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Sustainability and the left

  
  

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diz
22:42 / 26.04.07
.trampetunia

Has anybody actually advocated this measure?

Or are people advocating the promotion and use of sustainable sources of power for these countries, along with our own?

A significant subset of the Peak Oil crowd (e.g. Kunstler), are practically gleeful in arguing that industrial civilization has just about run its course and that we will soon be reverting to agrarianism. That's a very commonplace perspective in the deep ecology and eco-anarchist crowds in my experience overall. There are a lot of hardline energy skeptics who do not believe such sustainable sources of energy exist, and many would go so far as to say that they cannot exist (fossil fuels, in their opinions, were a one-time fluke and nothing can replace them), and even hint that they should not exist (because industrial civilization is inherently oppressive, patriarchal, etc., and we should all go live on communes and grow our own organic crops).

The argument is not that we should prevent people from industrialing, but rather that the whole thing's about to come down under its own weight and we should prepare for a joyful rebirth of agrarian culture, which is (supposedly) authentic and communal and non-exploitative. Or something.

Red Concrete

I think they are fixed. There's only a certain amount of sunlight, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, etc on Earth.

It's not a question of the quantity of resources, but the efficiency with which you used them. The amount of sunlight is fixed, the efficiency with which we convert it into energy used for other purposes (whether that's food or electricity) is not.

Right now, huge gains could be made just eliminating waste. Technologies like the internal combustion engine and the incandescent light bulb waste as much or more energy on heat than they use producing kinetic energy or light. Factory farming produces immense amounts of animal waste which is currently a pollutant but which could and should be captured and turned into a source of biofuel.

And there are (exponentially?) diminishing returns in extracting them - e.g. we can't really run out of iron, if the planetary core is composed of it, but to extract it all becomes energetically inefficient.

That's not really true. Energy fuels technological development, which increases the efficiency with which we extract future energy, and the efficiency increases faster than the increased difficulty of extracting future resources. Oil is a good example. You would think that now that oil drilling now routinely involves things like drilling through several miles of ocean water and solid rock, and changing the direction of the drilling in the middle (like, let's drill down 5 miles, then hang a left and drill 2 more) that the process would be less energy efficient than it was in the old days when you'd only have to go through about a half mile. However, despite the tremendous increase in the level of technical challenge, not only is that not true, it's the reverse. There's been a steady net increase of energy efficiency with oil, even though the deposits have gotten more and more inaccessible, because the efficiency with which we extract resources is growing faster than the resources themselves are growing scarce and inaccessible.

None of this is to say that there aren't huge environmental and other issues with increases in population, or industrialization, or anything else. It's just not a zero-sum game in the way that you're arguing it is.

God's Plan for Shiny Things

There is stuff we as individuals can do certainly - but applying every bit of political pressure we can for a change in the way things are organised is rather more likely to be useful than us reducing our own individual carbon footprints.

I remember reading something that basically pointed out that if we had waited for farmers to voluntarily refrain from using DDT, we'd still be waiting. The argument followed that the shift from political action regulating producers to calls for personal responsibility on the part of consumers were basically a corporate propaganda strategy designed to distract attention from the most effective avenue of change: government regulation. We could spend a fraction of the resources we put into convincing people to recycle into lobbying for stricter laws regarding consumer packaging and do more good overall.
 
 
Closed for Business Time
23:19 / 26.04.07
zidarro That's not really true. Energy fuels technological development, which increases the efficiency with which we extract future energy, and the efficiency increases faster than the increased difficulty of extracting future resources. Oil is a good example. You would think that now that oil drilling now routinely involves things like drilling through several miles of ocean water and solid rock, and changing the direction of the drilling in the middle (like, let's drill down 5 miles, then hang a left and drill 2 more) that the process would be less energy efficient than it was in the old days when you'd only have to go through about a half mile. However, despite the tremendous increase in the level of technical challenge, not only is that not true, it's the reverse. There's been a steady net increase of energy efficiency with oil, even though the deposits have gotten more and more inaccessible, because the efficiency with which we extract resources is growing faster than the resources themselves are growing scarce and inaccessible.
---
Not necessarily true. The net energy gain/EROEI (the amount of energy, as distinct from the monetary cost) from petroleum extraction has diminished from about 100:1 in the 30s to somewhere between 30:1 for Saudi oil and 10:1 for US oil.
Links here for a basic explanation of the concept, here for a debunking of peak oil using EROEI, which also gives some insight into the different conclusions that arise from looking at things from the perspectives of ecological energetics vs economics.

The basic problem is that when looking at energy production from a market perspective, it can be profitable to invest in an energy source with a diminishing or even negative energy efficiency (the latter apparently being the case for corn-based biofuel production in USA), whereas from a physics perspective relying on a less-than-1:1 EROEI source is equivalent to trying to build a perpetual motion machine.
 
 
jmw
16:37 / 27.04.07
Apologies for the delay in responding - been busy.

On the nature of problems, I accept that it's more than merely technical. It's also a social problem. Economic problem? I'm not really sure about that. We get to choose our form of economic organisation, in theory at least. However, my point is that we should be able to research, develop and deploy technical solutions to any problems we face.

.trampetunia,"educating" people to use contraception is a long way from a "population cull", yes, but organisations like the Optimum Population Trust clearly lay the theoretical framework for just that. However, cranks aside I would say that arguing for a reduced population is, at best, wrong-headed and, at worst, downright terrifying.

What you call education on these issues can skirt wrongly close to telling them what to do. China's policy is a pretty good example of this. Moreover, how is it the business of Western governments and NGOs (formerly known as pressure groups) to tell people they can't have kids?

(As an aside, NGOs are fundamentally undemocratic. Look at the joke of "debt relief". No-one in the west seems to care much about the conditions attached to debt relief and how they will continue to stunt economic development in poor countries. Bob Geldof, Bono and the NGOs sold the world a rich man's plan for Africa.)

One of the few things that most third world countries have going for them is labour power. It's a fallacy to imagine that all poor countries are sitting on top of huge piles of riches that are being consumed by wicked post-colonial dictators (who are worse than the imperialists who preceded them - a common trope and thinly veiled racism to boot). Even if said countries do indeed have huge material wealth in terms of resources it takes industrial development, and thus people, to get at it.

Moreover, it's pretty easy to romanticise the undeveloped peasant way of life ignoring its appalling social relations. A terrible factory job may, particularly for female workers, represent a limited form of liberation set against the rural patriarchy and its stifling social relations. The past or the 'natural' or traditional life ain't quite as rosy as people like to imagine.

More broadly, to argue that there are too many people on the planet cannot be anything but anti-human and there is an aspect of deep green thinking that feeds of negative - and incorrect - assumptions about humanity. Restating my point, six billion people is not a problem, it is six billion potential solutions. It is, at least from a left-wing perspective, entirely wrong and ahistorical to look upon people as malignant. One instead should be capable of seeing people as a pair of hands who can work to solve problems.

God's Plan for Shiny Things, you say you're "not loving the way you [I] are making parts of the argument but very, very with you on this [regressiveness in taxation and individualisation of culpability]". Well, you know, being an environmentalist doesn't make one left wing - nor vice versa. You can, of course, be both (as you hint at) but it doesn't necessarily follow that every environmentalist cause is good for the great mass of humanity even if a lot of putative leftists do jump like to jump on-board any bandwagon that happens to be rolling along. There's a lot of elite consensus out there on green issues these days, despite environmentalists' presentation of themselves as outsiders, from Zac Goldsmith and his dead right-wing dad through David Cameron and "Sir" Nicholas Stern to the Environmental Defense Fund and the Sierra Club (which opposed immigration on the basis of so-called "overpopulation", though the have "parked" that issue for now due to pressure from the likes of the SPLC). And just how did the censorious and authoritarian multi-millionarire Al Gore come to be a hero of the people, exactly? Oh yes, he's not George W. Bush - that's a pretty low standard. The are at least 5,999,999,999 people out there who aren't George W. Bush.

I'm against anything that hurts ordinary people - non-owners of the means of production, that is the vast majority of the world's population - whether it comes wrapped in a red, blue, green or brown flag.

What gets on my nerves is what will amount to a cut in working class living standards being dressed up as progressive social change. Does anyone honestly think that when enforced energy conservation policies become the norm there will be a redistributive aspect aimed at the poor? The rich will still have their hybrid cars, central heating, air-conditioning and expensive air flights. What will we have? A post-modern peasant existence?

