Problems of Transition 02: Technology as Fantasy

October 23, 2019

Follows from Transformation to Renewable Energy: General Problems

Contemporary societies have social fantasies, or myths, about technologies, which may not be helpful to dealing with the reality of transition. The biggest problem, is that we all may be in the grip of these myths and fantasies without being aware of it. We can just assume the myth is common sense and that what we are saying is obvious. Obviously I am not going to be aware of all of these myths, and even if I was, I could still be captured by them.

One reason that fantasy is important is that we cannot see the future or predict the future completely accurately. Indeed, socially, we have a bad record at this. Books anticipating the future always fail in fundamental ways to predict exactly what will happen. Weather, economic and sports forecasting is difficult, and rarely always accurate. We now understand that this arises from the nature of complex systems. Trends can perhaps be predicted, but predicting specific events is hard, especially when the predictions change behaviour.

Therefore we have to imagine the future. Imagining is essential, and helpful, but it is never constrained by reality. So when we are talking about technological transition, we are engaging in imagining and fantasy. Often imagining has guiding principles which make the results seem socially acceptable, and these principles may not be correct.

Technology is either really good or bad.

In these fantasies, technologies are nearly always forces that bring either marked good or harm. There is a large proportion of the population that seems to believe technology can solve almost any problems without bringing any harms. This is rarely so, even if it is a common part of the sales techniques deployed around technologies. There are also others who think that transition to any new technology will inevitably bring disaster.

Technology is spontaneously generated when needed.

People, including economists, often talk as if, because a technology is needed or imagined, it will be developed, and it will be developed in time, and utilised as intended, with only the results expected. This is often not the case. We still do not have skies full of flying cars, we do not have bases on the Moon and Mars, but we do have climate change, which is a classic case of a known problem with technologies being ignored, because the technologies are profitable and useful and have been built into social relations, activities and hierarchies.

Technology has no real restrictions; it is magical.

There is another tendency for people to act as if technology was magical, and that because we can do one thing, or one device can be said to resemble another, then we will soon be able to do something else, which is actually difficult or impossible. Thus again, because we could travel to the Moon, we would soon have a Moon base, or we should soon be able to colonise the solar system, or travel to another star, or something. We might think computers resemble minds, so we should soon be able download individual minds into computers. We can in theory catch CO2 emissions from coal, therefore we will soon have emissions-free coal everywhere. Thorium is a good source of energy, therefore we will soon have functional Thorium reactors. Fusion is wonderful, therefore we will soon have fusion reactors. The list goes on. And the catch is that fantasy and imagining, or trying to do things which were previously ‘magical’, probably is important in developing new technology. The problem is that even if these things were possible, and I am not saying they are impossible, it does not mean they will happen now. There are other complexities to consider, including the social relations around the technology and current technology, the limited range of human attention and application, and the success of struggles for limited finance.

Technology can also be ‘magical’ in quite a literal sense, if we define magic as a way of changing human awareness, habit, focus and so on and producing ‘non-physical’ effects in the world. Technology can change the way people perceive things and think about things. For example, we can start thinking of minds in terms of computers (software and hardware), or we can start thinking of the cosmos in terms of clocks, or information processors. People can use imagined technologies to attempt to change our view of the world and our behaviour, as when they argue that clean cheap and quick nuclear energy is available, or clean coal will soon be available, or that renewable energy is already doing a large part of the energy work, and will easily be able to replace fossil fuels with no social change. Technology often seems to be part of a rhetoric of persuasion, used to change world views and actions, and to focus attention on particular parts of reality, often at the expense of others. You have nothing to fear from total computerised surveillance if you are good.

It seems easy for humans to relate to machines as if they were animate and intelligent, especially when the machines are unfamiliar; in which case their behaviour with those machines is also not purely rational. Humans give everything meaning, and use everything to try and make meaning for themselves and others, including technology, but as usual the meanings given may not be uniform throughout society, and may be a subject of struggle and disjunction. Meaning never exists by itself, so the meaning of a technology becomes tied into a web of meaning and contrasts in meaning. The technology can be made to support existing world views, even as it slowly changes them, and affects other meanings, actions and power relations. Magical/meaning warfare is not yet dead.

Unintended consequences disrupt our fantasies.

Then there is no necessity that the technologies would give the results which were intended or expected. Technologies often add complications to the task they were supposed to perform. They give people new opportunities for action and add complexities to life, and the results of those opportunities and complexities, can only rarely be predicted in detail. Even if the problems were predicted in detail, there is only a small chance many people will accept the prediction, over their fantasy. This unpredictability, can always be disruptive, in both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ ways.

For example, the Internet was predicted to bring a world of free information-literacy and democracy. However, as well as providing communication between people who would never have previously met, it has probably brought endless shopping, induced polarisation, distorted information, strengthened politics as a form of identity, provided echo chambers for any idea whatsoever, magnified fantasy, and given new forms of political manipulation and Donald Trump. It brought both (some) benefits and (many) harms, and its main harms were not expected by most analysts.

We might also expect (via the so called ‘Jevons Paradox’) that if clean coal or gas could be made to work, then we would burn more coal and gas, and cause more ecological disaster through the mining and transport of coal and gas.

Resolution of fantasy and imagined expectations is a problem.

The series continues in:

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Problems of Transition to Renewable Energy 01: General Problems

October 21, 2019

This post is part of a short series on the problems of transition to renewable energy. It repeats and develops some earlier posts on this blog.

As the original post kept growing, I have decided to split it up into five shorter posts.

In this series of posts, I will deal with a set of general technological and social problems which are relevant to energy transition, before going into the problems of other necessary strategies (such as drawdown), and the problem with particular ‘renewable energies’.

Introduction: Fossil Fuels; virtues and problems

Fossil fuels are the most efficient sources of energy ever developed. Modern capitalist society is built on cheap fossil fuels (and steel making and plastics, which originate with the use of fossil fuels). Modern society may be said to depend on cheap fossil fuels.

Fossil Fuels are also amongst the most destructive forms of energy developed. They poison people and other creatures, they destroy functional ecologies, they are prone to disaster (leakage and spills, have vulnerability to acts of violence, coal seams can catch alight easily and be very difficult, or even impossible, to put out, etc), they can destroy water supplies, and they generate climate turmoil. All these various destructions mount up and get worse the more fuels are ‘mined’ and burnt.

Fossil Fuels are also finite and in decline. Although some say the end of fossil fuels is still a long way off, such fuels appear to be getting harder to find and utilise – hence the development and use of fracking, tar sands, open cut coal mines and other techniques. Fossil fuels nowadays produce more ecological devastation than they used to, through these new modes of extraction.

Fossil fuels have to be replaced if we are to save contemporary civilisations from ecological and energy collapse, and yet they have been essential to modern social organisation, function, social power relations and energy. This is the fundamental problem of contemporary life.

