He is better known for his work on population, but neomalthusian, Paul Ehrlich is listed as an author on a new paper, the abstract of which reads as follows,

Government policies are needed when people’s behaviors fail to deliver the public good. Those policies will be most effective if they can stimulate long-term changes in beliefs and norms, creating and reinforcing the behaviors needed to solidify and extend the public good. It is often the shortterm acceptability of potential policies, rather than their longer-term efficacy, that determines their scope and deployment. The policy process should include a consideration of both timescales. The academy, however, has provided insufficient insight on the coevolution of social norms and different policy instruments, thus compromising the ability of decisionmakers to craft effective solutions to the society’s most intractable environmental problems. Life scientists could make fundamental contributions to this agenda through targeted research on the emergence of social norms.

In other words…

Scientists Should Advance Management of Behavioral Norms

.. says the press release from the American Institute of Biological Sciences.

Needless to say, I find this weird. The press release explains…

The authors maintain that effective policies induce not only short-term changes in behavior but also long-term changes in norms. More effective management of social norms will be necessary, they write, to persuade the public to accept the inconvenience and expense of many environmental policies.

What is weirdest in my view is that biologists should take an interest in the development, and indeed the deliberate manipulation — engineering — of ‘social norms’. Almost as weird is the authors’ understanding of what a ‘social norm’ actually is:

This is how domestic recycling, for example, has become the accepted habit of many people who were at first resentful of having to separate recyclable items.

This is addressed in the paper:

Recycling provides a simple example. In many places, recycling programs began with much grumbling, under the pressure of increased costs for oversized garbage loads. Today, recycling is second nature for many people, who have come to view it as a normative behavior. This has led to increased recycling even under reduced enforcement. Prohibition provides an illuminating counterexample: Short-term declines in the consumption of alcohol in the face of severe penalties did not lead to widespread or long-term temperance. Effective policies, then, are ones that induce both short-term changes in behavior and longer-term changes in social norms.

A better example of what recycling is — at least as far as life in the UK is concerned — is a transformation of the relationship between local authorities and the people they (in theory) serve. And this transformation came from on high. Rather than local councils implementing policies through decisions made by the voter, most UK recycling rules are the consequence of EU directives on the management of landfill sites. A tax is imposed on the tonnage of waste sent to landfill. Notably, the people who select their representatives at local and national levels do not get to select the executive branch of the EU government. Yet, say the authors of the paper…

Some may object to an expanded governmental role in influencing norms, but we feel strongly that our recommendations can be carried out in a way that abides by the principles of representative democracy, including transparency, fairness, and accountability (Norton et al. 1998). Furthermore, government is only one of many parties and interests in democratic systems acting to influence values and social norms; other parties include, for instance, corporations, charitable organizations, neighborhood groups, organized religions, and public and private schools. Therefore, people’s behaviors, values, and preferences—and the social norms to which they give rise—are under continuous pressure, but government is uniquely obligated to locate the common good and formulate its policies accordingly. A central role of academics in this process would be to elucidate both the intended and the unintended effects of governmental policies and regulations on social norms, to help ensure transparency and a focus on the common good.

In fact, there was a fair amount of resistance to the recycling rules. And rather than accepting them, the antagonism that developed between local authorities and people was mediated by a relaxation of the rules — many councils backed down after public pressure, others themselves campaigned for changes, and the fines for householders’ non-compliance were quickly dropped. Where people ‘accept’ recycling now, it is because there is no alternative. ‘Social norms’ have nothing to do with it. For there to be evidence of a ‘social norm’ developing, there has to be a choice to do otherwise.

The authors believe that ‘government is uniquely obligated to locate the common good and formulate its policies accordingly’. But this, like the claim that ‘social norms’ follow recycling policies, get’s the concept of democratic government on its head: government’s seek to engineer values around their preferred politics and policies.

It is not for democratic governments to determine what ‘the common good’ is. ‘The common good’ is established in a democratic society by a much wider debate, and a contest of competing arguments, which the elected government then delivers on. Where there is no contest — where there is a political consensus on the government’s role — there can be, by definition, no possibility of the government identifying a ‘common good’; the claim to have identified the greater good is simply self-service, necessarily.

Perhaps that’s a bold claim. but the author’s take their definition of ‘democracy’ from another paper — Norton B, Costanza R, Bishop RC. 1998. The evolution of preferences: Why “sovereign” preferences may not lead to sustainable policies and what to do about it. Ecological Economics 24: 193–211, the discussion in which includes this interesting claim:

A commitment to democracy, and a rejection of any role for philosopher kings, scientific experts or, especially, for totalitarian manipulators of opinion, demands that preference formation be a highly individual, non-coercive process, according to this view. In this sense the individual consumer is sovereign, even as his or her preferences change, because the process of preference change is directed by the individual, rather than by an outside agent (this, of course, flies in the face of the fact that preferences are being manipulated by outside agents every day).

Norton et al confuse ‘democracy’ with ‘consumer sovereignty’. They continue on this tack, to examine ‘four degrees of consumer sovereignty’…

Degree 1: unchanging preferences
Degree 2: preferences as given
Degree 3: consumer sovereignty as commitment to democracy
Degree 4: democratic preference change

This leads to a painfully loaded discussion about a hypothetical society, which is gripped by a religious sect whose beliefs dictate that the first-born child from each non-believing family be sacrificed in order to prevent Armageddon.

Hoping we will never face a situation so dire as to live in a society solemnly and with due legislative process committed to human sacrifice (as in our hypothetical example above), one hopes that policy will be set in a situation of open debate, with experts weighing in, and with interactions between the public, experts, and political decision makers. If a democratic process, including safeguards for individual rights of present people, is in place, then surely it makes sense to inject into the debate moral concerns about the well-being of future generations, even if these arguments require questioning and criticizing individuals’ sincerely felt preferences.

[…]

Evidence that current behavior has negative impacts on other individuals, other species, or the future may require re-consideration of that behavior and the preferences that generate it. We can come to a democratic consensus about our shared preferences for a sustainable society through a process of discussion and debate, and then use these principles as guides to encourage people to
see the inappropriateness of some preferences, given the scientifically demonstrable impacts of acting on those preferences.

