Carbon parochialism

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One of the most effective arguments against pricing carbon in Australia is that horrible rhetorical question: how much effect will it have in isolation? Carbon price opponents think they’re onto a winner here, and their success (I think) has largely been in framing it as a national rather than a global issue.

In reality, reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a challenge confronting the whole world, collectively. We always knew it was going to be a hard sell, not least because each nation’s contribution cannot really do anything by itself. There does need to be some sort of international agreement. Absent international agreement, and absent action from other countries, it’s very easy to make the argument that a carbon price will not achieve anything. It won’t.

But at this point in the discussion we’ve already come off the rails, thinking like helpless pessimists, rather than constructive realists. We cannot so easily entertain hypothetical international climate inaction, because it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy and leads inevitably to the worst possible outcome. This is similar to the Prisoner’s Dilemma. If a nation acts in isolation, it may disadvantage itself economically, but if all nations fail to act for this reason, they will suffer far worst than if they had co-operated. We must focus on international co-operation, not on how to “win” the ensuing chaos if co-operation fails.

It’s not beyond us to figure this out. We must think beyond the immediate costs and benefits to our nation. Surely we are human beings before we are Australians. Thus, we must think of ourselves as global citizens, participating in a global debate on climate action and assessing the global costs and benefits thereof. Each investment in renewable energy or reduction in energy use benefits the whole world, not just the country in which it happens. The actual climatic effects of Australia’s carbon price will be dispersed over all seven continents and five oceans, while Australians ourselves will experience only a small part of it. Indeed, every country will experience only a small portion of the benefits of their own actions.

This is antithetical to the selfish, nationalist perspective, which would question why others should benefit from our efforts. But that’s the only way it can be – climate reality crushing the illusion of absolute national sovereignty. We cannot engineer a climate policy that is only in the national interest. We cannot employ a version of Maxwell’s Demon to stand at the border and stop the flow of greenhouse gas molecules back and forth. Climate policy can only serve the global interest, or none at all.

There are many possible analogies. Consider income tax – if each taxpayer were to measure the effect of their own tax contribution on healthcare, education, law enforcement, etc., it would be infinitesimal. Why then should anyone pay tax? Your own tax contribution in isolation hardly benefits society at all. However, there are many people to share the tax burden, and together their contribution is very noticeable. The benefits to everyone of government spending – the opportunity to live in a safe, healthy and educated society – far outweigh whatever personal benefits those few thousand tax dollars were going to have1.

If we convince ourselves that we matter more than society, or that Australia matters more that the rest of the world, we risk becoming obsessed not simply with helping ourselves, but with actively not helping others. It’s not our responsibility, we tell ourselves, forgetting in our stubbornness that we have a stake in it. Selfishness turns into angry defensiveness, which turns into isolationism, and ultimately self-betrayal. Far from being a burden, the greater good is actually in our own personal and national interest. Climate policy is not about altruistically helping others (though that is certainly no bad thing). It is about helping ourselves by helping everyone.

  1. Libertarians would insist otherwise, but I don’t think they have a great deal of evidence on their side. [↩]

In the spirit of carbon rationing

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I’ve gone with a new option being provided by my hosting company.

Though widely ridiculed in medical circles, homeopathy has the backing of a substantial collection of anecdotal science. There is little evidence to suggest it has ever cured anyone, but the principle may instead be applied to other facets of our civilisation – particularly power generation. We already know that large amounts of energy can, in principle, be extracted from the hydrogen in water through nuclear fusion, though that technology is still some decades away.

By contrast, the homeopathic approach to power generation is considerably simpler. You just need a reasonable number of self-contained power generators, two large tanks and one or more large rubber mallets, along with trained monkeys to wield them. The generators are placed inside one tank, turned on and then submerged in water. After submersion, the mallets are used to strike the tank. The resulting pressure waves convey electromagnetic force through the generators and into the surrounding water, diffusing the functions of the generators among water molecules.

Then, the bottom one tenth of the tank is drained through a large valve (large enough to fit a generator) into the second, equally-sized tank. The first tank is emptied (the left-over generators are now fully compostable), and the remaining nine tenths of the second tank is filled with fresh water. The mallets are used once again, and the bottom one tenth of the second tank is drained back into the first.

