subject of the book is the examination of a number of contemporary examples of ethnic nationalism, both more and less violent in character. As he intended, it is a fairly chilling depiction of some of the uglier elements of human relations, in the more disputed parts of the world today. His description of the use of chemical weapons against the people of the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq makes his initial support for the American led invasion more comprehensible.

At the same time as this book makes one fearful about the kind of world we will inhabit in twenty years, it also provides some hope. While I have not personally visited Quebec or Northern Ireland, it seems, on the basis of the coverage I have seen, that things are not as bad as they were when this book was written in the early nineties. Economic prosperity and civic forms of nationalism have the capacity, at least in theory, to slowly erode the bases of hatred and violence. Let us hope that this trend can win out in the long run over the one that seeks to define nation by something as arbitrary and damaging as an ethnic notion of identity.

I started reading this book in order to get a better sense of Ignatieff as a thinker and as a prospective leader. While my new sense is not sturdy enough to be definitive, I definitely think more of the man than I did in the period before I had read any of his writing. His understanding of difficult issues seems to have a subtlety and a compassion that is definitely not the mark of your standard politician. I will have to read more of his thinking, however, before I can issue or withhold a final endorsement.

Early morning politics

Now, I could – and probably should – write about my enjoyable hike up Dam Mountain with my father today. Likewise, the subject of this early morning post should be the fine dinner at Palki on Lonsdale with my mother, father, and brother Sasha. Failing that, I should certainly write about exploring English Bay with Nick, Neal, and Lauren, then getting a jumbo poutine with extra war sauce at Fritz, just off Granville. But people are quite rightly sick of me just narrating life, so I will present a bit of a puzzle instead.

The image above was taken of the back of a utility truck of the kind used by many of the Vancouver schoolboards, at Georgia and Granville at about 2:00am. A fairly odd looking character in a jacket was using various tools on the newspaper vending boxes at that intersection: unloading newer looking units for selling The Vancouver Sun and The Province – local newspapers with content of varying quality.

The real questions are, who attached the original sticker, who blacked out one flag with spray paint, and why. Presumably, it previously showed an American flag that has been blacked out subsequently due to the widespread hostility in much of the world that has developed towards the United States, particularly since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

I don’t really know how I feel about this display, but I took a photo for much the same reasons I often photograph graffiti: any expression of a genuine sentiment is at least worthy of cursory examination, and frequently worthy of deep thought. Right now, I am far too exhausted to think it through.

Building utopias or avoiding disasters

In the car, on the way back from Tristan’s cabin, a discussion arose about the problem of racism. As usual, I rapidly found myself unable to comprehend the terminology of philosophical devotees. I have never seen abstract theorizing as a particularly good way of effecting positive change in the world, or even identifying means by which to do so. Regardless, an interesting possibility arose from the conversation. At first, consideration was being given – by some – to mechanisms through which revolution could be used to generate a kind of ideal society. Personally, I found many of the characteristics of the postulated society despicable, but that is less interesting than the very phenomenon of trying to create utopias through the application of human reasoning and abilities. This is a vice to which those farthest from the political mainstream have always been particularly vulnerable: hoping to roll over the whole elephant of society so that their ideas end up on top.

From what I know of history and political philosophy, those who try to built utopias always fail: either for themselves or for those who are meant to live in their perfect society. Perhaps the big lesson of history is that people should focus on avoiding disaster, rather than perfecting the styles of interaction between people. Of course, that leaves the issue of deciding what constitutes a disaster. Was the internment of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War a moral disaster? What about the execution of an innocent person? What about the supposed decline of traditional family values?

The answer, perhaps, is a kind of pragmatic reverse utilitarianism which seeks to reduce violence in society to the minimum possible level, in lieu of trying to maximize utility. Utility or happiness is, after all, a fairly woolly concept and one open to flying accusations that there are ‘higher’ or ‘lower’ forms of happiness for reasons founded in morals or aesthetics. Violence, by comparison, is pretty clear cut. No doubt the idea is rife with problems – both logical and pragmatic – but it is something that seems worthy of consideration.

PS. Please note that these pictures have nothing to do with the posts in which they are embedded. They are just nice portraits from CF2 that I wanted to include in the blog. The very best photos will appear on Photo.net once I get my lovely Mac back.

