Archive for November, 2019

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Simple Thoughts on Politics

November 29, 2019

The world is complex. It is composed of heavily interactive systems that modify themselves in response to events within both themselves and within the ‘external’ world.

As the world is complex, responsive and interactive, it is always in flux. It is never completely stable.

Such complex systems are not completely understandable, or replicable, by humans.

Such complex systems are not completely predictable. The further into the future you imagine, the less accurate your predictions are likely to be.

As a result of these factors, political or other actions are extremely likely to have unintended consequences.

There are several common responses to these unintended consequences.

  • a) Refusal to accept the unintended consequences.
  • b) Accept that other people’s policies can have unintended consequences but not yours, because yours are true.
  • c) Accept the unintended consequences, but say they are irrelevant to what you are doing.
  • d) Suggest that the unintended consequences have unpleasant political consequences and are therefore unreal or a plot.
  • e) Argue that because the world is complex we cannot be sure these events have anything to do with our actions. We must continue.
  • f) Accept the unintended consequences, but blame evil forces.
  • g) Refuse to accept the unintended consequences and still blame evil forces.
  • h) Recognise the problems, but claim the bugs are features.
  • i) Start to eliminate, or silence, those who are telling you about the unintended consequences.
  • j) Start to eliminate those who you blame as evil forces, even if they cannot be proven to have anything to do with it, and even if you deny the consequences are real.
  • k) Intensify the actions we are performing, because clearly we are not applying them strongly enough. The theory is correct therefor we are not being thorough. We are being weak.

These common responses simply make the trap harder to escape.

Ways out.

Do not assume that because you are well intentioned, the policies you favour must work, and the theories you hold must be correct.

Policies and theories are tools, to be discarded when shown not to work in the ways they are expected to work.

As the world is complex, try innovations in small relatively enclosed areas, to see what happens. Realise problems can change with scale of implementation. For example, small amounts of fracking can be relatively harmless, but small amounts of fracking seem to be impossible.

If we are plagued with problems, especially problems we did not have before our innovations, then investigate those problems, and see if we can ameliorate, end them, or use them. Do not ignore them or blame others.

Problems are information, and must be listened to, to understand what we are doing, and do it better.

Change our actions, listen to the critics, see what they say is correct and what is wrong.

Be prepared to change as the world changes, because the world is always changing.

Recognise politics is always an experiment, and some times experiments will show you your theories are wrong.

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Climate arguments

November 26, 2019

Hardly original, but…. A small number of arguments against doing anything about climate change get eternally repeated.

“CO2 is a natural product, produced from respiration, would you alarmists ban people from breathing?“

CO2 like a lot of other substances is absolutely necessary at low levels. At high enough levels (say 15% or so) it is poisonous to humans – which is why putting your head in a completely intact plastic bag, and sealing it around your neck, is not a good idea.

If there is enough CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, then they act like blankets on beds, and trap the heat in. The person in the bed gets warmer. The areas under the Greenhouse gasses get warmer. The basic science of this has been known for over 100 years. It has not been successfully overthrown, or falsified, in all that time, which is pretty impressive for a theory.

All the respiratory creatures in the world breathing together are not a problem as they have evolved within the system over a long period of time – that system was reasonably balanced; we recently have disrupted that balance. There is no need to worry about breathing, unless you are worrying about breathing in particulate pollution from massive forest fires, coal dust from coal trains, fumes from coal burning, smog from car exhausts, and so on; that is often quite harmful, and should be worried about.

“There is only a small amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, it cannot have any significant effect. Why is this only a problem now?“

We might have only increased the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere a small amount, but in complex systems sometimes small changes have large results. That is just life.

The real problem is the rate of change. In the last 70 years we have massively increased greenhouse gas emissions. In the first decade of this century we doubled world coal consumption. An article I read today, argued that Global CO2 emissions have grown by 62% since 1990, and we were currently on track to beat last years record emissions. This increase stresses the natural systems, a stress which is increased by deforestation, ocean acidification and so on, all of which lessen the capacity for draw down of the emissions. There are a lot of factors at play, such as methane discharge, which make the consequences worse than they might have been otherwise.

We have not been burning fossil fuels for that long. Previously, people did notice the hideous smog pollution in cities from the burning of coal; London was famous for its ‘pea-soupers,’ and people died of respiratory complaints generated by the smog. This was fixed in the 1950s, and pollution lowered. It is still a problem in many cities.

Fossil fuel burning is releasing hundreds of millions of years of accumulated and stored carbon into the atmosphere in a very short period of time. The earth system is extremely unlikely to be able to cope with this, any more than your body system might if you drank an alcoholic’s life-time’s worth of alcohol in half an hour.

“Humans are too puny to destroy the world.”

Let us hope so, but we have no evidence for that position always being true. Anyway, we are not talking about destroying the world, just about it being altered enough to undermine current civilisation and its comforts.

Humans have changed and destroyed environments repeatedly, often completely destroying their own societies in the process. Now we have the opportunity to do it globally.

While we are not predicting that all humans will die, it is true the world will happily go on without humans.

“Climate changes Naturally“

Yes it does. That does not mean humans are not changing it now, or that climate change is always going to be gradual and easy to deal with.

Climate can change as a result of events such as volcanic action, large enough meteorite strike, rotation of the magnetic fields, levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The fact that climate can change because of these kind of events, suggests that it is also possible that humans could change climate. Indeed, the idea of solar radiation management, depends on the idea that humans can change climate.

“Life flourished when CO2 Levels have been much higher than they are in any foreseeable future.“

True. Life will flourish eventually under almost any circumstances: the previous five great extinctions show that. I’m just not sure human life, of the kind that we have now, could flourish during the unstable transition period. And some geological period’s climates would seem to have generated conditions which could have been difficult for humans to survive in, without biological change.