This process is repeated about 30 times, after which remains water imbued with the electrical-generation capacity of the original generators. This is the process undertaken by some web hosting providers now, to address interest across the web in reducing online reliance on fossil fuels. So far, I can report that Dave’s Archives appears to be functioning at its usual level of credibility.

Of course, the trap lies in the initial use of petrol-powered generators, because then your homeopathic generator will need constant top-ups of homeopathic petrol. Fortunately, the same process may be applied to solar photovoltaics, which if diluted homeopathically will produce a tank of photovoltaic water, which you can keep in a large transparent sealed container and place in the sun. (Whichever method is used, the homeopathic generator must immediately be connected to the grid to avoid uncontrolled arcing. Simply dangle your live, high-voltage cables in the water and you’re safe.)

This suggests a further, more radical step: converting the oceans to homeopathic photovoltaics. Not only would this essentially solve the world’s energy problems for centuries, but the process can be initiated by anyone for relatively little cost. It has not been attempted up until now principally because it would transform the world’s beaches into high-voltage risk areas, and virtually eliminate surfing (except on artificial waves). Unfortunately, the surfing lobby has thus far succeeded in stalling all scientific research into homeopathy, leading to its current predicament, being the laughing stock of the medical industry and virtually unknown in power generation. Presumably this cannot last forever, and few would argue that surfing is a necessary sacrifice if we are to secure the future of our planet.

Useful delusions

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Two curious, abstract figments of the political imagination, contracts and mandates lay the mental groundwork for whatever contrived political debates might lie ahead. In this case, I speak of the unfortunate politics of New South Wales (where I don’t live).

On one hand, Barry O’Farrell has signed a “contract” with voters, promising to resign if he breaks his promises (one of which is, of course, a promise to resign if he breaks his promises).

Let us first disavow ourselves of the notion that these “contracts” have any sort of legal basis. By my (perhaps shallow) understanding of contract law, a contract needs the express consent of all parties, not just the implied consent of the majority. There’s nothing whatsoever to stop O’Farrell breaking his “contract” or exceeding his “mandate”.

I’m not sure exactly who pioneered the idea of an election contract, but certainly David Cameron and Tony Abbott both tried it. Tony Abbott also tried to contract his way out of WorkChoices.

These “contracts” are, of course, really just a way of saying that you’re promising something really, really hard. They are apparently designed to create the impression of enforceability, relying on voters not thinking too hard about who, precisely, will be doing the enforcing. They also don’t yet have the same history as election “promises”, which are broken as a matter of course. ”A contract,” you therefore say to the electorate, “is just like a promise, only we mean it.” The word will be just as tarnished in the end. (This brings to mind the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe’s multiple attempts to revalue its currency during hyperinflation. The second Dollar is just like the first Dollar, only you can buy things with it. The third Dollar is just like the second Dollar, only you can buy things with it. The fourth Dollar is just like the third Dollar, only you can buy things with it.)

On the other hand, Kristina Keneally has declared that a victorious O’Farrell will have no “mandate”:

If the polls today are correct and Mr O’Farrell is slated for victory, it’ll be a victory without a mandate, because he’s not telling people what it is he will do.

How much Barry O’Farrell has said is beside the point. The people are voting for him, and since democracy operates under the assumption that the people are reasonably well-informed1, we must assume the people of NSW have taken his policies (or lack thereof) into due consideration.

Even if you accept Keneally’s premise, O’Farrell’s mandate would be much broader for him not having articulated any policy detail. If you don’t tell the voters what you’re going to do, and they vote for you anyway, then the assumption is that they trust you to make the right decisions. It’s when you tell voters what your policies are – and make “contracts” with them – that your mandate becomes restricted to those stated objectives.

That said, this notion of a “mandate” is rather abstract and, like an election contract, lacks any real legal basis. However, it is useful for evaluating a government’s level of honesty. The outgoing government naturally wants the incoming government’s mandate to be as narrow as possible, because they’re about to spend the next four/eight/twelve years finding ingenious ways of concluding that O’Farrell misled voters. Presumably, though, the incoming government has both the right and obligation to, well, govern, and not simply be a second Opposition.

  1. This is, in fact, the entire constitutional basis of freedom of speech in Australia. Nowhere does our hallowed founding document even mention such freedom, but elections require a well-informed public, which implies freedom of speech. [↩]

ABC News Panic

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This is ABC News Breakfast co-host Virginia Trioli, in a recent promo:

I reckon when people wake up in the morning they have one primary concern: is the world safe? Has anything happened drastically overnight that I need to know about and that I need to worry about.