Dangerous Afghan skies

I was talking with Edwina today about the possibility that the British Hawker-Siddeley Nimrod MR2 reconnaissance aircraft that crashed in Afghanistan recently was shot down by a FIM-92 Stinger missile, as Taliban representatives claimed. Fourteen British airmen were killed in the crash: the largest single day loss of British military personnel since the Falklands War. Given the ongoing presence of the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan and the famous provision of about 500 of these surface-to-air missiles to the Mujaheddin by the CIA during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, it is a question with contemporary relevance for Canadians.

Under construction since 1981 by the Raytheon Corporation (which also makes the washers and dryers used in residences at the University of British Columbia), the Stinger missile has a range of about 4800 metres and a maximum altitude of about 3800 – well below the cruising altitude of commercial aircraft. The Stinger seeks targets using an infrared homing system and is propelled using a two-stage chemical rocket. The homing system is thus vulnerable to flares used as decoy heat signatures, as well as to the reduction of an aircraft’s thermal profile through mechanisms like the internally mounted turbofan engines on vehicles like the B-2 Spirit Bomber, not that the Canadian Forces will or should get any of those.

Most of the reporting on the crash says that it was the result of a technical fault. This is the position that has been taken officially by NATO and the RAF, while the Taliban has claimed that it shot the plane down. There were Taliban fighters in the area, as evidenced by the rapidity with which the British Special Air Service (SAS) commandos were dispatched to destroy any secret electronic equipment that survived the malfunction and subsequent crash. Of course, it would be especially embarrassing to have a £100 million plane shot down and fourteen British soldiers killed by a $26,000 missile that was given to your enemies by the country with whom the Blair government is so loyally and controversially allied. As with the earlier discussion on conspiracy theories, we are left with little means for analyzing the official reports aside from our own intuition about which sources are trustworthy and which explanations are credible.

Whether the crash was an accident (as seems most plausible) or the result of enemy action, the dangers of continued military operations in Afghanistan are demonstrated. Even with complete air superiority, powerful allies, and all the other advantages of being in a superpower coalition, Canadian, British, and American soldiers will continue to die in Afghanistan until such a time as we decide to leave that country to the government and warlords who effectively control it today.

On Esperanto

One of the world’s more interesting examples of a market failure is the general inability of Esperanto to secure its intended role as a universal second language. If a great many people spoke Esperanto, it would be reasonably worthwhile to devote one’s time to learning it. Knowing that there was even a 30% chance that a random person encountered in Estonia or Italy or Japan would speak it, the energetic traveller or businessperson would have a pretty good incentive to learn at least a bit. If few people do, conversely, it is not worth anyone’s time. This is what economists call a network effect: having a fax machine when nobody else does is not very useful. Likewise, having a telephone or internet connection. The more people subscribe to any such network, the more valuable the network becomes to everyone. Such networks tend to explode in usage once they cross a critical threshold of popularity. Since the development of a base of speakers generally depends on such individual choices, it remains perpetually stuck at a low level of usage.

The idea of an invented universal second language is appealing for many reasons. While English has certainly emerged as a world language, it is not without significant cultural baggage. The forces that spread English – from the British empire to American ascendancy and the dominance of English cultural and technological materials – are inevitably connected with structures of dominance and submission in the world. While Esperanto does borrow from other languages, it seems sensible to say that it is free of at least a good portion of this kind of baggage.

Another serious issue related to second languages is how quickly they shrivel when not used. Much as I would like to avoid forgetting French, it is very hard to maintain in the absence of a need to use it. My French has never really been good enough to read French newspapers or literature without the aid of a dictionary. Now, in an environment where I am virtually never exposed to the language, my knowledge is fading quickly indeed. If everyone spoke one common language, it is quite likely that you would be exposed to it often enough to gain and maintain facility in its use.

The message is simple, then: Rest of the world, please learn Esperanto. Once two billion or so of you have, I will set upon the task myself.

PS. I promise this will be the last post during this slightly over-active day of blogging.

Vancouver’s safe injection site

I was glad to read today that the safe injection site for heroin in Vancouver has received approval from the federal minister of health, Tony Clement, to remain open until December 2007. Safe injection sites represent what I see as the most intelligent approach to dealing with addictive drugs, namely that of harm reduction. Given the enormous amount of harm that arises from activities peripheral to drug use, this is an approach with real promise.

By providing clean facilities and sterile needles, such sites reduce the probabilities of the transmission of infectious disease through intravenous drug use. Given the ever-rising numbers of people with AIDS and Hepatitis C, this is an incontrovertible benefit. Dr. Julio Montaner, director of the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS has said, of this facility:

The supervised injection site has saved lives, has optimized the use of medical services by entrenched addicts who are sick because of their addiction, has decreased risky behaviors that promote HIV spread, hepatitis C and others, has diminished the inappropriate use of medical resources, has not had a negative impact attracting news users, promoting drug use.