“Climate is complex you cannot predict what will happen. You can’t even predict the weather next week with certainty. Saying climate change is going to destroy us is extravagant alarmism. It won’t happen.“

It is true that climate forms a complex system. However, that does not mean you cannot make any predictions at all. You can often predict trends, even while you cannot predict specific events at particular times. It is quite legitimate to expect that weather will be colder in Winter than in Summer. It is also legitimate to predict that weather will become more tumultuous and intense, with increasing warming, while not being able to predict the weather in a specific place in a year or more.

If climate is complex, which it is, I don’t understand how ‘skeptics’, can be so certain that we can have no effect on it, and that any change won’t be too bad.

“All the models have failed and there is no proof of climate change, and no proof that CO2 is responsible.“

That depends on what you count as proof. I find the evidence and theory pretty persuasive myself, although it is true that I am not qualified in climate science. It is also true that some of the predictions have seriously underestimated the changes that are happening.

An increase in rates of warming will make things worse, that’s just logic: it cannot make things better.

We are already getting runs of temperatures in Australia, which can make survival without air conditioning difficult, and certainly lowers the amount of day time work people can do outside. The water losses we are suffering from could be primarily arising because of financialisation of the water supply, rather than climate change, but society can always make things worse. Drought will increase the severity and spread of bushfires. For some reason some governments are refusing to prepare for climate disruptions. This seems to be a bad idea – we generally prepare for forecasted threats even if they are relatively unlikely and small scale.

“Global Warming is just a theory.”

Yes. That is true. It is a theory on which a lot of work has been done, and most people who are experienced in the field, think that it is pretty good, and that the facts seem to support it.

That there is no global warming, that global warming is entirely natural, that we cannot do anything about it, and that climate change is not that bad, are equally theories, even if some people think they are true. Most people who are more qualified than me to make pronouncements on the issue, do not think these particular theories are correct or that there is much evidence for them. You may know better of course, and let us hope that you are correct, but we cannot be certain you are.

“I’ve found this paper which disproves global warming. It shows it’s all a hoax.”

If true, that’s a massive amount of work to be done in one paper. If the paper is that revolutionary it will certainly make the author’s name and be noticed in the field.

Where was it published? Is that a name journal reviewed by other climate scientists, a pay to be published journal or some think-tank journal?

What does it actually argue? Sometimes the connection between these supposedly path breaking articles and humanly generated climate change is not that great. I have been shown supposedly revolutionary, articles which are said to argue that climate change has occurred without human intervention. Yes, that’s true. No big deal, it does not mean human acts cannot produce climate change. Or someone might say this article shows that climate models ignore some obvious feature of climate (like cloud cover). I don’t know enough about the models to say for sure, but if it is obvious and ignored, I’m pretty sure someone will factor it into a model now and run them to see what results are produced. That is the point, science is meant to improve with criticism; if the article is good, then some people in the field will probably take up the ideas.

Sometimes we will hear that one set of measurements completely refutes climate change. This is improbable. If we used the sets of measurements I gathered in high-school physics then Newtonian mechanics is inaccurate as well. The data which allows us to say climate change is happening comes from a large variety of sources, and was made by many different groups, and checked by many different groups, and the correlations between different data sources would be examined. Scientists are not inherently more stupid than non-scientists. Given that climate is a complex system, it would not be surprising if some sets of data where anomalous or surprising. Again, it is the general trend that is important, one set of results proves nothing. It could have been warmer in one part of the polar circle in the past than it is now, while it was colder everywhere else.

I don’t actually know the consequences of one paper or one set of results, but I suspect the person bringing it forward does not either.

“AGW is a religion in which faith is enough.”

It seems to me that there is no proof that civilisation can survive growing ecological destruction and climate change either. Thinking that we can do so without any change in the ways we live is a matter of faith, as it does not depend on the best knowledge that we have.

In fact, it depends on the best knowledge that we have being completely wrong. That may even be true, but I would not want to risk the fate of my children and myself on such an assumption.

“Climate change is global socialist conspiracy to get the State to control us…“

That many solutions to climate change involve some kind of change in capitalism does not mean that climate change is a socialist conspiracy, it just means that, on the whole, pro-capitalist thinkers and politicians can’t, or won’t, deal with the problem, or they can’t see a way out without changing something they want to keep. If you really don’t want a ‘socialist solution’, then work towards a solution which pleases you (surely you are smart enough); and this does not mean leaving it to fossil fuel companies to decide not to make a last ditch profit out of burning and pollution.

Anyway, were the socialist 1950s to 60s with their high tax rates, extension of political participation and expanded social security really that terrible? I don’t think so. Socialism is just about increasing the participation and influence of ordinary people on the State, and that is what happened. It does not aim at control of the people, but it does oppose leaving rulership to the liberty of capitalist elites and their cronies. But, by all means choose something else.

By the way, those anti-recognising-global-warming types do seem quite prepared to use the State to threaten and control people who want to do something – so as that could be seen as a State based infringement of liberty, how about you help stop them?

“Scientists are conspiring to produce junk science“

Do you have any real evidence for that, other than a lot of scientists agree that the evidence supports a proposition that you don’t like?

Have you ever met any scientists? Do you know how unlikely it is that all climate scientists are socialists? The whole career path of many scientists is based on the idea that they will discover something new and overthrow some piece of established science. They don’t sit around trying to figure out how to ignore data that is contrary to other people’s research. In my experience they can spend all night arguing about some obscure piece of stuff, that nobody cares about. They don’t all have great social skills, and they seem unlikely to manage to get a group of people scattered all over the world, with no particular connection (except membership in some scientific body to get a bit of prestige), to agree on anything, certainly not something political. Unless, that is, they think the theory and data are true. Let’s also be real here, how many people outside science actually read scientific papers? They have almost no commercial or popular pull. Scientists, on the whole would be lousy politicians.