So the paper itself starts from poor premises: a shallow understanding of democracy as ‘consumer sovereignty’, and an egregious example of respect for individual preferences leading to the slaughter of infants. After some hand-wringing and indeed, hand-waving, the article concludes:

Actively seeking to influence preferences is not inconsistent with a democratic society. Quite the contrary, in order to operationalize real democracy, a two tiered decision structure must be used (Fig. 1). This is necessary in order to eliminate ‘preference inconsistencies’ between the short term and the long term and between local and global goals, a phenomenon described in the social psychology literature as a ‘social trap’ (Platt, 1973; Cross and Guyer, 1980). There must first be general, democratic consensus on the broad, longterm goals of society. At this level ‘individual sovereignty’ holds, in the sense that the rights and goals of all individuals in society must be taken into account, but in the context of a shared dialogue aimed at achieving broad consensus. Once these broad goals are democratically arrived at, they can be used to limit and direct preferences at lower levels. For example, once there is general consensus on the goal of sustainability, with agreement by all the major stakeholders in society, then society is justified in taking action to change local behaviors that are inconsistent with this goal. It may be justified, for example, to attempt to change either people’s preferences for driving automobiles or the price of doing so (or both) in order to change behavior to be more consistent with the longer term sustainability goals. In this way the foresight that we do possess in order to modify short-term cultural evolutionary forces toward achieving our shared long-term goals is utilized. If economics and other social sciences are to adequately address problems of sustainability, it will be necessary to develop evolutionary models that make preference formation and reformation an endogenous part of the analysis, and to develop mechanisms to modify short term cultural evolutionary forces in the direction of long term sustainability goals.

So this is the sleight-of-hand… Government’s can be coercive on the condition that there exists ‘general, democratic consensus on the broad, longterm goals of society’. So what the environmentalists do — NB Ehrlich’s earlier work — is to outline the possibility of some kind of ecological Armageddon. Once this is established as a party political consensus (rather than a broad societal consensus) the ‘general, democratic consensus on the broad, longterm goals of society’ consists of no more than ‘we want to survive’. This in turn reduces democratic politics to the elitism — “philosopher kings, scientific experts [and …] totalitarian manipulators of opinion” — that Norton et al set out to avoid.

Returning to the Paper co-authored by Ehrlich, it is notable, then, that there has been no ‘situation of open debate, with experts weighing in, and with interactions between the public, experts, and political decision makers’ that Norton et al speak of, not in the case of recycling or climate change and energy policy in the UK. Indeed, the entire point of constructing supranational political organisations and panels of experts to lead policymaking on climate change has been to circumvent the problem of democracy. As Chris Huhne revealed in an interview with the BBC in 2011:

All through human political history, you have had governments that have tried to set up particular objectives and have realised they can only go so far so fast without the rest of the world going along with them. For example, back in the bad old days of communism you had the whole argument about whether Joe Stalin could have socialism in one country. You can’t have environmentalism in one country.

Political leaders that do not enjoy the authority of a genuine democratic mandate have a preference for supranational political institutions. Huhne was no exception. Politically ambitious, the only way he could secure whatever vision he wanted to realise was by seeking authority from above, rather than below. The problem that remains is how to get the below to respond whilst maintaining the notion that a merely nominative democracy is more than that.

So what is a social norm?

We adopt Ellickson’s (2001) definition of a social norm as “a rule governing an individual’s behavior that third parties other than state agents diffusely enforce by means of social sanction” (p. 3) for those who violate the norm and with rewards for those who follow it. […] Social norms may exist even when there are government regulations constraining behavior. The likelihood that any of us would get caught and fined were we to drop a candy wrapper in a park, for instance, is very small; we probably resist littering not because of the state regulations but because of personal (e.g., “I’m not the kind of person who litters”) or social (e.g., “I wouldn’t want others to think I am the kind of person who litters”) norms

And what’s the point…

Our intent in this article, however, is not to provide an exhaustive review of social norms (which we have neither the expertise nor the space to do) but to provide an overview for life scientists, from an interdisciplinary team interested in the issues, of the potential links between policy instruments and social norms.

There follows in the article some discussion and speculation about governmental attempts to change social norms through marketing campaigns and other interventions: fines, subsidies, changing ‘choice architecture’, and banning things. It’s insipid stuff that smacks more of desperation than of rigorous academic research. There is a recognition here that the attempts to build policies on the back of claims to scientific authority have failed as comprehensively as the attempt to build a popular environmental movement. The article is superficially about changing ‘social norms’, but in fact the way in which signals are transmitted to government all speak about depriving the individual of his autonomy. Adopt this social norm, or I’ll punch you in the face. As this cack-handed prose, demonstrates, nobody is as confused about social norms as these authors:

Laws and regulations, like fines, can serve to create or reinforce social norms merely by signaling to the members of a community that this is an issue that others think is important. Some have argued that regulations are inherently coercive and cannot or should not exceed implied levels of public permission for such regulations. An alternative viewpoint is that governments can and even should move beyond extant levels of public permission in order to shift norms, allowing public sentiment to later catch up with the regulation (House of Lords 2011). The abolition of slavery in the United States (Guelzo 2004) and the ban on smoking in public places in the United Kingdom are both government actions that exceeded public sentiment at the time but later gained widespread public acceptance.

When an argument treats the abolition of slavery in the same terms as the abolition of smoking in public, we can know that we’re looking at a weak argument. It’s unlikely that there was a ‘social norm’ in favour of slavery amongst slaves. Even weaker is the idea that a law can produce a change in social norms. The point is hopefully made more precisely if we imagine the reversal or inversion of such policies: can we imagine that making smoking compulsory in public spaces or the legalisation of slavery would produce a change in social norms? No doubt some people might welcome such moves. But then, if it is the job of government to create social norms, why not bring back slavery? At the very least, it would serve the ‘common good’ by ending the problem of unemployment. Anything can be justified by the terms Ehrlich and his co-authors employ.

The article then goes on to outline five areas of research that biologists can emphasise, to help in the coercion of the wider public:

1. More realistic policy interventions in collective-action models.
2. The role of error (deception) in displaying and detecting behaviors.
3. More realistic network structures.
4. The role of absolute versus relative payoffs.
5. The role of viscous (i.e., slowly changing) and fluid (i.e., rapidly changing) norms and behaviors.

None of these areas, however, speak about biological science in the strict sense. “Scientists should introduce perturbations in their models of cooperative emergence that mimic the policy interventions described above.” says item 1 on the agenda. “Scientists could effectively explore the impact of certain agents engaging in deceptive behaviors; the incentive to do so will rise with the sanctions and will decline for more visible behaviors”, says item 2. Item 3 asks scientists to look for “distant geographic connections sustained through social media networks, exchanges of letters and e-mail, and periodic face-to-face visits”. Item 4 urges scientists to use game theory to identify what “influences perceptions of fairness and the adoption of cooperative strategies”. Item 5 asks, “Does it benefit society to have some behaviors and norms be fluid, while others are viscous, and, if so, which behaviors and norms can tolerate fluidity?” and “What does this mean for
the policy interventions that governments might make to alter behaviors?”

