Thursday, June 23, 2011
Friday, May 20, 2011
Joanne Nova and False Dilemmas
Below is a critique of an article written by Joanne Nova and published in The Australian on May 7 2011.
Nova's text is in italics and my response is in yellow highlight.
Wasting money on climate change betrays sick
- Joanne Nova
- From: The Australian
- May 07, 2011 12:00AM
LOST opportunities are invisible but deadly. On climate change, the call to buy insurance by pricing carbon is a cop-out. Where is the cost-benefit analysis?
An incoherent headline and by-line is a bad sign. The links between wasting money, the sick, lost opportunities, betrayal, invisibility, climate change, carbon price, insurance and cost-benefit analysis are likely to be complex and in need of detailed argument. Pre-budget speculation can turn into a dangerous game of emotional bullying.
We're thinking of axing Australian medical research yet we're supporting solar panel manufacturers in China. It doesn't have to be this way.
Well, ‘they’ actually increased spending on health care so perhaps some people wish to use the unsubstantiated threat of cuts to research push their own agenda? The Australian Government (and the States and Territories) have tax-payer subsidies for hundreds of products and services including diesel rebates for mining companies, fringe benefit tax concessions for company cars and major tax and investment concessions for the aviation and automobile industries. Many billions of dollars are given annually by Australian taxpayers to industry. The government has recently announced that it is about to further reduce subsidies for the installation of solar panels irrespective of where they are made.
Joanne Nova is correct ... “it does not have to be this way”
All the money spent employing green police, subsidising solar or researching how to pump carbon dioxide underground is money not spent on medical research.
So too is tax payers’ money being spent on all the other subsidies ... it is not going to medical research either. Why pick on particular small budget issues when billions of dollars of subsidies go into highly profitable industries such as mining? The emotive concept of “green police” sounds scary but who are they and where are they being employed? Without data this is a meaningless and misleading claim. The budget took hundreds of millions from carbon sequestration research in Australia … so presumably Joanne Nova is happy about this policy move.
Opportunity lost is a killer. The path not taken could be lined with happier, longer lives. Only the best evidence and real debate have a chance of helping us see through the fog to pick the better road.
Lost opportunities are mixed bag. Some might produce better outcomes, some might lead to disaster. Unfortunately, it is often with the wisdom of hindsight that we can know the real value of opportunity. The opportunity to make massive profits on derivatives in the market, for example, became evident as a big mistake only after the market crashed and businesses failed (Lehmans) or were subsidised by taxpayers (all other banks) to enable them to continue.
Longer lives are not necessarily happier ones.
The idea that we should have the best evidence available to us to make statements is laudable but the idea of “real” debate suggests that somewhere out there is an “unreal” debate going on. No evidence is presented to expose the place where unreal debate is taking place.
Help to see through fog is useful but a better road will not help unless the fog has lifted. In times of thick fog, all roads are bad.
While most scientists agree CO2 causes some warming, there is great debate about just how much. If CO2 has only a minor effect on temperature then spending, say, $1 billion on inefficient roof-top solar panels is not just wasted money, it's a choice that will kill people. We won't be able to say exactly who it will kill but we can virtually guarantee that some people will die in the future who could have been saved.
Yes, most climate scientists agree that there is an enhanced greenhouse effect warming the planet. There is no evidence presented about there being “a great debate” about the how much warming there has been. The 100-year linear trend (1906 to 2005) of approximately 0.8°C of warming was presented by the IPCC in 2007 as part of its conclusion that,
Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level (IPCC 2007)
There is, however, debate about how much warming will occur in the future but this is because the amount of warming will be connected to the degree of increase in greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere and positive feedback from the existing warming. There is an argument presented in the form of “If CO2 has only a minor effect on temperature” then spending on prevention of that warming will be a waste of money and will indirectly “kill people”. The first part of this argument has not been given the benefit of “best evidence”.
The forcing of C02 and other greenhouse gases is having a major impact on temperature already and is set to have an even greater impact in the future. The best evidence is provided by the IPCC:
Global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have increased markedly as a result of human activities since 1750 and now far exceed pre-industrial values determined from ice cores spanning many thousands of years
(see Figure SPM.1). The global increases in carbon dioxide concentration are due primarily to fossil fuel use and land use change, while those of methane and nitrous oxide are primarily due to agriculture. (IPCC 2007)
The rest of the argument does not follow from the false premise so there is no real need to critically evaluate the implication that money “wasted” on “inefficient solar panels” will “kill people”. However, the argument that “… we can virtually guarantee some people will die in the future who could have been saved” by redirecting the solar panel money into health care and health research is just plain silly. It is silly because any money redirected from any other cause might save a life in the future. As argued above, there are billions in taxpayer subsidies that Joanne Nova has ignored, so if she was really worried about saving lives, then redirecting those very large subsidies ought to be her top priority.
Moreover, if dangerous climate change does occur, and there is a real possibility that this can happen, then millions of lives could be put at risk because of sea level rise, severe storms, drought, floods, disease and heat stress.
Where is the cost-benefit analysis?
Why? Solar energy costs us more than five times what coal-powered energy does. So instead of spending $1bn on solar panels, we could have spent $200 million on cheap electricity and used the other $800m to double our medical research budget.
If we remove the tax payer subsidies from coal fired power and take into account the full life cycle costs of coal, then the question really becomes, why do we keep burning expensive coal? A recent study by Epstein et al explain this clearly”
Each stage in the life cycle of coal—extraction, transport, processing, and combustion—generates a waste stream and carries multiple hazards for health and the environment. These costs are external to the coal industry and are thus often considered “externalities.”We estimate that the life cycle effects of coal and the waste stream generated are costing the U.S. public a third to over one-half of a trillion dollars annually. Many of these so-called externalities are, moreover, cumulative. Accounting for the damages conservatively doubles to triples the price of electricity from coal per kWh generated, making wind, solar, and other forms of non fossil fuel power generation, along with investments in efficiency and electricity conservation methods, economically competitive. (Epstein et al 2011)
Right now, the government is planning to cut $133m from our $800m annual medical research budget. The Australian government has spent or will spend $3.8bn on initiatives to combat climate change across four years. (The US government was spending about $7bn a year at last count.) When Julia Gillard spends money on climate-related work instead of medical research, she is making a choice about the net benefits and it's supposedly based on science. It's true sooner or later medical research will get the answers right, but for someone who is sick with a deadly disease, sooner makes a life-and-death difference.
As a matter of fact, the government did not plan to cut the health research budget and it increased it significantly in the 2011-2012 budget. Combating climate change can occur at the same time as increasing health research as both are capable of science –based justification in that they could save lives and prevent illness and premature death. To claim that the only choice politicians have is to spend either on combating climate change or medical research is to present a false dilemma. To argue that we must urgently shift all or even some public money into curing deadly diseases is superficially attractive when we think of individual cases … but it is a slippery slope. Where do we stop? How much money do we redirect? How many people can we save? Again
Where is the cost-benefit analysis?
If our government-funded climate establishment makes the wrong guess about what humidity does in a warmer world, CO2 emissions become trivial and inconsequential. But the money diverted or delayed from better causes leaves a trail of destruction that cannot be repaired. Money can always be replaced, but lives lost are gone for good.
All of a sudden we move from concerns about carbon dioxide and its impact to a statement about guesses from the scientific community “what humidity” does in a warmer world. The suppressed premise here is that somehow humidity is more important than other greenhouse gases such as C02. This claim is often made by denialists and sceptics and has been refuted many times and in many places(http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/04/water-vapour-feedback-or-forcing/). Then on the basis of absolutely no evidence, the argument is put that if only we could put (wasted) climate change research money into “better causes” then we would avoid losing lives.