On the other hand fossil fuel companies are linked by organisations whose sole purpose is to promote sales of fossil fuels and make them look good. They are notorious for trying to gain political advantage for themselves, teaming up to deceive people and buy politicians to implement their will. They are prone to bribery, corruption, threat, taking tax payers’ money and refusing to clean up after themselves. They routinely lie about the extent of the damage they cause and the ease of fixing it up. We know, they have known about climate change and ignored the data, because it would affect them economically. Exxon is currently in court over this. They have interests in commercial media and can, to a large extent, control the stories that people hear. They have connections with other businesses which also work towards complete corporate domination over the political process disguised as ‘free market’ think tanks. Think of the Atlas Network for example.

Unlike scientists they have the tradition, the money, the motivation, the power, the ability and the organization to conspire.

Is it more likely that a disorganized bunch of nerds has managed to deliberately scare the world for obscure political purposes, or that a bunch of powerful well connected companies are trying to deceive you about the danger to keep their profit going?

I’d say, any realistic political worldview would choose the fossil fuel companies as the most likely villains.

“You just want to pull down capitalism, or society, or do something unpleasant.“

No. I want to avoid the ecological destruction that arises from our success, and I would rather that production, and the extraction of resources, does not poison humans or other creatures, and make it impossible for current societies to continue to improve. Let’s face it, if climate change does keep coming, the results will be very unpleasant.

“Lots of good things are happening in the world, like poverty reduction, and you want to stop them”

The idea that we can have lots of good things happening, does not mean that no bad, or disastrous, things can be happening at the same time.

However, the bad things which are likely to happen because of climate change will almost certainly primarily affect the world’s poor in the initial stages. So if you really do care about poverty, then you would probably want to stop climate change.

“The Socialist agenda of AGW types, means that solutions cannot be debated on merit. The politicisation has driven the Right away.”

Personally, I would expect people to try and solve problems in accordance with their normal social and political agenda. It is not as if the Right has never done this. They usually apply their neoliberal agenda to everything.

However, with this problem, they have rather oddly insisted on doing nothing and pretending the problem does not exist. They offer no solutions, they don’t even promote adaptation. They did not have to do this, and they would not normally deal with problems in this manner.

This unusual behaviour cannot be blamed on the Left. How could the Left force them to do nothing? – that was their own decision; they should take responsibility for it rather than excuse themselves by blaming others for their own actions. Blaming others is just more politicization of the reality.

“I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.“

and “We all admit that Climate is changeable and variable. There is nothing new here”

This is perhaps a uniquely Australian objection. However if Australia is subject to floods, droughts, bushfires and variable and extreme weather events, then we can expect that climate change and other ecological destruction (forest clearing, fracking, massive water use in mines, building over fertile land, etc.) will make the situation worse.

Therefore it would be sensible to prepare for longer droughts, bigger floods, and earlier, more intense and widespread bushfires. We need to train more fire fighters, and have the military trained and ready to help. It would be good to prepare country towns for longer water shortages and to make sure rivers flow rather than get held back for industrial crops which require huge amounts of water, and where the profit all ends up overseas. We need to stop mining under catchment areas, so that our water does not disappear down cracks. We may need more solar or wind powered desalination plants (rather than mock the few we have as unnecessary alarmism). We possibly need to protect endangered wildlife and scenic areas as well, if we want to retain our tourist potential. And we may need to change farming techniques to retain soil fertility and reduce moisture loss.

To keep Australia economically functional we cannot pretend that climate change is unlikely to have any significant effects on the country because the country is ‘harsh’. The harshness means we have to look after it better, and expect even wilder turns. Things are not the same as they were, even if we neglect climate change – larger population (as encouraged by both sides of politics) is also adding strains given the way we organise our ecology. We need to think hard about the way we live in our country.

“Its not our fault, we make only a small amount of emissions, so there is no reason for us to do anything, it won’t make any difference.”

See Only 1.3%

While Australia only emits 1.3–4% of global emissions, this puts us in the highest emitters per head of population, and we export masses of coal and gas which also increases emissions elsewhere in the world, so Australia is directly responsible for a lot of the pressures leading to runaway climate change.

Basically if wealthy developed countries can’t be bothered to cut their emissions, then we cannot expect poorer, still developing countries to be careful about their emissions either. The most likely result or our refusing to do anything, is that it will encourage us to encourage others to do nothing, and embolden others to refuse to do anything, and climate change really will get out of hand.

It is often difficult to set a good example, but that does not mean it should not be done.

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Criticism of Climate Protest

November 26, 2019

As should be clear there appears to be a possibly rising wave of protest against:

  • climate change and policies on climate change,
  • ecological destruction and
  • cruelty to farm animals and live sheep exports.

So far the Australian Federal and State governments response can be tabulated easily:

  • Play down the problem and say they are dealing with it, when they are not, and have a history of not dealing with it.
  • Say we should not discuss climate change during a lengthening period of crisis.
  • Say that Australia only produces a small amount of emissions (I have dealt with that issue earlier).
  • Promote new coal mines and suggest more taxpayer subsidies for new mines and for coal-fired power stations.
  • Promote gas as a substitute for coal, but not actually cutting back on coal.
  • Make the electricity market regulations so complex it is hard for new entry companies to figure out.
  • Propose new laws and regulations that make protesting against corporate destruction criminal, and increase fines and jail terms for protestors.
  • Suggest that protestors are hypocritical because they don’t live completely on the renewable energy the governments and corporations are blocking.
  • Suggest that the science is not in yet.

Let’s briefly discuss the science of climate change, even though climate change is a mere sub-category of the problems we face through destroying our ecologies for profit and ‘development’.

The scientific theory of Global warming has been around since the late 19th Century, as shown by this supposedly old clipping from a New Zealand Newspaper from the early twentieth Century (I say ‘supposedly’, because I’ve not gone through the newspapers archives and seen it myself):

The theory is straightforward. Carbon Dioxide, Methane and various other “greenhouse gases” (including water vapour), act like a blanket does on a bed. They trap the heat in, and slow down its escape, making the areas under the blanket hotter.

One of my friends suggested it is like going into a car on a hot day, shutting the windows and turning off the air conditioner; the temperature in the car will rise and, as most people know, sometimes pets and kids left in such a car will die, even if they would have easily survived outside.