Each item on this agenda for biologists extends biology, not just into the social sphere, but into the political sphere. In this way, it would seem that biology is being made a normative science. Before biologists embark on their agenda, they should ask themselves about the rights and wrongs of developing coercive techniques, and robbing individuals of their moral autonomy. The fact that biology has no real conception of moral autonomy, they should probably also ask whether their science is up to this task.

… it is clear that structural changes need to be made that would allow society and policymakers to more effectively assess the longer-term implications of policy proposals. Initially unpopular or only modestly popular measures may gain wider acceptance if they prompt reinforcing changes in how people define themselves and their society, particularly if the changes are aided by innovations that make their implementation easier or more effective. For instance, a poll of American opinions on global warming suggested that the public by and large opposes taxes on gasoline or electricity as a way of combating global climate change and, instead, favors stricter fuel- and building-efficiency standards (Leiserowtiz 2009). Although standards may be the path of least resistance, many environmental economists view taxes and other market-based instruments as a more efficient means to internalize the external costs of consumption. Political scientists have found that people have come to accept other taxes as normative after they have been convinced that the taxes effectively address shared concerns (Bobek et al. 2007). A carbon tax might therefore prove effective even in the face of near-term opposition. What needs to be assessed is the possibility that behaviors and values would coevolve in such a way that a carbon tax—or other policy instrument that raises prices, such as a cap-and-trade system—ultimately comes to be seen as worthy, which would therefore allow for its long-term effectiveness.

The authors recognise the problem that they cannot win the climate debate through democratic processes — that the case for environmentalism and environmental policy has not been won. The article argues for the problem to be framed in the terms of biological science. This is to reduce the voting public, from thinking, feeling, rational beings to mere organisms that need to be managed — farmed.

The academy, therefore, needs to increase its capacity to work with policymakers to effectively use existing knowledge on policy–behavior–norm interactions and to generate needed new insights in a timely fashion.

As previous posts here have shown, where once the academy, like the press, might have been a critic of power, it is increasingly the case that it is being sought to defend and extend power. Arguably, the interests of politics and research have coincided as they have struggled to identify their value to the wider public; the former unable to produce a democratic mandate, and the latter increasingly incapable of making an argument for academic enterprise as a good in itself. Being detached from the public means both institutions struggle to identify societal goals — the ‘common good’. The possibility of ecological catastrophe is a stand-in for a shared goal — it can be presupposed that we all want to survive. But in the process, the public are made objects of a ‘science’.

Whether or not climate change is a real problem, the compact between politics and the academy as is proposed by the article plainly aims to position science as a remedy to extant political problems. No good can possibly come of it. Even if biologists could produce ‘insights’ into the control of behaviour, it would come at the expense of policy being advanced on the basis of consent between rational people, resulting in only a further degradation of the concept of democracy. The reality is likely to be much more a broadening of the gap between the public and public institutions, and a deepening of the mutal cynicism between the public and politicians, into which scientists will be dragged. At the very least, before any researcher attempts to follow the agenda, they should attempt to form a critical view of that agenda in the same terms, before rising to the challenge of engineering social norms.

Ed Davey made some revealing comments at his presentation at the Royal Society this week. James Delingpole has given Davey’s words the treatment they probably deserve, pointing out that the Royal Society has ‘jumped the shark’. Says Dellers,

The Royal Society – founded 1660; former motto “Nullius In Verba” – this week strapped on a giant pair of waterskis and leapt over an enormous shark swimming in the pond in nearby St James’s Park. The shark, whose name is Ed Davey, is believed to have been lured over from Westminster aquarium to perform bizarre tricks for the amusement and delight of the Royal Society’s membership.

I think James may have it slightly wrong here — not that it matters to his criticism, which I think correctly identifies the absurdity of the relationship between the science academy and the government, and the Secretary of State’s childish framing of the climate debate.

Says Davey,

It is fair to say that trust in politicians is not something the public has in abundance.

That is why, when it comes to climate change, it is so important that all the rigours of the scientific method are applied.

This gives us some important clues about what is really going on in the climate debate, which is helped by Delingpole’s ‘jumping the shark’ metaphor.

It probably needs no explaining here, but ‘jumping the shark’ is an allusion to the attempt to reverse falling viewing figures for the ’70s TV show, Happy Days. Like many TV series, the attempt to revive the show forced the writers to ever more desperate measures, only serving to demonstrate instead the terminal condition of the franchise.

There is a curious parallel, then, between the viewing figures for Happy Days in the late 1970s, and the UK public’s estimation of politicians in 2013. ‘Trust in politicians is not something the public has in abundance’. So call in the writers…

It should set alarm bells ringing. Those bells should be ringing most loudly at the Royal Society. Eyebrows should have been raised… ‘Did you hear that, Paul, Davey wants us to write him a script’.

Davey’s words reveal the dynamic that is driving the climate debate. He wants the authority of science; his own authority, as a member of the minority party in an unpopular coalition government, in a historically dire political situation, is non existent. If this blog has said nothing else in the past six years, it is that ‘science’ has been recruited into a political campaign to save the political establishment from the public. This takes two forms: first taking a mandate from science, rather than securing legitimacy through democratic processes; second, building supranational political institutions above democratic control. in this way, sovereignty is taken away from individuals and from national governments. To be seen to be doing the right thing, then, is more important than to be seen doing it in the right way…

That it is the science that drives policy.

And that we hear loud and clear from the experts.

When the scientists tell us that the evidence proves that smoking is addictive and can cause a whole host of deadly medical conditions from emphysema to heart disease, we believe them.

We try to give up, we hope our children never start.

When scientists tell us to that prolonged exposure to the sun’s ultra-violet rays can lead to cancer, we believe them, because their views are based on strong evidence.

We take precautions, we avoid sun burn, we cover up, use sun cream.

So if we have this trust in scientific evidence, why would we make an exception when it comes to the science of climate change?

When it comes to assessing the health of our planet’s eco-system – we should listen to the scientists – and we should believe them.

The logic here appears to be that, because we know that too much exposure to the sun can lead to an increased likelihood of skin cancer, the IPCC/UNFCCC process is legitimate.

Turning to scepticism, Davey makes an even stranger remark:

As President Obama said last month:

“Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires and crippling drought and more powerful storms.”

And Sir John also talked about how our hope must be to limit climate change – preventing us passing a potentially catastrophic tipping point – a great threat to life.

Because the stark fact is this – climate change is happening.