Some leftists, particularly juvenile ones, aren't really that interested in green issues but do see the environment as lever for pushing class interest back into politics. Unfortunately it appears to be serving the interests of the ruling classes. At the absolute best you could say that eco concerns will be - and in fact already are being - consumed by capitalism. From where I'm standing, which I don't want to go into here, I see no shortage of businesses making plenty of money from global warming, real, imagined, man-made or natural.

The nub if the issue is: what is to be done? Obviously I don't know otherwise I wouldn't be here floating ideas but I won't stand shoulder-to-shoulder with, for example, the privatisation of water supply for any reason. I'm sure that those of you in Britain have probably grown used to buying water but it hasn't happened yet here. When it does, and it's coming, it will no-doubt be dressed-up in environmental verbiage, naked Thatcherite neo-liberalism having lost whatever tiny appeal it ever had here. You can dismiss me if you want, but this kind of thing is a real issue.

zidarro, on the anti-development hard-liners. Thank-you, that is precisely my point.

Moving on, Tto deny that there has been a deeply romantic, anti-human streak in environmental thinking, (CONSERVATionism, as it was called up until the 1960s) is to deny the facts. Read Ecofascism: Lessons from the German experience, by Biehl and Staudenmaier or look at Green Anarchist, Alternative Green and Richard Hunt, Patrick Harrington and the "Third Way" or so-called National Anarchism - green fascism.

Too fringey? OK. Look at the predecessor to today's "cuddly" Green party, the Ecology party and its original 1973 "Manifesto for a Sustainable Society". The party advocated a zero growth economic strategy. This really is not the stuff of the left. Rural idiocy, methinks.

Now, the significance of these characters on modern environmentalism is in the case of the EP, questionable, and, in the case of the green and brown mobs, non-existent. Thankfully. However, plenty of environmentalist thinking, whether elite environmentalism or "anarchist"-inspired does contain, at the very least, a tighten-your-belts mentality if not outright misanthropy. Are no genuine left-leaning environmentalists concerned about how green issues have swung to the right along with (as a by-product of?) increasing corporate acceptance?

All I am doing is re-stating decades old Marxist and anarchist positions.

Now, I know there is other stuff that I need to address above and will aim to do so over the weekend.
 
 
jmw
17:26 / 27.04.07
Finding myself with a spare 15 minutes while I wait for the water to heat so that I can do the dishes - ah, the joys of living in a flat without central heating - I've decided to quickly respond to the last points about Lovelock.

Irish Independent interview w/ Lovelock. Subs required (free, or use Bugmenot.com.

A socialist and conscientious objector during the Second World War, his sympathies slowly aligned with the Establishment, and when at the height of the Cold War the Security Service sought to draw on his expertise in inventing gadgets he responded enthusiastically. It would be an exaggeration to say he was the real-life equivalent of Q, James Bond's gadgeteer, but it is not an empty comparison. "I very much enjoyed my contact with MI5," he says.

And this man is a socialist? Er... Yeah, OK, it's from the Sunday Independent, one of Ireland's most right-wing papers, but he does say himself he "enjoyed" his "contact".

Lovelock himself, in common with John Wesley, or indeed Jesus, may not be a member of the religion he founded, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. He's far from being free of guilt for creating the cult, though. He may not have joined the cult but he did a lot to create it.

"I've had to stop saying the Earth is alive" [in order to get credibility]. Irish Independent, liked above.

[...]

Yet three decades on, Lovelock retains his twin vision of Gaia as Earth Goddess who should be respected and revered, as well as complex self-regulating mechanism. He fears that coming climate change may produce more drastic effects than people imagine as Gaia is perturbed, in the literal sense, by human actions; he can well contemplate the earth spinning on without people. Ibid.

Here's the best bit:

"Modern science has taken away from the authority of religion but has offered us nothing in the way of moral guidance in return," he says. "Gaia gives us something to which we are accountable. We're not here for ourselves alone." Ibid.

Priceless. I still say it's a religion. He may use weasel words, but Lovelock agrees.

Unscientific, I know, but Lovelock's books come up in the Religion and Spirituality section on Amazon. This categorisation comes direct from the publisher.

The entry for The Revenge of Gaia, for example, lists it as the following:

Subjects > Religion & Spirituality > New Age > Earth-Based Religions > Gaia
Subjects > Science & Nature > Environment & Ecology > Ecology
Subjects > Science & Nature > Environment & Ecology > Environmental Philosophy
Subjects > Science & Nature > Popular Science > Authors A-Z > L > Lovelock, James

In his theory Lovelock gives agency to that which possesses none. The earth is not "fighting back", to say so is absurd.

So Lovelock is sorry that his work has been misinterpreted? Boo hoo hoo. He shouldn't have named it after a godess, should he?

Meanwhile, writing in the Independent of London, Lovelock is either wrong or lying:

Unfortunately our nation is now so urbanised as to be like a large city and we have only a small acreage of agriculture and forestry. We are dependent on the trading world for sustenance; climate change will deny us regular supplies of food and fuel from overseas.

I invite you to test his claim by taking Google Earth for a spin and looking at the relative urban development vs. rural land use issue.

As an aside, this bit really rather got on my nerves being Irish:

On these British Isles, we are used to thinking of all humanity and not just ourselves;

Meaning what exactly? A history of empire, imperialism, murder and economic exploitation? Thanks James, but the rest of us don't want your "thinking" about us, even some of us other inhabitants of the "British Isles", a ridiculous term only used in Britain. Still, I digress.

In fairness to Lovelock, he at least is not a deep green and recognises that humans are not merely animals and does frame his arguments in terms of continuing human existence, even if I find his doom-mongering off-putting to say the least.

Deep ecology and Gaia theory share a background in that they dismiss the importance of and difference of the human. Gaia theorists acknowledge humanity as important, but only important through being a creation of Gaia. For deep ecologists, humans are no different from, and no more important than, worms or viruses. http://www.sirc.org/articles/how_deep.shtml

Distressingly, the article continues: "And while each of these perspectives has its merits". Do they? I can't see any.

Memtics I simply do not want to get into because of a personal prejudice against the term and how it is used by nerdy geekboy Boing Boing types.
 
 
jmw
14:57 / 28.04.07
At the risk of killing this thread altogether, I will now respond a bit more.

RedConcrete asks if being green and left are somehow linked. In the popular imagination, yes. In reality, no. The modern ecology movement dates back to the 1960s, a complex and confusing period in political history. Most people tend to think of this period as being fairly homogenous, but it was not. 1968 in Paris and Prague had little to do with wealthy hippies in San Francisco or London, for example.

Nevertheless, there has been a clear appropriation of left-wing discourse by environmentalists since then. The key message is one of not being selfish, for example. Likewise, the left has appropriated green discourse - note also how green themes have influenced anarchism in the last twenty-five years and how, post 1989/1991, many socialist groups began to talk and write more and more about the environment.

The now defunct CPGB and other, much larger, "Eurocommunist" parties such as the PCF and PCI jumped on-board the "new social movements" bandwagon quite a bit before this. All of the back issues of the CPGB's journal Marxism Today from the Eurocommunist period are available online. If you read them, or the book Endgames and New Times you will see quite clearly how, following Hobsbawn's essay "The forward march of labour halted?" the left came under the spell of environmentalism, having lost faith in the agency of the working class.

Finally, before the recent emergence of an elite consensus on these issues many pro-busienss organisations, particularly in the US, attempted to discredit environmentalists by calling them "communists" despite the fact that real communists would never call for "zero growth" or "steady state" economics.

At the risk of stressing the obvious, some things that appear to be of the "left" are nothing of the sort. The communes of the sixties, for example, represent a disengagement from the material world and the difficulties it poses and were driven by the same desire as today's gated communities, even if gated communities are more obviously privatised in intent and form.

My problem is that a great many of the measures promoted as sustainable will lead directly to a lowering of working class incomes in the West and pose a threat to industrial - and thus social - development in the third world.

The problem is not about environmental awareness per se, it's that the language of the discourse is inherently limiting. The notion of sustainability as it is presented in both politics and the medis is inherently presentist - it has no positive vision of the future, just today's conditions stretching out forever. Deep greens go one worse, wanting to go back to an imagined bucolic yesterday that never actually existed.

Demands for cuts in consumption - really demand for lower incomes - have long predated any discussion of man-made climate change. So who is in favour of real world income cuts? I'm not.

