The environment – Page 67 – a sibilant intake of breath

Dinosaur demise historiography

At the Ottawa Museum of Nature the other day, I saw their video presentation on the demise of dinosaurs. It was interesting to compare it with videos I saw as a child on the same topic. The ones I remember were claymation productions, put out by the National Film Board of Canada. This one was computer animated, and used multimedia effects like fans to simulate the shockwave from the Yucatan asteroid collision.

More than in videos I can recall, this one stressed that both birds and mammals already existed when the extinction of dinosaurs took place. It also included a couple of references to the paleoclimate, describing some of the ways in which the Cretaceous Earth differed from the modern form. The film was also forthright in describing some enduring scientific uncertainties, such as how long it took after the impact for the dinosaurs to actually die.

The Museum of Nature is a pretty great place, even though they removed the live frog exhibit which was my favourite part. They have a rather excellent gift shop that sells – among other things – hand puppets shaped like crabs and very affordable large actual fossils.

Understanding complex dynamic systems

Complex dynamic systems are the most difficult things in the universe to understand because they are bundles of relationships that interact in complex ways. It’s easiest to explain what they are through an example. Think of the Earth’s climate. It has discrete elements like incoming sunlight and the physical properties of water. The elements interact in complex ways that vary with time. Water forms clouds and icesheets which affect the reflection of light. The amount of ice on Earth has an effect on the totality of life on Earth, which then interacts in complex ways with other elements of the climate system: the erosion of rock, the composition of the atmosphere, etc, etc, etc.

Understanding a complex dynamic system at all is challenging. For instance, there is the task of understanding all the interactions that are ongoing when something is in a steady state. The level of complexity jumps when you consider the totality of steady and unsteady states, and all the ways by which they can turn into one another.

It seems arguable that the main task of thinking entities in the universe is to better understand complex dynamic systems. That understanding is always partial – akin to the French concept of connaitre rather than the concept of savoir. You can write down the totality of a person’s phone number on a piece of paper, but you can only express a partial view of what ‘Paris’ or ‘German’ or ‘physics’ is. In addition, it seems that complex dynamic systems are nested and that if we want to be able to behave intelligently in the world, we need to have some kind of understanding of all of them:

The rules of the universe: gravitation, electromagnetism, the nature of matter, etc
The physical Earth: the composition of the planet, and the way physical elements interact
The totality of life on Earth: genetics, behaviour, the history of life, etc
The human body: cells, organs, genes, the endocrine system, the physical brain, etc
The human mind: cognition, politics, economics, creativity, etc

At some point in history, it may be necessary and useful to consider the physical and/or mental characteristics of life from places other than the Earth.

The better a particular being understands each of these complex dynamic systems, the more capable they are of acting effectively in the world (a concept that presumes the existence of intentions, which ties back to each of the dynamic systems under consideration). Understanding them all better is thus a strategy capable of advancing the achievement of any conceivable goal, with the possible exception of intentional laziness or the avoidance of mentally taxing work.

Should the Green Party have a full platform?

Apparently, the Green Party has a position on income splitting. If this seems a bit random and disconnected from the environment, it is also reflective of a controversial question about what the party ought to be.

Given our first-past-the-post electoral system, the Green Party is never likely to elect many MPs. At the same time, the party has a reasonably large number of supporters – quite possibly more supporters across Canada than the Bloc Quebecois. I would argue that the main message these voters are sending is that Canada needs to take better care of the environment, and prioritize the development of a sustainable society more than we do now. I don’t think they are really endorsing their personal Green candidates, for the most part, or even that they are endorsing the overall Green platform.

Since they will never form a government (barring major constitutional reform, or a huge realignment of voter preferences), it seems there is a strong case to be made for the Greens sticking to their core message and not campaigning on unrelated issues (except as individual candidates, if they wish). It seems like taking a stance on environmentally unrelated things could lead to voters who disagree on those peripheral issues rejecting the party. If the Green Party took a strong stance on an issue like whether Canada should (or should not) have intervened in Libya, the risk is that they would be broadening their message somewhat pointlessly and alienating potential supporters. The Green Party isn’t about income splitting, or intellectual property rights, or criminal justice policy. There may be areas in which policies in this area have environmental effects – and it makes sense for the Greens to comment on them in those senses – but I don’t see the sense in them unnecessarily adopting political positions outside their area of core competency.