I don’t know if this is how 24-hour news reporters justify themselves generally, or if Trioli just happens to know a lot of very stressed, panicky people.

Is “is the world safe” honestly and truly the very first thing that comes to your mind in the morning? Is it even neurologically possible for that to be your one primary concern, before, say, eating breakfast?

Now, I enjoy a good dose of global catastrophe-voyeurism as much as anyone else, but not before something infinitely more important: deciding if and when I need to actually get out of bed and do something productive. I first need to establish this mental framework before I’m capable of entertaining lesser questions of what disasters may have befallen humanity during my state of unconsciousness.

Maybe I’m just in the wrong demographic, and I have nothing against Virginia Trioli, but surely we ought not to be encouraging a culture of panic.

Question time psychosis

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I read (via the ABC) that our new Greens MP Adam Bandt believes that the hallowed institution of Question Time is in danger of becoming a farce:

There is a real risk that we are about to lose one of the key opportunities that Parliament has to hold the executive accountable and to ask ministers to think on their feet.

What really is the fulcrum of Parliament, something the nation tunes in to every day and an opportunity to put ministers on the spot, runs the risk of descending into a scripted farce.

At the moment we have the length of Question Time being determined by what time Play School comes on television.

I can understand and sympathise with Bandt, but this strikes me as being a little naïve. Question Time has almost never been anything but a farce.

Each question from a Government MP is a blank cheque for the relevant minister to burble on about how great they are. Each question from the Opposition is just a rhetorical salvo designed to damage the government’s credibility. It’s been like that since the dawn of time, and our adversarial, two-party system almost guarantees it will stay that way. Independent MPs – including, presumably, Mr Bandt himself – are the only ones even remotely likely to use Question Time as a means of acquiring information and so informing the public. However, they get very few opportunities to do so, and such cool-headed rational discourse appears not to rate very highly in media coverage.

So, when Tony Abbott decides to disrupt Question Time with spurious censure motions over Gillard’s carbon tax, who really cares? Sure, he’s being a supercilious git, but it’s not as if he’s disrupting anything important. I shall elaborate by way of the following diagram:

If we can make Question Time not an unmitigated farce (or we can get rid of people likely to care about democracy), then we can worry about Abbott’s choreography.

I’m not racist, because…

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Following on from that racism study, the comments below SBS’s article on the subject threaten to provide some good starting material for an incarnation of internet bingo.

Again the Left shows its superficiality. If people are wary of Islam, then they are not racist because Islam is not a race. It’s a religion.

Aha! Religion, not race, therefore prejudice is impossible! I am overwhelmed by non-superficiality.

If 10% of Aussies are racist, I say most of of that 10% are of Arab, Asian background. Colonial Aussies are not really racist, they are culturally biased.

I’m not racist – it’s those other races that are racist! Get your stinking paws off me you damn racist Arabs! Learn to be “culturally biased” instead, like proper, refined white folk.

Because I am concerned about the radical elements of Islam in Australia, I am deemed to be racist.

Well, you know, the survey didn’t find that you personally were racist – you seem to have worked that out yourself.

To love the culture and race which ones heratige originates over that of others is not racism.

So, nothing wrong with “white pride” then? Just a bit of cultural fun.

This is all in stark contrast to the comments below the corresponding ABC article, which managed to avoid using the word “racism”. Commenters at the ABC seemed to be far less defensive.

The economics of insanity

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I learnt a new phrase today – “lexicographic preference” – courtesy of economics professor J. Bradford DeLong. Before I tell you what it means, let me show you what kind of thinking it produces (not on DeLong’s part, but on those he ridicules).

Here are two quotes (don’t look at the links just yet). First:

I think there’s a good case to be made that taxing people to protect the Earth from an asteroid, while within Congress’s powers, is an illegitimate function of government from a moral perspective.

Second:

We believe that the decisions of how to deal with the massive asteroid are best left to the individual.

You’d be right to smell satire. However, only one of the above quotes is satirical. The other is quite serious. (This is a manifestation of Poe’s Law.)

The second quote comes from The Onion; the first comes from Sasha Volokh, who apparently didn’t get the joke. I shall defer to some other great commentary on this by J. Bradford DeLong:

So not only does Sasha Volokh claim that it is immoral to tax people to blow up an asteroid (or install lightning rods, or mandate lightning rods, or pay for a tree-trimming crew on the public roads), but it is immoral to tell people of an approaching asteroid so they can scramble to safety because it will cause violations of rights through looting.