These people appear to be, though: Prospects for a conserver party.
[...] sections of the left are courting fellow travellers in the environment movement beguiling them with their new-found environmental sensitivity. Elements in the Green Party and the green movement either flirt with them or fail clearly to reject their advances. The result is a green current parroting some of the sectarianism and prejudices of the left. The real political alternative of trying to marry what is best in the progressive and conservative traditions to political ecology is not being considered.

It is my opinion that part of the problem is rooted in our Western, post-material and consumption-oriented view of society which ignores the fundamental source of wealth: production.

I'm not sure what you mean when you write Why should differences of opinion of the distribution of wealth correlate with differences of opinion on technical, pragmatic aspects of wealth generation?

I don't think they do correlate, at least not rationally, but what exactly do you mean by "pragmatic aspects of wealth generation".

Olukabelle, in Ireland there is much green criticism of biofuels including wood pellets, which have become very popular with middle-class homeowners as a result of generous grant-aid from the government. My statements are not factually inaccurate at all. Sweeping, perhaps.
 
 
Tsuga
16:05 / 28.04.07
to argue that there are too many people on the planet cannot be anything but anti-human and there is an aspect of deep green thinking that feeds of negative - and incorrect - assumptions about humanity. Restating my point, six billion people is not a problem, it is six billion potential solutions.

I don't know if you've actually said what's incorrect about these "assumptions" or that they are in fact assumptions, and not beliefs based on some amount of reasoned analysis. "Anti-human"? What an interesting idea. I can't speak for anyone else, but I don't know that being pro-planet makes one anti-human. We may be in charge because we have big brains and opposable thumbs, but how does that make us more important? Only in that we, being the ones who made up concepts like value, importance, or meaning, are the only creatures who can impose those concepts on the world around us, as well as having the power behind it to craft the world to our liking. I mean, getting abstract (which is the origin of all human elaborations beyond pure existence), why do we matter more than anything else beyond the fact that we invented our value?

The "six billion potential solutions" seems to me very simplistic, though I've heard that logic and understand it. People telling my wife and me to have children because "they'll be problem-solvers" comes to mind. I don't know how you can think that six billion people consuming and creating waste products is "sustainable".
 
 
Red Concrete
17:09 / 28.04.07
I'm not sure what you mean when you write Why should differences of opinion of the distribution of wealth correlate with differences of opinion on technical, pragmatic aspects of wealth generation?

I don't think they do correlate, at least not rationally, but what exactly do you mean by "pragmatic aspects of wealth generation".

I was restating the question. The left as a political movement concerns control of the distribution of wealth. Environmentalism (I want to avoid using the term 'sustainablility' because I think it's not been well defined here yet, and there's a whole other thread for that) concerns how much production interferes with mostly non-human aspects of the biome - really it's a problem that should have scientific, technical solutions, which I call "pragmatic" because I can understand them better. Control of the means of production is less interesting to me, although I'd disagree with you that wealth is nothing but production... probably a bigger topic than fits into this thread.

My point of view is as a scientist (not a Gaian, by the way!), and I've poor knowledge of political and social impact of the environmentalist movement (probably quite obviously already). Also obvious is that you have done a lot of research in the area and have pretty strong opinions.

Can you address issues of micro-power generation and community energy self-sufficiency (in "developing countries" in particular)? I would see such technology, and others which increase local independence as a good thing - it doesn't even require technological change, it's just a geographical rearrangement of production to the most parsimonious state (with environmental benefits).

I'm concerned that you don't address the threat of climate change as a force that could threaten agricultural and industrial production centres, and potentially displace billions of humans. Surely these risks have to be factored against any decrease in living standards (which in my opinion the "developed world" could easily bear).
 
 
Red Concrete
17:15 / 28.04.07
I also would like to hear all you have to say on population capacity! Surely the planet does have a hard limit somewhere? to me the problem is more the rate of population expansion, which is exponential. That is simply not sustainable. And rather than it being unethical to promote reproductive limits, I would say it is unethical to let the human population hit the Malthusian limit (which probably would result in a forced "return" to the deep Greens' idyll).
 
 
jmw
17:27 / 28.04.07
The assumption is that people should only be measured in term of their consumption and the waste and "damage" it creates, that people are a stress on finite resources. This is if not openly millenarian, it's at least Malthusian and conservative.

Human action is now no longer considered to be purposeful and constructive but destructive and negative.

We matter for precisely the reasons you state: "because we have big brains and opposable thumbs [...] as well as having the power behind it to craft the world to our liking." Those are pretty important things, don't you think? Or do you believe that monkeys should have human rights? What about horses? Dogs? Worms? Plants? Viruses?

More brodly, some of the logic used is curious. A lot of it is couched in terms of "future generations", otherwise known as people that do not exist. This is the precisely same logic as is used by anti-abortion activists. Now, I'm not arguing for the immediate consumption of all of our resources and leaving the future to its own devices but I do think that addressing the needs of those of us already alive on the planet should take precedence.

Being pro-human and, as you put it "pro-planet" are not mutually exclusive - though I do find the idea of being pro-planet strange and unnecessarily slanted in favour of the Lovelockian reasoning noted above. However I accept that you likely coined the phrase in direct response to me using the term anti-human. The point is, trendy notions of "speciesism" are anti-human, as is placing human need on a par or below that of other life on earth.

"Six billion potential solutions" is no more simplistic than six billion sinners or consumers or wasters or "planet abusers" or however one might frame an anti-population argument. In fact, it's less simplistic because it is hinged on the concept of human agency and not a one-dimensional consumptionist view of human nature.

Malthus was wrong in 1798. Why should he be right now?
 
 
Closed for Business Time
17:49 / 28.04.07
I'll try and create some time for a longer response to your posts later, jmw (incidentally, I find that their quality has risen a lot - well done), but for now what I found curious was this little proposition
The point is, trendy notions of "speciesism" are anti-human, as is placing human need on a par or below that of other life on earth.
Leaving aside the debate on speciesism and the moral status of non-human animals, I think that in the long run, any policy which consistently places human life above that of other life in the planet is destined to kill off humans.
Like it or not we are not and will not ever be able to bootstrap energy, food and material resources from thin air. Preserving a healthy biodiverse mass of life on the planet is in the long term (as in centuries, and possibly within one life-span) an absolute necessity if we are to sustain anything like the level of welfare we have at the moment. So I find that your statement above is simply wrong, and dangerously so.
 
 
jmw
18:03 / 28.04.07
Red Concrete I'm at least glad that someone doesn't think I'm expressing half-baked ideas! I don't address the threat of climate change because I am not in a position to do so. I am not a weather forecaster.

I do note with some interest, though, that the IPCC report is not nearly as gloomy as the likes of the Independent of London or Al Gore would have us think, estimating an increase in temperature of between 1.8 and 4 degrees celsius by 2100. This, they estimate, will result in sea levels that could rise by between 18 and 59 centimetres by 2100 - not anything like six metres, as that well-known weather forecaster Al Gore suggests.

Still, this is a bit of a diversion. My argument is not with the science or indeed with the desire to protect the planet per se, it's with the discussion of the politics and the implication of the polity.

I think I've addressed my point about green and left above. If not, let me know and I'll give it another bash.

Regarding population, who know? No one does. What I do know is that talking about an "optimum population" is offensive to rationality, modernity and ethics. When someone says that there are too many people on the planet surely the first question to ask them is who they want to kill first? This sounds absurd, of course, but we have to remember that we are talking about living, breathing, walking, talking, loving, hating, thinking, working people, not mere "units" or statistics.

Why do you assume that there is a "Mathusian limit"? The planet can feed exponentially more people now than it could a hundred years ago due to improvements in agricultural techniques and technology. Small scale farming is the least efficient mode of agriculture one could come up with. Think what could have been done with GM crops. For the record, my only problem with them would be ownership and patenting, not the technology which by all scientific accounts benign.

Moreover, you and others have pointed toward various alternative technologies and energy sources. If these work then surely we can "sustain" even more of my favourite thing: people.

Nevertheless, even if you're right about there being some kind of predetermined limit I'd point you to zidarro's comments above: "More economically-developed countries have lower birth rates". Industrial and social development lowers birth rates in the long term. Will the population peak at 10bn as zidarro suspects? I have no idea.

The "population bomb" was debunked years ago. I find it interesting that it has crept back into political discourse, dressed up in green clothes. It serves as a very useful purpose allowing governments and business to argue that pensions are "unsustainable", doesn't it?