This theory of greenhouse gases has been around for a long time and has not met with any serious challenges as to its accuracy. This is despite the fact that any proposition about the universe carries some levels of uncertainty, despite us now knowing an awful lot more about climate change than we did at the turn of the Century and despite the fact that scientists more or less professionally disagree with each other and try to tear down established theories. [In my experience, scientists of a particular type are unlikely to ever team up to form a conspiracy, they would splinter almost immediately]

We now know there can be many factors which cause climate change. Without the burning of fossil fuels, it is possible we would be heading into a colder period, but the burning seems to be over-powering other effects. The burning seems to be the dominant cause of our current change.

Some people suggest that we have been burning things for a long while, and wonder why it is only just a problem now. That is pretty simple. The amount of burning that has been happening has massively increased since the eighteenth century. It has further massively increased since the 1950s. In the first ten years of this century alone, world coal consumption doubled. While debate continues as to how much coal burning is continuing to increase, there is little doubt that the projected increase in available coal will further increase emissions at a huge rate.

This extremely rapid, in geological time, increase in greenhouse gases puts incredible strains on the planet’s balancing mechanisms, which now seem more or less used up, or breaking down. It is likely to be the wild oscillations of those systems which are producing the wild weather we experience. The strain on these systems is increased by deforestation and ocean acidification and poisoning. There is not enough photosynthesis going on to draw down the excess Carbon, and make it part of the natural cycles.

It also needs to be stated that, while it is getting harder to mine some sources, we will not run out of fossil fuels in time to save us. We have more than enough to reach the end of civilization as we know it.

Let us be clear, if people burnt fossil fuels at the rate we were burning them in the 1950s then we almost certainly would not have the severe problems we have now, and could probably have solved any future problems if we had been inclined to.

After all, as the old proposition states, even if the scientists are wrong and we do something, we will be producing less harmful and less polluting energy, and destroying our world ecology less. The costs will be a bit of lost profit, the sacrifice of the political power of fossil fuel companies, and the forcing some corporate change. If scientists are right (we trust them with the theories behind computers and aircraft, and cars, and so on), then not doing anything is close to suicidal.

We have less than 1 degree temperature change at the moment, and things are not looking good. If we don’t stop 3 or 4 degrees of increase from happening, we will be in a bad way. Yes those are small increases, but in complex systems, some small changes can make a huge difference. This is life.

While destruction of viable ecologies and emissions of greenhouse gases are major problems, we could have solved them, if we had taken them seriously.

However, we face a reluctance by some governments and corporations to even consider the problem and, in the face of opposition, their attempts to shut down commentary and discussion. This appears aimed at keeping on with the destruction and the marketing of fossil fuel burning.

I suspect that a problem for these political parties and corporations is that, if they were to act, they would be implying they had been wrong in the past, and that is not allowable. They can never be wrong. They can only be Right.

This is a simple form of authoritarianism, imposed largely for the benefit of a segment of the dominant groups. It will eventually harm everyone, whether that is intended or not.

Political action is needed, as this is primarily a political problem.

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Authoritarianism and the Right wing

November 25, 2019

Any argument about authoritarian politics, can depend on how you define left and right wing.

Usually the Right are those people who defend the established power relations and hierarchies, and the Left are those that challenge them by supporting people who have been declared outsiders or unworthy. While Conservatives also tend to support established power relations, it can be useful to distinguish conservatism from contemporary neoliberalism, as Conservatives may be skeptical of the benefits of unconstrained capitalism, and the radical transformations it brings. However, this distinction is not really maintained in this piece, even though it is politically vital…. See: Conservatism as philosophy and the posts referred to there.

The usual story is that the terms came into use during the period around the French Revolution when, in the National Assembly, the supporters of the King and aristocracy sat on the President (or presiding officer’s), right and the anti-royalist anti-aristocratic supporters of the revolution sat on his left.

In keeping with this tradition, those called ‘The Left’ in the English speaking world, tend to fight for workers’s rights, women’s rights, gay rights, minority race rights, refugee rights and so on, and the Right tends to fight against such rights, to declare that outsiders are dangerous and to increase the rights of the current dominant groups of capitalists and wealthy people. By supporting established power relations, the Right can also claim to be conservative – but sometimes by over-intensifying the powers of the dominant elite, it can end up destroying what it is supposed to be conserving.

While it is a customary piece of blather that Hitler and Mussolini where left wing, they opposed the left and were heavily supported by the right and the established hierarchies (capitalists, militarists, and so on); they opposed workers democracy, even in principal, and subordinated everything to the nation state, and the established hierarchy. They started persecuting and killing those they defined as dangerous but inferior outsiders (Jews, gypsies, gays, communists, pacifists, disabled people, etc). Eventually they started to replace the established hierarchy with their own. They were not ever pretending to be libertarian capitalists, of course, but that does not mean they were socialists.

Even nowadays (after it is quite clear what Nazism actually stood for), the mainstream Right seems happier working with, or excusing, neo-nazis and white supremacists, than they do working with or excusing anti-fascists who are trying to defend people against violence. This may not just be because both support hierarchies, but because the Right know there is a large chance the neo-fascists and white supremacists will vote for them.

Anyway, the problem for the left is quite obvious. Leftists aim for an overthrow of established powers; however should they achieve this by revolution, they usually have to impose an order, because the old hierarchy does not give in, other states may support the old hierarchy, they might still need a police force or national guard and so on. The French Revolution faced the threat of firstly the King subverting its aims, then the aristocracy some of whom fled and tried to persuade neighbouring states to invade, and the Church which was trying to preserve its aristocratic allies and their property, by stirring up counter-revolution among the peasantry. Austria, Prussia, Holland, Spain and England all opposed the Revolutionaries, at least partly to stop the idea of anti-hierarchy from spreading, and some of them engaged in open warfare against France. Similarly, the Russians faced deniable invading armies after the revolution who allied with the so called White Russians (who naturally persecuted inferiors), which left them on a war footing even after leaving WWI (which given the country could not afford war was a severe problem).