The further posts in this series follow this post:

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Reflections on the ‘Deep State’

October 20, 2019

The idea behind the term “Deep State” is important, but the term, as is currently used, seems to function as a propaganda device to justify pro-corporate factions in their struggle against any curtailment of corporate power, or corporate ability to distribute costs to the public, often in the context of climate change. For the idea to regain its use, we might have to replace it with some other term such as the “factional State”

Definition and basic Propaganda Functions

Wikipedia gives the following, apparently unattributed, definition of the Deep State:

a hybrid association of government elements and parts of top-level industry and finance that is effectively able to govern the…. [Nation] without reference to the consent of the governed as expressed through the formal political process.

While this definition gives the impression that the State is a monolithic unity (when it is not unified but full of conflict, as the term ‘factional state’ suggests), it is important to recognise that, in the US and much of the Western World, one of the main drivers of the ‘deep state’ is the commercial sector (“top-level industry and finance”), as the current propaganda use of the terms tends to ignore this part of the definition altogether.

This definition and the propaganda usage, both ignore the different types of power (including military power), and their different ways of operating. (Not to mention the relationship between power and incompetence). This again, serves an ideological function because it makes the State the only form of power, as well as the single and simple oppresive power which needs to be curtailed. In particular, usage ignores the power of wealth, and the way it can operate against freedom, and control most of the other sources of power. It also deletes the idea that ‘the people’ can use, and have used, the State to benefit themselves (even if this involves struggles with other factions).

The role of commerce in the State, and in power relations, is perhaps being ignored because the Right want to get rid of any regulation of corporations, or rules that help protect citizens from corporations. This certainly seems to be one of President Trumps most consistent aims – other than when he thinks he can curtail international trade, for America’s benefit.

In this context, it is also notable that the ‘Libertarian Right’ is always vitally keen on cutting government spending which benefits (or could benefit) ordinary citizens, but generally has little energy to agitate for cuts to military spending, perhaps because most of that spending is subsidy of large parts of the corporate sector.

The pro-corporate propagandists probably also do not want the commercial sector to be held responsible for any wars held to capture or defend oil, labour and markets for US business, which was pereviously quite a well known idea. It seems unlikely that the propagandists do not recognise that increased military spending, such as the massive increases boasted of by Trump, is likely a prelude to the actual use of the material in war or threat of war. However, they certainly behave as if they do not recognise this.

Some of the Possible Factions in the Factional State

The “factional State” idea suggests multiple forces are involved in the State, not only pro-corporate forces, or malicious hidden actors, are at work, and we don’t have to assume all corporations have exactly the same interests and are completely unified, either. Some forms of possible factions include bureaucrats in various departments, pro-science factions, foreign affairs, intelligence, military, economic and political party factions. Not all of which are intrinsically harmful.

The State depends for continuity on bureaucrats who try to maintain that continuity while protecting their place in the State. These bureaucrats may tend to try to protect the State and the nation from mad, or overly-idealistic, kings or emperors. This is why the Roman State survived so long after madness and incompetence seemed the hallmark of rulers. In an extreme form, this illustrates the ‘Yes Minster’ theory of the State, in which the civil service obstructs both politicians’ fantasy, and their good ideas.

As part of this State faction, there may be dedicated public servants who try and stop corporations from poisoning, or otherwise maltreating normal citizens, and are thus also identified as enemies of business, and who need to be removed. This faction might also represent what we might call, the “green State,” the “humanitarian State” or the “useful State.”

There are also other public servants who favour the pro-corporate line, and who welcome the possibility of making transition into much higher paid jobs in the private sector, while using contacts to influence State action. Again the point is that the State is factional, and a site of struggle between factions. The State is not unified or uniform.

At one time there might have been somsething we could call techno-scientific factions in the State. These were composed of the people who made sure there was money for State-useful research that was unlikely to be done by the private sector, or done properly by the private sector. They also advised on energy, water, satellites, disease control, and what we call ‘infrastructure’. They would also try and persuade the State to keep the infrastructure functional. Again, it is improbable there would be complete unity here. Medical experts, Physics experts and others would compete for finance, priority and influence.

There are also the diplomats and foreign affairs people who might try and keep relationships with other States concentionally ‘functional’ despite the rantings of local politicians who would happily insult other rulers or threaten war to raise local support. Again, it seems probable that some of these people would recommend support for different other States, different levels of support for other States, different levels of military threat (either way) and different forms of covert action. There would only rarely be unity.

Intelligence people would try and find out what other States where actually doing and sometimes undermine those efforts to keep things “smooth.” It is not hard to imagine them trying to undermine dissent in the State itself and support establishment politics, but that is an uncertain field. During the cold war, it seems to be well documented that in the West intelligence agencies kept a “strong eye” on left wing politicians and dissenters, and it seems doubtful they have changed.

It seems highly probable that the English-speaking State’s economic experts have been largely captured by pro-corporate, pro-free market, pro-development, pro-growth forces. This is a rare moment of unity. These theories seem more or less unchallengable, although there is some dispute between more humanitarian factions and more stringent ‘sacrifice the poor and workers’ factions. This also seems to have been well documented. Such economism may be resisted outside the State, but it seems usually to be popular with establishment politicians as it provides justification for the increase of corporate wealth and power.

Politicians are another faction in the State. Long standing politicians, in particular, will have built up alliances with other long standing actors in the State (including other politicians), they may even have selected them. Politicians are likely to have relationships with those who finance them, and will fight to support the interest of these financers and the interests of commercial power in general. This is one of the powers of wealth; representatives can be bought. Politicians can also be run by ideology, and may have little experience in the day to say running of the State, so the Nation and the State may be harmed by their actions. Ultimately, politicians can seem to be able to force the State to behave as they wish. The Government, or even the President, can declare war against the advice of foreign affairs, intelligence, military and treasury. The government can change relatively successful economic policies against advice. The government can ignore scientific advice to favour their backers as with climate change. And the government can direct offices to find information which matches with political ideology, but does not match with reality, and the departments be left to sort out the mess.

The existence of different factions does not mean there cannot be alliances between them which work against one side of the political faction, but these are likely to be opposed by other alliances. And it is rare for any political party to hold the support of much more than 55% of the population, and thus even those who claim an overwhelming mandate should accept the presence of opposition and be willing to try and justify their position by ‘facts,’ persuasion, and acceptance of advice from others, rather than aim for total victory and destruction of opposition (which could be considered tyranny).

Destruction of Continuity by Ideology: More use of the ‘Deep State’ idea

It seems to be becoming more and more common for Politicians and governments to deploy a version of the American system whereby the heads of departments and high level advisors are political appointees with prime loyalty to the incoming President or government (ie one group of politicians), rather than loyalty to the State or nation iself. These appointments break continuity, break knowledge, break experience, break up convention, break up resistance to stupidity and ideology, and establish the relative dominance of the political factions for the time they are in power.