Maybe climate change is happening. But Roger Pielke Jr. has a handy button that can be pressed at such times as these, referring the statements such as Davey’s to the IPCC’s SREX report…

“There is medium evidence and high agreement that long-term trends in normalized losses have not been attributed to natural or anthropogenic climate change”
“The statement about the absence of trends in impacts attributable to natural or anthropogenic climate change holds for tropical and extratropical storms and tornados”
“The absence of an attributable climate change signal in losses also holds for flood losses”

The report even takes care of tying up a loose end that has allowed some commentators to avoid the scientific literature:

“Some authors suggest that a (natural or anthropogenic) climate change signal can be found in the records of disaster losses (e.g., Mills, 2005; Höppe and Grimm, 2009), but their work is in the nature of reviews and commentary rather than empirical research.”

I expect the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate change, and the brilliant minds of the Royal Society to be better able to recall and marshal the facts about climate change than I am, not least because they are all paid much more than I for their abilities. But perhaps the compact between them causes them to forget what it is science itself has told them. And it gets worse…

It may be as I mentioned earlier that the art of politics is not greatly revered.

But we will need every piece of political artistry we can bring to bear to make sure that we translate this scientific understanding into concrete and effective action to keep climate change within manageable levels.

Action based on the science, the risks and the impacts.

Action to deliver a low carbon way of life.

Rewiring the global economy, becoming more resource efficient while continuing to deliver the economic growth that improves people’s lives.

If you’re a member of the Royal Society — which seems unlikely, because the Royal Society is very good at ignoring its critics — you should, I hope, be able to see Davey’s words as an explicit statement that you are recruited into a political campaign.

But Davey is not the first politician to speak to the Royal Society, of course. In 1998, the then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher spoke about a new relationship between science and policy,

In studying the system of the earth and its atmosphere we have no laboratory in which to carry out controlled experiments. We have to rely on observations of natural systems. We need to identify particular areas of research which will help to establish cause and effect. We need to consider in more detail the likely effects of change within precise timescales. And to consider the wider implications for policy—for energy production, for fuel efficiency, for reforestation. This is no small task, for the annual increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide alone is of the order of three billion tonnes. And half the carbon emitted since the Industrial Revolution remains in the atmosphere. We have an extensive research programme at our meteorological office and we provide one of the world’s four centres for the study of climatic change. We must ensure that what we do is founded on good science to establish cause and effect.

[…]

The Government espouses the concept of sustainable economic development.

Stable prosperity can be achieved throughout the world provided the environment is nurtured and safeguarded. Protecting this balance of nature is therefore one of the great challenges of the late Twentieth Century and one in which I am sure your advice will be repeatedly sought.

Thatcher’s speech is arguably far more lucid than Davey’s. While the former PM speaks in paragraphs, Davey can barely grunt one-line factoids. But what both speeches speak to is the idea of a dependent relationship between the systems of the natural and human worlds. Over the 25 years between the two speeches, that belief became orthodoxy. And it is that orthodoxy that allows Davey to peddle myths about the extent to which climate change signals have been detected, and attributed to humans. And it would seem to be that same orthodoxy that prevents the scientists of the Royal Society from calling him out on it.

The standard caveat that I am usuall forced to include here is that none of this is to say that ‘climate change isn’t happening’, nor that climate change will not be a problem. It’s simply that the likes of Davey inaccurately represent the facts, and relies heavily on the possibility of catastrophic scenarios to make his claims. Moreover, whether or not climate change is happening, the estimate of impact presuppose humanity’s closely dependent relationship with the natural world. The Royal Society’s scientists aren’t just being asked to take sides in a political campaign, they are asked to reproduce the ideology of that campaign. And what will it achieve? The goals of men like Davey are policies — totems to their own power that serve no useful function:

The real prize, the real prize, is to design in long-term emissions reduction through systemic change.

Designing out carbon.

And that is where this Coalition Government has been building on the framework created by the last Labour Administration.

Putting muscle and flesh on the bones of the Climate Change Act.

Turning theory into practice.

Taking forward the practical polices that will create a low carbon economy.

Maximising energy efficiency by overhauling the housing stock through the Green Deal.

Setting up the Green Investment Bank to leverage private sector investment into low carbon.

And now before Parliament a new Energy Bill – an ambitious long-term plan for a major reform of our electricity market to help ensure we deliver on our emissions reductions commitments, and attract the right investment for low carbon infrastructure – creating jobs and growth in the process.

Let us remind ourselves that Davey knows that politicians are unpopular. And yet he seeks global agreements on climate, to extend the UK Climate Change Act, to reorganise the productive economy, to continue to make energy expensive. For a man who knows his mandate is weak, he shows no signs of humility. Never mind that the existing legislation designed to protect the climate has failed to work on its own terms, has made life harder for people, and has many critics within even the green camp, Davey asks the scientists to defend him against criticism. And those we might expect to speak truth to power seem to have been flattered by power asking for their favours. He frames the debate for them…

You know, when I am confronted by some of the most dogmatic and blinkered people who deny that climate change is happening, I am reminded of the sentiment of the famous USA Today cartoon.

“If we really are wrong about climate change, we will have created a better world for nothing”.

In reality, those who deny climate change and demand a halt to emissions reduction and mitigation work, want us to take a huge gamble with the future of every human being on the planet, every future human being, our children and grand children, and every other living species.

We will not take that risk.

It should be an insult to the intelligence of the members of the organisation that is founded on the basis of its members’ intelligence. In reality, critics of climate change policy are as concerned about their children as any other person. Davey persuades the scientific academy with cheap moral point-scoring.

If the scientists buy Davey’s crude moral story of baddies versus goodies, it will be another demonstration that the Royal Society no longer takes its motto seriously. The gamble they are taking is with the future of trust in science. Trust in science will go the way that trust in politicians went, for the same reasons.

Bloomberg are reporting that

Wind is now cheaper than fossil fuels in producing electricity in Australia, the world’s biggest coal exporter, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

What amazing news! So someone must have developed some amazing new technology!

Wrong…

Electricity can be supplied from a new wind farm in Australia at a cost of A$80 ($84) per megawatt hour, compared with A$143 a megawatt hour from a new coal-fired power plant or A$116 from a new station powered by natural gas when the cost of carbon emissions is included, according to a Bloomberg New Energy Finance report. Coal-fired power stations built in the 1970s and 1980s can still produce power at a lower cost than that of wind, the research shows.

Bloomberg’s omission is fairly typical of news agencies these days. We might expect people reporting on things like energy markets to be a bit less… well… activist about the way they report things. Bloomberg isn’t only attempting to report the news, it’s trying to make it:

“The fact that wind power is now cheaper than coal and gas in a country with some of the world’s best fossil fuel resources shows that clean energy is a game changer which promises to turn the economics of power systems on its head,” Michael Liebreich, chief executive officer of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, said in a statement today.

Guess what, making energy more expensive ‘turn[s] the economics of power systems on its head’.

We could, tomorrow, create a tax on bicycles. Let’s say the tax is £8,000. Car manufacturers would now be able to claim that they had produced a car that was cheaper than the bike, right?