Micro power is interesting. I'm not at all against it in principle. It does have limitations, though - the hint being the word "mirco" - and is never likely to produce enough energy reliably for secondary industry or things like hospitals. On the other hand, it can work well in residential scenarios - as long a you still have the choice and ability to connect to the grid.

However, it can easily play into the hands of capital. District heating and power (CHP) owned by housing developers, for example. I would rather have monolithic state provision than hundreds of private monopolies.

In undeveloped countries it's sure as hell better than no power but it's no replacement for a national infrastructure that everyone has access to. The corollary is water, the Victorian swage network causing the single greatest improvement in public health in the history of Britain.

Mos Nolte, that's stating the obvious and I don't disagree. Placing human life at the top of the pyramid, if you like, does not give anyone carte blanche to wipe out other life and I wouldn't argue that it does.

To be honest I rarely post here and what you saw as poor post quality I would argue is more to do with the fact that I'm not used to the specific kind of discourse on Barbelith. I do tend to talk—and write—in the abstract a lot, an occupational hazard. Mea culpa. Still, no-one has answered my first question: "Does anyone else think that electricity, generated by whatever means, should be subsidised?"

Personally, I think it would go a long way toward making this a civilised, fairer and equitable world.

By the way, today's Financial Times magazine - that well-known radical left-wing periodical - is a special environment special:

----
Editorial content

p.3
Editorial comment

p.7
First person
"I eat out of garbage bins"

p.12
Mrs. Moneypenny
Goes (pale) green

Cover story, p. 18
Village greened
The well heeled residents of Ashton Hayes decided to wipe out their carbon footprint—and transformed their community as well. Rob Bnlackhurst asks what their pioneering experiment can teach the rest of us
(Cover strap line: Can England's middle classes save the environment?)

p. 24
Planes, brains, automobiles
Simple counting of food miles doesn't being to describe your dinner's impact on the environment. By Sarah Murray

p. 16
Lunch with the FT
James Lovelock—Apocalypse soon

p.30
The world on the edge
Our climate is changing—but what are the tipping points that will decide how much and how soon? By Fiona Harvey

Advertising content

p.6
nPower business ad: "Reducing CO2 could save your business money"

p. 9
Advertisement for wind-power from General Electric

p.11
Aviva "Our strategy for the future is to make sure there is a future. We're committed to becoming the first insurer to go carbon neutral worldwide"

p.14
BASF—The chemical company: "water is one of the simplest, yet most precious, of all chemical substances"
----
 
 
Tsuga
18:16 / 28.04.07
We matter for precisely the reasons you state: "because we have big brains and opposable thumbs [...] as well as having the power behind it to craft the world to our liking." Those are pretty important things, don't you think? Or do you believe that monkeys should have human rights? What about horses? Dogs? Worms? Plants? Viruses?
Those are important things, but why are they so important? They've had a big impact. So have volcanoes and meteors. So, we're humans, so of course we have a bias about how cool we are. I'm sure impressed, humans are pretty amazing. And I sure care about them and don't want them to all die. You are still talking about extrinsic value. So you think people are more important than anything else. Does that make you right? Maybe- but personally I don't exclusively think so, other than, as I said before, we're discussing concepts.
As for human rights to worms, well, they're not human, are they. I don't believe it's an argument of rights so much as responsibility or propriety.


The assumption is that people should only be measured in term of their consumption and the waste and "damage" it creates, that people are a stress on finite resources. This is if not openly millenarian, it's at least Malthusian and conservative.
Who says people should only be measured in those terms, really. That is an element of ye olde big picture. Also, saying that ever-increasing population cannot be sustained is not the same as being Malthusian.
The point is, trendy notions of "speciesism" are anti-human, as is placing human need on a par or below that of other life on earth.
Well, I was about to respond to that, but then I see MosNolte's any policy which consistently places human life above that of other life in the planet is destined to kill off humans. which is perfect, I think.
 
 
jmw
18:28 / 28.04.07
Tsuga, writes that "saying that ever-increasing population cannot be sustained is not the same as being Malthusian."

Well maybe not—and I disagree—but saying that there is indeed an "ever-increasing" population is Malthusian. Cf. industrial and social development and birth rates above. The discussion is Malthusian in its very nature.

Mos Nolte's point, no offence, is simply stating something that I didn't write because I considered to to be a given: human life is dependent on other life. The only point of difference is this: Mos Nolte argues—deterministically—that placing human life above others will necessarily lead to the destruction of said others and, ultimately, humanity itself. Obviously I disagree and would characterise that argument as stemming from a view of humanity centred on a diminished view of our capacity for both rationality and agency.

Would you deny that today there is a clear and obvious tendency in both political discourse and polity to view human action as negative?

If you want to hear my theory about why this is so I'll be happy to give it a whirl, but I warn you, it's long, complex and requires a lot of interest in the politics of the cold war to even get through it.

Humans are more important that volcanoes because they have agency. I don't want to be facetious here, but that's a fairly simple point. Want more? OK, Descartes's cogito is the centre of the idea of - and creation of - the human subject; subjectivity.

I prefer to use the term agency than subjectivity because in my experience when you talk about subjectivity, most people assume wrongly that you mean 'subjectiveness'. More on this can be dredged up if you like. Let me know.
 
 
jmw
18:55 / 28.04.07
I would like to, belatedly, add a further reference to the red/green stuff above.

This article, The turning green tide by Geoff Mulgan in the Communist Party of Great Britain's journal, Marxism Today [PDF] dated April 1989. I picked it absolutely at random from the Marxism Today archive.

Mulgan, described by the Guardian as "the ultimate new Labourite" was later to become director of policy for new Labour under Tony Blair and head of the social exclusion unit, whatever the hell that is. This ex-communist set up the think-tank Demos, along with fellow ex-CPGB central committee member and Marxism Today editor Martin Jacques, that did lots of Bomber Blair's thinking for him prior to his election in 1997.
 
 
Red Concrete
19:32 / 28.04.07
jmw, I don't think we can entirely get away from the techonology issues, but yes we can avoid discussing technical details. You've clearly read the Workgroup I report for the 4th assessment, but it doesn't sound like you've read the Workgroup 2 report yet. It's quite relevant as it forecasts a negative impact of climate change, particularly on "developing countries".

Personally I think the risk of catastrophic (5m SLR) disaster is (small but) large enough to justify reducing the standard of living in order to bring CO2 emissions down. It would be good if it could be only the rich that paid. Do you have a solution?

I have to get my thoughts straight on Malthus, probably I should not be invoking him. But high population growth dosn't improve the standard of living for the worst off global regions, or sections of society, does it? I think it's wrong to expect technology will improve their part. You seem to imply that the population will stabilise somehow. I think it's wrong to assume that anything other than disease, starvation, or war, or education will limit population growth.

Re: micropower, you forget that all hospitals are actually self-sufficient energy-wise (up to a certain limit). They have to be. Some have converted to wind-power and so on. There's no reason why a village can be self-powered, but an industrial estate cannot. I agree with your point on privatisation, but I don't think green movements advocate this, do they? Is there not something recursive about your characterisation of modern political discourse as misanthropic?

You've lost me again on the Descarte / volcano stuff. What are you using a volcano as an analogy for? What's your point, and why aren't you stating it clearly?
 
 
jmw
19:49 / 28.04.07
Too busy to respond to the bulk of your post in any detail, I'll get to it tomorrow or on Monday.

The volcano reference is not an analogy. It's direct response to someone's comments. Tsuga writes: "Those are important things, but why are they so important? They've had a big impact. So have volcanoes and meteors." I was responding that the comparison is fallacious because volcanoes, for example, do not possess agency (otherwise known as subjectivity). Hence Descartes: cogito ergo sum. Rocks cannot think and so they cannot act, thus the significance of their influence on the world does not equal that of ours.

Hospitals are not self-sufficient. They have back-up capacity but that's very different.

Try running an iron smelting plant on micropower - and just because we don't do much of it anymore doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

It doesn't matter whether environmentalists are advocating privatisation or not (and plenty of "green businesses", if not actual environmentalists, are) - that is what is being proposed right here, right now, where I live: district CHP, privately owned. And it is the green argument is being used to push it through in precisely the same way that happened with bin taxes and water charges. The current claim is that micropower is 2.7 times more "efficient" than grid electricity.