Julio Licinio, director of the John Curtin School of Medical Research at the Australian National University, put together a passionate, disturbing advertisement two weeks ago, a plea to stop cuts to medical research funding. His sister died aged four from a disease that is treatable today.
Sad but true of millions of people who have died before treatment became available for ‘their’ disease. If we redirect millions into medical research we might save extra lives, but maybe we could save more lives and prevent more suffering by making road systems and cars much safer (about 1500 deaths per annum and 30,000 serious injuries) and by investing in public transport.
Where is the cost-benefit analysis?
Which four-year-old in 2018 will die because Gillard introduced a carbon tax instead of increasing medical research funding? Which father will die in 2022 who would have lived if we had doubled our funding for medical research? It is for people such as four-year-old Fabiola that we should keep fighting for rational debate. Bad science makes for bad policy. Poor reasoning is deadly.
We now have emotive, ad hominem arguments that bring the discussion down to the pathos of individual cases versus a carbon tax. Questions like “which four-year old will die in 2018” are designed to scare people into taking the false choice between funding climate change or medical research seriously.
I agree that poor reasoning can be deadly for rational debate!
Medical research is blossoming at a phenomenal, historic pace.
The exponential curve in gene therapy, telomerase research, genomics and glycobiology is barely beginning. Four significant breakthroughs were made in medical research in 1996, 1997, 1998 and 2000.
These were the kinds of breakthroughs people had worked for decades to make, and some were not predicted even a few years beforehand. The human genome project was finished five years ahead of schedule and for a fraction of the expected price.
Right now, a year of medical research really does make a difference. These are the areas where we will be left behind and it will hurt. These are the industries where we need to stay at the head of the pack, not just to save lives but to save the economy as well.
Access Economics estimated in 2003 that every dollar invested in the Australian health research and development sector returned at least $5 in national economic development.
When government-funded Australian researchers discover treatments, we own vital intellectual property. We not only export products the world wants, we avoid being beholden to foreign patent holders. Some effective cancer drugs cost $2000 a week. Isn't that the kind of research we want to own?
A great deal of largely irrelevant material is presented. Saving lives and the economy is complex and cannot be reduced to simplistic sweeping statements about highly selective examples of medical research.
If we lead the world in medicine, the world is our oyster. If it turns out clean carbon technology is useful, we can buy it with the spare change from the profits of medical research. We know we need a cure for cancer. We don't know if the rest of the world will want to pump CO2 underground 10 years from now.
A connection is made between possible profits from medical research and buying ‘clean carbon technology”. Again, the emotive power of a term like ‘cancer’ is used to justify a false choice between spending on curing disease or preventing climate change. A sane and reasonable culture can do both. Emotive reasoning can be deadly for coherence.
When we lead the world in putting inefficient solar panels on roofs, we only help Chinese manufacturers and we win a race no one wants to win. You can't export second-hand solar panels or resell old pink batts.
No evidence is provided to justify the claims that we are leading the world in installing solar panels, that solar panels are inefficient or that all subsidised panels are made in China. The bizarre idea of selling used solar panels or pink batts has not been suggested by anyone except Joanne Nova. Perhaps she was being ironic?
Can we start looking at the cost benefits of all our policies instead of reasoning by fallacy? The precautionary principle is no principle of science: it's a blind tool that works for both sides of any debate.
Joanne Nova has presented her case by use of emotion and fallacious reasoning and has supplied no evidence to support her many claims. If we actually did a cost benefit analysis of her proposal to redirect tax payer money into curative medicine we might end up deciding that to provide large amounts of public money on hospitals, drugs and illness is not the best way to deal with illness and health. The hard work would actually have to be done.
The precautionary principle is indeed a principle based on ethics, not science, but that does not invalidate its potential usefulness in deciding what to do when scientific knowledge is not perfect or complete. We now know enough about the dangers of current and further global warming to act ethically now so as to avoid an even worse situation in the future.
To quote Licinio: "In 1964 non-Hodgkin's lymphoma of childhood was 100 per cent fatal. Now the cure rate is over 80 per cent, thanks to medical research. When Fabiola died I was so upset that it took me decades to recover. From protracted mourning to survivor guilt, the impact of that death shaped my life. For someone like myself who suffered tremendously due to a disease [that] was incurable and whose cure has been subsequently achieved through medical research, the proposed cuts to the NHRMC [National Health and Medical Research Council] budget are unconscionable.
"On a very positive note, my mother, Aurea, lost her own mother early on. My grandmother died at age 47 due to malignant hypertension, which was out of control, and sky-high blood pressures. My mother suffered enormously because of that death; and she knew that she had the exact same disease. Later in life, my mother also developed breast cancer. However, medical research always caught up with her and her blood pressure was always well controlled. When she was diagnosed with breast cancer she had state-of-the-art treatment, guided by medical research. My mother died in 2007 neither from hypertension nor from breast cancer. Medical research gave my mother 40 years of active, happy and highly productive life."
These are very personal accounts of death, disease and cure. They are all used to argue the case against withdrawal or reduction of funding from curative medicine. Their emotive use in this context is clear for all to see, but to then use these personal cases to argue against public action (funding) on research about climate change does Joanne Nova no credit. That The Australian would publish something that so blatantly fails the test of logic and coherence is also a poor reflection on its journalistic standards. That a principle like “cost benefit analysis” is used to critique the renewable energy sector and carbon reduction research but is not equally applied to the proposals for increasing public subsidies to curative medicine is a monumental failure of coherence.
The agenda of this article is quite clear. The author is using a highly personal and emotional context of past human suffering and hypothetical threats to funding for medical research to create a false dilemma about preventing climate change versus saving lives via medical research. It is my hope that those who might have been influenced by this false dilemma can see that acting rationally and ethically requires of us to both take the threat of climate change seriously and to act where we can to minimise human pain and suffering via medical research.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Ethical Dieback
I wonder if the West Australian would publish a letter on the topic I cover below?
If we could watch what is going on in fast forward we would see vast tracts of bushland dying of thirst in the grip of this permanent drought. If you take the time to look, you will notice that the native ecosystems on the coastal plain are also in the deep distress of various forms of ‘dieback’.
Even the bikies that roar their Harleys up the Jarrahdale Road, heading for the hills, are part of endemic Perth, for although they might find it hard to admit, they love the beautiful bush vistas and the stress release that green, open spaces invite. That you can enjoy the roos, the jarrah forest and a thirst-quenching beer at the Jarrahdale Tavern is a quintessentially West Australian freedom. But it is a freedom, like the water in Serpentine Dam, which is in danger of disappearing.
Ethical Dieback
While gamers and sports fans might like slow motion action scenes where you can watch every move in minute detail, I doubt if anybody would like to watch the slow motion disaster that is unfolding before our very eyes in the Perth region.
I live in the hills at Jarrahdale and well into April I am watching whole sections of the forest slowly die. It is not just Jarrah and Marri that are turning yellow and dying, the whole ecosystem is in deep distress, so much so that, tragically, it looks like a Northern Hemisphere autumn is taking place right here, right now.
If we could watch what is going on in fast forward we would see vast tracts of bushland dying of thirst in the grip of this permanent drought. If you take the time to look, you will notice that the native ecosystems on the coastal plain are also in the deep distress of various forms of ‘dieback’.
