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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Clinton and Gabbard

November 17, 2019

Everybody knows that Clinton attacked Tulsi Gabbard, and this is causing a scandal.

I thought I would have a quick look at what this was all about. What I found was another example of (dis)information, or mess of information, at work, and it is of some interest to look at how this mess operates.

Firstly, Clinton gave an interview on the 17th of October 2019 in which she said some members of the Democrats were likely Russian Assets and aiming at splintering the Party like Jill Stein had done…

Her argument was pro-Trump forces would not necessarily only try to get people to vote for Trump, but to actively not vote for the Democratic opponent. She said they would say:

You don’t like me? Don’t vote for the other guy because the other guy is going to do X, Y and Z or the other guy did such terrible things and I’m going to show you in these, you know, flashing videos that appear and then disappear and they’re on the dark web, and nobody can find them, but you’re going to see them and you’re going to see that person doing these horrible things.

This might be a bit exaggerated, but it does seem to encapsulate a lot of what was happening during the last election. Clinton continued that the Republicans,

They’re also going to do third party again. And I’m not making any predictions but I think they’ve got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third party candidate. She’s the favorite of the Russians. They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far, and that’s assuming Jill Stein will give it up. Which she might not, ’cause she’s also a Russian asset.

Many early media reports suggested that Clinton had said the Russians, rather than the Republicans, were “grooming” a candidate. In either case, no evidence seems to be presented by Clinton.

This was not wise set of statements, but Clinton probably lost the Presidency, and we got Donald Trump, because of people splitting the ‘left’, so it is not unreasonable she should have feelings on the matter, and warn that more intense versions of the same techniques are likely to be used again.

Apparently Tulsi Gabbard went on twitter claiming that Clinton and the Democrats were smearing her, and implying that the Democrats were corrupt. It is not clear what Gabbard’s source of the story was, possibly earlier mainstream media reports.

Thank you @HillaryClinton. You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain,

it was always you, through your proxies and … powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose.

It’s now clear that this primary is between you and me. Don’t cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly.

We can see several standard approaches here.

  • Trying to make the tweeter look as though they are being suppressed
  • Trying to make the Tweeter look important – the others are frightened of the threat she poses, hence things they say are to be discounted.
  • Responding to a smear with a bigger smear taken as common sense, or what everybody knows.
  • Discrediting news which the tweeter finds objectionable by ‘dissing’ media in general; as if there were not more accurate and less accurate media organisations.
  • Accusing the other person of inherently taking a position which they may not have taken, and cannot deny without appearing to take that position.
  • There is also some soothing of any of the ‘Left’ who did not vote for Clinton and thus helped Trump to victory, by opening with the unsupported accusation that Clinton is the “Queen of warmongers” and “embodiment of corruption”. To reiterate, Clinton has been endlessly investigated by hostile inquiries, and they have never found an offence she can be charged with, or even thoroughly accused of. She is hardly the exemplar of evil – unless you take the absence of evidence and charges as showing how evil and cunning she is.

The Story was taken up by Fox News who broadcast Gabbard’s twitter statements and interviewed her. Gabbard clearly liked the segment as she tweeted it. It is probably not going too far to postulate that Fox saw a story which would cast the Democrats, and their favourite villain, Hillary Clinton, in a bad light and so were eager to participate in the issue, and stir it up for their own political aims.

On the 19th of October, CNN host Van Jones said that Clinton had come out against Gabbard, “a decorated war veteran” with “just a complete smear and no facts.” CNN seems to have heavily promoted the allegations and the conflict, although I have not checked thoroughly as to how heavily they promoted the line.

We can, therefore, note that at least two examples of the “corporate media” which Gabbard condemns, seem to have been fairly sympathetic to her position.

Someone asked a person, Nick Merril, who is associated with Clinton (I don’t know to what degree, although he likes portraying himself as close), if Clinton had meant Gabbard, and he replied something like:

Divisive language filled with vitriol and conspiracy theories? Can’t imagine a better proof point than this.

and

If the nesting doll fits

There is no evidence from his statements that he had any inside knowledge, but that he thought Gabbard’s response to Clinton made the general point.