Would Bloomberg reporters fall for it? Of course not. Yet that must be how stupid Michael Liebreich thinks Bloomberg’s readers are.

Bjorn Lomborg, however, tells a different story.

No wonder the Australians are angry. Electricity prices have shot through the roof, increasing 56% in real prices since 2006.

This is both because of green costs like the carbon tax and feed-in tariffs, but also because of aging electric infrastructure that needs to be changed.

The price is now ¢26/kWh, compared to the US paying just above 11 australian cents.

If it were possible for wind turbines to produce electricity more cheaply than coal-fired power stations, it wouldn’t be necessary to push electricity prices up to make them ‘competitive’. It is a straightforward concept that shouldn’t be beyond the brains of news agency staff.

Readers will no doubt remember climate change psychologist, Stephan Lewandowsky and his attempt to connect climate change denial and scepticism to conspiracy theories.

Lewandowsky et al’s paper, ‘NASA faked the moon landing|Therefore (Climate) Science is a Hoax: An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science‘ was published on the author’s university web site, though it was presented as ‘in press’, shortly to be published by the Journal of Psychological Science. However, in spite of being ‘in press’, the article never made it to hard copy.

We might reasonably be allowed to speculate what the reasons for the paper not making it to print were. One reason may be that it was, as has been widely observed, utter BS. Even Lewandowsky’s own colleagues pointed out its many flaws in methodology, and its naked attempt to diminish Lewandowsky’s opposites in the climate debate — climate bloggers.

Lewandowsky has returned, apparently with an analysis of the reactions to his unpublished, non-peer-reviewed paper. And it is published, in an ‘open-access’ journal,

Recursive fury: Conspiracist ideation in the blogosphere in response to research on conspiracist ideation
Stephan Lewandowsky1*, John Cook1, 2, Klaus Oberauer1, 3 and Michael Hubble4
1 Psychology, University of Western Australia, Australia
2 Global Change Institute, The University of Queensland, Australia
3 Psychology, University of Zurich, Switzerland
4 Climate Realities Research, Australia
Conspiracist ideation has been repeatedly implicated in the rejection of scientific propositions, although empirical evidence to date has been sparse. A recent study involving visitors to climate blogs found that conspiracist ideation was associated with the rejection of climate science and the rejection of other scientific propositions such as the link between lung cancer and smoking, and between HIV and AIDS (Lewandowsky, Oberauer, & Gignac, in press; LOG12 from here on). This article analyzes the response of the climate blogosphere to the publication of LOG12. We identify and trace the hypotheses that emerged in response to LOG12 and that questioned the validity of the paper’s conclusions. Using established criteria to identify conspiracist ideation, we show that many of the hypotheses exhibited conspiratorial content and counterfactual thinking. For example, whereas hypotheses were initially narrowly focused on LOG12, some ultimately grew in scope to include actors beyond the authors of LOG12, such as university executives, a media organization, and the Australian government. The overall pattern of the blogosphere’s response to LOG12 illustrates the possible role of conspiracist ideation in the rejection of science, although alternative scholarly interpretations may be advanced in the future

It’s all the more remarkable that the reaction to the first, unpublished paper (referred to in the new paper as ‘LOG12’) should be the subject of a second paper, published in a journal with arguably far less credibility. Indeed, there is not even a link to LOG12 in the new paper, other than the citation:

Lewandowsky, S., Oberauer, K., & Gignac, G. E. (in press). NASA faked the moon landing|therefore (climate) science is a hoax: An anatomy of the motivated rejection of science. Psychological Science.

Still ‘in press’. Or is it? Perhaps the journal has decided, wisely, not to let themselves get dragged into Lewandowsky’s political war. Either way, readers of the new journal don’t get to see the substance of Lewandowsky’s earlier paper, nor the substantive criticisms of it — merely those which, on Lewandowsky et al’s view, demonstrate conspiracy theory ‘ideation’.

It’s a bit like comprehensively losing a football match 7-nil, but to only include in your retelling of the game one successful tackle. And that’s being generous to Lewandowsky. Because, not only does his new paper deny its readers a précis of his previous paper, he frames responses to it as ‘conspiracy ideation’, whereas in fact they were largely trying to establish exactly what it was he had done.

For instance, the new paper presents an unfolding story of sceptic’s reactions to the original paper:

“Skeptic” blogs not contacted (2). Initial attention of the blogosphere also focused on the method reported by LOG12, which stated: “Links were posted on 8 blogs (with a pro-science science stance but with a diverse audience); a further 5 `skeptic’ (or`skeptic’-leaning) blogs were approached but none posted the link.” Speculation immediately focused on the identity of the 5 “skeptic” bloggers. Within short order, 25 “skeptical” bloggers had come publicly forward (http://www.webcitation.org/6APs1GdzO) to state that they had not been approached by the researchers. Of those 25 public declarations, 5 were by individuals who were invited to post links to the study by LOG12 in 2010. Two of these bloggers had engaged in correspondence with the research assistant for further clarification.

This apparent failure to locate the “skeptic” bloggers led to allegations of research misconduct by LOG12 in blog posts and comments. Those suspicions were sometimes asserted with considerably {sic} confidence; “Lew made up the `5 skeptical blogs’ bit. That much we know” (http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2012/8/31/lewandowskys-data.html?currentPage=2#comments). One blog comment airing the suspicion that “skeptic” bloggers had not been contacted also provided the email address to which allegations of research misconduct could be directed at the host institution of LOG12’s first author. This comment was posted by an individual (SMcI; see Table 3) who had been contacted twice by the researchers’ assistant.

But self-evidently, it was the opacity of the first paper (LOG12) and its method that led to the bloggers’ speculation. Had Lewandowsky and his researchers been upfront about which blogs they had approached and when and by whom, there would have been no confusion. But on Lewandowsky’s view, speculation about his methodology counts as ‘conspiracy ideation’, which is to say that wondering out loud about whether or not Lewandowsky had done what he had claimed to have done betrays a similar mode of thought that convinces people that the CIA organised the assassination of JFK.