In imposing their new order, the left tends to become ‘rightists’ supporters of their new hierarchy, oppressors of those that challenge them, and so on. This direction gets reinforced when opportunistic authoritarians succeed in taking over “because it is necessary”, as did Stalin in Russia.

So the left revolution is so busy defending itself that it usually fails to be revolutionary or liberatory. This is a problem, because the regime justifies itself in terms of delivering freedom for ordinary people, when it is probably not doing that at all. People eventually notice the failure, and the best they give the regime is resigned and unenthusiastic tolerance.

Rightist revolutions are usually less troublesome for the winners. Being at home with the existing hierarchies, the right can use them and then fade them out gradually if they so choose. They can support traditional modes of ordering, usually with the same personnel, while making them more intense or militarised. They can free up people, in their old ‘policing’ jobs, to be more aggressive in supporting the establishment and persecuting outsiders – which is usually not very difficult. Their main risk is trying to gain legitimacy by demonstrating their military superiority over inferior types. This can increase problems, if they eventually encounter a better armed less tired force, or supply lines get stretched beyond the capacity to support them. To some extent this happened with the Righteous who supported the second Iraq War in the name of the New American Century, or of maintaining US dominance and oil supplies. However, if they stay within National Borders and pacify and celebrate existing powers, like Franco did in Spain with the support of the Church and the old aristocracy, they can be stable for quite a long while. Mussolini could probably have survived a lot longer than he did, but he went against his original suspicions of Hitler and joined with him in a series of unnecessary, unpopular (with the Italian people) and weakening wars.

This implies support for authority, can become a form of corruption. The Church in Spain for example, might have thought that supporting Franco was support for Spanish values and Church authority, and would lead to salvation for most of Spain, but they learnt to ignore torture and maltreatment of victims, and quite a lot of other Christian values as part of that support. Similarly, people on the right who support free markets as a form of liberty, and who gain power, tend to end up supporting the capitalist elite (because they have money) and end up supporting crony capitalism, state capture, anti-union laws, anti-protest laws and so on, because opposition to these pro-capitalist moves promotes inhibition of the market. They deliver liberty for the capitalist elite, rather than for ordinary people. This arrangement can also be quite stable for a while, although it might be looking precarious at the moment.

There is an argument that neoliberalism (lots of talk of free markets with state support for Capitalist elites) was first tried out in the dictatorship in Chili, and promoted by Hayek and Friedman. It is a complex argument and a lot of neoliberals object to this characterisation, but it rarely seems they are particularly interested in a democracy that threatens capitalist domination, whatever the people might want.

In terms of the Toynbee cycle, both left and right revolutions are trying to solve perceived major challenges to the social order. The Rightist revolution in the contemporary English speaking world quite possibly originated in dealing with the “crisis of democracy“; the fact that the non-revolutionary left had succeeded to such an extent that the elites where threatened by:

  • minorities who now insisted they had a right to self governance, and to overturn the traditions (sexism, genderism, racism etc) which had held them down,
  • the steadily increasing wages of the lower class, and State based social support, which gave them prosperity, freedom to participate in government, lack of fear of unemployment and disobedience to bosses, and
  • the growing success of the environmental movement which threatened wealthy high polluters, environmental destruction for profit, nuclear power and the fossil fuel industry.

To the Right these collective factors promised chaos, and led to the campaign to make markets the supreme virtue and reinforce corporate dominance, while pretending to bring people a lack of governmental interference, or rather a lack of governmental support and an alienation from participation in their own self-government.

This movement has had the probably unintended consequence of accelerating and protecting environmental destruction, and the resultant destabilizing of world orders – which is likely to become a complete destructive crisis in the next ten to twenty years.

The Russian Left faced the problems of a decaying aristocratic government and a small comfortable middle class, both of whom could not see the growing unrest among the peasantry and workers who were seeing the country fall apart, with them being asked to take the burdens. There was also protest against a war that few really believed was in Russia’s interests, and Russia’s lack of an industrial base with which to produce modern armaments. While the Russians did solve the problem of Industrialisation in a very short time, it would be ignorant to deny this came at a great cost.

So, the answer to the question is complicated.

I’d say that by definition the vast majority of authoritarian states are right-wing, but they may not have started out that way, or intended to be so, they just become that way to defend themselves against the disorder that eventuated.

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The PM on the Bushfires

November 24, 2019

Right wing politicians still condemn people for mentioning the possible connection between climate change and intense early bushfires. The condemnation seems to have been started by the National Party trying to make it look as though mentioning the connection was politically motivated and inappropriate, despite the connection coming from non-political sources, who were not blaming the government parties. The condemnation was, of course, supported by the Murdoch Empire.

After making the point several times himself, the PM made the following tweets:

Scott Morrison@ScottMorrisonMP·Nov 19

There are 70+ fires burning in Qld. I spoke to Premier Palaszczuk yesterday to offer any assistance they need. Our @DeptDefence continue to transport firefighters to where they’re needed and to undertake other tasks as requested by the States, like clearing overgrown firebreaks.

Scott Morrison@ScottMorrisonMP·Nov 20

I visited the @QldFES Centre today to get an update on the current and forecast bushfire conditions. Australia is facing some dangerous fire conditions all across the country in the coming days. Please keep updated on fires in your area. Stay alert. Stay informed. Stay safe.

and

Scott Morrison@ScottMorrisonMP·Nov 20

Going to be a great summer of cricket, and for our firefighters and fire-impacted communities, I’m sure our boys will give them something to cheer for. [1]

In other words, we don’t need any leadership on climate change, or attempts to prepare for a summer of fires; all the firefighters and people who’ve lost their homes need is success at cricket!!

On the other hand, a report released at the beginning of the year stated that millions of people in Australia’s East face natural disaster risk.

Across greater Sydney, there are 317,000 people in council areas facing high bushfire risks, with most of these in Richmond, Windsor and Blaxland.