The Perth Region, including the Hills, has had a 20% decline in rainfall over the last 30 years and a much larger, 60% decline in runoff into the streams and our dams. Gooralong Brook, once a year-round running stream, has disappeared and most of its deeper pools are now bone dry. The climate of the SW of WA has already changed for the worse and if it gets even warmer and dryer, the Perth region will be in perpetual ecosystem distress.
This distress is not only about trees, frogs, jilgies and thirsty kangaroos; it is also a crisis of the human spirit and the mind. Our identity as people of the Perth region is at stake. All that is endemic to this special part of the world is at risk of slow death by desiccation. Our iconic trees such as Banksia and Jarrah are already dying and the wildflowers, the exquisite ground orchids and kangaroo paws, will not reappear in a dry, colourless Spring.
Even the bikies that roar their Harleys up the Jarrahdale Road, heading for the hills, are part of endemic Perth, for although they might find it hard to admit, they love the beautiful bush vistas and the stress release that green, open spaces invite. That you can enjoy the roos, the jarrah forest and a thirst-quenching beer at the Jarrahdale Tavern is a quintessentially West Australian freedom. But it is a freedom, like the water in Serpentine Dam, which is in danger of disappearing.
We are a people in denial about the huge, negative changes to our climate and landscape that have taken place during my lifetime (I am a baby boomer). Since 1975, in SW WA, we have experienced most of the driest years on record. Last year (2010) was the driest year for the SW since 1900 and we are now breaking records for night and day time heat. The summer of 2010 -11 had the highest average minimum and maximum temperatures on record. Our dams are right now at less than a quarter of their total capacity and the chance of record rains that would return them to the spectacular overflows I witnessed as a child seems a very remote possibility.
We, in Perth, are in the front line of human induced global warming and its negative impacts and unless we confront that reality, our environment will either wither or simply pack up and move away from us. Sure, at huge expense, we can produce potable water from the sea and pump more ground water to keep Perth ‘green’, but these ‘solutions’ are a sign that we have got our relationship to the earth completely wrong. Go and have a good look at the (former) Lake Gnangara and think about the trade-off between ecosystem health and green lawns.
We are now living in a time of solastalgia, the homesickness you have when you are still at home. We have a lived experience of an environment that is changing all around us in ways that are distressing. Some people still think there is not a problem, that the problem is not serious, that we are not responsible for the problem, that we should do nothing ... but these responses are a sign of deep denial and ethical dieback.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Paul Murray and His Opinions
Paul Murray has a greater ability than most to express his ‘opinion’ in the media. As a columnist for The West Australian and a radio presenter he gets a lot of attention. However, with participation in the public realm comes responsibility. What Paul Murray is doing with his ‘opinions’ on climate change and the issue of action, is giving the public of WA a very one-sided (biased) view of a hugely important issue.
His standard tactic seems to be to highlight obscure issues in the debate, particularly old statements made in the public area by non-specialist commentators that seem extreme or just plain wrong and use them to argue against the science of climate change and the need to do anything about increasing greenhouse gas concentrations in the global atmosphere.
The argument pattern seems to be, that if, in the past, some science connected to climate change has been exaggeration, then all climate science must be exaggeration. Then, on the assumption that all climate science must be exaggeration, the conclusion is reached that we do not need to do anything about global warming. This form of reasoning, although it makes good blog material, is not sound and leads to conceptual and ethical failure of the highest order.
His latest opinion piece (The Weekend West April 23-24), for example, makes a great deal of the opinions of people who are, for example, trade union officials, not climate scientists, who have contributed to the public debate about climate change and its impacts. Much is made of the statements of Ged Kearney about the future of the Great Barrier Reef. He dismisses scientific research on the reef with a simple statement that “there is simply no substantiation of the claim that the coral on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) has declined by half – nor that the reef is dying”. A May 2010 report on the GBR by Australia’s leading reef scientists has stated:
The GBR is currently in good condition relative to other coral reef systems. However, it faces serious threats from local factors, such as declining water quality along the Queensland coastline, shipping, and over-fishing of some areas. Recent evidence suggests that coral cover (a measure of reef health) is now around half of what it was in the early 1980s. Increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) has placed additional threats on the GBR through its impact on water temperature and acidity. (http://climatescientistsaustralia.org.au/assets/files/csa_gbr-factsheet_may10.pdf)
For Murray to simply dismiss the work of leading scientists about the many causes of coral cover decline on the GBR (not only climate change) shows no respect to his readers. The “substantiation” of the decline is readily available for those who bother to look.
Murray further highlights a statement made in 2002 on the ABC 4 Corners program about coral reefs. Murray states that the program reported “that 40% of the world’s coral would be dead by 2010”. What the author of the original article published in 2000 actually says is:
We suggest that 40 percent of the world’s coral reefs will be lost by 2010, and another 20 percent in the 20 years following unless urgent management action is implemented.” (http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/environment/water/tech_pubs/coral.reef.report.sections/04.coral_reef_report.2002.global_status.pdf ).
It has to be remembered that the context for this statement was the devastating worldwide coral bleaching episode of 1998, the hottest year on record at that time in history. Also, where human mismanagement was a cause of coral loss, corrective measures have been taken, so much so that the same people who made the statement reported in 2002, have in 2008 reported:
The first GCRMN global status report was produced in 1998, as massive climate change-related coral bleaching was devastating reefs in the Indian Ocean, Western Pacific and Wider Caribbean. We are pleased to report that many remote reefs in the Indian Ocean and Western Pacific, including Indonesian and Palauan reefs, are now recovering rapidly; however many other reefs facing heavy human pressures are recovering slowly or not at all. The world’s coral reefs suffered two major setbacks since 2004: the Indian Ocean earthquake and resultant tsunamis in 2004 caused significant coral reef damage, especially in Indonesia; and 2005 was the hottest year on record throughout large parts of the Caribbean, resulting in extensive coral bleaching and mortality. Some Challenge countries lost more than half of their corals due to bleaching and disease. http://www.reefbase.org/download/gcrmn_download.aspx?type=10&docid=13312
It is quite clear that with the wisdom of hindsight the scientists who write these reports are “pleased” that recovery is happening. There is no alarmist conspiracy.
There is also a statement in the Murray Carbon Fantasyland article made about the supposed fact that there has been no significant change in the global extent of coral reefs. This is offered as proof that there could have been no significant loss in coral extent world-wide. The figures for this conclusion are taken directly from a Blog site without attribution (http://abcnewswatch.blogspot.com/2011/04/past-alarm-worlds-coral-40-gone-by-2010.html)
The original post, acknowledges two references to arrive at the conclusion there has been no significant loss of reef extent, but the references do not support this claim. One of the articles argues “variation in reef area estimates is, in part, a function of variation in reef definition” while the other gives no justification for its method of area measurement. With no common definition of what a reef is, these figures are not comparable and no conclusion can be drawn from them.
The other issue used to discredit action on climate change action was based on a 2005 claim by “a United Nations group” that by 2010 there would be 50 million climate change refugees because of rising sea levels.
The major source for this issue was a paper presented by environmental scientist Norman Myers at the 13th Economic Forum, Prague, 23-27 May 2005 (not a UN meeting). In this paper he argued for the concept of ‘environmental refugees’ defined as “people who have abandoned their homelands on a semi–permanent if not permanent basis, with little hope of a foreseeable return.” (http://www.osce.org/eea/14851)
He goes on to suggest that:
As far back as 1995 (latest date for a comprehensive assessment), these environmental refugees totalled at least 25 million people, compared with 27 million traditional refugees (people fleeing political oppression, religious persecution and ethnic troubles). The environmental refugees total could well double between 1995 and 2010. (http://www.osce.org/eea/14851)
Hence, while some environmental refugees might be made so by climate change, Myers mentions “drought, soil erosion, desertification, deforestation and other environmental problems” as the major factors that he is considering as relevant for designation as ‘environmental refugee’.