The Trump transition was apparently remarkable for its lack of interest in what the State actually did for the US and non-corporate citizens (See Michael Lewis). This seems to have been part of an ideological drive to demolish the ‘useful’ State while keeping the oppressive state. President Trump, while erratic, is fairly coherent on his project of support for parts of the corporate sector, via tax cuts, increased military spending, and reduction of red tape and restrictions on corporate victimisation of ordinary people. He especially seems to desire to cut back controls on pollution and environmental despoliation, and I have frequently seen this portrayed as part of Trump’s fight against the Deep State, who are supposedly against business (another reason why the propagandists want commercial input into the state not to be mentioned). This is probably why he gets such huge support from the Republican Party despite his levels of random incompetence. Indeed a competent, well connected and popular President might be the pro-corporate state’s nightmare.

It is useful to the Right to suggest that people are hostile to Trump, not because of his incompetence or tyrannical moves, but because of Deep State plotting. By a careful use of the term “deep state”, it can be implied that attempts to hold Trump responsible to the consitution and for his acts, are profoundly undemocratic. They can also imply that the reason Hillary Clinton was not prosecuted, was not because Republicans could find no coherent evidence against her despite years of trying, but because she was protected by secret elites. The State must be made evil to justify its cutback and promotion of unregulated corporate abuse.

Secondly, the term reinforces the attempt to ignore experts who give scientific reports that disagree with Politicians’ ideology; the reports can be dismissed as just the deep state working against people.

Another part of the propagandist use is to suggest that wars are brought about the intelligence agencies, controlling the President through misleading information – hence it does not have to be a concern that it is widely reported that President Trump ignores this information. However, it is also clear that Intelligence agencies may not always want war. This was demonstrated during the build up to Bush Jr’s Iraq war. It perhaps depended on the media you read at the time, but it was pretty obvious the US and British Agencies were leaking profusely, trying to give people the information they needed to see through the Republican media lie machine and its reports of “weapons of mass destruction”. The Agencies were warning about the likely spread of war to other countries and its destabilising consequences. All of which happened as predicted. They appeared not to want to be blamed for the disaster they thought the war would be. However, they were completely unable to control the President or his ‘war machine’.

[I also remember reading but cannot remember were, so this might be rubbish, that Bush Jr and friends also ignored the advice of the military not to go into Iraq.] They definitely, and completely, ignored the military’s contingency plans for what they should do after victory. In fact they seemed not to have any plans for what to do after victory.

Later the Republicans somehow seem to have managed to lay the blame for the war on the Intelligence agencies rather than on themselves, perhaps because the media naturally tends towards that party or because intelligence agencies make for easy villains. The idea of the Deep State was part of their avoidance of responsibility. They used the term to try and convince people that the Right was not a party of war, or at least not worse than the other side, so they could be tolerated despite the mess they got the world into.

Interestingly, during the time that the Arab Spring looked successful, many Republicans seemed to be claiming that the war in Iraq had worked and their decision was justified. The point is that it seems far more likely that Republican politicians won the struggle within the Factional State, and were mistaken in their anticipation of the results and course of the war, rather than they were taken in by secretive actors within the State.

Summary

The State is not unified, it is a site of struggle between different factions, and that often includes struggles with the ruling politicians and their supporters (particularly financing supporters) – who find this resistance annoying. Supressing the conflicts and distinctions between factions, amounts (in the current day) to supporting the corporate-military State at the expense of everyone else.

Comparison between Deep State theory (DS) and Factional State theory (FS):

1: DS) The state is monolithic and unified

Vs

FS) The State is a site of struggle involving many factions

*

2: DS) The State is bad (unless it supports the Corporate sector)

Vs

FS) Whether the State is useful or not, depends on the results of struggle between factions.

*

3: DS) There is only one source of oppressive power; the State.

Vs.

FS) There are many forms of power. Whether they are oppressive or not depends on how the power is wielded, and often who by. The State is not the only oppressive force.

*

4: DS) The state is only responsible to itself

Vs.

FS) The State is potentially responsible to many factions, including the political faction

*

5: DS) The State always ignores the views of the people

Vs.

FS) The State can ignore the views of the people, but it does not have to. It is likely to respond more speedily to the views of the ruling class (in the US this is the Corporate class), but it can be used to curtail the acts of the rulers – this may lead to it being attacked by the rulers and their representatives, and those they manage to persuade.

*

6: DS) The Deep State is to blame when ‘our’ policies do not work, or our view of reality seems not to deliver the results we would like.

Vs

FS) The States is a complex system, within other complex systems. It is natural for results of policies and actions to be partly unexpected. This does not have to be explained by resistance alone. Neither will eliminating the State mean that a political party’s vision of reality is correct, and only good things will result.

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Political Rhetoric

October 17, 2019

Rhetorical tropes which are used to support, or which end up supporting, the Right in the USA

1) Both Sides are equally bad. [Therefore the Republicans are not that bad.]

2) The Republican president is vulnerable to the Deep State. [Therefore any attempt to impeach the current President for corruption is anti-democratic, and a deep state conspiracy. ]

3) America has done bad things in the past. [Therefore, what we, or the President, are doing now is not that bad really. Certainly we should be even handed about this, and excuse ourselves from any particular responsibility (see 1)]

4) Always talk about foreign policy and wars, because the parties are quite similar here. Never talk about domestic issues (other than guns), such as: wages, work security, work safety, distribution of income, or health. That way, point 1 is reinforced again

5) The left is to blame for whatever goes wrong. Everything is ok, when the Right governs, even while it is collapsing.
Eg: By questioning us the Democrats are responsible for everything bad that happens while they are questioning us, because they break morale. [Therefore they are the bad people. Everyone should just be quiet – unless they are criticising democrats]

6) Science is a left-wing political conspiracy, [unless it is sponsored by the corporate sector, and boosts profit, and even then its risky.]

7) Global warming is an example of science in action. Scientists just say there is global warming because they get grants for saying that.

8) Disagreeing with a scientific consensus shows true independent thinking. Disagreeing with the free market ‘consensus’ [which does not exist in economics] shows lunacy.

9) The Constitution allows the Right to do whatever they like, because they are Right….

10) The Left want to warp the consitution and take away your rights.

11) The left are politically correct, latte drinking, socialist, feminazi, whimps who would boldly take your guns and freedom away.

12) The Left would persecute Religious people [by objecting to religious people discriminating against others.]

13) Listening to women talk about sexual assault, leads to innocent men being persecuted and so women should be ignored [they are viscious irrational harridans to begin with].

14) People who identify as Lefist should be shot – Oh we are not being serious, the left just can’t take a joke.