More generally, safe injection sites provide a window for public health authorities into lives that would generally be concealed from them: a glimpse that can only be afforded on the basis that those being helped can be sure they will not be turned over to the police.

Those sites that actually provide addicts with heroin generate additional benefits. Firstly, doing so eliminates the need on the part of addicts to generate funds to sustain a drug habit. Since those funds are likely to be generated in illegal ways, this reduces the amount of crime associated with drug use. Secondly, since distributional channels are often controlled by organized crime, giving addicts means of circumventing them reduces the income and influence of these groups. Given the enormous corrupting power organized crime groups have on governments and police forces, this is most welcome. Such groups are also notoriously violent, and prone to engaging in bloody competition with one another, as well as perpetuating other criminal activities related to the practice or profits of the distribution of illegal drugs. The fact that the Vancouver Police Department has repeatedly expressed support for the safe injection site demonstrates that the arguments about crime reduction have merit. On Clement’s politically risky decision, they supported him “for making a very difficult decision on a complex issue, and for the care with which it has approached it.”

In the end, criminalizing drug use is a strategy where the intuitive appeal falters on the shoals of practical considerations. Countries that have vigorously pursued the enforcement of drug laws – especially the United States – have increased their prison populations while doing little to deal with the underlying issues. Given the reduced life prospects for anyone who has been convicted, as well as the toxic and criminally encouraging environment inside many prisons, such policies generate further harmful knock-on effects.

I am glad that drug policy is an area where Canada has generally been able to steer its own course, subject to the occasional frantic denouncement from across the border. It shows that Canadian values like compassion and pragmatism can be applied successfully even in policy areas that are frequently the source of vitriol and extreme polarization.

Canadian Liberal leadership race

Despite having lived in Canada for more than twenty years, and being interested in all matters political for much of that time, I really don’t know a great deal about Canadian politics. This is especially true of the raft of individuals who comprise Canada’s political elite; I could definitely tell you more about, say, Tom Daschle and Barack Obama than any of their Canadian equivalents. References that people like Tim, Tristan, Spencer, and Emily make regularly leave me with no idea of what they are talking about. That probably has something to do with a lifetime in which I have skipped straight to the ‘international’ section of the newspaper, followed by ‘United States,’ and then ‘science.’ I rationalize it to myself on the basis of the general hope that Canada will muddle through on its own and that if something really spectacular is going on, I will hear about it anyway.

In a bid to partially reverse this long time trend, I have decided to learn a bit about Michael Ignatieff: at least to the point where I can endorse or reject him as a possible leader for the federal Liberal party and, by extension, a possible Prime Minister. To that end, I am now reading his book Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism. It seems to be more about the world in general than about Canada specifically, but it should at least lay bare some of his assumptions and modes of thinking.

To those much more aware of this contest than I am, which of the other potential Liberal leaders are worthy of some examination?

On conspiracy theories

Partly prompted by a Penn and Teller episode, and partly by a post written by my friend Tristan, I have been thinking about conspiracy theories today. On what basis can we as individuals accept or refute them? Let’s take some examples that Penn and Teller raise: the reality of the moon landings, the nature of the JFK assassination, and the nature of the September 11th attacks. It should be noted that this is the worst episode of theirs I have ever seen. It relies largely upon arguments based on emotion, backed by the testimony of people to whom Penn and Teller accord expert status, rather than a logical or empirical demonstration of why these theories should be considered false.

Normally, our understanding of such phenomena is mediated through experts. When someone credible makes a statement about the nature of what took place, it provides some evidence for believing it. Penn and Teller amply demonstrate that there are lots of crazy and disreputable people who believe that the moon landing was faked, some strange conspiracy led to the death of JFK, and CIA controlled drones and explosives were used to carry out the September 11th attacks. That said, it hardly disproves those things. Plenty of certifiably insane people believe that the universe is expanding, that humans and viruses have a common biological ancestor, and that any whole number can be generated by adding powers of two (365 = 2^8 + 2^6 + 2^5 + 2^3 +2^2 + 2^0). That doesn’t make any of those things false.