In 2005, The United Nations University put out a press statement that:
Amid predictions that by 2010 the world will need to cope with as many as 50 million people escaping the effects of creeping environmental deterioration, United Nations University experts say the international community urgently needs to define, recognize and extend support to this new category of ‘refugee’. (http://www.ehs.unu.edu/file/get/3916 )
You will note that neither Myers, nor the UN University state that it is climate change or sea level rise that will be the sole cause of millions of environmental refugees, they talk about “creeping environmental deterioration”. Apparently, a ‘refugee’ map that UNEP denies it is responsible for was once to be found on a UNEP website. It was titled “Fifty million climate refugees by 2010″ and was allegedly produced by a cartographer employed by UNEP. So the shift from ‘environmental’ to ‘climate’ on basis of the title of a single map is the cause of an international Blogosphere controversy. If one takes the time to read the original reports, you will find that they are carefully crafted around a broad concept of environmental change, not solely climate change and sea level rise.
Another more recent supposed source claimed for the ‘sea level rise’ refugee story is the UN University’s Institute for Environment and Human Security where one academic in 2009 claimed that “as climate change increases the frequency and intensity of natural hazards such as cyclones, floods and droughts, the number of temporarily displaced people will rise”. Her figure was 25-50 million perhaps temporarily displaced by 2010 due to the causes cited above. There is no doubt that at first glance, this figure seems extreme.
However, given that over 20 million people in Pakistan and over 2 million in Burma were displaced by flooding due to cyclone and extreme monsoon events alone in 2008 and 2009 the figure may not be so extreme. The Prime Minister of Pakistan, Yousuf Raza Gilani was reported as saying on August 14 2009 that;
“Unfortunately, the recent unprecedented torrential rains and devastating floods have made more than 20 m (million) people homeless, destroyed standing crops and food... worth billions of dollars, washed away bridges, roads, communication and energy networks”. ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-10973725)
What we have is a beat-up. Environmental refugees are not refugees fleeing solely from sea-level rise and sea level rise is not the only possible consequence of climate change. It is possible for there to be very large numbers (millions) of environmental refugees in any one year. The claim that climate change can exacerbate the impacts of natural hazards such as cyclones, floods and droughts is no doubt open to argument, but it is a reasonable hypothesis based on climate science modelling and known impacts.
Murray’s rhetorical question, where are all the climate refugees? belittles the serious issue of temporary displacement, largely within countries affected by disasters made worse by climate change. So, to answer the question “where are they all?” ... you need to look inside tents in places that have been desolated by cyclones, floods and droughts. That journalists like Murray think it is funny to ask the question reveals their deep disrespect for people desolated by calamity.
Conclusion
What the analysis of Murray’s trivial cases shows is that they enable him to avoid the key arguments that are relevant to anthropogenic climate change. The science shows us that rising greenhouse gases in the atmosphere lead to rising temperatures. It is a fact that greenhouse gas levels are rising. It is also a fact that the world has inexorably warmed over the last century, but especially so over the last decade. The climate science tells us that 2010 tied with 2005 as the warmest year of the global surface temperature record, beginning in 1880 and that this higher than average trend has now clocked up 34 consecutive years. The last ten years have all been in the warmest years recorded on the planet since records began in the C19th. Just to bring the facts right up to date and to give a local perspective:
Very hot conditions have been experienced across the Perth metropolitan region during the first three months of 2011, with most sites 2 to 3 °C above normal and hottest on record. Perth Metro's mean daily maximum temperature for the three months of January to March is 32.9 °C, which is the hottest start to the year since records commenced in 1897, breaking the previous record of 32.3 °C set in 1978. The average for the three months January to March period is 30.5 °C.
A number of sites across the Perth metropolitan area observed a record number of hot days during the first three months of 2011 including; Pearce RAAF with 69 hot days (previous record of 58 in 2010), Perth Airport with 64 hot days (previous record of 52 in 1978), Perth Metro with 58 hot days (previous record of 47 in 1978), Jandakot Aerodrome with 61 hot days (previous record of 50 in 2010), Swanbourne with 45 hot days (previous record of 35 in 2008), Bickley with 47 hot days (previous record of 41 in 2010). (http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/month/wa/perth.shtml )
Now, if a journalist was really interested in important facts, as opposed to distortions based on other people’s websites, there could be a really interesting story here. However we are not likely to get it from Mr Paul Murray because his agenda seems to be in fantasyland, not the facts.
The reason why we need to address climate change (global warming) is because the planet is warming! Murray’s regurgitation of the extreme views of other people such as Andrew Bolt just sets back the momentum to change to a low greenhouse gas economy. His argument that the effort of individual people, individual companies and individual countries to reduce greenhouse gases is inconsequential is ethically vacuous.
Unless somebody starts to reduce greenhouse gases soon, we will inevitably be experiencing an even warmer and more unpredictable planetary climate. The implications of such a warmer world range from serious changes to historical norms (no water in Perth’s dams) to catastrophic shifts in the foundations of everything that sustains life. No reasonable person could ignore the ethical desirability of avoiding bad or extreme climate change.
It is not inevitable that we should continue to warm the climate. We can slow down, and then stop the greenhouse gas emissions that are responsible for the warming. In the process we can maintain a viable economy and support a world environment that can sustain us.
That Paul Murray seemingly proudly stands in the way of such a transition should make us worry about his motives. I for one shall now carefully examine every claim he ever makes about climate change and report on its veracity. I suggest that it is in all our interests to do the same.
Glenn Albrecht PhD (philosophy)
Professor of Sustainability, Murdoch University.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Innocide
The Apology to Young and Future Australians
From Glenn Albrecht, Citizen, 17 Wanliss Street, Jarrahdale, Western Australia.
My fellow Australians,
We have reached the point where we must come together to acknowledge a severe injustice being perpetrated on current and future citizens. We must say to you; the recently conceived, newborns, infants, young children, youth, young adults and all future generations in Australia, that we are sorry that your future is being put at risk.
The callous abuse and mistreatment of the earth and its climate is a source of deep shame. In particular we need to offer you, the innocent and non-consenting parties to this destruction, a profound and deep-felt apology for failing to consider your interests. You are not responsible for the mess we are making of your future.
To all those who will be disadvantaged and who will have their life potential cut short by climate chaos … we say sorry for the innocide.
To avoid a warming and unpredictable climate you, the occupants of the future, need right now to be represented by well informed people with wisdom and ethical courage. Instead you have political and other leaders, who, in their denial or inaction on the reality of a warming world are putting the nation, families and whole communities at risk.
It is an unfolding tragedy that leaders are risking the future of the Earth for dubious benefits in the here and now. The so-called representatives of the people of Australia must be seen and judged for what they are … intellectually and ethically bankrupt. We must apologise for their lack of wisdom and their failure to look after those they ought to represent.
For this gross lack of integrity, for putting children and families last and for the abuse of those in science who are the messengers about our warming world … we say sorry for this tragedy.
It is a dark period in our history when critically important decisions about a genuinely sustainable future are being unduly influenced by those with vested interests. The time has come for us to stand up to such selfishness and egocentricity. To continue to abuse the earth and bring suffering to its future inhabitants is an ethical failure of the highest magnitude.
We must apologise in advance for the massive hardship that will occur to every facet of life as the climate gets hotter, disease, heat stress, drought and fire frequency increase, agriculture collapses, sea level rises and powerful storms wipe out our coastal communities.