Population growth is a lot more complex socially than people often think. Yes, it can improve material conditions through modernisation, industrial development etc. Obviously if society stays agrarian and/or tribal it doesn't, but that's not very likely.

"I think it's wrong to assume that anything other than disease, starvation, or war, or education will limit population growth."

So population growth of just 0.73 per cent in an industrialised country like Norway has occurred because of disease, starvation or war? To be sure, Norway lost half its population through the Black Death—in 1349. Come on, industrialised countries with modern social relations have lower birth rates. Development slows population growth.

Even education is rather fanciful notion and is reliant on social development, AKA modernisation.

"Is there not something recursive about your characterisation of modern political discourse as misanthropic?"

How so?
 
 
Red Concrete
01:06 / 29.04.07
because we have big brains and opposable thumbs [...] as well as having the power behind it to craft the world to our liking.

Sorry, I'm a little slow sometimes. That's the key quote, isn't it? So, you meant that humans should be more important than other things because we have subjectivity, and therefore have most influence on the world? And therefore our comfort should come before that of other species?

Stop me if I go too far... our comfort should also be put before the health of ecosystems. And also before the stability of the relationship between all ecosystems and the cycles of carbon, nitrogen, water, etc. Because that's all a religion anyway, even James Lovelock nearly admitted it? And by comfort you actually mean the size of the wealth gap between rich and poor (because nothing else is behind that...).

And with all the ecosystems and their interdependent cycles of elements and water, why not throw in the homes of a few million people who live by coastal regions, the water security of a few hundred million Africans, worse flooding, drought and possibly disesase across the world.

Anyway technology will keep up and stop things getting too bad. (oh, we'll all have equal access to it, of course)

Obviously you don't support all of that, and the parenthesized bits are mine. But can you tell me what to throw out, because based on your posts, I can't tell...? Two pages in, I still don't even know if you're a green who's annoyed at opportunistic capitalists trying to cash in with poorly designed fixes, or an indignant leftist who thinks the whole "green" thing is a scam that shouldn't be more important than the class struggle.

Try running an iron smelting plant on micropower

There was lots of steel production before electricity. Do you know anything about iron smelting?

The current claim is that micropower is 2.7 times more "efficient" than grid electricity.

That seems reasonably close to the figure I have in my head for it. Why did you put 'efficient' in inverted commas?

Probably it should be owned by the users, I agree. But who is proposing it? Fianna Fail? How does this link with your green/left debate?

Even education is rather fanciful notion and is reliant on social development, AKA modernisation.

I think you've put the horse before the cart. Education leads to improved circumstances. It is not my field, but I think the effect of education on population growth is very well established, not fanciful. I don't have the sociology-foo to get reliable links.
 
 
Red Concrete
01:10 / 29.04.07
"Is there not something recursive about your characterisation of modern political discourse as misanthropic?"

How so?

Never mind, I was trying to set up a recursion, but you broke it.
 
 
Lagrange's Nightmare
01:21 / 29.04.07
It doesn't matter whether environmentalists are advocating privatisation or not (and plenty of "green businesses", if not actual environmentalists, are)

Ok so you keep making the point that people are making money off sustainability and "being green", but does that really surprise you? Pharmaceutical companies make bucket loads of cash (often to the detriment of people in developing countries) out of treatments for AIDs and other diseases, but does that makes the cause of trying to prevent diseases bad?. (This analogy is difficult due to medical treatment = present benefit, sustainability = future benefit) There are always going to be people who want to make lots of money, if they can attach themselves to cause to do it, well...

Try running an iron smelting plant on micropower - and just because we don't do much of it anymore doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

If you take a closer look at Ireland's 2004 electricity statistics you will see total electricity consumption for residential was 7368 GWh while industrial consumption was only 6857 GWh (the other major component was commercial/public services 8067 GWh)I'm willing to except that there are countries that will have different figures (i.e ones with aluminium smelters) but industrial processes aren't the be all and end all of our energy problems.

CHP should definitely be used for industrial purposes, don't think of it as micro-power, just think of it as distributed power generation. One of the greatest inefficiencies of our current system is that we burn fossil fuels to generate heat of which 36-38% is converted to useable electricity. The other 62-64% is wasted. The electricity is then transmitted, while continously losing energy and of course for many industrial process the electricity is then simply used to generate more heat. The ability to generate electricity and do something useful with the waste heat is not only essential but also kind of obvious. Privitisation is of course another issue i see no reason why a government couldn't support / build community based CHP projects (as opposed to the industrial projects).

I recently spoke to a woman who owns a company that sells rainwater harvesting systems. She and others are lobbying for consumption-based water charges based on the premise that there is a shortage of water.

This in a country with between 750 and 1000mm of rainfall a year and whose driest year was 1887. It rains, on average, up to 225 days a year. If, and it's a big if, there is a water shortage it is as a result of an ageing network and leaks, not a lack of water.

So has a water charge actually been put in place in Ireland, or was this just some lady wanting to sell rainwater tanks? I feel looking at consumption has to come in somewhere (probably not for this example, but say for water use in Australia) of course it shouldn't penalise the poor.

So population growth of just 0.73 per cent in an industrialised country like Norway has occurred because of disease, starvation or war? To be sure, Norway lost half its population through the Black Death—in 1349. Come on, industrialised countries with modern social relations have lower birth rates. Development slows population growth.

I tend to agree with you on the population front. I think the population growth of developing countries will reduce dramatically as they become more developed (that is i assume the same dynamics that occur in europe will apply to the rest of the work, which may be a valid assumption..) however we are looking at populations in the order of 9 or 10 billion before that happens, which means we have to get much more efficient at how we use resources in the mean time and hopefully allow these countries to develop without the same environmental damage we caused or countries like china are going through now. I still believe the majority of people in the environmental movement do not want us to drop modern culture, just to take a hard look at how we are using resources.
 
 
jmw
13:25 / 29.04.07
Addle brains compares green businesses with the pharmaceutical industry. Not a bad point, I think, but the analogy is slightly flawed. Firstly the pharmaceutical industry isn't generally thought of as anything other than an industry. The moral and ethical power of medicine lies not with GlaxoSmithkline but with doctors, medical scientists and researchers. With environmental issues, practically anyone who slips the word "sustainable" into their programme, no matter what that programme's content is, is afforded moral authority.

Someone flogging rainwater harvesting systems has a vested interest in privatisation. At the minute such a business is only sustained by people who want to be green (or be seen to be green). Were there a consumption-based tax for mains water then the market would be much bigger. And it will be consumption based, that's what the lobbying is for, because a rating based on house value is supposedly unfair.

Pharma companies make most of their profits, in Europe at least, from state purchases and so they do not have the same desire to see privatisation of healthcare. Things aren't quite that simple, of course, and the pharmaceutical industry has been accused of having its hand in the till while simultaneously parking its snout in the trough, but the key point is one of moral authority and its source.

It's not actually the profit-making that I object to, it's the potential levering in of privatisation of areas that should, in my opinion, always be public services such as water and power. By all means sell rainwater harvesting systems but don't try and cut off my public water supply to guarantee more sales.

In the North of Ireland the on-again, off-again assembly has dodged the water consumption tax bullet, but only for one year. The former water board is now called Northern Ireland Water Ltd., a so-called "goco" (government-owned company). Now why would you change something from a public service to a "goco" unless you wanted to privatise it?

The same thing will soon happen in the republic, regardless of whether the election if won by shit or shite, sorry Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael. In fact, it's more likely with FG because they have the post-working-class Labour and the Greens in tow, whereas FF are led around by the nose by the Superprofits Democrats who have thus far shown virtually zero inclination to engage with environmental issues, even from a right-wing perspective.

You asked about water charges in Ireland. To clarify: it was proposed a few years back and stopped by civil disobedience. It was proposed in the North this year and "delayed" by the assembly for 12 months. There is now a huge amount of lobbying going on in the south to get the issue back on the table.

When you say "I feel looking at consumption [charging for water] has to come in somewhere (probably not for this example, but say for water use in Australia) of course it shouldn't penalise the poor" you sound like the voice of reason, but there's a problem. Firstly, you know that there will be penalties for the poor. In our current form of economic organisation that's how things work. Secondly, can we at least accept that such a political discourse is inherently limited? Didn't the anarchists at the First International propose irrigating the Sahara? Forget about how sensible that proposal may or may not be and consider this: what a long road we have travelled since then, no?