Blog comments, like blogs, vary in their quality. They can be breath-takingly bad, or conversely, knock you out with insight. But it would be impossible to claim that any ‘side’ of any debate on any subject had the monopoly on low quality conspiracy theories. Indeed, the conspiracy theorising by ‘warmists’ in the climate debate isn’t confined to the blogosphere. You may remember George’ Monbiot’s belief, published in The Guardian that oil interests pay for armies of sceptic drones to undermine his arguments. And respectability and scientific expertise is no barrier to bad ideas, either. The Royal Society itself published an argument in its guide to climate change that,

There are some individuals and organisations, some of which are funded by the US oil industry, that seek to undermine the science of climate change and the work of the IPCC. They appear motivated in their arguments by opposition to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol, which seek urgent action to tackle climate change through a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions… Often all these individuals and organisations have in common is their opposition to the growing consensus of the scientific community that urgent action is required through a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. But the opponents are well-organised and well-funded…

I have little interest in parsing the 57 pages of the new paper, to get the measure of the remainder of what Lewandowsky believes are conspiracy theories. It seems sufficient to say that, whether or not the comments in question do betray a tendency of the authors towards conspiracy theorising, they were a response to a poorly-conceived research exercise which was transparently intended to frame the debate as one between science on the one hand, and idology/conspiracy theorists on the other. If the internet has a gutter, in which thrive conspiracy theories and pointless interminable flame wars between people who have little grasp on the real world, Lewandowsky’s work is amongst it.

But what is remarkable, however, is that seemingly academic research should have fallen to this level. Lewandowsky reduces academia to a silly blog comment war. He drags journals, and research organisations into this war, undermining the value of research in general and trust in it. The thrust of Lewandowsky’s paper is ‘I picked a fight on the Internet, and this is what people said about me’, which, of course, omits any criticism of his work that may enable him to develop a better argument.

And that’s the point. Lewandowsky’s research is intended to reduce the phenomenon of ‘scepticism’ and ‘denial’ without taking any notice of what sceptics say, except when it confirms to the stereotype Lewandowsky wants to demonstrate the existence of. No doubt that’s a ‘conspiracy theory’ on his view, but the truth is much simpler: either his mediocre talents aren’t sufficient for the critical self-reflection necessary to produce robust research, or an inflated ego precludes critical self-reflection.

There might well be some value — though I doubt it very much — in seeing what motivates online discussion. But this would involve a far less partisan, nudge-nudge-wink-wink smear on the researcher’s own enemies. Ultimately, ‘research’ of this kind will bring the academy down with it, because drawing attention to, and publishing Lewandowsky’s work means demonstrating to the world the fact that quite often, academic researchers are as petty-minded, ‘idologically-motivated’, and pig ignorant as the worst of online commentary. That was something that Academia could exclude. But no longer. It is as if research departments — especially those that have made a name for themselves by emphasising climate — have opened their doors to an army of pub bores, never mind climate activists. Half-baked, and cock-eyed theories about society, individuals, politics and economics and so on proliferate, and don’t do anything like as much to advance their own arguments as they do diminish the faculties of those outwith the faculty. It backfires, to take the university with them. Picture this…

It should be clear to everyone by now that environmentalists have no sense of proportion. For instance, on the green view, the claim that ‘climate change is happening’ has been a matter of true or false, rather than a matter of degree. But is this misconception the consequence of green ‘ideology’, or simply a strategy intended to promote it?

A press release from Friends of the Earth on Friday announced:

Samsung questioned over tin as profits soar

25 January 2013

Commenting on phone manufacture Samsung’s soaring profits revealed today (Friday 25 January 2013), Friends of the Earth’s Head of Campaigns Andrew Pendleton said:

“Samsung’s profits may be soaring, but do they come with a cost? The company has yet to explain whether the tin it uses in its phones is ravaging the tropical forests and coral reefs of Bangka Island, Indonesia.

“Research shows that tin from Banka is almost certainly in Samsung’s products.

“New rules are needed to make all companies disclose their supply chains – starting with a Europe-wide law next year.”

ENDS

FoE’s research was published last November, in a report called, Mining for smartphones: the true cost of tin [PDF]. On page 20, the report explains FoE’s decision to target Samsung:

Samsung is the top-selling smartphone brand in Europe. It offers a wide range of handsets and as a result has a global reach like no other – in 2011 it sold 95 million smartphones – that’s nearly one in five of all smartphones sold worldwide (19.5 per cent of the global market share). In fact just one model, the Galaxy S, launched in June 2010, and updated Galaxy S2 and S3, has already sold more than 42 million. Samsung Electronics is South Korea’s biggest company and has extended its reach as an Olympic Games 2012 partner and Chelsea football club sponsor.

When Friends of the Earth investigators contacted Samsung Electronics prior to publication to ask if the company sourced tin from Bangka or was aware of the damage tin mining is causing the island’s communities and ecosystems, a Samsung spokesperson neither confirmed nor denied this. In a statement, the company said it took the issue of ethical sourcing of minerals very seriously. “Samsung is committed to upholding the highest standards of corporate responsibility, and we continue to evaluate our sourcing policies to ensure they comply with global standards associated with our industry,” said a spokesperson. “We will monitor the Bangka Island situation to determine if an investigation into whether tin in our supply chain is being sourced from the region is required.”

During Friends of the Earth’s research Samsung was identified as a buyer or user of Indonesian tin via the supply chain of PT Timah.

The problem, according to FoE is the environmental destruction caused by tin mining operations in Indonesia. As this FoE film shows, it’s certainly not a pretty process, and the lot of the workers involved in the production of tin have a pretty lousy time.

Tin is used in the production of mobile phones, chiefly as an ingredient in solder, a substance used to hold electronic components to circuit boards. But to what extent is Samsung responsible for the situation in Indonesia?

Let’s start with the facts. FoE claim that Samsung sold 95 million smartphones last year. That’s a lot of phones. So how much tin is that? Curiously, for it’s emphasis on smartphones, FoE’s report is vague about how much tin is in a smartphone. It produces this graphic instead. (Page 7).

A tablet contains between 1 and 3 grammes of ‘tin rich solder’. So let’s assume that a smartphone, which is about half the size and complexity of a tablet, contains a gramme of tin rich solder. So Samsung used 95 million grammes of tin in smartphones in 2011. There are a million grammes in a tonne (1,000 grammes in a kilogramme; 1,000 kg in a tonne). So that’s 95 tonnes of tin, for Samsung’s global smartphone market.

Is that a lot?

No.

According to the US Geological Survey, in 2010, the world produced 277,000 tonnes of tin. On the FoE’s own gallery of images of tin mining in Indonesia, it shows a picture of an operation that produces 50,000 tonnes a year:

So Samsung and the market for smartphones hardly drive the bulk of production of tin in Indonesia.

Pretty much any electronic device will contain solder and therefore tin. It is an extremely useful substance. But its extraction, like the extraction from the earth of many useful substances, causes problems. And those problems are far more pronounced where institutions that might regulate extractive processes and protect workers are not as developed as they are in the west. For another instance, we might want to look at the extraction of rare earth metals for use in wind turbines and electric vehicles, which is arguably a dirtier and more dangerous process, but which Friends of the Earth seems to ignore.