For all these things and more that will happen in the foreseeable future ... we say sorry.
My fellow citizens, we must care about the future. We must make a rapid transition to an ecologically sustainable economy, one that is in harmony with our environment and climate. With courage and hope we can right a future wrong in the here and now.
From Glenn Albrecht, Citizen, 17 Wanliss Street, Jarrahdale, Western Australia.
My fellow Australians,
We have reached the point where we must come together to acknowledge a severe injustice being perpetrated on current and future citizens. We must say to you; the recently conceived, newborns, infants, young children, youth, young adults and all future generations in Australia, that we are sorry that your future is being put at risk.
The callous abuse and mistreatment of the earth and its climate is a source of deep shame. In particular we need to offer you, the innocent and non-consenting parties to this destruction, a profound and deep-felt apology for failing to consider your interests. You are not responsible for the mess we are making of your future.
To all those who will be disadvantaged and who will have their life potential cut short by climate chaos … we say sorry for the innocide.
To avoid a warming and unpredictable climate you, the occupants of the future, need right now to be represented by well informed people with wisdom and ethical courage. Instead you have political and other leaders, who, in their denial or inaction on the reality of a warming world are putting the nation, families and whole communities at risk.
It is an unfolding tragedy that leaders are risking the future of the Earth for dubious benefits in the here and now. The so-called representatives of the people of Australia must be seen and judged for what they are … intellectually and ethically bankrupt. We must apologise for their lack of wisdom and their failure to look after those they ought to represent.
For this gross lack of integrity, for putting children and families last and for the abuse of those in science who are the messengers about our warming world … we say sorry for this tragedy.
It is a dark period in our history when critically important decisions about a genuinely sustainable future are being unduly influenced by those with vested interests. The time has come for us to stand up to such selfishness and egocentricity. To continue to abuse the earth and bring suffering to its future inhabitants is an ethical failure of the highest magnitude.
We must apologise in advance for the massive hardship that will occur to every facet of life as the climate gets hotter, disease, heat stress, drought and fire frequency increase, agriculture collapses, sea level rises and powerful storms wipe out our coastal communities.
For all these things and more that will happen in the foreseeable future ... we say sorry.
My fellow citizens, we must care about the future. We must make a rapid transition to an ecologically sustainable economy, one that is in harmony with our environment and climate. With courage and hope we can right a future wrong in the here and now.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
The Ethics of Nation Building
I am genuinely surprised that the global financial system has failed before ecological systems. The perverse resilience that has kept fiscal flows generating profits has been hard to identify and almost impossible to criticise. The mantra of deregulation and 'freedom' has spewed from fiscal fundamentalists all over the world ... no where more enthusiastically than in Australia.
But now, with astonishing rapidity, the whole thing has collapsed and looks like suffering even more pain before the patient can be stabilised. Even the former free market fundamentalists are rushing for life support and a helping hand (bank loans from governments) as they too go into the meltdown.
I am not surprised at the international cash stimulus that is being hurled at the fire storm but worry that it will simply add further to the fuel. Throwing money at a failed economic system is as futile as fighting a monster fire with a garden hose. But even if we succeed ... what do we achieve?
Let's assume that depression and recession are averted for the moment, all that happens next is that we return to the non-sustainable economic path we were on before the sub-prime smoke started. All the combustible material, all the "fuel" simply builds again ready for the next conflagration and some crazy arsonist is just itching to drop a match and watch the glow.
It is time for alternatives to handouts (Labour) and tax cuts (Liberals) as they both fail to tackle the root causes of the problem.
As many commentators have pointed out, the current fiscal failure is a failure of values and ethics but I worry that such moral failure is now being perpetuated in the so-called solutions to the crisis.
The tax cut pathway panders to relictual greed and selfishness while the handouts stink of political self-interest and the perceived need for a quick fix to ease the pain of recession before the next election. And so in Australia, a nation of only 22 million people ... we have an instant $42 billion to spend as if there was no tomorrow. Everybody can have a $1000 ... everybody is being promised something for the "good of the nation".
Is it possible for us to see right now that spending billions on non-essential services such as school halls in a system that is already one of the best funded, most equipped and serviced education systems in the world is ethically bankrupt? Our children will not thank us for new school halls if all they are useful for is temporary shelter from the storms that will come.
Similarly, spending huge amounts of money on roof insulation in the name of saving us from climate and economic chaos is simply pulling the wool over our eyes. Perhaps roof insulation will insulate us from climate change for a short while, but it will burn along with our houses if we do not directly address the real causes of our problems with global warming. Solar hot water is a good thing to spend money on but the subsidies proposed are not sufficient to drive a massive change to the way we currently heat water by burning coal.
To achieve foundational sustainability our nation needs safe, renewable energy, a secure, potable water supply and a clean, secure food supply that is sustainably produced. Without energy, water and food ... and the real jobs that go with them, we are sub-prime and likely to fail.
To build a sustainable nation we need to urgently invest in clean, renewable energy, the technologies that use such energy and the raw materials needed to build them. Its a no-brainer ... we can generate sustainable jobs in a sustainable economy.
In order to kick start such a sustainable economy, how about:
But now, with astonishing rapidity, the whole thing has collapsed and looks like suffering even more pain before the patient can be stabilised. Even the former free market fundamentalists are rushing for life support and a helping hand (bank loans from governments) as they too go into the meltdown.
I am not surprised at the international cash stimulus that is being hurled at the fire storm but worry that it will simply add further to the fuel. Throwing money at a failed economic system is as futile as fighting a monster fire with a garden hose. But even if we succeed ... what do we achieve?
Let's assume that depression and recession are averted for the moment, all that happens next is that we return to the non-sustainable economic path we were on before the sub-prime smoke started. All the combustible material, all the "fuel" simply builds again ready for the next conflagration and some crazy arsonist is just itching to drop a match and watch the glow.
It is time for alternatives to handouts (Labour) and tax cuts (Liberals) as they both fail to tackle the root causes of the problem.
As many commentators have pointed out, the current fiscal failure is a failure of values and ethics but I worry that such moral failure is now being perpetuated in the so-called solutions to the crisis.
The tax cut pathway panders to relictual greed and selfishness while the handouts stink of political self-interest and the perceived need for a quick fix to ease the pain of recession before the next election. And so in Australia, a nation of only 22 million people ... we have an instant $42 billion to spend as if there was no tomorrow. Everybody can have a $1000 ... everybody is being promised something for the "good of the nation".
Is it possible for us to see right now that spending billions on non-essential services such as school halls in a system that is already one of the best funded, most equipped and serviced education systems in the world is ethically bankrupt? Our children will not thank us for new school halls if all they are useful for is temporary shelter from the storms that will come.
Similarly, spending huge amounts of money on roof insulation in the name of saving us from climate and economic chaos is simply pulling the wool over our eyes. Perhaps roof insulation will insulate us from climate change for a short while, but it will burn along with our houses if we do not directly address the real causes of our problems with global warming. Solar hot water is a good thing to spend money on but the subsidies proposed are not sufficient to drive a massive change to the way we currently heat water by burning coal.
To achieve foundational sustainability our nation needs safe, renewable energy, a secure, potable water supply and a clean, secure food supply that is sustainably produced. Without energy, water and food ... and the real jobs that go with them, we are sub-prime and likely to fail.
To build a sustainable nation we need to urgently invest in clean, renewable energy, the technologies that use such energy and the raw materials needed to build them. Its a no-brainer ... we can generate sustainable jobs in a sustainable economy.