15) To keep you safe we have to prevent leftists from propagating socialist propaganda like global warming. They are unAmerican at best.

16) We must reluctantly support Nazis and white-supremacist rights to free speech. Because free speech is sacred.

17) The lack of support you hear from ordinary non-shouty people, indicates they support us.

18) Helping poor people is interfering government at its worse. Helping rich people makes everyone prosperous.

19) Private charity is good. [It keeps the poor acknowledging their place and dependency.]

20) No Good, Christian, Conservative, free market loving, Anglo, gender secure, hetrosexual person would ever stoop to using identity politics. That is a leftist trick to divide us.

21) Hilary Clinton is a criminal. [All round, general purpose response to anything – despite Clinton being investigated by hostile Republicans almost continually, and never being successfully prosecuted for anything.]

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Naturalising Politics II

October 13, 2019

Living with Catastrophe made a series of interesting objections and comments to the last post, so let me see if i can respond

First let me state as clearly as I can, what I understand to be Living with Catastrophe‘s main objections. This makes it clear if I’m reading wrong.

  1. Real Politics is ruthless, and people know this. That is why they do not participate in it.
  2. Politics is to be avoided because it cannnot achieve the things people hope to get from it.
  3. Marshall’s definition is too broad. If we accept it, the dead do politics, and people cannot be out of politics.
  4. Aristotle is an unreliable ally for promoting a liberatory or environmental politics.
  5. Politics is about achieving goals, particulary adminstrative goals.
  6. Politics usually flouders in its attempts to achieve other kinds of goals.
  7. Skepticism about the source of values for politics. People can often gain consensus over what they don’t want, but split over what they do want.
  8. Politics suppresses living with moral uncertainty, and we should conscientiously object to it.

Second let me restate my position.

In everyday life humans are constantly trying to work with others, organise work and celebration with others, organise conflict with others, trying to get the better of others, trying to persuade others, trying to threaten others, trying to flatter others, trying to help others, trying to discover the truth of a situation, trying to hide the truth, trying to frame the truth in a way which suits us, or trying to make the good life with others.

These processes go on in the family, in the village, in the city, in the company, in the University, in the State, and in World wide organisations. Not everyone is allowed or encouraged to participate at every level (that exclusion, or inclusion, is part of the politics involved).

While the politics of the State may look different, have different modes of enforcement, and have different effects from the politics of the home or the workplace, they all use similar kinds of processes. Just as the poetry of Shakespeare and my own prose are both language, and can be analysed as langauge, thought, communication, story-telling etc, however different they are.

The classic Western family was often seen as being ruled by a ‘prince’ with absolute legal authority over its members. In reality he may have been advised by his wife or eldest son, or his wife, or mother, may have really ruled, but it was often seen as a State in miniture, and this point was frequently made by monarchists.

1) Rather than ruthlessness being the mark of State politics alone, it may be that the most successful players in any kind of politics are the most ruthless. However, this is not always the case, and even if it was, does not mean that politics has to invoke ruthlessness.

I do, paranoically, suggest that the separation of politics from daily life is a political technique, perhaps ruthlessly, encouraged by neoliberalism, which aims to make ‘the market’ (or really corporate power) the dominant and non challengable part of human life and politics – and supposedly better than other parts of human life, because it is described as ‘non-political’. Hayek even proposes that the democratic state be prohibted from dealing with commerce in any way restrictively.

In the libertarian forms of neoliberalism, every human action and production becomes reduced to trade, and mutual decision making becomes an impingment on liberty, especially when it interferes with trade. For them the ideal forms of evil organisation are the State or the Trade Union (and people must be encouraged to have no hope in the State or unions), and the truly good form is the company – where you get told what to do unless you own and control it. The obvious idea here is that ordinary people are all individuals, and should never act together. Libertarians rarely seem to have the same strength of objection to the wealthy or business people acting together – perhaps because they realise this would affect the political effectiveness of these people, and the force of capitalism.

Neoliberals don’t want to remind us, or they want to keep us ignorant, of the scale and success of peaceful popular movements against corporate power. For example, the environmental movement in the 60s and 70s. I read yesterday, that 20 million Americans joined protests for the first Earth Day. Who knows that nowadays? Who nowadays is allowed to think anything other than that environmentalism is a minor, non-mainstream, interest? How did people in the US raise up against flaming poisonous rivers, and deadly work conditions, and temporarily succeed? Partly because they knew that politics was part of daily life. “The personal is political.” Any ethical decision making that involves others, involves politics.

The Right realised this was a problem in the early 1970s, what they called the “Crisis of Democracy.” Hell Workers! Women!, non-Anglos!, Prisoners! where would it end? The dominant elites might have to share power, if this went on. Power would be diffuse. Depoliticising daily life was one of the solutions to their problem. Ironically, Nixon helped this anti-political rhetoric, through Watergate, and through violating people’s political norms of behaviour. You can’t trust government. Even if it might be nice to have someone of Nixon’s principles in office nowadays….

Over and over again I’ve heard people say things like all politicians are corrupt, they only in it for themselves, you wouldn’t want to be in politics etc… I’ve heard people say politicians all lie or are all the same as an excuse for staying with those who seem to be lying more. It is now pretty much orthodoxy to leave the State to the wealthy, and assume nothing can be done to make things better. So yes I think the absence of politics from daily life is an important trope, and a trope which affects our ability to control our lives, or make the good life.

2) The fact that politics does not always work, in the family, in the village, in the state etc, seems to me, to be largely irrelevant to the argument about it originating in daily life or being more widespread than is usually thought. I’m not sure that many human activities achieve what people hope to get from them. I don’t really transform the world by thinking about it. Most art is crap and will be forgotten or thrown out. Doctors do not heal everyone, and in some cases likley damage people even more. Many families will be unhappy despite the best efforts of those involved. Failure and unintended consequences are normal, and we should recognise this, if we want to engage with life.

I would suggest, that the more self-destructive the culture, the more deletarious unintended consequences are likely to be the case. Climate change is a great example of what seems to be an unintended consequences of particular modes of social organisation and their politics.

3) I don’t think that I am making too broad a definition of politics at all, that’s partly why I went back to Aristotle, because it seems to me, that he didn’t think it too broad either. The same kind of skills are deployed in the family as are needed to be employed in the village, in the township and so on, to make decisions, to organise people, to work and celebrate or whatever. If the idea is to make self-government unnatural, then you have to make this kind of thing either seem minor, or disconnected from the State.

Dead people are important for politics. They may not participate, but they are used politically, and set traditions. The supposedly positive legacy of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher is constantly reaserted in order to justify what the right is doing now, and to make it part of general common sense. These legacies may be used in quite contradictory ways. For example, Boris Johnson may use Thatcher’s opposition to climate change to attempt to ‘prove’ that Extinction Rebellion is irrelevant to modern politics.Other people may point to Thatcher’s later recantations of climate change activism, on the grounds that solutions being proposed are non-capitalist, and thus that nothing political should be done. Likewise the activities of a dead parent, grandparent or whatever, may be used to set the tone for the life of members of a family, and encourage them to maintain or increase their status with respect to others.