In the past, a large part of the world’s supply of tin was produced in the south west of England. And the story was similar. As the following video from Cornish Mining World Heritage demonstrates, what was once a dangerous and exploitative industry is now celebrated for its historical significance.

Might it not be the case that in a hundred or so years — perhaps, and I hope, many fewer — that the tin mines of Indonesia will become museums like their Cornish predecessors? How is it that we can see Britain’s part in the history and development of global trade as so essential, but the expansion of such processes into the emerging economies as such a bad thing? After all, aren’t they the same story? The video shows, even if it doesn’t say so directly, the transformation of an economy, alongside the transformation of the landscape, politics, and concomitantly, the conditions that workers in tin mines experienced. Now we see videos like this, and perhaps visit the museums that now stand in place of the mines. They show how much life has changed. We would not tolerate the danger, the child labour, and the rates of pay. But in 19th Century Britain, there was no Friends of the Earth, and there were no global environmental NGOs complaining about the environmental impact of mining.

None of this is to defend unsafe working conditions and the ruthless exploitation of workers, of course. However, green NGOs have a tendency to not present the development going on behind the ugly images they trade in. Data from the World Bank is useful here.

As we can see from the above chart, the most striking thing is that mobile phone usage is now pretty widespread. It’s not as if Indonesians have been left out of the mobile phone and tin markets. The second most striking change in Indonesia since 1991 is the decline in infant mortality — from 80 per 1000 live births in 1991 to 33 in 2010. Next, we see enrolment in secondary education rising from 44% to 77% in a generation. Then we see life expectancy rising from 62 to 69. Finally we see 11% more people enjoying access to clean water than in 1991. Over the same period, GNI per capita, PPP (at current international $) rose from $1,390 to $4,180.

What is clear, then, is that in spite of the picture FoE have presented, conditions for people in Indonesia — tin miners amongst them — have improved. Readers will no doubt differ in their views about whether or not this progress is fast enough, and what, if anything could be done to speed that process up. The rights and wrongs of this need bringing out of the debate. On the one hand, it is hard to imagine that we owe nothing to people whose working conditions are dire if we are in a position to help. However, the basis on which we intervene in the political and economic lives of others needs careful consideration.

This is how Foe see things though…

As major users of tin and hugely influential brands that deal with companies buying tin from BangkaBelitung province, we’re also calling on these smartphone giants to:

> Bring together affected parties in Bangka to agree and implement a plan to halt environmental and human problems caused by tin mining.
> Back new rules for all companies to come clean about how they do business.

We don’t have all the answers for Bangka. But as a crucial first step Friends of the Earth and our colleagues in Friends of the Earth Indonesia, Walhi, want Samsung and Apple to bring together all the affected parties to agree and implement a plan to halt environmental and human problems caused by mining. Finding a solution will need to involve miners, fishermen, government and other community groups. Friends of the Earth believes mining firms shouldn’t be allowed to operate without community consent, cleaning up properly afterwards and avoiding operating in precious ecosystems and habitats.

To help prevent these sorts of problems happening elsewhere in the world and to ensure that companies make our favourite products in a way that’s within the limits of our planet’s ability to support us, we’re asking Samsung and Apple to support Europe-wide legislation requiring full reporting on product supply chain impacts.

What is immediately obvious is the self-conscious tacking of human problems onto environmental concerns. After 200 years of history, the people of Cornwall — the descendants of the first industrial tin miners — are able to assert themselves politically. They are protected from dangerous and exploitative working conditions. These are rights which we expect for ourselves, and would surely wish for everyone. But wishing them for everyone means letting other people decide for themselves what the value of their environment is. The conditions FoE put down, however, are that mining operations must not take place in ‘in precious ecosystems and habitats’, and operate ‘in a way that’s within the limits of our planet’s ability to support us’.

The first problem, then, is that any emerging economy will be developing into space that is, on the green view, a ‘precious ecosystem’. Even in the UK, where barely a square inch of the landscape can be claimed as untouched by human hands, protests about building roads and homes still take place on the basis that it will disturb some ecosystem or other. Yet this image from the UK National Ecosystem Assessment Report tells a different story:

Barely 1.5% of the UK has something built on it — be it a home or a road. James Heartfield demonstrates the problem with the greens’ mindset at Spiked — the environmentalist’s failure to develop a sense of proportion:

Meanwhile, Britain’s protected Green Belt is expanding all the time. Currently it accounts for 12.6 per cent of the land area of England. ‘Special areas of conservation’, ‘sites of special scientific interest’ and ‘areas of outstanding natural beauty’ account for a further 29.8 per cent (see More Homes and Better Places, published by the Building and Social Housing Foundation in September 2011). New national parks are also being created, the latest being the South Downs that stretches from Eastbourne to Winchester. The marking out of these restricted areas prevents any development of any scale from taking place.

The population of the UK are squeezed into 1.5% of its area, while flora and fauna frolic in the remainder. So if that’s what environmentalists want for an industrialised, advanced economy like the UK, what do they want for Indonesia?

It isn’t clear. And it never is clear. The sense of disproportion in the green argument is in this sense, strategic: to give the substance of numbers to an argument means committing yourself to redundancy once that number is made a target, and then realised. To leave the figure unstated gives the environmentalist to push for more, more, more. Moreover, giving the argument the perspective of numbers allows the putative destruction of one area to be seen against a greater whole — context. What might be a tragic episode for a one-eyed Disney-esque perspective might in fact be a convenient trade-off of development and conservation on a view with more depth. It might well be the case that Indonesians could decide for themselves that Bangka, as beautiful as it is, is a sacrifice worth making.

No doubt, however, Indonesia’s turbulent political history, and the economic circumstances of many Indonesians have precluded the kind of public debate about planning we might expect in the UK. But then, is the issue environmental? Or is it political? The basis on which FoE decide to intervene in the lives of Indonesians, then, doesn’t emerge out of a desire to work in solidarity with poor Indonesians, but out of what seems to be a desire to ‘protect the environment’. Hence, FoE call for ‘Europe-wide legislation requiring full reporting on product supply chain impacts’. FoE demand that mining shouldn’t occur without ‘community consent’, but the politics of tin mining in Indonesia is to be settled in Brussels and Strasbourg. It’s not enough that the EU’s undemocratic influence only extends as far as Europe; it is to set standards for the rest of the world, too, driven, as it is, by ‘civil society’ organisations — NGOs like Friends of the Earth. Environmental concerns, invariably expressed in unscientific and hopelessly catastrophic terms with no sense of proportion, are turned into world wide legislation by a level of governance with barely a mandate even from the people it governs. ‘Community consent’, my elbow.

Barely a mandate… for what seems to be a desire to ‘protect the environment’ But is that the whole story?