What do others think? Would the Greens be a more effective force for driving improved environmental policies if they focus on that area exclusively, or does seeking to be a party with a comprehensive platform actually make more sense for them given the nature of our electoral system and what they want to achieve?

Freedoms and loyalties

Modern political life is complicated, in terms of the obligations and allegiances people possess. For instance, it is entirely sensible to say that a person has simultaneous and differing obligations toward family, friends, co-workers, fellow citizens, humanity as a whole, and even all of nature. These obligations can be contradictory. For instance, one’s family might be best served by choices that would harm fellow citizens or humanity as a whole.

There is an important distinction between freedoms in the abstract and freedoms in practice. For instance, one might have the right to legal counsel but be financially unable to secure adequate representation (especially in civil matters). Similarly, the most fundamental of abstract freedoms – sovereignty over one’s own mind and body – are frequently interfered with by states. Despite that interference, however, I think the logic underlying them is sound. What happens to a person’s body and mind should be up to that person. If another person or a government forces something upon you without your informed consent, they have violated important rights, even if they were trying to do good. That’s not an assertion of the fundamental validity of rights, but rather part of a utilitarian calculus. It’s simply the case that a world where the fundamental rights of individuals are respected is better than a world in which they are violated and ignored. It’s the collectivity of outcomes that really matters, but the collectivity is often served best by treating all individuals decently.

It seems to me that our highest loyalty should be to humanity as a whole, or perhaps to the collection of all species with a reasonably rich mental life. It is impossible to behave unethically toward an inanimate object. Crushing a rock to powder can only be a problem if, in so doing, you negatively affect the mental lives of thinking beings. At the same time, there are many smaller groups of humans that demand and frequency receive loyalty, often manifested in behaviours that harm humanity as a whole.

There are clear-cut examples of this: if you are in the army and ordered to use biological weapons against a civilian population, you have been placed in a situation where someone is asserting that your loyalty to them should trump the concern you have for other living beings. In such circumstances, it seems admirable to refuse by asserting the greater importance of loyalty to humanity compared with loyalty to your army or loyalty to your country.

Ultimately, we are all in a complicated ethical position. We have sovereignty over our bodies and minds, but we never have individual security. We are all vulnerable to the will of others and, in cases where it contradicts our own will, we do not have the power to resist the whole world. We will also frequently be punished for obeying higher loyalties rather than lower ones, partly because an important way through which lower loyalties are maintained in the general population is by punishing those that violate them (though consent accompanies coercion in most systems of control).

On the basis of our particular combination of capabilities and options, all we can do is try to behave in the way that best respects our ethical obligations, such as they can be determined on the basis of determined and selfless examination.

‘Bling Boxes’

You may recall the much-hyped ‘Bloom Box’ which promised to be a climate change solution, but which mostly just shifted natural gas burning from big central facilities to a handful of small distributed ones.

More promising is the air capture and sequestration system developed by Bling Box Systems. Their system takes advantage of the 1797 discovery that diamonds are composed of pure carbon, along with the High-Pressure High-Temperature (HPHT) synthesis process developed by General Electric and others in the 1970s. The internet-equipped Bling Box calculates the annual carbon footprint of the individual or family who it belongs to, and then uses an amine process to separate an equivalent quantity of carbon dioxide (CO2) from ambient air. It then uses a patented process to subject the gas to over ten gigapascals of pressure (compared with about 100 kilopascals for ordinary atmospheric pressure), inducing the transformation of the CO2 gas into diamonds made of pure carbon, along with oxygen gas.

Naturally, the amine separation and HPHT processing take up energy themselves. Bling Boxes are configured to calculate the associated emissions based on the electricity generation mix in the area where they are installed. They then produce additional gems to compensate. This ‘bonus bling’ can actually be more massive than the ordinary offset variety, for people living in areas where electricity comes from carbon-intensive sources like coal-fired power plants. People living in areas with lots of wind farms or nuclear power stations will find themselves with smaller heaps of bonus bling at the end of the year.