So while everything is politics, we are being kept out of the central forms of politics, by the denial that everything is political. Nowadays, we don’t influence what counts as justice, or what is ethics… While we are alive, most of us are engaged in politics – to requote Aristotle, we are zoon politicon.

5) All human action and interaction can be reduced to the achieving of goals if we want to. Consequently, if that is our definition of politics then, indeed, everything is politics.

6) Again, that people do not succeed in politics all the time, is not an argument against humans engaging in politics most of the time. Success is never a measure of something occuring, and of course we live with moral uncertainty, and all other kinds of uncertainty, that still does not mean we don’t engage in politics with each other whether we object to those politics or not. Indeed, I would suggest that certainty of action and solution, is probably the hallmark of a politics which will fail to produce beneficial results for most people.

7) The origins of the values which shape political goals, can be many… but nevertheless parts of those values will be shaped by the political process, by interaction and our capacity to persuade people of the virtue of those values and the actions associated with them. We may also use the statement of values to separate us off from other groups, and to creat conflict, in which we are the virtuous, and they are evil. Separation may well be as important to humans as co-opertation, and may indeed work together with co-operation, in that we often seem to co-operate better when we co-operate against some other group.

8) i don’t think there is any particular reason why politics should suppress uncertainty, and moral uncertainty. I think it would be a better politics. But I also think that is true of daily life. People in families often seem sacrifice other members of the family on the altars of moral certainty – but that can probably happen more easily, with a certain type of righteous politics within the family.

4) I’ll talk about Aristotle later… but let me start by saying I don’t have to accept all of Aristotle to accept that some of what he wrote seems insightful.

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Naturalising Politics

October 10, 2019

The Forbes article which attempts to flatter and dismiss Thunberg, and which I have discussed here and here, relies for its effect, on the asumption that politics has a bad reputation.

In my more paranoid moments, I suspect that some of this reputation is deliberately manufactured and aims to weaken people’s desire to participate in formal politics by persuading them that politics is only about power, enforcement, deception and dishonesty. Who would want to be political in that case?

Such a cultivated attitude reinforces the power of those who do participate, and particularly those who participate shamelessly.

However, such a vision of politics seems limited and inacurate.

For me, politics is what humans engage in when they attempt to decide upon, or achieve, an aim which involves or effects other people.

Politics necessarily happens all the time because we live with other people, and people acting together can be much more effective than individuals acting alone (most of the time). Indeed to live harmoniously with others, we have to learn how to negotiate and compromise and get them onside as best we can.

This is a view with considerable antiquity. As is well known Aristotle wrote that

“animals that live politically are those that have any kind of activity in common, which is not true of all gregarious animals,”

and

“humans are by nature political animals [or political life forms, Zoon politikon]. And he who by nature and not by mere accident is without a Polity, is either above humanity, or below it.”

Aristotle appears to argue, that people cannot perform their natural functions apart from the polity, since they are not self-sufficient. Thus, the Polity (my way of translating polis, usually translated as ‘state’ or ‘city state’ or even ‘social organisation’) comes into existence to enable human life. He takes a more or less anthropological position that:

The polity is prior in nature to the household and to each of us individually.

This is because we build our function, abilities and capacities through our relationships to others. Households and individuals do not exist by themselves.

For the whole must necessarily be prior to the part… [as] all things are defined by their function and capacity, so that when they are no longer able to perform their function [within the whole] they must not be said to be the same things

In other words, humans develop their capacities and virtues in relationship to other humans within already existing modes of organisation. We come into being amidst creative others (this is I think important to Aristotle’s idea of humanity, and is in any case always important to recognise). The polity is, therefore, the way humans can come to craft a good and human life the best way they can. The Polity is necessary to make a better polity.

We can also hope that those capacities and virtues crafted within the crafting of the Polity, can perhaps extend outwards to the land, and other life forms. Again, because environments change and relationships between different groups or different polities change, the work of making the good polity is never ending. It never reaches permanent stability or perfection. The polity is likely to face new challenges and new problems, which it has to face creatively.

Taking this idea of politics seriously, politics can be seen to involve idea generation, persuasion, co-operation, competition, decision making, allocating responsibility, allocating authority, overcoming entrenched and no longer useful authority, gaining ability, gaining virtue, rewarding virtue, rewarding beneficial aspiration, and so on.

Politics is essential for joint-human activity, but it need not mean “power over,” or constant dishonesty – an anarchist, communitarian, politics is possible, even if it is precarious. Indeed we might well define a politics which only requires power over and dishonesty as defining a bad polity, which is headed for disaster and requires reformation.

Despite the Forbes article, Thunberg, for example, is almost certainly not playing power and dominance games but is involved in trying reform the current polity, craft the best possible polity, and to continue survival. However, because of this, she is involved in politics, and being made part of power and dominance struggles, by those who are engaged in such struggles and attempting to preserve a disastrous polity. That is probably why she is being so roundly abused. This is supposed to make her less effective, but because of her response to the abuse, it only makes her more effective, and acts as an exemplar for how to behave (virtue) for those who support her.

Some of those engaged in this kind of established abuse politics, are pretending that they are not political, because, in their politics, doing nothing to challenge the processes of destruction is supposed to seem normal.

Please note that I’m not defining politics so that it has to be successful, or result in any firm control over the world (I’m not sure about Aristotles’ opinion on this). The best we can hope for is influence, or effect on the world – working with the world, perhaps – and then check events as they occur to see if we are getting the results we anticipated. This is the nature of the world.

However, uncertainty does not mean you can escape living with politics, or entirely escape having a diffuse effect on the world. Politics is part of human, and humane, life.

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Forbes on Thunberg again

October 10, 2019

I’m still reacting to the Forbes article on Greta Thunberg. In its view the Australian and US Right is completely innocent and rational. They would help fight climate change if the Left could avoid making Ecological Destruction a political matter.

I think this is basically wrong headed. It is also a political justifcation for inaction. It does not diminish the politics of the situation.

The reality is that a solution to the problem will be political. This cannot be avoided. It certainly cannot be avoided by politicising the recognition of a problem. In the UK, the various sides of politics have managed to find a politicaly acceptable solution to energy emissions. It may not be perfect, and more is needed, but it exists. People on the right in the UK are not all pretending that recognition of ongoing ecological destruction is a socialist plot to destroy capitalism, or whatever.

Besides which, many people who object to ecological destruction are not trying to pull down capitalism, and not trying to challenge real conservative values, whatever they are.