Most mainstream news companies went with Gabbard’s version of the story as this was the only version being broadcast, until some of them checked the interview and found that Clinton had not named Gabbard. They then attempted to clear things up.

Other news companies then attacked the retractions. One I saw, argued that Clinton did attack Gabbard and was lying, and played the interview, concluding, to the effect that ‘there you are no question of it’. Unfortunately, in the clip they showed, Clinton did not mention Gabbard at all, despite their explicit claims to the contrary.

If that was the best they could do, then it is clear that Clinton did not attack Gabbard by name, and apparently not by implication either (unless you consider the use of ‘her’ as an implication).

A day or so later (20th October or thereabouts), the President saw this as an opportunity to use the story to defend Gabbard and himself, saying:

Hillary Clinton, I don’t know if you’ve heard of her, she’s the one accusing everybody of being a Russian agent. Anybody that is opposed to her is a Russian agent. That’s a scam that was pretty much put down.

I don’t know Tulsi, but she’s not a Russian agent, I don’t know Jill Stein. I know she likes environment. I don’t think she likes Russians. If she does like them, I know she’s not an asset.

These people are sick. There’s something wrong with them,

[Different media sources give different orders, and slightly different phrasings for Trump’s statements, probably because he made them several times, (probably at a Press Conference, and in a hyper-friendly interview on Fox) as he saw it as an opportunity to dismiss the Mueller inquiry’s findings, and the general evidence he both received Russian support and his campaign attempted to attract Russian support]

This acts to keep the story going, and to keep it phrased in a certain way.

However, what can we conclude about Gabbard’s quick response to Clinton?

  • a) At best, Gabbard is thin-skinned and likely to completely break up under pressure from the Republican media. If she can’t handle this she has no chance of survival in real heat.
  • b) She may have a guilty conscience and recognised herself in the comments.
  • c) She tried to smear Clinton and the Democrats, in order to persuade her followers not to support whoever is chosen to run for President if it wasn’t her (and her nomination is probably unlikely), and therefore keep Trump in power.

According to some reports, rather than just backing down and getting on with her campaign Gabbard is pressing Clinton to retract “her accusations”, through her lawyers. According to these stories (which may not be true of course), she demands that Clinton say:

“On October 17, 2019, I made certain statements about Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard. Among other things, I accused her of being a Russian asset and that Russia was grooming her to be a third-party candidate.

“I was wrong. I never should have made these remarks, and I apologize. I did not have any basis for making the statements. I acknowledge my grave mistake and error in judgment in this matter.” [there is more]

Clinton cannot retract what she did not do, but Gabbard appears to want to create as much chaos as possible, as you would expect if she was trying to splinter the Democratic Party and keep Trump in power. She may not be trying, but that is what she appears to be doing.

At the best, it means that the information so strongly fits with her filters (“Clinton is corrupt,” “The Democratic Party authorities are against me,” “people who support me agree Clinton named me”), that Gabbard cannot be bothered to check what she already knows, or that she does not want to loose face, media attention, or campaign momentum, by admitting the story is distorted.

We already have that problem, in a President who seems to primarily believe what Fox News tells him is the case, and who throws aside counter information, that does not fit with his bias and filters.

We can also see the story being used for political purposes, and in attempts to settle scores, and hostilities. This distracts from attempts to find out what is correct or even what is plausible. Some reports suggest that Gabbard’s fund raising was boosted by the ‘scandal’, which would provide another reason to keep going with the story, but I’m not accepting that as correct at the moment.

This now, seems to be becoming the normal response to news. Accept what fits with your existing bias, or political strategy, and don’t check to make sure its correct. If you are wrong, then let the news cycle move on, or create a new disturbance. Being wrong is irrelevant, and people will eventually forget you were wrong.

For me, this series of events as well as describing motivators of the information mess, opens the question of whether Gabbard is a suitable candidate for President? Let us compare her with someone who is not a presidential Candidate. AOC.

AOC is intelligent and competent, she handles pressure well, she deals with conflict wittily, she makes news, she does things, she works well with others, and she improves the standing of her Party.