The oxygen produced by the Bling Boxes can also be put to use: for instance, in equipping an oxygen bar or tent for the use of the owners of the device.

The deployment of Bling Boxes is set to substantially alter the global market for diamonds. Even before taking into account bonus bling, the average Canadian’s Bling Box would produce about 23,000 kg worth of diamonds per year. For the sake of comparison, an African Elephant weighs about 5,000 to 6,000 kg. If they become universal, Canada as a whole would be putting out about 700 billion kilograms worth of stones, bonus bling excluded. That compares with a global total of about 26,000 kg of diamonds mined around the world each year. Each Canadian emitter will be a De Beers unto themselves.

As the technology is deployed globally, bling production will increase still further. Total human CO2 production is sitting at around thirty billion tonnes per year. Converted into bling, that would represent about a million years worth of diamond mining, produced each and every year until humanity changes its sources of energy. Diamond output at that scale would swamp any conceivable set of uses for the stones, so I expect they will mostly end up being dumped into depleted oil and gas reservoirs, and perhaps injected into underground aquifers. Diamond-based carbon capture and storage (DBCCS) would have many advantages over plans to inject the carbon underground in gas or liquid form. For instance, there would be no risk of suffocating leaks.

By changing the economics of the global diamond market substantially, Bling Boxes do risk undermining the traditional role of the clear stones as a girl’s best friend. The ability of these rocks to not lose their shape (whether square cut or pear-shaped) will be less impressive when the world is liberally scattered with billions of fist-sized stones. As such, material girls are advised to shift their preferred form of wealth storage before Bling Boxes become commonplace. There is no reason to believe that the deployment of this technology will undermine the traditional relationship between boys having cold hard cash and them being Mr. Right.

Radiation threats to health

I must admit to being perplexed when I see sentences in news stories like: “TEPCO vice-president Sakae Muto said, however, the plutonium 238, 239 and 240 collected were not in concentrations harmful to human health.”

While I am far from being an expert, it seems to me like at least some of the discussion of the risks from radiation is misleading. In particular, I think it is a bit misleading to pretend that radiation is a homogenous mass like a magnetic field. In reality, the radionucleotides that have been released from Fukushima are solids and gases getting blown around in the wind. They are less like the fading signal from a cell phone tower as you walk away, and more like a person’s ashes that have been scattered into the wind. You can take an average measure for the amount of radiation in an area, but that doesn’t give you a good sense of how much exposure a person will get if they inhale or ingest a random batch of windswept particles.

This seems especially true when it comes to plutonium. Imagine a little speck of plutonium that was part of a burning MOX fuel rod in the Number 3 reactor at Fukushima. Burning zircaloy cladding on the fuel rods could have shifted it into a puff of radioactive smoke that either escaped through a crack in the reactor’s containment or was intentionally vented as part of ongoing efforts to cool the reactors. If that little speck ends up in your lung, it certainly seems as though it would be a danger to your health.

Am I totally off base here?

Environmentalism and the anthropocene

The term ‘environmentalist’ is not consistently applied. In some circumstances, it is such a generic concept that it would include virtually everybody. If you don’t think we should fill the Grand Canyon with radioactive waste, perhaps you are an environmentalist. In other places, ‘environmentalist’ is a dirty word that politicians feel the need to distance themselves from, using labels like ‘conservationist’.

At the same time, there is enormous disagreement on the scale at which changes in environmental policy and behaviour need to take place. There seem to be people who genuinely think that things like plastic grocery bags are the true environmental scourges of our age (a sort of local environmentalism), but who do not see the planet as a whole as imperilled by human behaviour.

The term ‘anthropocene’ refers to the new geological era in which humanity is the most powerful force affecting what happens on Earth. We are much more influential now than the slow forces that made the climate change in the past. Barring an impact from a meteor or asteroid – or perhaps some kind of megavolcanic event – humanity will remain firmly in charge for the foreseeable future.

Perhaps we need another word for people who recognize this: that in an important sense there is no ‘wilderness’ left, and that the fate of the entire planet now comes down to human decisions. Recognizing this doesn’t mean that you care a lot about nature or wilderness – or even about humanity. It is just a recognition that on this spinning ball of iron (with a glaze of water on the surface and a whiff of atmosphere around) there are about seven billion bipedal primates who are running the show, albeit without a great deal of long-term thinking, ethical deliberation, or wisdom.