I, for one, don’t see the possibility of capitalism, and its sidekick of developmentalism, being wound down, in any kind of deliberative non-dangerous way, in the time frames available. This is just not feasible, however desirable it might be. I do expect that capitalism and developmentalism will collapse, along with almost everything else after it has achieved a certain point of destructiveness. This point may already be passed. In which case we will have to learn to flourish amidst the ruins of capitalism.

The point is that I, and many others, are more than happy for some form of capitalism to be preserved, if it can preserve the rest of us, but I don’t see any plan for this happening – at least partly because of the Right’s refusal to engage.

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Wishful Thinking about Energy

October 10, 2019

Nearly all of our thinking about energy is “wishful” and geared towards the destruction of notions of limits on action, travel and possessions. However, energy is, by its nature, bound up with entropy and limits. The first step towards ‘realism’, is realising these limits.

For example, you cannot expend more energy than you have, and it is only in rare circumstances that energy production is near free – that is that the amount of energy expended (over the production and distribution cycle) to make energy is much less than the energy produced.

It always takes energy to make energy available. Even human food gathering, takes humanly expended energy.

Making or capturing energy also usually creates mess and danger. For example, mass slavery destroys the societies the slaves come from as well as posing problems for the societies using the slaves. Fossil fuel production and burning creates poisons and ecological destruction.

We are now moving out of a rare period of really cheap energy into an era of either both expensive or dangerous energy.

Fossil fuels are getting expensive and dangerous. Coal mines are getting even more ecologically fraught and people are more likely to resist being poisoned for the ‘greater good,’ even if governments, like Trump’s, are trying to make it easier not to have to contain dangerous materials. Oil appears to have already hit its peak, taking more and more energy to extract, and gas via fracking is largely uneconomic and destructive. Gas is dangerous in general because of leakage at wells or in old, expensive to replace, pipes in cities.

However, moving to renewables will not completely solve the energy problem. The level of renewable energy sources we need to fully replace fossil fuels will take massive amounts of energy to build; some figures suggest that we have to increase the amount of renewables by a factor of fifty to seventy, in about 10 years, to fully replace fossil fuels before it is too late. Renewables, generally occupy large amounts of land (even if they don’t have destroy that land forever, they sometimes may), and require large amounts of mining for materials, and this mining probably will destroy land. Renewables also wear out eventually, and have to be replaced, although this is also true of fossil fuel power stations; it is not entirely certain we can recycle all components, and even if we can this will take energy.

If we want to survive, then we need to recognise that the era of cheap energy has gone. There is, of course, the vague possibility of massive technological innovation which will replace the cheap energy of yore with new sources, but the problem with being saved by wished for tech, is that sometimes the tech just cannot be made in time, with the energy available, or within the costs people are prepared for. That we need a new working technology does not mean it will arise, or arise in time.

We need to work with what we have, while trying to make it better, rather than distract ourselves with wishful fantasy. Fantasy that leads to more constructive action than just indulging in hope is a different matter.

There is no question that fusion could solve our problems. But despite research since the 1940s, we are nowhere near having a commercially viable fusion generator. All fusion energy, so far, seems to require more energy consumption to make than is emitted. It is not something we can depend upon solving our problems.

Clean coal, or carbon capture, is theoretically possible (if you ignore a few problems of policing the results) and relatively easy, yet it has not come into being, despite lots of public money being made available for companies to develop it in their own self-interest.

Thorium reactors have been tried and failed in Germany for commercial and technical reasons. It is possible that we could revitalise thorium research, but it is not happening at the moment, and development, testing and (finally) building new thorium based energy sources will probably take twenty to forty years, going by normal time cycles, with plenty of government investment. Again this is not happening, so thorium is unlikely to save us, even if it can be made to work. Normal nuclear reactors are not being built because of the cost, time to build, impossibility of gaining disaster insurance, resistance by local populations, and so on. So they are not going to save us either.

If we are going to be saved by tech we don’t have, then the chances of being saved are low – in my opinion of course.

A further problem is that wishful thinking plagues discussion. Pro-fossil fuel people tend to blame renewables for society’s energy problems and renewable people tend to blame fossil fuels, when they are mutually implicated. However, it serves as a distraction from those problems with the sources they are promoting.

I’m reading Michael Mills report on renewables (thanks Mark) which is realistic about the costs and inefficiencies of renewables, but completely blasé about the costs of fossil fuels, which he insists must remain the main energy source for the world. Likewise the Australian government has decided the country’s potential energy problems arise solely because we have too many renewables.

Both cases are wishfully ignoring problems with fossil fuels in order to support established industries and established cheap energy, which is no longer cheap due to its consequences.

This wishfulness probably arises because so much of our culture is bound into cheap safe energy. Without it we face an existential crisis. The future appears uncertain, and unpleasant. It is very hard to decide what to do about the problems in a way which maintains life as it ‘should be’ and which will gain the necessary support. It is much easier to be wishful.

Consequently, the most likely trajectory is that we will just crash and burn. Another reason for ‘us’ ‘choosing’ to crash and burn, is because so much privilege and security is bound up with continuing along as we have done. It is not uncommon for ruling classes to be more interested in preserving their power and privilege than in seeing the problems, dealing with them and surviving – and that is what seems to be happening.

We might need to explore and understand the conditions in which societies do not pursue wishfulness fantasies, or the preservation of ruling class power, and actually face their existential problems. I would suspect that circulation amongst the elites, in which established members of the elite can slide down, and people in the non elites can slide up without depending on a single dictator like figure, might be one common circumstance in survival, but I’m not sure this is still present in most of our societies.

Whatever, the case, wishful business as usual, does not appear to be delivering civilisational survival. Such survival is almost certainly going to demand a completely new way of organising socially, and of ‘lowering expectations’ of what can be done. This will generate more resistance from the ruling classes, and from most people who see the current mode of being as being the only one worth having.

If we keep the same social dynamics, then it is probable that any new technology will be engineered and expected to fit in with the established social dynamics of ecological destruction or exploitation, and will not work to help save society in the long term.

Others may object that its hard to change society, even if the rulers co-operate. However, it is not harder to change society than to change the working of the global ecological system to preserve social relations of power and wealth.

We have changed societies and the ways they operate quite quickly in the past. It took less than 30 years for neoliberalism to become the norm in Australia and the US. It is true that that particular change was helped by it benefiting the rulers considerably, but the working classes made heaps of sacrifices for it to come about. That is probably one reason why they won’t like making more sacrifices for new forms of social organisation – but I suspect that people could still make sacrifices, if they could see that sacrifices were equitable, and the new life was being delivered equitably, and they could participate.

People will do heroic things for their kids and grandkids (not everyone obviously, but most people)

But, at the moment, people are going to think wishfully that it is someonelse’s problem or wonder what’s in it for them. Overcoming those problems is not something neoliberalism helps, as it is based on lack of responsibility and proft, so that has probably got to go.