Another 484,000 are in medium-risk areas, stretching from Hornsby in the north to the fast growing suburbs south of Camden….

There are 66,000 residents in the Hawkesbury catchment facing very high threats of flooding.

There are another 1.3 million people at high risk of flooding, including in Penrith, parts of Fairfield, Liverpool and Camden…

Outside greater Sydney, there are another 1.7 million people in NSW at risk of flooding….

133,000 people living around Port Macquarie and Taree face a high risk of storms. 

That is just in NSW.

More than 4.4 million people in NSW and Queensland live in local council areas with extreme or high risk of cyclones,

And so on. Nothing to worry about. Nothing to plan about. No fears things could get worse. Don’t be political….

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Australia increases fossil fuel exports

November 24, 2019

This is largely a series of quotes from the UN 2019 Production Gap report.

Governments [through out the world] are planning to produce about 50% more fossil fuels by 2030 than would be consistent with a 2°C pathway and 120% more than would be consistent with a 1.5°C pathway.

P.4

Australia is not only a major fossil fuel producer, but also the world’s leading exporter of coal (IEA 2019a) and the second largest producer and exporter of LNG (IGU 2018). With government backing, and proposed major new investments in mines and port facilities, Australia’s coal and gas outputs and exports could continue their rapid rise (Office of the Chief Economist 2019). Proposed large coal mines and ports — if fully completed — would represent one of the world’s largest fossil fuel expansions (around 300 Mt per year of added coal capacity) (Buckley 2019a; Department of the Environment and Energy 2018). The rise of hydraulic fracking has also opened the door to discussions on tapping into the country’s vast resources of unconventional (shale) gas (Westbrook 2018).

Australia supports increased fossil fuel production through several measures:

Tax-based subsidies total more than AUD 12 billion (USD 9 billion) per year (Market Forces 2019). This includes the fuel tax credit scheme, which allows fossil fuel companies to claim tax credit on their fuel use (Australian Taxation Office 2017), and a budgeted AUD 1.7 billion (USD 1.3 billion) for accelerated depreciation for oil and gas assets (Australian Department of the Treasury 2015).

Geoscience Australia, a government agency, absorbs sector risk by financing and conducting resource exploration, which was worth AUD 100 million (USD 75 million) in fiscal 2017 (Department of Industry, Innovation and Science 2018).

The government takes various steps to support increased coal production, including, for example, fast-track approval, private road construction, and reduced royalty payments for Adani’s recently approved Carmichael coal mine project in the Galilee Basin (Buckley 2019b).

Recent legislation increased government support for investment in new overseas infrastructure projects from AUD 2 million to AUD 1.2 billion to accommodate Australian coal and gas exports (Parliament of Australia 2019; Hasham 2019).

Government projections show coal production growing another 10% by 2024 and 34% by 2030, relative to 2018 levels (Office of the Chief Economist 2019; Syed 2014). As shown in Figure 4.6, the government also envisions gas production growing 20% by 2024 and 33% by 2030 relative to 2018 levels (Office of the Chief Economist 2019; Syed 2014).

Under these projections, Australia’s extraction-based emissions from fossil fuel production would nearly double (a 95% increase) by 2030 compared to 2005 levels. However, its NDC targets a reduction in territorial GHG emissions of 26–28% over the same period (Government of Australia 2016)”

p.35

This likely illustrates:

  • The heavy symbolic importance that coal has for developmentalism and prosperity, even faced with ecological destruction and massive climate change: the coal rush continues.
  • The dominant groups in the world are heavily identified (self-cateogrised) as belonging with fossil fuel companies, the use of fossil fuels, or the traditional trajectories of development through fossil fuels. They do not seem to care what will happen to their populations if climate scientists are correct about the likely tumultuous effects of higher Greenhouse gas emissions.
  • Dominant groups do not see that a method which used to produce order, is now highly likely to produce chaos, unintended effects or blowback. Reality has changed but ideology lingers, as do the power and wealth relations of fossil fuel societies.
  • The mess of information, provides many alternate stories which can make it seem that the risk of the process is negligible, and that the dominant groups find it easy to dismiss information which suggests the risk is not negligible, which further reassures them. I have been told that Right wing MPs in Australia refuse to attend climate briefings, and we know that despite the requests of State Governments, the Coalition recently refused to allow a general briefing of State Treasurers by a member of the Reserve Bank, on the risks of Climate Change. Acceptance of Information seems now almost totally driven by political and market allegiances. They also deny large bush fires could have anything to do with extended droughts, higher than average temperatures, and longer runs at peak temperatures. Instead they and the Murdoch Empire blame the effect on non-existent Greens policies.
  • The green paradox; the more likely it is that fossil fuels will be stopped, the more pressure there is to mine and sell them before it is too late, and there are fewer purchasers.

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Rewrite of the Toynbee cycle

November 23, 2019

I have just extensively revised the post called Corporate society and the Toynbee Cycle I was intending to make it a new post here, but blew that completely 🙂

So if you are interested then please click the link above, and check it out….

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Only 1.3%

November 23, 2019

Australia and Climate Change

It is frequently argued that Australia’s CO2 emissions are tiny, and that there is no point in Australia’s federal government acting to cut them. The Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, was making this argument the other day.

Faced with criticism over the recent bushfires, because it seems logical that increased drought and temperatures from climate change would increase bush fire danger and severity, he said

the suggestion that any way, shape or form with Australia accountable for 1.3 per cent of the world’s emissions, that the individual actions of Australia are impacting directly on specific fire events, whether it’s here or anywhere else in the world, that doesn’t bear up to credible scientific evidence either. Climate change is a global phenomenon, and we’re doing our bit as part of the response to climate change. We’re taking action on climate change. But I think to suggest that with just that 1.3 per cent of global emissions that Australia doing something differently, more or less, would have changed the fire outcome this season. I don’t think that stands up to any credible scientific evidence at all.