The Moral Landscape

Traditionally, science is understood as having limited authority on ethical questions. While scientific knowledge is useful for understanding the world better – including in ways that change our moral thinking – the idea that you can have a scientific answer to a moral question is usually rejected. That position is itself rejected by Sam Harris in The Moral Landscape: How Science can Determine Human Values. Harris argues that we can use science to develop an objective sense of what is good for human beings and what is not, and that we can judge various practices using that scale. The book sharply and effectively criticizes both religious perspectives on the nature of the world and moral relativism. Indeed, the author’s principle project seems to be the development of a non-religious alternative to relativism, based around cognitive science. For the most part, his argument strikes me as a convincing one. That, in turn, has some important implications for political debates.

Harris’ book is a complex one that makes many different arguments and points. Often, he is able to illustrate his logic through clear examples, though some of them feel a bit cliched. He could also have devoted more attention to criticizing intuitive moral reasoning within western societies. He manages some elegant and convincing rebuttals, such as his response to the scapegoat problem on page 79 of the hardcover edition.

One key element of Harris’ argument is the view that it is the conscious life of animals that matters, when it comes to the basis of ethics: “[Q]uestions about values – about meaning, morality, and life’s larger purpose – are really questions about the well-being of conscious creatures”. He argues this point convincingly, and suggests that we can build from that claim and from factual understanding of cognitive science to robust ethical judgements. Harris pays relatively little attention to non-human animals, but that is clearly an area into which such thinking can be extended, when it comes to questions like factory farming or veganism. Harris says that: “The only thing wrong with injustice is that it is, on same level, actually or potentially bad for people”. A richer ethical theory might incorporate the interests of other conscious organisms in some way.

Some of Harris’ concerns do seem a bit exaggerated. For instance, when he walks about the danger of “the societies of Europe” being “refashion[ed]” into “a new Caliphate”. He also has a bit too much faith in the power of brain scans as they now exist. Being able to track which parts of the brain receive more blood flow than others is useful, but doesn’t necessarily allow us to develop nuanced pictures of complex ideas and thought processes. As such, his argument that since functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans of people thinking about mathematical equations resemble those of people considering ethical propositions, we should consider that evidence that the two are similar things.

Ultimately, the argument made in The Moral Landscape is utilitarian. We can come to know the basics of what makes up a good human life, and we should arrange states and global society so that people can experience them (and so that they avoid experiencing the worst things, like slavery and total personal insecurity). He makes the important point that we cannot expect to know all the consequences of particular choices, but we can nonetheless reach firm conclusions about important problems. Societies that provide education for women are better than societies that keep them in ignorance. That claim can be justified, according to Harris, by carefully examining the mental lives of people living in both kinds of society.

In particular, Harris highlights how societies that are based upon secular ethics consistently do better in measurable ways than those which are most explicitly modeled on religious ethics. “Countries like Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and the Netherlands”, Harris explains, “which are consistently the most atheistic societies on earth – consistently rate better tan religious nations on measures like like expectancy, infant mortality, crime, literacy, GDP, child welfare, economic equality, economic competitiveness, gender equality, health care, investments in education, rates of university enrollment, internet access, environmental protection, lack of corruption, political stability, and charity to poorer nations, etc”. He attributes the claim to P. Zuckerman’s 2008 book Society Without God.

Harris’ purpose is not a dispassionate one, focused on description. He says clearly that: “[c]hanging people’s ethical commitments… is the most important task facing humanity in the twenty-first century”. I am not sure if I quite agree. You can argue that people need to change the fundamental basis of their ethical views in order to deal with a world of 6.7 billion people. Alternatively, you can see the problem as the disconnect between the choices people make and the ethical views they already possess. If people could directly see the consequences of their choices, I think their existing ethical systems would often drive them to behave otherwise. It is because the consequences are mostly hidden – largely imposed on people in other places, and in the future – that people often make choices that are so oblivious to the harm they are forcing upon other conscious creatures. Harris argues that “one of the great tasks of civilization is to create cultural mechanisms that protect us from the moment-to-moment failures of our ethical intuitions”. I think that is especially true when it comes to economics, public policy, and the environment.