The point is that transition is more difficult than most people want to see, even if they do see it as inevitable. It requires transformations at all kinds of levels and all kinds of places. I’m not sure its impossible, but we almost certainly need to change social organisation as much as we need new technology, and as much as we need to guard against wishfulness…

.

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Free Speech Again

October 4, 2019

I’ve written a fair few articles about the way the Right react to disagreement. There was a piece on this in general, a look at the way Jordan Peterson reacted to Foucault and Peterson’s modes of silencing discussion, some considerations of responses to Greta Thunberg’s speech at the UN [1, 2, 3], and lots of stuff on Religious ‘Liberty’ to persecute. This is just a continuing footnote.

Firstly Peter Dutton’s reaction to people engaging in Extinction Rebellion protests was that these people “should be jailed until their behaviour changes”. He implied that they were “bludgers”, who should have their welfare payments stopped. He gave no evidence for this position, and I know people in the movement who definitely hold down jobs, and plenty of businesses seemed happy for people to attend the climate strike, so I presume this was an attempt to discredit them in the ways that he and his government attempt to dehumanize and punish people on NewStart in general. Of course, he did not explain why people on NewStart should not be able to protest against government policy. He just assumed that such a position was normal and acceptable. People who are relatively weak or poor, are obviously immoral. He also requested that “People should take these names and the photos of these people and distribute them as far and wide as they can.” In his view, it seems surveillance must be total, and encourage people in general to get at those with what he considers to be deviant views. His problem seems to be that judges were not imprisoning people for dissent, even though people are being charged with offenses and fined, some of them had even tried to embarrass him – How dare they…..

Assuming that the government acts on these arguments, the next step could well be to threaten people with pensions and uni-students on loans, and then anyone on any government money, including university lecturers, public servants, people doing research, probably people who receive money from the government for contracting work and so on… There is no real end to this – and perhaps that is the point. It is also possible he is just sounding the media out to see if he can get the usual righteous shouters on board.

Secondly, the coalition has been encouraging business to speak on public issues for quite a while now. They like polluting businesses speaking up against pollution taxes, they did not complain when the minerals council claimed responsibility for overthrowing a prime minister of the other party, they liked businesses speaking up against inquiries into the banking system, they liked businesses speaking in favour of corporate tax cuts, deregistering unions for action, and other policies they were proposing. They never stop saying how these kind of comments from business show how their policies are in the national interest.

However, we have recently witnessed the strange phenomena of businesses deciding that maybe we should talk about climate change. Ecological destruction will eventually affect earnings, there is the risk of stranded assets, there is “Carbon risk” , there is risk from massive storms and destruction, there is risk of flooding from sea level rise. There are all kinds of risks which affect business if climate change gets worse and the government continues to do nothing. Given the long delays that the Coalition has supported, it is possible that it is now too late and we are stuck with the probable danger of economic collapse through ecological collapse.

However the Righteous reaction to criticism (as opposed to support) is that companies should shut up, or that companies are loud, or that companies are cowards yeilding to activists (sure!), or that ecological destruction has no economic consequences. In general, it appears their attitude is that you only have the right to praise the Right.

Third, in NSW there has been a rare loss of planning permission for a coal mine, because emissions cannot be confined and have an effect on global climate change. The Minerals Council (or the union for mining companies) is upset about this. Previously the government has passed legislation to ensure the prohibited mine is acceptable by changing the requirements, which then apply retrospectively. The government is now considering legislation that could limit the ability for planning authorities to rule out coalmine projects based on the climate change impact of emissions from the coal. The planning minister, Rob Stokes, has said it was “not appropriate for state governments to impose conditions about emissions policies in other countries”. Oh those poor other countries. But aren’t we always being told that if we don’t sell them the coal they will buy it elsewhere? So we cannot imposes conditions about emissions on other countries, we can just refuse to participate in the destruction here and overseas. But righteous virtue always has to be easy and profitable. The government is also trying to discourage protest and is proposing a new law which punishes unlawful entry to ‘enclosed lands’ with up to three years in jail and increases fines from $5,500 to $22,000. Other laws are being proposed to curb inconvenience to business and private owners, presumably because this is more important than allowing people to protest against government policy in a way which is noticed.

Just to make it clear this is not unique to Australia. In the US:

  • The Department of Agriculture relocated their economists who published findings showing financial harm arising to farmers because of the administration’s trade policies.
  • The acting White House chief of staff apparently instructed the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to support the president’s assertions about the path of hurricane Dorian. It was reported that they threatened to fire top officials if they did not do what they were told.
  • The Interior Department reassigned its top climate scientist to an accounting role after he mentioned the dangers of climate change.

Homeland security and the Patriot act, set up to defend the US from terrorists is now being used to defend mining and fracking operations from the objections of local people. Given the FBI’s constant preference for policing left wing activists rather than rightwingers this should not be a surprise.

The obvious point is that dissent from the righteous view of the world has to be punished or threatened. It is much more important that they be correct, than that they change their minds to deal with new data, or new understandings. People who have different understandings and who opposed them, are by definition ‘evil’ and to be crushed.

This idea they must be right, and dissent must be punished, is fundamental to their understanding of the world. It is like the request that religious people should have the right to sack or namecall anyone because of that person’s differences, but maintain the right to be protected from being sacked or namecalled for their own differences. Indeed the issue may even originate in Christianity’s persecution of heretics and people of other religions. Perhaps, this monotheism cannot accept that any deviance can be anything other than satanic, and to be purged? Perhaps it is just that Capitalism as a monotheism that makes profit its only value is authoritarian?

Equity of action is not understood at all. It appears to be govenment by dogma, and threat, and the righteous have to be right, and they will stop at nothing to assert being right. They certainly will not normally discuss anything, or accept they could be wrong.

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Thunberg’s are Go! 04

September 28, 2019

The third example of the anti-Thunberg argument comes from Amanda Vanstone. An ex-minister in the Coaltion government. Often thought of as a moderate. This should be the place were we can find a way into discussion about the issues. Sadly, it is not.

She begins.

It’s a measure of where we’ve come to in public debate that I have thought more than twice about writing this piece. The days of civilised debate, of accepting different opinions seem to be disappearing.

None of us likes being yelled at or chastised for our views. The pleasure of exchanging opinions, exploring them and in the process better understanding or modifying our own is one of the hallmarks of a free society.

Vanstone would have been much more persausive here if she had made this comment when the Right started its head kicking of everyone who disagreed with it, in the eighties, or perhaps if she had gently asked her old companion Tony Abbott to use a little politeness everynow and again. But its only nowadays that its a problem, when people speak back to the right in the same way that they are spoken to…. But we can perhaps hope that she is going to engage in discussion rather than abuse.

