Category: Politics

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

Shue on intergenerational climate responsibility and vulnerability

“Doing nothing” about climate change in the sense of simply continuing business as usual is — far from actually doing nothing — continuing to change the environmental conditions that future generations will face for the worst. To persist in the activities that make climate change worse, and thereby make living conditions for future generations worse, is not merely to decline to provide protection. It is to inflict danger, and to inflict it on people who are vulnerable to us and to whom we are invulnerable. The relationship is entirely asymmetric: they are at our mercy, but we are out of their reach. Causation runs through time in only one direction. Lucky for us.

Shue, Henry. “Deadly Delays, Saving Opportunities” in Pachauri, Rajendra Kumar, Stephen Gardiner, Simon Caney, Dale Jamieson, and Henry Shue. Climate Ethics: Essential Readings. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. p. 151

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America’s constitutional crisis

Some people are saying that Trump’s contestation of election results is just a way to soothe the pain of defeat and raise money for campaign debts, but the statements of high-ranking Republicans show that analysis to be unduly complacent.

Specifically, I mean secretary of state Mike Pompeo promising: “There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration” and senate majority leader Mitch McConnell saying Trump is “100% within his rights” to challenge the election.

Trump appointees are hampering the transition process for the Biden administration, likely with the intent to sap their ability to get anything done in the first 100 days which are considered so crucial to any presidency’s ability to implement an agenda. Meanwhile, US COVID-19 numbers are exploding and raising the spectre that, just as much of the promise of reform under Obama was undermined by the need to resolve the Bush-era 2008 financial crisis, Biden will inherit an out-of-control pandemic and a population half-primed to see medical precautions as oppression.

I think it’s already clear that America has been permanently weakened by the Trump administration, both domestically through their erosion of governance norms and self-dealing and internationally through cynical, short-sighted, and transactional diplomacy. That damage has already been badly worsened by threatening the peaceful transfer of power, and may be still more if a Biden administration gets constantly stymied by a hostile Republican senate. America’s strength depends on the norm that the party that gets defeated in elections accepts the legitimacy of the winners. If the country shifts to a pattern where every change of party is rejected by the other as crooked and illegitimate, the foundation of America as one polity will be undermined and fractured.

The nightmare possibility remains that Trump will exhort his supporters to violence during or at the end of the transition period, or that after they turn to violence based on the encouragement so far Trump will support them. The risk of America’s election ending in mass violence persists.

Strident progressivism versus incrementalist centrism

The debate on the left about what lessons to take from the 2020 US election has the same contours as the main debate within climate change activism, with one side arguing that the success of the right demonstrates that Democrats have compromised too much with Republicans while a strongly progressive candidate and platform would have done better with voters while the other argues that since most of the available votes are to the right of progressives the Democrats’ promotion of policies which appeal to their most fervent base turns off centrist voters while energizing the conservative base.

This is a lot like the debate between climate justice advocates who favour a broadly intersectional progressive agenda including economic redistribution and the endorsement of a broad range of social justice causes and climate-energy or CO2-energy advocates who think the most plausible path to success is to remain focused narrowly on climate in ways calculated to not offend or challenge those with more conservative political views.

Since both arguments rely on counterfactuals (if only we had done this or that) the debate is hard to resolve. Either can be reconciled with the political outcomes we have observed, though each has contradictory implications for what the best approach moving forward is.

On climate specifically, I think one crucial element is the ability of decarbonization policies to endure between changes of government and party. If decarbonization is integrated into a progressive left agenda there is both the risk that the elements with more immediate political benefits will be given priority over the more painful changes needed to deal with climate change and the danger that the next right-wing government will dismantle the whole assembly.

To function, democracies need a consensus that the decisions of past governments were legitimate and that society as a whole needs predictability in what laws and regulations will be in force so that they can make appropriate long-term decisions. The historical pattern so far in climate change policies has been to see comparatively ambitious but still dreadfully inadequate proposals from left-wing governments and then their dismantling and contradiction by succeeding right-wing governments. Breaking out of that pattern somehow seems like our only path to the durable consensus on decarbonization which will need to hold for decades if we’re to avoid catastrophic climate change.

As the votes are counted

Nearly half of Americans prefer an incompetent authoritarian to a Democrat who was selected primarily for being able to appeal to moderates.