In order to kick start such a sustainable economy, how about:
- photovoltaic panels on every roof top in Australia with every citizen contributing to the electricity grid and collecting their surplus energy in cash.
- Solar hot water systems on every roof in Australia with energy conserving hot water for all who need it.
- Rainwater tanks attached to almost every down pipe in Australia with every house and business self-sufficient in water
Then there is food ... massive re-employment as we move from agribusiness-driven rural unemployment to organic and other types of sustainable agriculture. Plus, clean and healthy food ... what a bonus!
All of the above is predicated on:
" using, conserving and enhancing the community's resources so that ecological processes, on which life depends, are maintained, and the total quality of life, now and in the future, can be increased"
(Australian Government ESD Policy 1992)
Let us reject the unimaginative and unethical path and take another look at how to spend what little money is left in a depleted bank. Even The Greens seem to have folded and given up on the tough job of telling Australians that the party is over ... its time to reject unsustainable growth in favour of improving the quality of our lives. Citizens must reject politics as usual in the face of this compelling need to change. We must give direction to our politicians and demand of them that we now move quickly towards economic, ecological and climatic sustainability and stability.
Fellow Australians, the ethical thing to do is reject tax cuts and short-term handouts for non-foundational projects of all types (cash in hand, roof insulation, school halls) and demand that an elected government govern in the interests of all, that is, for long-term sustainability. If we have big money to spare, then let us build on secure foundations ... a sane and sustainable society ... one that our children will be happy to inherit.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Shallow Thinking
Poor journalism has become a cover for hatred of environmentalists
The lead editorial of The Weekend Australian December 13-14 2008 takes my prize for the most illogical and inane editorial of 2008. Some failed hack has written a piece that attempts to revive the anti-Marxist debates of the 1960s and 70s and apply them to environmental and climate change policy in the year 2008.
Rather than carefully examine what is happening in the contemporary real world of personal, social and political responses to the enormous environmental and climatic changes that are taking place, the editorial retreats into a cold war rhetoric that should not be left unchallenged.
In the 60s and 70s many scholars of the legacy of Marx critically evaluated the idea that only a form of false consciousness prevented the proletariat from realising its historical mission to overthrow Capitalism. According to the theory, the working class had become diverted by increasing wealth and consumer goodies that prevented them from seeing their true destiny. Good scholarship showed that rather than false consciousness, false theory within the legacy of Marx was at the core of the explanation of why the working class was not revolting against its oppressors, the greedy Capitalists. The idea that iron laws of history (historicism) were working their way out towards an inevitable collapse of Capitalism and the classless society was debunked not only by good scholarship, but also by the terror of totalitarianism in the former Soviet Union and Maoist China. If terror and dictatorship were needed to create a socialist, classless society, then clearly Marx was mistaken.
However, rather than leaving this debate in the 1970s where it belongs, the author of the editorial regurgitates it into the present context of climate change policy. Lets carefully examine the way this is undertaken.
December 13, 2008
Article from: The Australian (editorial is in red)
Environmentalism has become a cover for class hatred
THE on-again, off-again relationship between the progressives and the proletariat has hit a rough patch, this time over saving the planet. The moral middle class has barely forgiven the outer-suburban battlers for propping up John Howard's conservative regime for more than a decade. Now, in what seems to be another infuriating act of false consciousness, the McMansion-dwelling classes appear reluctant to embrace the deep-green agenda on climate change.
For those not in the know, “progressives” in this article means anybody whose politics is vaguely left-leaning. You are likely to be left-leaning if you do not believe that free market Capitalism is the superior way to allocate resources and benefits and burdens in society. If you have a commitment to the common good, social safety nets for the unfortunate and the need for planning and regulation of essential public services such as ‘the market’, hospitals, transport and education, then you are probably “progressive”.
The “proletariat” or working class is not defined in the editorial but presumably, they are the “true believers”, those who still adhere to the idea that revolution is destiny and that the revolution is just around the corner. Traditionally, they opposed the Bourgeoise or the ruling class, those who owned capital. Despite being a critically endangered conceptual species in the contemporary world, the editorial seems to need the proletarian presence to make the whole story line work.
The “moral middle class” (another term for progressives) are introduced as the natural opponents of the proletariat or “outer-suburban battlers”. It is claimed that these battlers not only supported John Howard and his Conservative rule for a decade, they now refuse to take on board the progressive green agenda.
We are told that the green agenda is both “environmentalism” and “deep-green”. Environmentalism is a term that is used by serious academics of green politics to describe a reform movement designed to bring the excesses of rampant economic growth and development into line with a broad stewardship ethic. Environmentalism represents a shift from gross environmental despotism to good management or environmental stewardship. This is a position many leading global corporations have taken into their corporate philosophy in the last 3 decades.
Deep Green positions are more radical than environmentalism in that rather than reform, they proposed radical transformation of society to one that exists within biophysical reality and the limits to growth. Such limits are material flows (eg Peak Oil) and the ability of waste sinks to assimilate our wastes (eg the atmosphere and CO2). Deep ecological positions also advocate values that are life affirming (life is intrinsically valuable), biocentric (the variety of life has value) and egalitarian (all life is of equal value). These values are diametrically opposed to the anthropocentric or human values implied in stewardship.
While the progressives might have an environmentalist stance on climate change, they are unlikely to embrace deep green positions. If they are, then some evidence would be needed to support such a claim.
The rift widened this week when Paul Howes, the Australian Workers Union national secretary, argued persuasively in The Australian against emission restrictions that would drive trade-exposed, energy-intensive industries overseas. "My members and their wives, husbands and children are getting pretty tired of being told their jobs are dirty and polluting, particularly by bankers relentlessly pocketing their money and frittering away superannuation," he wrote.
The editorial uses material from AWU secretary, Paul Howes as evidence to support its claim that the battlers in the McMansions (the new proletariat) are actively opposing the progressive deep green agenda on emissions restrictions (what ever that is) on climate change. Howes, however, targets greedy bankers, not progressive environmentalists as the ‘enemy’ (I have yet to come across a deep green banker). Despite the argument from Howes, there are many in the trade union movement who see climate change as a direct threat to their future job security and a future threat to their children and grandchildren. The views of one trade unionist does not make for a sound argument in rejecting the need for emissions restrictions.
For the tertiary-educated greens, it felt like a knife in the back. Didn't the bourgeoisie stand shoulder to shoulder with the workers to defeat Mr Howard's extreme workplace laws? And this is how they are rewarded! Class treachery of the highest order.
The implication now is that tertiary education is a likely cause of this mess. The suppressed premise is that academics in universities are all socialists and deep greens and that their graduates, progressive tertiary educated greens, are likely to see the workers as traitors to the glorious cause of the failure of global capitalism and the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The progressives (now the equivalent of the Bourgeoisie) supported the workers on reform of Work Choices, but they are now being denied support from the workers over green issues such as emissions restrictions.
The claim that concern about job security in the energy intensive sector represents “class treachery” to the green progressives is interesting, but totally unsubstantiated. Again, there are many in the trade union movement who talk about a just transition to more sustainable forms of production and are willing to see transformation from an energy intensive scenario to one that is based on renewable energy and carbon neutrality.
It is easy being green in the leafy inner city, where public transport is available, the tofu co-op is around the corner and the local cafe serves a decent fair-trade soy cappuccino. It is much harder in the outer suburbs, where two cars are a necessity, not a choice. Much of what passes for green commentary is a thinly disguised attack on the suburbs and the people who choose to live there. Flat-screen televisions, V8 utes and lawns that must be mown and watered are evidence of their environmental depravity.