This lack of urgency for action, seems reinforced when the US, under President Trump, also pretends there is no problem. US emissions are huge, and we can have no obvious effect on those, and by comparison our general effect is small. We also cannot directly affect emissions in China and India, which are also significantly larger than our own.

However, there are significant problems with this issue. Australia does not have 1.3% of the world’s population. We have about 0.33%, so we are batting at just under four times our weight in emissions – which is impressive. We are also, as the Climate Council pointed out, when Mr. Morrison used the same argument at the UN, around the 17th largest emitter in the world, ahead of 175 other countries.

We also reputedly have amongst the highest per capita emissions in the developed world.

Climate Analytics stated in their 2019 fact sheet that:

Australians emit more than twice as much per person as the average of the ‘Group of Twenty’ (G20) in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. This includes burning fossil fuels and other processes in industry, agriculture and waste treatment.

Figures released in August of 2019, for March 2019, by the Australian government show emissions rose 0.6 per cent over the previous 12 months, largely because of gas. So our emissions are not heading in the right direction for long-term survival, and Mr Morrison could be said to be engaging in deception if he implies that any targets we are meeting, are useful, or that we really doing our bit to save everyone.

Furthermore, none of these figures about emissions, factor in the emissions from exports of coal, gas or oil which are burnt elsewhere. We are about the third largest exporter of fossil fuels in the world, so we are responsible for their availability. We are also apparently going to boost our coal production by 34% over a decade. That is probably a conservative estimate given the potential of Clive Palmer’s mines in Queensland. Given that our emissions are not declining, then the actual, and future, emissions which can be attributed to Australia or to the burning of Australian products is likely to be considerably more than 1.3% and increasing.

If Australia is acting on climate, it is to make climate change worse.

By not attempting to ameliorate climate change, and not attempting to prepare for climate change (not being ready for early and large bush fires or drought) Australia is showing that it does not care about climate change, it will not protect its people from climate change, and that it will not object that strongly to other bigger polluters continuing to pollute. It puts no pressure on local industries or other Countries to reduce and it does not set a good example. Our actions help to make Greenhouse gas production normal which produces more climate change.

By making these choices, and encouraging coal mining in Australia, Australian governments are allying with the commercial and political forces which produce climate change. Our governments (of all persuasions) are apparently demonstrating that they care more for the profit of some companies, than they care about preserving the land, water, people’s health or maintaining a climate balance. They care more about maintaining profits than they do about ordinary people’s lives. Choices made, such as the mining under Sydney’s water supply, or the Adani mine in the Great Artesian basin, compound the problems of climate, by affecting water supply, and demonstrating further lack of concern.

It is sometimes argued that if we do not sell fossil fuels, then countries will buy them from other suppliers, and Australians will lose jobs. This may be true, but it hardly makes those sales moral or sensible – virtue can be difficult – and there are not that many jobs in mining these days either.

If we did decide not to sell fossil fuels then (according to orthodox economics) this would lower supply and increase the price, thus adding more incentive for other countries to move out of fossil fuels.

Damage to our ecology, agriculture and cities by climate change through sea level rise, massive storms and droughts will also cost us money – only most of it will be from the taxpayers and not the companies who profit.

By not being worried that Australians have one of the highest Greenhouse gas emissions per head in the world, Australian governments are further implying that a prosperous life style depends upon destroying climate and ecological stability, and that everyone destroying that stability should be encouraged, so they can become prosperous. This one reason why Australian governments probably promote the developmental capacity of coal (apart from making money for miners).

By being half hearted or indifferent to climate change they provide an exemplar and an excuse for the behavior of other countries (‘If wealthy countries in the West can’t be bothered, then why should less developed countries?’).

There is also truth in what the Prime Minister says, if we currently made half the emissions we do now, and nothing else had changed, then it is probable that there would be little difference in the current bushfires. But the question is would nothing else have changed over the last 20 or so years, if we had acted? Would we be as equally unprepared for bush fires? Would we have sacked so many people with experience in fire preparation in cost cutting escapades? Would other countries have not been influenced by Australia’s example, and cut emissions? Would we have been a more effective force at the UN, rather than prevaricate and support fossil fuels? Would we have sold as many fossil fuels? Would we have helped other countries to move out of fossil fuels?

If we had reduced our consumption, then everything would not be the same.

If we act to cut emissions and support transition to renewables then we provide an exemplar of behaviour which also might influence both other governments and corporate behaviour – at the least we would not appear hypocritical – and indeed the world might be different. If we had begun the work in 1990, or even 2008, then, even without support from other countries, it is probable the world would be in a much better space.

If we keep doing nothing, we keep increasing the possibility that events can get much worse than they would otherwise.

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Insurance and the measure of climate damage

November 21, 2019

This is a proposition only.

People often ask about how we can measure the effects of climate change. And this does seem to be difficult.

One possible method might be to compile a yearly figure which involves the combined factors of insurance company figures for weather related damage, added to the cost of weather disasters in each year for government departments.

If we factor in inflation, we should get some kind of sense as to whether, the effects of climate change have been getting worse.

One advantage of this method is that insurance companies are widely rumoured to underpay and underestimate damage, to keep their profit under control. So the figures should have be recognized as conservative, rather than exaggerated.

One of the problems with this method is, that as fires, cyclones and other extreme weather events become much more severe as we slide out of established climate stability into a new state of climate turmoil, we might expect climate damage to be so great that measures like this are totally inadequate.

For example, Insurance companies will probably try to avoid paying out, because that is how they make their money, and they have no way of calculating risk in the new circumstances, so they are continually threatened by the change. To help deal with this, flood plain areas, for example, are likely to be expanded giving insurers excuses for extending the lack of coverage. The same kind of thing will happen as governmental budgets run out, and help gets scaled back: I am told that Hurricane Katrina already broke the US national flood insurance.

As insurers retreat from insuring people, and government budgets run out, then the figures will become much too conservative to be of use, so we might have to find other measures of real damage. However, until then such measures might be worth while.