And then John Quiggin:

The general point is that if some physical state of the world would require government action inconsistent with libertarian principles or conservative tribal taboos, then since libertarianism/conservatism is always right, logic dictates that the physical state in question must be impossible.

DeLong attributes Volokh’s thinking to “lexicographic preference”, which is economics jargon. Imagine you are selecting between alternatives, and you have several criteria to base your decision on. If I understand correctly, choosing lexicographically means applying each criterion in turn (as if you were comparing the letters in two words to place them in dictionary order; hence the name). You stop at the first criterion that distinguishes the alternatives.

For such absolutist libertarians as Sasha Volokh, the first criterion is upholding individual rights. If the available courses of action both uphold rights, or both fail to uphold rights, then we can move onto the second criterion (e.g. preservation of human civilisation). However, (a) libertarians in general tend to argue that taxation is theft, and (b) Volokh in particular argues that we do not, strictly speaking, have the right to survive a natural disaster. Thus, the first criterion does distinguish between the alternatives, and so we never need consider any other factors. Thus, government is morally obliged to do nothing to save humanity.

DeLong also highlights another phenomenon – the tendency in the face of extremism to declare a legitimate debate (specifically, in this case, by one Ilya Somin):

Somin’s insanity is… a second-order insanity — the insanity of taking first-order insane claims to be questions about which reasonable people can disagree.

In other words, Volokh’s position is demonstrably insane, and those who think that it can form part of a legitimate debate, as opposed to an object of ridicule, are themselves at least mildly insane.

Now, having understood the preceding arguments, most thinking people probably have pet topics to which they envisage an application.

In my case, lexicographic preference reminds me a lot of the political quagmire associated with unathorised boat arrivals. Politicians and commentators (especially of the Liberal persuasion), cast this as a crisis in which the only acceptable outcome is the total absence of any further “boat people”. There is no consideration for either (a) the humanitarian situation, (b) the diplomatic situation, or (c) the costs involved (or indeed anything else). In evaluating a given policy, the last three factors are irrelevant as long as there is some effect – no matter how small – on the number of boats. A policy that results in x boat arrivals is incontestably superior to one that results in x + 1 arrivals, no matter the cost, diplomatic or humanitarian implications.

Unfortunately, this is such a widely-held variety of insanity that any second-order insanity (i.e. that there is a legitimate argument that we should favour fewer boat arrivals no matter the consequences) is redundant.

A better demonstration of second-order insanity lies in the never-ending racism/multiculturalism debate. Here, Kevin Andrews was one the latest purveyors of this particular type of nonsense (after the British PM David Cameron had taken the lead of Angela Merkel in announcing the supposed failure of multiculturalism):

Mr Andrews described the British prime minister’s comments as “fairly sensible” and relevant to Australia.

“I think there is a risk [of ethnic enclaves] in Australia,” Mr Andrews said.

“What actually concerns me the most is that we can’t have a discussion about it,” he said, as he pushed for a public debate on the issue.

Of course, we can have a discussion about the merits of multiculturalism, in much the same way that we can have a discussion about the merits of using tax dollars to stop asteroids from annihilating civilisation. It really just depends on your preferred level of insanity.

I’m not latently racist, but…

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It’s an interesting exercise getting people to admit to racism. The ABC reports on a nation-wide survey (or rather a collection of state-wide surveys) exploring the nature and extent of racist attitudes in Australia.

Only 1 in 8 people were prepared to explicitly admit to racial prejudice. Yet, 1 in 2 people were found to be “anti-Muslim”, 1 in 4 were “anti-Indigenous”, 1 in 4 were “anti-Asian”, 1 in 4 were anti-Semitic and 1 in 4 were “anti-black African” (approximately, in each case). Clearly there is a disconnect, but how did the researchers manage to uncover it? By asking the following question:

In your opinion how concerned would you feel if one of your close relatives were to marry a person of…?

(This question was asked once for each of five national/ethic groups – Asian, Indigenous, Italian, British and black African – and three religious affiliations – Muslim, Jewish and Christian. )

In other words, though you might not identify yourself as prejudiced, your prejudices can be revealed by having you imagine a personal association with someone different. People are evidentially very good at fooling themselves when it comes to racial prejudice; hence the expression “I’m not racist, but…”, which is almost invariably followed by something mind-bendingly racist. As a society, we’ve learnt by rote that racism is bad, but a lot of us clearly don’t understand why. Thus, we perform mental gymnastics to allow us to be racist without acknowledging it.