The Greta Thunberg circus has become a complete farce.

That is a really good example of exchanging opinions and exploring them. Beautifully done.

Then follows a passage about Thunberg travelling by emissions free boat is “first-world fake melodrama at its best”. Ok we have quickly gone past expecting civilised debate, and lack of being chastised, but its interesting, how the soon the idea can be discarded, after it is brought up.

We could get the idea from the generally virtue signalling right wing social injustice warriors (see what I did there?) that whatever Thunberg did to produce her message would have been inadequate – unless nobody had heard about it. Then it could be bypassed without comment. Travelled by plane, used Skype all of these would have shown her hypocracy because of the emissions involved, just as not producing emissions was not enough.

It’s a personal choice but I don’t think telling people they’ll never be forgiven, berating them with “how dare you”, does much to bring people on board.

Neither does the kind of language that Vanstone uses. However, Thunberg’s short message, less I believe than 500 words was to the point. If leaders do not do something, when the problem is as clear as it is, how can they be forgiven, or praised? They may want praise for ignoring the problems, but that does not mean they will get it from everybody. And the short speech has certainly provoked a lot of dismisal.

Usually it has the opposite effect. It’s just another sad example of serious and complex political issues being reduced to “I’m right and you’re an idiot”. That kind of discourse just pollutes the town square. It’s fractious and shuts others out. It is toxic to democratic debate.

Exactly what Vanstone is doing. She is so good at this.

The whole trip, the hype and the expense was one big media circus.

Cliche after cliche about why people should not listen to Thunberg. No dealing with her arguments, no civilised exchange. And of course no lack of chastisement. Tut!

Given the over-dramatisation of global warming by some, including Thunberg, we now have a generation of children worried about being burnt to a crisp.

Do we have any evidence presented that climate change effects are being Over-dramatised? No, not necessary clearly. Even if scientists keep saying that the effects are proceeding more rapidly than the official predictions. And should people be relaxed about their ecologies and futures being destroyed? Really? Tell that to farmers.

Out of all the 16-year-olds in the world, why is it that just one features in the media worldwide? There are other kids who care as much, are just as articulate, just as concerned. If you think the world focussing on this one young girl was just some happy accident you are plugged into a faulty socket.

Gently plugging into the conspiracy theory socket here. All this concern is media manipulation. Probably Soros lurks in the background, with his evil tendrils everywhere..

Hmm, we have just had right wing speakers, criticising and dimsissing all these intelligent, caring kids who went on strike, and often refusing to engage in polite discussion with them as well. So we don’t have to look at what happens to one 16-year-old to know what will happen, but we get the idea. Every concerned, caring kid has to worry about retaliation for being bold enough to suggest that people should do something.

I’ve seen the photo of her outside her school on her first climate strike. Posed to draw on the haunting concept of the lonely outsider who (surprise, surprise) becomes the involuntary hero. Who took that photo and, more importantly, why?

Yes it is deeply suspicious that in this age of everyone having mobile phone cameras that anyone (including her parents, teachers or school-friends) would take a photo of her. It must have been planned malevolance, that is the only possible explanation.

Now we have kids all over the world skipping school for the day to show how much they care.

Yes indeed we have another example of Vanstone engaging in civilised debate with all these “kids skipping school”. Evil disobedient creatures that they are.

I’d be more impressed if they gave up their free time to make their statement.

Plenty of them probably have, and have been ignored.

Even more impressive would be if they organised to collectively make a lasting statement by doing something useful. If everyone who skipped school had planted a tree in pre-agreed areas that needed revegetating, that would have made an impressive statement.

Yes they could have been praised and ignored. They could have been more quiet Australians who agree with the Government being ecologically destructive. They would have suggested that planting trees was enough, and we could just ignore the wholesale destruction going on. It would have been much more comfortable for those who don’t care.

If all the protesters focussed on a few areas, whole suburbs could be made better places in which to live. All it would take is commitment and elbow grease. Just skipping school gives you no skin in the game.

Yes, it would be nice if our government did even that much to lead by example, but hey the Coalition likes land-clearing, so we don’t expect leadership, and we are not disappointed. That everyone else should do something, is always a good argument.

Perhaps the Australian protesting kids could all decide to not own a car and to use public transport instead. At home they could not use air conditioning: my generation grew up without it.

Individually they could give up all devices, maybe bar a simple phone and use a shared family tablet or computer.

Careful, she is calling for the end of comsumerism.

Would these striking students be able to pass a simple test on the positive things both sides of politics have done in Australia? Don’t hold your breath.

Certainly it would be hard to pass a test on the positive things that the Coalition have done in the last 10 years, but note the spurious sign of even-handedness.

Everyone can and should play their part. More to the point is how globally we address this. The plain fact is that China and the US produce more than 40 per cent of world emissions followed by India and Russia. The top 15 countries produce more than 70 per cent of emissions. Unless these countries change their ways what we do will make little difference.

Indeed and Australia is one of the top 15 to 20 countries in terms of total CO2 emissions depending on your source (closer to the top if you factor in emissions from coal and gas exports) and is extremely close to the top in terms of emissions per capita. And its getting bigger. We can’t ignore Australia. But she seems to imply we can. Odd. Or is this another example of how it is really everyone else’s problem and we don’t have to do anything?

That’s not a reason to shrug our shoulders and walk away. Not at all. But it does provide some perspective. Did our school protesters think that Xi Jinping, or Modi or Putin gave a damn about their protest? Did they even think about that?

I don’t know, of course, I’m sure some people did think about it. But they did not expect Xi, Modi or Putin to listen. These people are not going to listen to people from Australia. But then Scott Morrison did decide to lecture China on its emissions, while increasing those in his domain. Did he expect China to listen? and he apparently decided not to lecture President Trump who is going out of his way to increase emissions. But Morrison and Trump’s efforts to make things worse will not be commented upon, in an article which is asking us to dismiss Thunberg and student strikers.

Greta Thunberg seemed angered at the presence of President Trump arriving at the UN. She may have just been realising the missed opportunity to get more headlines by berating him.

Anyone who is concerned about emissions is likely to be angry about Trump’s continual efforts to boost them. But it was Trump and his followers who were snarky about Thunberg, not the other way around… The idea that Thunberg is realising a missed opportunity in that moment, is really showing how Vanstone’s mind works, not Thunberg’s. Thunberg could have run after him, if she had wanted, but she didn’t…. Absence of action is somehow proof of intent?

That’s what she does. People have grown tired of that trick.

Hopefully people will get tired of the trick of pretending to be interested in debate while slagging off at people who think there is a problem….

Its depressing. Were any of these three anti-Thunberg writers remotely interested in an opening for discussion? Not as far as I can see. They seemed to be just looking for excuses to put her down, and put concern about climate change down.

That is all.

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