The statistics you provide on Ireland's electricity consumption are very interesting (thanks for the link, by the way). Having lacked significant industrial development Ireland is rather different from most of Western Europe. Then again, given the industrial decline in some EU states (such as the UK) perhaps Ireland provides an (unintentionally) useful model.

Still, your figures indicate that 14,924GWh were non-residential versus 7,368 residential. It doesn't take a statistician to argue that the burden doesn't lie with the individual.

Moreover, I'm not arguing against more energy-effieicent appliances or better insulation in the home. I am simply arguing that by individualising the argument one plays straight into the hands of privatisation and attacks on the standard of living of those who can scarcely afford it.

Also, what makes people assume that others, usually the rich, won't find ways around various green measures? Anecdotally, consumption-based bin charges have led to a huge increase in the sale of sink macerators. I was told this by someone in the wastewater treatment industry who has to deal with its consequences—septic tanks and wastewater systems failing and backing-up, spewing waste, including faeces, into the ground and the water table.

On CHP in industry, again, I have no problem with its existence. I do have a problem with it if it is proposed as a replacement for the grid, which does so much for productivity and thus our standard of living.

You say: "i see no reason why a government couldn't support / build community based CHP projects." Really? How about because the way in which we organise society favours private industry. It's a small step from monolithic state or former-state grid provider to dozens of private providers—with the "bonus" that if the main supplier is an old-fashioned public service this can be privitisatation by the back door. It's a much bigger leap from a monolithic state or former-state grid provider to community-owned co-ops.

Red Concrete No, not Fianna Fáil. It's at the lobbying stage. Watch this space. It links into the red/green debate because I am of the opinion that when this stuff finally comes into open public discourse it will be supported by a great many environmentalists, a proposition I am basing on the Green party's shameful support for water taxation (which failed first time round) and bin taxation (which passed). A pretty good reason for me thinking this, no? At this point the, for example, Green party will have to drop its "progressive" patina and admit the real class composition of its base which doesn't appear to be much different from the Progressive Democrats.

Efficient shouldn't have been in inverted commas, the whole lot should have been from 2.7 to electricity, It was supposed to be a quote. Tiredness.

Efficiency is not the be-all and end-all of the issue. Locally-owned co-ops running CHP with an option to continue using the grid (or even one's own generation)? Yes, no problem. Privately-owned CHP run by property developers? No. Absolutely not.

Addressing your main point, firstly, that quote's not mine but I don't disagree with it. Comfort is not the issue and your attempting to squeeze it in is, I feel, a little disingenuous.

As I have stated, at least I think I have, I am in favour of rational resource use, that is taking a sensible future-oriented approach to how we can meet human needs, not 'burn it all now and to hell with the consequences'.

Two pages in, I still don't even know if you're a green who's annoyed at opportunistic capitalists trying to cash in with poorly designed fixes, or an indignant leftist who thinks the whole "green" thing is a scam that shouldn't be more important than the class struggle.

It doesn't matter who I am, I'm just asking questions. The discussion is not about you, me or any other individual. For the record, I am ahumanist—but then I think you already knew that given I am arguing for human-centred morality against "planet-centred" or whatever.

However, perhaps I can clear it up for you. You have described yourself as a scientist which I assume means you are a working scientist rather than a student or merely a "scientifically-inclined" person. The many great problems with science funding notwithstanding, you're not likely to be on the bread line. Am I right so far? You then state that the West can, and in fact should, take a drop in living standards. Well maybe you can, but I can't and there are a lot of people worse off than me. So if belt-tightening is the order of the day in the West, even if we don't force it on poor countries, it will objectively result in pain for an awful lot of people. Again, the issue is not "comfort"—a silly, loaded word—but material conditions.

I want to raise living standards. Why? Because they are currently so shit. My father lived a typical working-class existence for all of his life, crap pay, no security etc. Not in the slightest bit unusual. His father had to go all over Ireland and eventually to England just to make a living. His wife, my grandmother, was born a peasant, as were all of the generations before that. This is all pretty typical in Ireland. Even most of the wealthy are only off the land two generations ago. So, as far as I can see, recent gains in standards of living here have been overdue and any return to what went before, at least in an Irish context, can only mean penury.

Now, even in more evenly developed countries such as the UK, France or Germany where the peasantry is a distant memory living standards are an issue.

In short, if you can green up Ireland (or any other country for that matter) without harming common people then I have no objection. I do, however, think that the entire discourse as it exists today is slanted to harm the poor more than the rich. Do I think that that is a necessary aspect to environmentalism (or whatever we might want to call it)? No. But I do think that there is something wrong with the discourse as it currently exists.

By the way, class struggle seems a tad fanciful in today's world, not that the antagonisms aren't there.

Industrial metal production has moved on from the middle-ages—and from the nineteenth century, for that matter—you know. And anyway, it was merely an avatar for heavy industry.

Regarding development versus education, I most certainly have not put the cart before the horse. In fact, you have. Your conception of education seems to be simply telling people that having children is immoral and wasteful. My position is that education cannot mean anything without development. What are you educating people for? In an agrarian society with high infant mortality rates having a lot of children is perfectly rational—kids to work the land. If you want to do something about this may I suggest giving people something else to do other than plough fields. Such as jobs.

I have to say, I detect an undercurrent that you think I'm either crazy or being disingenuous. I assure you, I am neither.

Further up the page you asked: "Do you have a solution?". No, I don't. But then again, I didn't claim to. All I am saying is that I think in attempting to answer the question the paramount issue in our minds must be the needs of the mass of humanity, not the environment in the abstract or the comfort of the wealthy.

I started the thread by asking a serious question that no-one has addressed: "Does anyone else think that electricity, generated by whatever means, should be subsidised?"

Well? How about it? Fossil fuels, nuclear, solar, wind, hydro, whatever you think we should use, but should it be subsidised, particularly in poor countries?
 
 
Closed for Business Time
15:00 / 29.04.07
When you say subsidised - do you mean to ask whether we think the use of power should be almost or entirely free, like say healthcare in Scandinavia?

Else, I'll have to take some time out to research/respond to the massive posts you've made lately. Sorry about that. Lastly, when I said their quality has risen, I meant that as in I think you started off quite polemically, without too much substance, but that as the thread has progressed you have fleshed out your arguments in an admirable way, and with a much clearer "voice". As it stands at the moment I think this is a fine thread, and much of the credit for that is due to you, mssr jmw.
 
 
jmw
15:19 / 29.04.07
Mos Nolte I don't know exactly Maybe, or maybe just a lot cheaper (below market price) or maybe just free infrastructure and then pay for the power. What's driving the question is the fact that, apparently, around 4bn people lack access to electricity supply. I'm not quite sure how many of these people have no supply at all versus no "reliable" supply, none at home or just can't afford it, but there's no denying the civilising power of, er, power. Electricity would make a lot of people's lives measurably better.

So, take it any way you want to (that sounds rude, but I don't mean it that way). I suppose the question is, should we—or someone anyway—pay to get these people connected up and, if so, how is that balanced with today's environmental rhetoric that energy consumption must actually be reduced?

If not are we not condemning people to eking out a life of penury?

Is there a tension between treating people fairly and humanely and the goal of sustainability? Or is there a possibility for both through some technical means, whether alternative energy sources or efficiency in energy use?

My bugbear with the language is important. Consider the demand for reduced "consumption" generally. This sounds pleasing to Western ears, tired as many of us are meaningless shopping, overpriced goods and general alienation from society. But thinking about it all I can come up with is that it is a demand for austerity and, therefore, the only way to achieve it is to cut people's real incomes. I don't think I'm being particularly radical in saying that income cuts are a bad thing. After all, I'm a trade union member. I wouldn't be if they started arguing for pay cuts.

I find polemics entertaining. Glibness is a vice. I think my first post was anything but polemical—provocative, yes, but not polemical. My strong opinions on the necessity for human-centred morality did, I concede, push me into polemic quite quickly thereafter, but both my questions and arguments are quite serious and, more importantly, are not in my opinion being discussed in either the political sphere or the media.
 
 
Red Concrete
15:41 / 29.04.07
I was using 'comfort', but you can replace with whatever measure you meant when you were stating that humans should come first. I used it because I think that in the West it is a matter of comfort.

I have to drop all the rest about education, our relative incomes, Irish politics, etc. - it's threadrot, and I disagree with you on too fundamental a level. Apologies for any personal slant, or attack you saw in it - it was not intended. As a scientist I prefer clarity and precision to provocation and polemic!
 
 
jmw
15:59 / 29.04.07
As a scientist I prefer clarity and precision to provocation and polemic!