Of course, there are lots of ways in which racism can be worse than concern over interracial marriage in your own family. There was some relatively good news from the survey:

  • Less than 1 in 10 people felt insecure “with people of different ethic backgrounds”.
  • Less than 1 in 15 people felt that society ought not to be “made up of people from different cultures”.

Maybe this is where our ”latent racism” comes in. We’re happy to work with people from different backgrounds, but we don’t truly think of them as equals. This shows up in the 41% agreement with the following statement:

Australia is weakened by people of different ethnic origins sticking to their old ways.

This is a curious form of wording. “Old ways” seems to invite respondents to fantasise about all manner of archaic, barbaric practices that might occur in Ethnicistan. The statement is not loaded per se - it is perfectly possible to give a reasonable, straight “agree” or “disagree”. However, like the marriage question, it is cleverly designed to press our buttons and draw out latent prejudice.

The responses to that original marriage question also turn the “integration” debate on its head. For years, politicians and commentators have cried out for migrants, especially Muslims, to “integrate” into Australian society. Interracial, inter-religious, inter-ethnic marriage is surely one of the best markers of successful integration. If Muslim migrants are to be truly integrated into Australian society, such marriage is an inevitable, perhaps crucial part of the process. And yet, on a personal level, it would be a cause for concern for half of all Australians. It is concerning, presumably, for many of the very same people1 who complain about the lack of integration.

Hopefully those 14 out of 15 Australians are not just paying lip service to diversity.

  1. I tend to be wary of the phrase “the same people who…”, because often it’s a device to conjure up fictional double standards for your opponents. Often there’s no evidence that the people in question are the same at all. I’ll concede that some of the people complaining of the lack of Muslim integration might not be concerned about their own relatives marrying Muslims. I’m not really worried about anyone who holds that combination of views, because race riots are not conducted by those with such nuanced opinions. I fear it’s a little too nuanced for many of us, though. [↩]

Nothing so humble

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The ABC reports that Scott Morrison “climbs down in funeral row”:

Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison has admitted he was “insensitive” to question the cost of funerals as families mourned for those lost in the Christmas Island shipwreck tragedy yesterday.

News Ltd reported that  Morrison was sorry for his “insensitive and inappropriate” comments:

A CHASTENED Scott Morrison today apologised for “insensitive and inappropriate” comments on the funerals of asylum seekers killed in December’s boat tragedy.

This is actually quite a distorted interpretation of Morrison’s remarks. If you read what he actually said, as reported in both articles, it’s hard to come to the conclusion that he’s “climbing down” in any meaningful sense. According to the News Ltd article:

He told 2GB “the timing of my comments over the last 24 hours was insensitive and was inappropriate”.

“I know probably more than anyone how strongly people feel about this issue, how angry they get about the costs that are involved and I share that anger and I want to see that changed,” he said.

“But there is a time and a place.”

Morrison is not sorry for what he said at all, but merely when he said it. That’s not an apology, but simply political manoeuvring. It appears he’s trying to conflate the funeral costs with overall asylum seeker processing costs.

If Morrison were genuinely sorry, he’d do the following in a long statement to the mass media:

  • explicitly disown his remarks;
  • show some leadership and not kowtow to or stoke populist fears;
  • make an argument in favour of the funeral arrangements and the consequent government expenditure;
  • make an effort to separate the issue of funeral costs from the broader “unauthorised boat arrivals”  issue; and
  • not immediately go back on the offensive (which would simply dilute the apology).

In reality, Morrison is just trying to have us ignore what he said. The problem is that there are a large number of people who probably agreed with him the first time, and who themselves will just see this “apology” for the meaningless non-concession that it is. Each time a high-ranking politician utters remarks like Morrison’s, it further emboldens the nutters who want to see, for instance, an end to “Muslim immigration”.

If Morrison were genuinely sorry, he wouldn’t try to gain political ground from both the moderates who might think he apologised and the nutters who know that he didn’t. If Morrison were genuinely sorry, he would be trying to undo the damage he caused by passionately refuting his own remarks. He isn’t sorry – he’s gaming the electorate.