We really have three mechanisms to work with:

Empirical evidence
Logical reasoning
Heuristic methods

As individuals confronted with questions like those above, we almost always use the third. While those with a powerful telescope and the right coordinates could pick out all the junk we left on the moon, most people lack the means. Likewise, those with a rifle, a melon, and some time can learn the physics behind why Kennedy moved the way he did when he was shot, despite Oliver Stone‘s theories to the contrary. Finally, someone with some steel beams, jet fuel, and mathematical and engineering knowledge can model the collapse of the twin towers as induced by heat related weakening of steel to their heart’s content. Normally, however, we must rely upon experts to make these kinds of judgements for us, whether on the basis of sound technique or not.

Logical reasoning is great, but when applied strictly cannot get us very far. Most of what people call ‘logic’ is actually probabalistic reasoning. Strict logic can tell us about things that are necessary and things that are impossible. If every senior member of the American administration is controlled by an alien slug entity, and all alien slug entitites compel their hosts to sing “Irish Eyes are Smiling” once a day, we can logically conclude that all members of the American administration sing “Irish Eyes are Smiling” every day. Likewise, if all bats are bugs, all non-bugs must be non-bats. Entirely logically valid, but not too useful.

A heuristic reasoning device says something along the lines of: “In the more forty years or so since the moon landing, nobody has brought forward credible evidence that they were faked. As such, it is likely that they were not.” Occam’s razor works on the same kind of principle. This is often the best kind of analysis we can manage as individuals, and it is exactly this that makes conspiracy theories so difficult to dislodge. Once you adopt a different logic of probability, for instance one where certain people will stop at nothing to keep the truth hidden, your probabilistic reasoning gets thrown out of whack.

How, then, should we deal with competing testimony from ‘experts’ of various sorts, and with the fallout of our imperfect ability to access and understand the world as individuals? If there was a pat and easy answer to this question, it would be enormously valuable. Alas, there is not, and we are left to try and reach judgments on the basis of our own, imperfect, capabilities.

PS. For the record, I believe that the moon was almost certainly walked upon by humans, that Oswald quite probably shot John F. Kennedy on his own initiative, and that the airplanes listed in the 9/11 report as having crashed where they did actually did so. My reasons for believing these things are almost entirely heuristic.

Back to the moon? But why?

Apparently, Lockheed-Martin got the contract to serve as prime contractor for a return to the moon, and possibly further travel from there to Mars. Now, when I first heard the ‘back to the moon’ proposal, I assumed it was electoral fluff. How can an agency that decided to scrap such a useful piece of scientific equipment as the Hubble Space Telescope possibly be considering the scientifically pointless mission of putting human beings back on the moon?

I believe that humanity will eventually expand outwards into space. It is advisable due to the small but catastrophic risk of asteroid or comet impact, as well as generally in keeping with an agenda of exploration that I find personally inspiring. The first moon landings were an astonishing demonstration of human ingenuity and American technical and economic might. With present technology, manned spaceflight is a symbolic and political endeavour, not a scientific one. That said, returning to the moon serves no purpose, scientific or political. If we could do it in the 1960s, we can do it again now. Even if you accept the argument that a moon base is necessary for a manned mission to Mars, the enormous question remains of why we should take on such an expedition at this time, with this technology, and the present financial circumstances of the United States.

When it comes to space science, people are very expensive and delicate instruments. Robots might not always work (note all the failed Mars landers), but they don’t require all the food, air, space, and temperature and acceleration control that people do. The things we hope to learn about our solar system and the space beyond are almost certainly better investigated by robots, at this time. And the moon is hardly a profitable place to go looking for new scientific insights. A robot sent somewhere interesting – like Europa – would almost certainly advance science more than sending scores of people to that great airless ball that lights up our night sky and causes our tides.

This plan is especially absurd given the magnitude of public debt in the United States right now. The existing level of federal debt is more than $8.5 trillion, more than $28,000 per person, and the federal budget is sharply in deficit. If we could choose to send people to the moon instead of developing one of the two hugely expensive fighter jets now being rolled out (the F-22 and the Joint Strike Fighter, a $256 billion program), I would be all for it. At least, going back to the moon would do relatively little harm (wasted resources aside). Of course, no such trade-off is being offered. This would be spending over and above the sums already being expended on pricey little projects like the JSF, the DDX destroyer (about $4 billion per ship), and the war in Iraq (more than $300 billion, so far). The comparison to military hardware is a sensible one, since manned spaceflight is, to a large extent, just another massive subsidy to the military aerospace industry. Hopefully, the passing of the mid-term elections will put this white elephant to sleep again.