So you say but then why not engage with what I'm questioning? Show me some statistics on how we can afford drops in income. You said we can afford it, I say we can't. Since you're the one advocating the change the burden of proof is on you. Being uncharitable I could say that your deference to the scientific method masks a deterministic view of human organisation. What you call provocation and polemic—and I referred to as such for my own amusement—is perfectly legitimate political dialogue.

And this remains a political question, not a scientific one. Science has a part to play in informing decision making, most assuredly, but it is not the zenith of all matters and to argue otherwise is to argue for unrepresentative technocratic government. As John Stuart Mill wrote: "That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinion of others, to do so would be wise, or even right...The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign."

Further, you're being very unfair characterising my response to direct questions asked of my by people, including yourself, as "threadrot".

On what fundamental level do you disagree with me? That people's needs right here and right now are more important than abstract concepts?
 
 
Red Concrete
16:57 / 29.04.07
Show me some statistics on how we can afford drops in income.

I don't have statistics, which is why I'm not engaging. Do you have any? The IPCC Workgroup III report comes out next week - I expect it will have an assessment of the economics of mitigation.


Further, you're being very unfair characterising my response to direct questions asked of my by people, including yourself, as "threadrot".

Sorry, I was referring to any answers I might give on those topics, not to your contriubution. Can I suggest creating other threads if you want to keep talking about whether education leads to development, or vice versa. Or the role of the peasantry in contemporary economics. Or why I am not on the breadline. My disagreements with you are in these areas, particularly your comment "What are you educating people for?" - is completely off my radar (possibly its range is not large enough).

The case of bin taxes and water taxes in Ireland is probably relevant to this thread. I thought they were introduced due to local coucils having less money given to them by central government. I assumed that this was because of the low-tax policies of the latter, but I'd like to hear from your knowledge on the subject. Probably this is a good example of what is irking you so - a rightist government indirectly putting a pseudo-green sheen on their destructive taxation policy.

...your deference to the scientific method...
...is not the zenith of all matters...
...is to argue for unrepresentative technocratic government...

Where? You've put words in my mouth about the role of science, as you did about the role of education. When I said "As a scientist I prefer clarity and precision to provocation and polemic" I was referring to my own personality - I'm a pedant, and I can't interpret your style of argument easily. You're the one who has suddenly interpreted "provocation and polemic" as a slur - I meant it in the same spirit as you did.
 
 
Red Concrete
17:05 / 29.04.07
On what fundamental level do you disagree with me? That people's needs right here and right now are more important than abstract concepts?

Yes, possibly. But no, not really - not "abstract concepts". Hard science, of the type that you say should inform policy, which says that there is a threat from things such as pollution and climate change. And that such a threat is greatest for the poorest most miserable people of the planet. I don't think that the poor in developed countries, who have the cushion of the welfare state (certainly in part sponsored by the poverty of the poorest countries), have any grounds to complain about measures to prevent further (not ameliorate, merely to prevent further) misery, disease, hunger and drought in places that are orders of magnitude poorer. It's a case of the greatest good for the greatest number, in my opinion. Your claim that humanity should not suffer environmentalism, is counter-factual, and it implies that your local working class, your local union, are more important than people not privileged enough to live in places that are relatively safe from the effects of climate change.
 
 
jmw
17:10 / 29.04.07
OK, OK, misunderstanding then. And I apologise unreservedly for assuming you were slurring me, that's just how I read it. I don't think my style is particularly hard to follow, though. Ultimately what I want to see is a dialectic process which takes into account the thesis of the need for economic development, the antithesis of the sustainability argument to create a synthesis. I am serious—though I'm not conceited enough to think that thrashing this stuff out here will make a sod of a difference. At best it helps me clarify things in my own mind.

Local government always wants more money and central government never wants to provide it. The underlying issue in Ireland was the abolition years ago of residential rates and their replacement with... nothing, or maybe with higher income tax. Given the subsequent property boom, no politician is going to argue for the return of rates.

Actually I do have statistics on both poverty and industry in the UK and Ireland and will drag them out eventually. I need to find them first.

You're exactly right here (though I'd take issue with the word 'indirectly'): "Probably this is a good example of what is irking you so - a rightist government indirectly putting a pseudo-green sheen on their destructive taxation policy." Add to that a putative rightist government in waiting and a media which show much faux concern for the environment as an abstract concept but precious little for the people who inhabit it.

My point on education is simple: social science is famously unscientific but it does show us though hard statistics how economic development improves both education and living standards and reduces birth rates. The common liberal contention that education improves living standards and economic development remains unproven, despite its popularity as a vote-winner.
 
 
jmw
17:43 / 29.04.07
Now, some really good meat on your last post.

Firstly, the least important of my responses: How can you claim that the "cushion" of welfare in the West is predicated on the continuing poverty of the third world? That's counter-intituitve. It comes at absolutely no cost to the third world and, arguably, at very little to us.

Your point about prevention of further "misery, disease, hunger and drought" is a strong one but it's just not good enough for me. Keeping people endlessly locked into their current conditions may be a lot better than inadvertently killing them all, but it's not progressive and it's not enough for me and it shouldn't be enough for anyone. In fact, in my opinion, it's appalling. The purpose of progress, a concept that I have raised a lot in this thread, is to improve our lives, not to simply preserve our existence. I may be outdated in my thinking but I do consider this to be a worthwhile and achievable goal.

You do make a reasonable argument for utilitarianism but, then again, utilitarianism has its flaws. To me it represents too diminished a framework. My question isn't one of "suffering environmentalism" but of suffering privation, whether it comes through inaction or inappropriate action. I know it's glib but as I've stated before, the rich—the actual rich, not the "labour aristocracy" of the west if you want to be all third worldist about it—will have their hybrid or electric cars, well-insulated homes, expensive air travel (and carbon offsetting schemes) and all of the rest of it. What will we have?

You may think I am hopelessly optimistic but I do think that with appropriate technical and technological changes we can surmount the problems that face us. I don't want to fetishise science and technology but human ingenuity is extraordinary. Consider this: if we're already at a worst case situation then all of the talk above about CHP and new technologies and renewable energy is pretty meaningless.

I don't actually think that the interests of the local working class, as you put it, are at odds with the indigent elsewhere, though there are certainly some very strong tensions.
 
 
jmw
21:11 / 29.04.07
Dredging-up and old thread here:http://www.barbelith.com/topic/26108. Worth a look because people are imagining the following:

Floods, pestilence, tsunamis, nuclear war, the death of a billion people (seen as a positive development), starvation, asteroids and communicable cancer "bugs".

In other word, biblical stuff not very far off religious millenarianism.

Consider the following quote:

We should embark on a global campaign to exterminate all aggressively nasty species in the world, especially h. sapiens and p. troglodytes, prune a fuck-load of unpleasantness from the evolutionary tree and fade away, leaving the world to (hopefully) recover and eventually evolve some nicer dominant species, who can thank us from the year 100,000,000.

I accept—and frankly hope—that the poster has his or her tongue planted in their cheek, but still, it's pretty telling stuff.

Now, tell me I'm wrong about the anti-human streak.
 
 
Closed for Business Time
16:59 / 04.05.07
Hey peeps, check out this link from Physics Today where there's mucho goodness dealing with issues such as sustainability, overpopulation and energy.

The link is to letters in reply to two articles promoting population stabilisation as a means to achieve sustainability. I haven't read those, but it seems like the main points are adequately covered in the responses they garnered. I'll return to this topic to address some of jmw's points later this weekend. After I've been to the Isle of Wight...
 
 
Red Concrete
20:10 / 04.05.07
That reminds me, the Working Group III released their report today, as you may be hearing on the news. They suggest that worldwide GDP will have to change by as much as -3% by 2030, and between +1% and -5.5% by 2050 (IIRC). The summary is here. The figures don't seem excessive to me, but I think I have a very heightened sense of the risks of global warming. Obviously local impact will depend on a lot of things. Probably any nation/company that gets a jump on the technology will do well. On the other hand early-adopter individuals/societies tend to pay over the odds.
 