The paragraph above stereotypes inner city people who are green as having it easy. By contrast people in the outer burbs find it impossible to be anything other than environmentally despotic. Inner city greens then see the outer despots as depraved. Thus a new class war is set up between the inner pro-greens (cappuccino set) and the outer anti-greens (Flat-screen watchers) ... the modern equivalent of the old war between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Nice plot for a modern rock opera, however, it is not serious journalism, nor should it be taken seriously.
Every now and then a proxy-war breaks out, the latest being a proposal to bring V8 Supercar racing to Sydney's Olympic Park at Homebush, a suburb that lies on the geographical fault-line between environmentally conscious inner-western enclaves and the western suburbs. The arguments about trees, noise and air pollution will be familiar to Melburnians who followed the debate about Formula One Grand Prix racing at Albert Park and the environmental subtext is the same: shouldn't Lewis Hamilton drive a Prius?
As evidence for the claim that a new class and culture war is being created by the progressives, the plot is thickened with an argument that the V8 supercar event proposed for Homebush in Sydney highlights the great green divide between the inner and the outer burbs. The idea that Lewis Hamilton or Garth Tander should drive a Hybrid is supposed to represent the values implicit in the progressive “environmental subtext” while all outer suburban folk are anti-green V8 ute driving revheads is just plain absurd. Loss of trees, excessive noise and air pollution are all serious issues for all those affected by them ... it does The Australian no service to trivialise them.
Kevin Rudd is acutely aware of the mood in the suburbs, where voters would take a dim view of any government that pushed deep-green policies at the expense of jobs or prosperity. We confidently predict, therefore, that the emissions targets the Government will announce on Monday will not be deep enough to mollify the tree-hugging Left. Once again, the green movement has positioned itself at the extremity of debate, a long way from the pragmatic centre ground defined by popular sentiment and occupied by both major parties. But that, we suspect, is where the moral minority feels at home, recycling the bathwater and looking smugly down their noses at the rest of us.
The editorial claims to know the “mood in the suburbs” and that the mood is a pragmatic one far removed from the views of the “tree-hugging Left”, deep greens. This position, supposedly co-extensive with “the green movement”, is characterised as being extreme and out of touch with “popular sentiment”.
However, it is the author of the editorial who seems to be totally out of touch with basic ideological positions in the C21. To be Left is still to embrace (albeit in a socialist form) the super-ideology of industrialism with its attendant commitment to constant economic growth and technological progress (eg China). To be deep green is to reject that super ideology for a ‘limits to growth’ and eco-technology position. To be a tree-hugger is to conserve or preserve something (possibly a tree or trees) that are deemed to be valuable for some reason. To be a part of the green movement is to occupy some part of the environmental spectrum from light green (shallow) to dark green (deep). To mash up all these positions into a crude editorial blender is to embrace ignorance and perpetuate falsehoods. Not a good move for Australia’s only national newspaper, one that presumably can afford to pay professional journalists to write their editorials.
As for the last couple of lines, the real motivation of the editorial is finally revealed. Reference is now made to the “moral minority” (as opposed to the moral majority?) that recycles its bathwater and negatively evaluates all other people and positions. People who are concerned about green issues such as climate change, water recycling and pollution are portrayed as smug and out of touch with political reality.
However, worldwide, it is clear that far from being a minority position occupied by extremists, environmentalism (especially in its stewardship form) has been universally embraced as vital for a sustainable future in both ecological and economic senses.
Extreme green positions have been advocated by a small minority of theorists but their influence remains marginal at best. However, given delay on addressing the causes of climate change (greenhouse gas emissions) and a runaway greenhouse disaster scenario a serious possibility, extreme green positions are likely to become more mainstream as people of good will realise that only rapid and deep cuts to our greenhouse gases will stop disaster unfolding.
Where this editor appears to feel at home is with a role that invents false conflict (wedging) with the hope that such conflict will prevent consolidated and cooperative action to implement carbon reduction targets that will make a difference to the problems we face. Recycling stale cold war rhetoric is a lot worse than recycling bathwater. The motivation for such ‘bad faith’ can only be extreme scepticism or denialism in the cause of inaction on the whole climate change issue.
The Australian and its owners should be ashamed that journalism has now been reduced to slack use of slogans and the portrayal of complex social and climatic reality via crude stereotyping that says more about the values of the author than those he/she is trying to portray. It is time that The Australian ditched such ignorant extremism ... even Rupert Murdoch (in 2007) has publically uttered a position that is far more mainstream:
“Climate change poses clear, catastrophic threats. We may not agree on the extent, but we certainly can't afford the risk of inaction.”
The lead editorial of The Weekend Australian December 13-14 2008 takes my prize for the most illogical and inane editorial of 2008. Some failed hack has written a piece that attempts to revive the anti-Marxist debates of the 1960s and 70s and apply them to environmental and climate change policy in the year 2008.
Rather than carefully examine what is happening in the contemporary real world of personal, social and political responses to the enormous environmental and climatic changes that are taking place, the editorial retreats into a cold war rhetoric that should not be left unchallenged.
In the 60s and 70s many scholars of the legacy of Marx critically evaluated the idea that only a form of false consciousness prevented the proletariat from realising its historical mission to overthrow Capitalism. According to the theory, the working class had become diverted by increasing wealth and consumer goodies that prevented them from seeing their true destiny. Good scholarship showed that rather than false consciousness, false theory within the legacy of Marx was at the core of the explanation of why the working class was not revolting against its oppressors, the greedy Capitalists. The idea that iron laws of history (historicism) were working their way out towards an inevitable collapse of Capitalism and the classless society was debunked not only by good scholarship, but also by the terror of totalitarianism in the former Soviet Union and Maoist China. If terror and dictatorship were needed to create a socialist, classless society, then clearly Marx was mistaken.
However, rather than leaving this debate in the 1970s where it belongs, the author of the editorial regurgitates it into the present context of climate change policy. Lets carefully examine the way this is undertaken.
December 13, 2008
Article from: The Australian (editorial is in red)
Environmentalism has become a cover for class hatred
THE on-again, off-again relationship between the progressives and the proletariat has hit a rough patch, this time over saving the planet. The moral middle class has barely forgiven the outer-suburban battlers for propping up John Howard's conservative regime for more than a decade. Now, in what seems to be another infuriating act of false consciousness, the McMansion-dwelling classes appear reluctant to embrace the deep-green agenda on climate change.
For those not in the know, “progressives” in this article means anybody whose politics is vaguely left-leaning. You are likely to be left-leaning if you do not believe that free market Capitalism is the superior way to allocate resources and benefits and burdens in society. If you have a commitment to the common good, social safety nets for the unfortunate and the need for planning and regulation of essential public services such as ‘the market’, hospitals, transport and education, then you are probably “progressive”.
The “proletariat” or working class is not defined in the editorial but presumably, they are the “true believers”, those who still adhere to the idea that revolution is destiny and that the revolution is just around the corner. Traditionally, they opposed the Bourgeoise or the ruling class, those who owned capital. Despite being a critically endangered conceptual species in the contemporary world, the editorial seems to need the proletarian presence to make the whole story line work.
The “moral middle class” (another term for progressives) are introduced as the natural opponents of the proletariat or “outer-suburban battlers”. It is claimed that these battlers not only supported John Howard and his Conservative rule for a decade, they now refuse to take on board the progressive green agenda.
We are told that the green agenda is both “environmentalism” and “deep-green”. Environmentalism is a term that is used by serious academics of green politics to describe a reform movement designed to bring the excesses of rampant economic growth and development into line with a broad stewardship ethic. Environmentalism represents a shift from gross environmental despotism to good management or environmental stewardship. This is a position many leading global corporations have taken into their corporate philosophy in the last 3 decades.