Addenda from 4 March 2021

In 2018, natural disasters killed more than 10,000 people and left millions more homeless. In the same year, natural catastrophe-related economic losses reached US$160 billion (A$215 billion) (half of which were all insured losses). The vast majority – 95 per cent – of the registered events were weather-related.

Ticha How resilient is the insurance industry against climate change? UNSW newsroom. 16 December 2020

One problem for the Insurance industry is that they rely on stability. They assume that changes in mortality and property damage, on the whole, move slowly, and that any crisis will probably be succeeded by a return to normality. This is not the case in a changing climate system. We simply do not know the changes in weather which will be produced. This makes calculating risk extremely difficult and highly inaccurate. It may also affect their business in general.

Insurers, however, must be careful not to underestimate the true threat of climate change. Because its effects are systemic, climate risk is likely to stress local economies and—more grimly—cause market failures that affect both consumers and insurers. More frequent catastrophic events, in combination with the need to meet evolving regulatory requirements, can threaten company business models—and make insuring some risk unaffordable for customers or unfeasible for insurers…. Some historically stable premium and profit pools will shrink, and possibly disappear…

McKinsey research shows that the value at stake from climate-induced hazards could, conservatively, increase from about 2 percent of global GDP to more than 4 percent of global GDP in 2050. And the risks associated with climate change are multiplying. They vary by locale, evolve, and have nonlinear systemic effects that tend to be regressive. In short, a small physical shift can change entire systems irreversibly

[Some companies] have publicly committed to reducing their exposure to carbon-intensive industries by 2030 or 2040. In recent interactions with industry executives, more than half have said that the industry’s response so far has been underwhelming and inadequate—even though the vast majority said that responding to climate risk is either “very important” or “a top priority.” 

Grimaldi et al. Climate change and P&C insurance: The threat and opportunity. McKinsey & Company 19 November 2020 [Rearranged]

The Ticha article referenced above, tries to explain some ways of countering these problems, but I’m not sure I understand what they are talking about.

The only safe thing to do for the industry is stop insuring people in areas which seem to be likely to get increasing damage, or massively increase the price of insurance. This action has huge consequences for the precariousness of ordinary people, as if they get hit by climate change they can lose everything.

The Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority (Apra) executive director Dr Sean Carmody told a Senate hearing on Tuesday the nation’s insurers and banks were taking steps to prepare for worsening bushfire seasons and more extreme weather events.

However, he said the resultant rising insurance premiums may put coverage out of reach for many people, threatening the stability of the wider economy…..

The total cost to the insurance industry from extreme weather and natural disasters between November 2019 and February 2020 alone stood in the range of $5bn.

Kermelov Climate change could put insurance out of reach for many Australians. The Guardian 2 March 2021

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A Jeremiad: Neoliberalism and Climate Change

November 19, 2019

Plenty of conservatives in the UK and Germany and other countries can recognise climate change is a problem, and a problem that is going to get worse the more we pollute and destroy the environment. The UK, for example, is going to be free of coal relatively soon. That is not enough, but it is a start, and there is little dispute about it.

Those people who call themselves “Conservatives” but who pretend climate change is not real, are not conservative in the sense of conserving things like land, tradition, virtue or stability. They are more likely to be radical neoliberals, wolves dressed as sheep, who believe that everything must be sacrificed to keep the market going. They seem to believe that markets are more important than natural ecologies, and that ecologies can be disposed of in the name of profit without harm to land, tradition, stability or virtue.

For some reason they wish to impose their vision of endless pollution and destruction upon the rest of the world. They want pro-corporate government throughout the world, for whom profit is the only thing that matters.

To fulfil this aim, they suppress research and free speech, and try to shut down science, slander scientists, prevent public servants from talking about climate change, taking down public websites, they try to take the subject out of the public domain. They shout a lot in the media, and endlessly abuse those who think there is a problem. They pretend it is likely that scientists are left wing conspirators, when scientists can hardly agree on anything other than climate change being real, and deliberately ignore the power of wealth and the long standing reputations oil, and coal companies have for political suppression and corruption. They pretend they can predict that the future will be ok, and so ignore the complexity of the world.

When defending their support of destruction, they try to argue that if we act to diminish the effects of climate change then we inevitably will support more taxes, more government, socialism and the destruction of ‘the economy’. Apparently this is obviously worse than widespread, calamitous ecological collapse.

But would a truly working and functional economy poison the ecologies it depends on? And, how bad were the 1950s and 60s with their high tax rates, government interference in economy, stronger unions, greater social mobility and high levels of home ownership? Not that bad really. Quite possibly more hopeful for most people than nowadays.

By eagerly defending the current economy, neoliberals are not defending real ‘free markets’, ‘open markets’, or a ‘beneficial economy’, but just those wealthy groups who have successfully bought special rights, captured regulatory bodies, and co-opted the State for their own interests.

Neoliberals reduce all virtue and intelligence to selfishness, the acquisition of money, and obedience to wealth. They may dress this in the tatters of religion, but this too is about making money, obedience to the existing hierarchy, and cultivating hatred for others. They may pretend that this hatred shows the love of God, but their love requires those others to become like them, so it supports a withered uniformity and frightened acquiescence.

This neoliberal religion is, in short, the worship of Mammon. Nature only exists to be overcome, extracted from, despoiled and turned into profit. All that is shared, or common, the real gifts of God, are valueless to Mammon and his worshipers, everything must be privately owned, with others excluded unless they can pay. Everything is to be subject to the neoliberal will; there is no freedom, only the drive for money, and punishment for the sin of non-possession.

Perhaps Neoliberals think capitalism cannot survive without endless despoliation? Perhaps they just want to side with the powerful. I don’t know, but it seems that way. In either case, none of us can avoid the agonizing consequences of their destructive actions and enforcement of ignorance, either economically or politically.

Real Conservatives do not have to pretend reality is the way they would like it to be, and can face up to unpleasant facts. We need more real conservatives, and others prepared to stand against Mammon. Otherwise the consequences are dire: destruction, flood, fire and famine.

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