Why not a world of 690 million?

As David MacKay’s book describes in detail, producing enough energy for everyone on Earth to live like the average European is possible using renewable forms of energy, though it would require a colossal effort and the conversion of a huge amount of land into renewable energy facilities like wind farms and concentrating solar plants.

Given that, the case for reducing population size within rich economies seems even stronger. Would Canada really be a worse place if it had a population of 50% what it does now? What about 10%? As long as the transition was gradual and done in an appropriate way, it could lead to a world in which there are more resources available per person, where the planet is better suited to dealing with our wastes, and where more of the planet can be left in some kind of a wild state, rather than converted for human purposes. Rather than cities that constantly spill beyond green zones into sprawling suburbs, we could live comfortably in the facilities we already have. With fewer workers around, each would be able to demand higher wages and benefits. There would also be more capital available per person for investment.

With a global population 1/10th of the current size, there would obviously be fewer brains out there, so the absolute pace of innovation would probably slow. At the same time, it would give the planet some welcome relief from the relentless pressure than human beings put on it, and would offer an opportunity for humanity to learn to live in a sustainable way before it destroys itself.

If the average number of children per woman can be reduced to well below the replacement rate, a falling population could result. The means of encouraging that need not be coercive, and many of them are beneficial in themselves. Better sexual education can be provided, particularly for girls. Universal access to contraception can likewise be provided, at the same time as women are given better educational opportunities and better treatment in the workplace. Governments can halt policies intended to promote large families, and instead concentrate on the task of reducing the burden humanity is placing on the Earth to a level that can be borne indefinitely. It would also be nice if improved mechanisms were developed for men to control their fertility, including through the development of drugs akin to hormonal birth control pills, which allow for fertility to be temporarily suspended.

People often assume that population control in poor countries with fast-growing populations is the key issue, when it comes to population and the environment. That view misrepresents the relative impact of different lifestyles, and the level of inequality that exists when it comes to resource use and waste production. The most important thing is probably to have fewer absolute gluttons – like Canadians, Americans, and Australians – and to work on providing the energy needs of the people who remain using safe, renewable sources of energy.

China’s awkward environmental example

For the most part, the Chinese economy is fast-growing and filthy – rapidly constructing large numbers of the coal power plants that are doing the most to endanger the Earth’s climate. At the same time, China has also started to build and deploy renewable energy technologies faster than any other country. From what outsiders can tell, China’s secretive leadership do seem to be concerned about climate change and the exhaustible character of fossil fuels.

Of course, China’s system of government has enormous problems. China’s unelected leaders remain in power through force and the suppression of the population. Censorship is endemic, and many parts of the government seem to be corrupt and self-serving. China is also aggressive toward peaceful domestic organizations, as well as Tibet and Taiwan. It is not clear that China’s growth model is sustainable even in terms of politics, economics, and security – much less in terms of the environment. It is not inconceivable that the Chinese Communist Party could lose control of the country in the years or decades ahead, and it is completely unclear what would transpire if that took place.

How, then, should people in the West who are concerned about climate change talk about China? Politicians already worry about the performance of their home countries relative to that of China. For that reason, pointing out how many solar panels and wind turbines China is building could potentially goad them into taking more action. At the same time, there is some reason to be concerned that praising any element of Chinese behaviour is an endorsement of the entire Chinese system of government.

All told, I find that argument fairly unconvincing. We don’t need to accept or reject governments as taken all in all. We can be critical about decisions made even by countries which are our closest allies and which have accountable and effective forms of government. By the same token, we can condemn Chinese censorship and repression at the same time as we praise the efforts they are making to deploy renewable energy and try to tackle the problem of greenhouse gas pollution. Of course, we shouldn’t stop complaining about those coal power plants, either. China is shooting itself in the foot with those, just as we are when we build expensive fossil-fuel-powered facilities. In a couple of decades – when the frightening impacts of climate change are undeniably obvious – these costly facilities will need to be scrapped and replaced with the costly renewable facilities we should have built in the first place.