 
Saturn's nod
07:28 / 05.05.07
@jmw: I don't think my style is particularly hard to follow, though.

jmw, I find your writing pretty hard work to trawl through. It's been getting easier for me to read in the last few posts, perhaps just because I am becoming more familiar with the way you use words, but if you changed something deliberately, please keep doing that. I think one of the features I'd pick out is a way of writing where you lump people together and describes group - deep greens? - as if they have all the same opinion, where I don't share the same impression of that group. I have to wrestle through that in my mind and it makes it hard work to get to what the point underneath that I think you're trying to make.

@RC:Probably any nation/company that gets a jump on the technology will do well. On the other hand early-adopter individuals/societies tend to pay over the odds.

Yeah, I think it's pretty easy to see that morally the longest developed countries - UK, U.S., France? Germany? - China & India might get a pass to second rank because of exploitation through colonisation having knocked back industrialisation? - need to lead the way through the green conversion, and it's a good use of the riches of the global North to do so. Hey maybe it should be an obligation of UN security council membership, since human security, justice and the ecological integrity of the planet are the same direction right? Okay maybe I'm being over optimistic there.

I think leapfrog technology is pretty sane - if we can pioneer good solar-economy tech and show it works for good living, there will be no shortage of buyers in the world. I think there's a problem with industries exploiting citizens of poor countries with limited worker and ecological-sanity legislation and enforcement. The rich countries have no credit with which to persuade anyone else to act unless we lead the way in conversion, I think it just comes across like another colonial lie. We need to make a plan neither trying to use the Global South as a cheap laboratory for solar tech nor as an development-suppressed backwater of forests to buy the Global North out of trouble (paraphrase from P. Newell, CSGR@Warwick).

What I most want at the moment in terms of collective action is labelling of "sun calorie : fossil calorie ratio" - I could then see at a glance whether I was choosing something which is solar-economy compliant (~1) or fossil-fuel-funded (~0). I'm happy to use fossil fuel energy while it's still here as long as I can see it as capital investment in solutions which will outlast the initial energetic investment: i.e., in order to build solar-economic systems that will trend towards negative carbon impact.

The justice problem I see is that if I understand it right half of the fossil calories we know about have been already spent by the rich world. That's a store of solar energy from a previous geological age that we're just not going to see again until a few geological ages along. We're approaching the point where if we want justice for the many we have to build an economy that's primarily powered by harvesting solar energy (I can see a minor part from geothermal heating and gravitational power through tidal flow). It's the many who already suffer from degradation of ecological capital - fresh water, soil health, human rights , and unwise uses of fossil energy - not the super rich who might be the last to go under unless we find a way to get them to work.

I was at a World Development Movement thing the other evening and a political economist who works with the Bank of England was talking about his preferred route for collective change. He was pointing out that taxation is a difficult instrument and that green tax initiatives have been resisted in the last decades, I think for the reasons you're describing, jmw: VAT on domestic fuel hit the elderly and frail -> social outcry, freight fuel duty hits hauliers who already feel their profit margin is tiny -> rebellion. He suggested that pricing and taxation may be too slow as economic instruments for this crisis and that the essential component is making sure it's financially viable to choose the solar-economy development route.

A political scientist at the same meeting suggested was that investment needs to be directed away from fossil-fuel-hungry industries, because lack of investment capital has the potential to slow the growth of solar-tech solutions. That investment stream is what has allowed largely unregulated private sector activities to carry on with enterprises that are non-viable in ecological terms. Go and persuade your bank to change reconsider its investment strategy!

The same researcher also commented that joining up political direction towards a solar economy across all sectors of public planning would have a huge effect. It's the same point ecologists have been making for a decade: abolishing peverse subsidies on fossil fuel and ecological degradation would do more to help ecological stability and human well-being than the relatively tiny amount of funding explicitly directed towards those causes.

If policies were in place across agriculture, building/landscaping, transport, and energy departments aimed at making the sane choices economically attractive for all industries, I can see it might do much more than setting up a new civil service department for climate change planning.
 
 
borealiz
14:36 / 05.05.07
hello ::::
jmw, I also find your style takes a lot of effort, but in the imprecision with which you present the green position you've underscored a critical piece to your question : are sustainability and progress necessarily incompatible? It seems you believe they are, while I would say they are not contradictory and even (in an era of reduced resource use) could reinforce one another.
Sustainability threatens progress mainly by reducing the pool of resources available to everyone so, under the current arrangement, all classes would suffer deprivationn -- just that those with less would have even less. I see this as a result of social organization which fosters inequality, not a result of the overall amount of resources we choose to use.
There is nothing inherent in sustainability that freezes any particular mode of social orgaization in place -- social change can take place regardless of how much stuff is available to the society at large.
Moreover, right now, we in the West are using resources to increase the availablilty of consumer goods at a lower price. This seems to undercut lower- or middle-class willingness to criticize the current social order. So, sustainability as a societal goal would entail reduced consumption of nonessential goods, removing both carrot and stick that fosters complacency. Yeah, this is simplistic, but I hope it addresses some of the principles behind jmw's intial question.
The question remains, what would sustainability look like? This is where jmw cuts off a useful area of debate by kicking around cardboard caricatures of green thought instead of confronting the concepts. Antihuman? Secular Religion? Earth worshippers? Amusing cliches, but he offers no evidence (well, one Barbelith post). Anyway, there are many kinds of environmentalism. Environmental thought offers many heuristics which add depth and complexity to any debate about how human society might survive Global Warming : the tragedy of the commons, bioethics, and economic scale and localism, for starters. And the more radical parts of green thought certainly have their wack adherents, but that doesn't negate the concepts.
thanks for reading. This was my first Barbelith post.
 
 
jmw
15:46 / 05.05.07
Very quick response:

On tone and style, I would assume that it is just familiarity as I haven't changed anything. Apologies if I've been using the jargon of economics and sociology, will try and minimise that.

But honestly, one hand giveth and the other taketh away: "heuristics"? Come on, that's not the language of simple debate. I have no problem with it but you can't have it both ways. Saturn's nod, meanwhile, uses the term "Global North" to refer to what is commonly called the West or the first world. That's the jargon of NGOs and the anti-capitalist movement. Again, no problem, but if we spend all of out time saying "this isn't clear" or "that isn't" clear we're not going to get anywhere at all. I write a lot—A LOT—and I've never had any problems before so I'm tempted to say that people here either are either dodging my points by concentrating on style or are simply not used to the questions being asked at all. More charitably I could also argue that we are simply coming from different backgrounds and that my starting point of reasonably orthodox leftism is simply not well understood.

On the point about conflating people's views, I'll elaborate on that soon. There are clear and distinct differences between the views of deep greens and moderate environmentalists and I have no desire to diminish that or pretend otherwise. On the other hand, I think there is clearly a group of people who have come to environmentalism through their opinions of scientific study but, it appears to me, that the broad mass have done so for other reasons, both personal and political. There's nothing particularly outrageous about that—after all, most of us are not scientists, but it does mean that a lot of people make quasi-scientific arguments based on half-knowledge. This isn't unique to environmentalism by any measure but my worry is that by unthinkingly using science that we don't fully understand we could undermine the essentially political nature of the question, that is: "What is to be done?" Red Concrete is a scientist but how many of the rest of us are (and I mean in society, not just this board)? I don't think it's much of a stretch to say that scientific education at secondary level has suffered in recent years.

It might help to make a clear distinction between environmentalists and politico greens (such as Green party members) but I'm not quite sure how to draw that particular line.

On the main points, I'm over-run with work ATM and will address them in due course.

On the 3rd IPCC report, I haven't had a chance to even look at it and, even when I do, it'll take some time to digest it. People think my style is difficult? Pity me reading scientific reports!

On the question of cardboard cut-outs, I don't have the time or inclination to write an academic discourse every time I post here but the examples are out there and my characterisations, though broad, are not outrageous. I think if you review my post on Lovelock you'll find I've offered a lot more evidence than "one Barbelith post" (which was actually a thread and details exactly the kind of doom-mongering that I've been talking about, never mind references to books, newspaper and magazine articles, web sites and well-understood ideas, all listed above).

There is a book I'd like to quote from but I don't have it to had right now but will post it as soon as I find it.
 
 
jmw
15:49 / 05.05.07
Two references for comparison re the IPCC (pre-third report):

18–59cm rise in sea levels—if no policy changes are made to combat carbon emissions
Intergovernmental panel on climate change, Summary for policymakers, February 2007 http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf

Seventy metre rise in sea levels from a newspaper report on the IPCC's findings
Lynas, M. 'Global warming: the final warning', The Independent, April 30, 2007, London: http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article2211566.ece
 
  

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