Gabbard may have good policies, but clearly does not handle pressure or conflict well, and she does not seem to do much to improve the Party’s standing. I don’t know anything about how she works with other people, and so far I have seen no evidence that Gabbard has done anything, above the routine, with her four terms in Congress. However, she does appear to be trying hard to split the Party, and keep Trump in office. If she is not trying to do this, then it is hard to praise her intelligence.

Incidentally, it was reported in February that:

An NBC News analysis of the main English-language news sites employed by Russia in its 2016 election meddling shows Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who is set to make her formal announcement Saturday, has become a favorite of the sites Moscow used when it interfered in 2016.

So the Russians may like her. She has supported their actions and propaganda in Syria [1],[2],[3] which makes that support plausible. [I’m not quite clear why realistic suspicion of US foreign policy, translates so often into the ideas that everyone the US supports must be bad and that Putin is the Good Guy. But it does]. The conspiratorial right and Fox has also apparently supported her, although I doubt this would translate into support for her in an election against Trump. If so, then this adds to the likelihood of the news being stirred and distorted, for the Right’s benefit.

Let us be clear, that despite the popularity of the “both sides are equally bad,” meme, there is no doubt that Trump is far worse than Clinton would have been, and if you are remotely Green, then that should be obvious. Trump will gladly destroy and poison people to boost corporate power. He joyfully supports destruction of the environment. Throughout the world, we have all had our probabilities of uncomfortable eco-death increased by the election of Trump. It is not smart to fall into the same trap again.

This means, of course that if Gabbard does win the primaries, then it is important to support her against Trump, and not get caught up in counter wars against her of the kind the Republicans will try to start up.

It is that vital to defeat Trump.

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Neoliberalism, Climate and Fire…

November 14, 2019

The public service association of NSW has said that National Parks and Wildlife Service has been gutted of staff by the Coalition, especially of experienced fire managers. The number of experienced staff was cut from 289 to 193. The government appears to have assumed, as neoliberals do, that all workers are interchangeable, and replaced knowledge and experience with basic entry level people, and they have pretended this makes no difference.

The chief of the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment, told their staff this month that Treasury (actually the government hiding under another name as usual) had ordered savings of $81.4 million by July 2020, and that despite their best efforts this would result in further cuts to the National Parks service and to the Energy and Science division.

The government has tried to blame previous governments of many years ago for a perceived lack of hazard reduction fires in the present, but the National parks service actually exceeded the Government’s own targets, despite the shorter season in which is safe to do hazard reduction (due to climate change)…. So as usual the only people to blame are the Coalition themselves.

The government also claims that the number of trained fire fighting staff as been increased, but it has actually fallen from 1349 to 1060. The Coalition’s own “Labour Expense Cap” means that $20m a year has to be cut from wages budgets by the fire service, which means even fewer experienced fire fighters.

The problem here needs to emphasised, because the volunteer fire services have been stretched to exhaustion already and summer is yet to come. Firefighters will die. I guess the neoliberal attitude is that you can always buy another.

Former NSW Fire Chief, Greg Mullins tried to organize a meeting of fire chiefs with the Federal Coalition to discuss responses to climate change earlier in the year, and was rejected twice.

Structurally, we would like to actually go back to being retired and not to have to speak out. We would like the doors to be open to the current chiefs, and allow them to utter the words “climate change”. They are not allowed to, at the moment.

The Guardian 14 Nov 2019 11:17

On a slightly different note, workers from the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment who were attending an AdaptNSW forum on showcasing best practice in reducing the impacts of climate change on communities, received an email stating “Public Affairs has issued advice [to you] not to discuss the link between climate change and bushfires.” The next day, the minister said this was a mistake, but it was a mistake entirely in keeping with Coalition policy, and it had its effect.

The government does not appear to recognise that Climate change, and increased ecological destruction causes any problems for NSW that cannot be solved by taxcuts, taxpayer funded gifts to developers, destruction of knowledge, misinformation, suppression of disagreement, denial of responsibility, silence and sacking workers.

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