Deep Green positions are more radical than environmentalism in that rather than reform, they proposed radical transformation of society to one that exists within biophysical reality and the limits to growth. Such limits are material flows (eg Peak Oil) and the ability of waste sinks to assimilate our wastes (eg the atmosphere and CO2). Deep ecological positions also advocate values that are life affirming (life is intrinsically valuable), biocentric (the variety of life has value) and egalitarian (all life is of equal value). These values are diametrically opposed to the anthropocentric or human values implied in stewardship.
While the progressives might have an environmentalist stance on climate change, they are unlikely to embrace deep green positions. If they are, then some evidence would be needed to support such a claim.
The rift widened this week when Paul Howes, the Australian Workers Union national secretary, argued persuasively in The Australian against emission restrictions that would drive trade-exposed, energy-intensive industries overseas. "My members and their wives, husbands and children are getting pretty tired of being told their jobs are dirty and polluting, particularly by bankers relentlessly pocketing their money and frittering away superannuation," he wrote.
The editorial uses material from AWU secretary, Paul Howes as evidence to support its claim that the battlers in the McMansions (the new proletariat) are actively opposing the progressive deep green agenda on emissions restrictions (what ever that is) on climate change. Howes, however, targets greedy bankers, not progressive environmentalists as the ‘enemy’ (I have yet to come across a deep green banker). Despite the argument from Howes, there are many in the trade union movement who see climate change as a direct threat to their future job security and a future threat to their children and grandchildren. The views of one trade unionist does not make for a sound argument in rejecting the need for emissions restrictions.
For the tertiary-educated greens, it felt like a knife in the back. Didn't the bourgeoisie stand shoulder to shoulder with the workers to defeat Mr Howard's extreme workplace laws? And this is how they are rewarded! Class treachery of the highest order.
The implication now is that tertiary education is a likely cause of this mess. The suppressed premise is that academics in universities are all socialists and deep greens and that their graduates, progressive tertiary educated greens, are likely to see the workers as traitors to the glorious cause of the failure of global capitalism and the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The progressives (now the equivalent of the Bourgeoisie) supported the workers on reform of Work Choices, but they are now being denied support from the workers over green issues such as emissions restrictions.
The claim that concern about job security in the energy intensive sector represents “class treachery” to the green progressives is interesting, but totally unsubstantiated. Again, there are many in the trade union movement who talk about a just transition to more sustainable forms of production and are willing to see transformation from an energy intensive scenario to one that is based on renewable energy and carbon neutrality.
It is easy being green in the leafy inner city, where public transport is available, the tofu co-op is around the corner and the local cafe serves a decent fair-trade soy cappuccino. It is much harder in the outer suburbs, where two cars are a necessity, not a choice. Much of what passes for green commentary is a thinly disguised attack on the suburbs and the people who choose to live there. Flat-screen televisions, V8 utes and lawns that must be mown and watered are evidence of their environmental depravity.
The paragraph above stereotypes inner city people who are green as having it easy. By contrast people in the outer burbs find it impossible to be anything other than environmentally despotic. Inner city greens then see the outer despots as depraved. Thus a new class war is set up between the inner pro-greens (cappuccino set) and the outer anti-greens (Flat-screen watchers) ... the modern equivalent of the old war between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Nice plot for a modern rock opera, however, it is not serious journalism, nor should it be taken seriously.
Every now and then a proxy-war breaks out, the latest being a proposal to bring V8 Supercar racing to Sydney's Olympic Park at Homebush, a suburb that lies on the geographical fault-line between environmentally conscious inner-western enclaves and the western suburbs. The arguments about trees, noise and air pollution will be familiar to Melburnians who followed the debate about Formula One Grand Prix racing at Albert Park and the environmental subtext is the same: shouldn't Lewis Hamilton drive a Prius?
As evidence for the claim that a new class and culture war is being created by the progressives, the plot is thickened with an argument that the V8 supercar event proposed for Homebush in Sydney highlights the great green divide between the inner and the outer burbs. The idea that Lewis Hamilton or Garth Tander should drive a Hybrid is supposed to represent the values implicit in the progressive “environmental subtext” while all outer suburban folk are anti-green V8 ute driving revheads is just plain absurd. Loss of trees, excessive noise and air pollution are all serious issues for all those affected by them ... it does The Australian no service to trivialise them.
Kevin Rudd is acutely aware of the mood in the suburbs, where voters would take a dim view of any government that pushed deep-green policies at the expense of jobs or prosperity. We confidently predict, therefore, that the emissions targets the Government will announce on Monday will not be deep enough to mollify the tree-hugging Left. Once again, the green movement has positioned itself at the extremity of debate, a long way from the pragmatic centre ground defined by popular sentiment and occupied by both major parties. But that, we suspect, is where the moral minority feels at home, recycling the bathwater and looking smugly down their noses at the rest of us.
The editorial claims to know the “mood in the suburbs” and that the mood is a pragmatic one far removed from the views of the “tree-hugging Left”, deep greens. This position, supposedly co-extensive with “the green movement”, is characterised as being extreme and out of touch with “popular sentiment”.
However, it is the author of the editorial who seems to be totally out of touch with basic ideological positions in the C21. To be Left is still to embrace (albeit in a socialist form) the super-ideology of industrialism with its attendant commitment to constant economic growth and technological progress (eg China). To be deep green is to reject that super ideology for a ‘limits to growth’ and eco-technology position. To be a tree-hugger is to conserve or preserve something (possibly a tree or trees) that are deemed to be valuable for some reason. To be a part of the green movement is to occupy some part of the environmental spectrum from light green (shallow) to dark green (deep). To mash up all these positions into a crude editorial blender is to embrace ignorance and perpetuate falsehoods. Not a good move for Australia’s only national newspaper, one that presumably can afford to pay professional journalists to write their editorials.
As for the last couple of lines, the real motivation of the editorial is finally revealed. Reference is now made to the “moral minority” (as opposed to the moral majority?) that recycles its bathwater and negatively evaluates all other people and positions. People who are concerned about green issues such as climate change, water recycling and pollution are portrayed as smug and out of touch with political reality.
However, worldwide, it is clear that far from being a minority position occupied by extremists, environmentalism (especially in its stewardship form) has been universally embraced as vital for a sustainable future in both ecological and economic senses.
Extreme green positions have been advocated by a small minority of theorists but their influence remains marginal at best. However, given delay on addressing the causes of climate change (greenhouse gas emissions) and a runaway greenhouse disaster scenario a serious possibility, extreme green positions are likely to become more mainstream as people of good will realise that only rapid and deep cuts to our greenhouse gases will stop disaster unfolding.
Where this editor appears to feel at home is with a role that invents false conflict (wedging) with the hope that such conflict will prevent consolidated and cooperative action to implement carbon reduction targets that will make a difference to the problems we face. Recycling stale cold war rhetoric is a lot worse than recycling bathwater. The motivation for such ‘bad faith’ can only be extreme scepticism or denialism in the cause of inaction on the whole climate change issue.
The Australian and its owners should be ashamed that journalism has now been reduced to slack use of slogans and the portrayal of complex social and climatic reality via crude stereotyping that says more about the values of the author than those he/she is trying to portray. It is time that The Australian ditched such ignorant extremism ... even Rupert Murdoch (in 2007) has publically uttered a position that is far more mainstream:
“Climate change poses clear, catastrophic threats. We may not agree on the extent, but we certainly can't afford the risk of inaction.”
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