Even before we know the election results, this is establishing the contours for US politics in the years ahead. For instance, everybody knows that president Trump has lawsuits on hold while he is in office. If he does lose and leave office, and then suddenly faces a barrage of lawsuits about taxes, corruption in office, and other misdeeds, it’s probable that much of the country will see it as political retribution and interpret it as a sign of authoritarianism on the other side, or legitimation to prosecute their own political opponents.

A lot will turn on the senate, which is still too close to call. A Biden presidency with a tied or GOP senate won’t be able to implement much of a mandate, disappointing supporters on the left and emboldening the strategy of obstruction which already blocked president Obama’s attempted final supreme court nominee before helping to force through Trump’s.

Our fond hopes that the US electorate would rebuke and renounce Trump are already dashed. Americans have chosen to say that his conduct is within the acceptable bounds of politics, making it more of a template for the future. Watching from a country as vulnerable to US instability as Canada, it’s hard not to be afraid.

British Columbia’s 2020 election

I’m not celebrating NDP premier John Horgan’s successful gamble on an election to secure a majority government. For one thing, I think minority governments which sometimes seek support from the Greens are likely to enact more responsible climate change policies. For another, I have been consistently frustrated by the NDP’s inconsistent and inadequate positions on climate change.

Both federally and provincially I think it would be desirable for the left-wing parties (Liberals, NDP, and Greens) to adopt a Pact for Humanity in which they pledge to at least keep in place their predecessors’ climate change mitigation policies. That would help give some certainty to industries, municipalities, and individuals who are deciding whether to invest in fossil fuel infrastructure or alternatives. Of course, there would still be uncertainty from possible future Conservative governments which will roll everything back, but it’s better than having the left remain split on what approach to take and left-wing parties competing with each other about whether to support industry at the expense of the environment, keep tightening carbon restrictions in line with the best scientific and economic advice, or keep jumping unproductively between one approach to GHG regulation and another.

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COVID in winter

Toronto is returning to a partial COVID lockdown because of rising case numbers.

It has limited practical effect on me since I have been in isolation anyway since early March, only going out for groceries and socially distanced walks for exercise.

I suppose the pandemic and the public policy response will always be subject to multiple interpretations. I can’t recall any comparable disease control measures in my lifetime, so you could say that the world has responded with unprecedented energy. At the same time, the pandemic is a constant reminder of how many people put their own comparatively unimportant preferences (like for entertainment and variety) ahead of protecting themselves and others, limiting the effectiveness of public health measures and extending this entire unpleasant experience for everyone. Like climate change, the pandemic provides endless examples of people who begin with what they want to do and then choose beliefs which are compatible.

All told, the behaviour of governments and populations highlights how poorly human beings respond to slow and generalized threats, as opposed to the fast and personal kind. That’s not an encouraging precedent at a time when the future of humanity is in jeopardy if we cannot cooperate, moderate our selfish desires, and do what’s necessary to control the problem.

Is plastic recycled?

There’s a story doing the rounds about how plastic recycling has always been a scam. Consumers started to get concerned about the ecological consequences of throwing plastic away and — despite knowing it was infeasible and uneconomical to actually recycle — they slapped little logos on everything implying that they can and will be recycled, thus alleviating the consumer concern without doing anything about the problem.

NPR’s Planet Money did a show on whether recycling is worthwhile at all.

In particular, people argue that recycling as a solution suits the corporate agenda by shifting responsibility from the firms creating the problem to individuals, regardless of whether they are at all positioned to make things better. This can be equated to the ‘carbon footprint’ idea and the approach to climate change mitigation based on individual action, helping the fossil fuel industry avoid regulation and responsibility.

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UBC warns of the dangers of international online learning

I cannot recall hearing about a warning like this before:

Some UBC courses might cover topics that are censored or considered illegal by non-Canadian government… This may include, but is not limited to, human rights, representative government, defamation, obscenity, gender or sexuality, and historical or current geopolitical controversies… Students should be mindful that when they partake in class discussions or communicate to the members of the class, that for some students living abroad, sensitive material might result in repercussions.

It has been sad to watch the hopeful vision of an unfettered global internet linking together humanity collide with the interests and increasing willingness to intervene of governments. I don’t think it’s plausible, but it would be great if the next-generation satellite internet providers like StarLink would be willing to provide access to everyone underneath their constellation without government censorship and firewalls.

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