Something akin to a mandate is necessary, though, of course. And here we return to the disproportionate emphasis on just 95 tonnes of tin, that may possibly have been produced in Indonesia.

Friends of the Earth are attempting to raise the profile of their campaign by emphasising the putative environmental impact on a consumer item of choice — the smartphone. In this way, it is able to piggyback off, if not hijack, the marketing hype and consumer demand for these items. The remaining 276,905 tonnes of tin used in almost every other electronic item and plumbing system is not part of this story.

The campaign is launched. Obedient journalists (if that is what they really are) at The Guardian pick up the press release, and a journalist is sent off by plane, to meet with the victims of your desire for a smartphone…

Death metal: tin mining in Indonesia
If you own a mobile, it’s probably held together by tin from the Indonesian island of Bangka. Mining is wrecking the environment and every year it claims dozens more lives

Yes, ‘if you own a mobile’, possibly… But also if you own a kettle, a low energy CFL lamp, an oven, a boiler, a radio… anything… it too is ‘probably held together by tin…’ from the same place.

But no matter, the campaign has its publicity, and asks for the public to ‘Take Action‘. Meanwhile, the manufacturers, keen to sustain their fluffy eco-friendly PR are forced to submit. Companies embarrassed, and public mood demonstrated, the NGO takes the proof of concept and demonstration of public mood to the legislators.

To say that this is cynical would be an understatement. After all, where is FoE’s campaign for  the rights of workers who are not involved in extractive industries? Why is ‘community consent’ an issue only where a community attached to a ‘precious ecosystem’? And what business is it of the EU’s or the FoE’s to demand negotiations between the ‘community’ and the mining operations? The ‘environment’ is merely a basis from which political interests can extend their reach.

So the failure to develop a sense of proportion is strategic. The story begins with a tall tale about your smartphone and the ugly impact of mining on a picturesque landscape. The 95 tonnes is but a tiny fraction of the tin extracted anywhere, but the campaign mobilises (pardon the pun) consumer guilt about the remaining bulk, and turns it into political capital. Next we see the lot of the workers, but again, not in proportion, and not in the context of development — they are helpless victims, incapable of organising themselves politically, and so need European NGOs and political institutions to protect them. And of course, the ‘environmental destruction’ itself is not discussed in terms of what an appropriate level of protection is necessary.

Were there any sense of proportion to the FoE campaign, consumers might shrug, rather than join the campaign. If the ugly steps of economic development and industrialisation were seen in their context of improving conditions, and the growing potential of workers to bargain for rights for themselves, FoE would be unable to put on a parade victims. And if the loss of ‘precious ecosystems’ in our own and other country’s histories were seen in proportion to the vast stretches that — contrary to FoE’s claims — still exist, it would be hard to say that it’s not worth pulling tin out of the ground. And if there was any sense of proportion at all, the few people who are taken in by FoE’s absurd campaigns would carry no weight with EU legislators whatsoever.

But perhaps the worst of the FoE’s campaign is this unholy meeting of EU politics, ‘civil society’ and consumer ‘democracy’. The attempt to forge superficial solidarity between consumers in the West, and Indonesian tin miners belies a compact between wholly undemocratic organisations. FoE market themselves through images of muck and squalor to channel emotions far more cynically than any brand marketing campaign. And rather than simply turning such emotion into profit, FoE turn images of poverty and deforested areas into political power.

BBC Radio 4 show, Thinking Allowed had a feature on the psychoanalysts perspective on climate change this week. Bishop Hill picked up the story. Thinking Allowed is one of my favourite programmes, so I was a tad disappointed to hear that thinking isn’t allowed if it’s thinking that contradicts climate orthodoxy. Here’s my letter to the programme.

Dear Laurie,

I refer to your section on climate change and psychoanalysis in your most recent programme.

Your feature frames the problem as a failure to recognise what one of your guests called ‘the reality of climate change’, which moved on to a discussion about ‘types of denial’. However, if psychoanalysis has anything to say in the climate debate, it must speak to climate sceptics as much as their counterparts.

Sally Weintrobe lets the cat out of the bag when she claims that we are ‘increasingly aware’ of ‘weird weather’, citing hurricane Sandy and the UK’s recent wet weather. Yet there was nothing remarkable about the weather last year. The IPCC’s recent special report on extreme weather found that there is no evidence of increased frequency or intensity of storms, floods or droughts, or losses caused by them attributable to anthropogenic climate change.

So psychoanalysis must have something to say about Sally Weintrobe’s misconception of the ‘reality’ of climate change represented by the IPCC. Her views on climate seem to be as far out of kilter with the scientific consensus as any “denier’s”.

Further to her misconception of the reality of climate change is Weintrobe’s misconception of climate sceptics’ arguments. There are many forms of climate scepticism. Some sceptics object to environmental ethical or political philosophy. Some object to environmental economics. Some object to the attempt to mobilise political action through the use of fear. And of course, some sceptics object to some of the claims that seem to emerge from climate science. Your guests would have us believe that sceptics contest the claim that ‘global warming is happening’, whereas the question that most sceptics of climate science ask is about the role of feedback mechanisms that are believed to amplify the global warming effect — a subject on which there is far less consensus that your guests will admit.

For a programme with the title, ‘thinking allowed’, this is a problem. Rather than doing justice to the debate, a psychopathology of climate scepticism is proposed. Thus thinking is not allowed: to think differently about climate change is to have a broken mind, requiring the intervention of psychoanalysts.

There is a dark history of psychoanalysts and psychiatrists being recruited by the state to elicit the obedience of the public. Your guests seem to want to continue that tradition. That desire for control is what this climate sceptic objects to.

The recruitment of headshrinkers to a political campaign is a far more concerning phenomenon than people living in ‘denial’ of ‘the reality of climate change’. Your guests would rather construct elaborate theories about the pathology of climate sceptics than speak to them. Thus, their theories stand as a demonstration of only what is happening inside their own heads, rather than in society at large. This in turn speaks about the nature of environmental politics and the anti-democratic tendency of environmentalism.

The Telegraph’s resident Gaia-botherer, Louise Gray has a short piece on neoMalthusian anti-baby campaigner, David Attenborough.

The television presenter said that humans are threatening their own existence and that of other species by using up the world’s resources.

He said the only way to save the planet from famine and species extinction is to limit human population growth.

“We are a plague on the Earth. It’s coming home to roost over the next 50 years or so. It’s not just climate change; it’s sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde. Either we limit our population growth or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world is doing it for us right now,” he told the Radio Times.

Sir David, who is a patron of the Optimum Population Trust, has spoken out before about the “frightening explosion in human numbers” and the need for investment in sex education and other voluntary means of limiting population in developing countries.

“We keep putting on programmes about famine in Ethiopia; that’s what’s happening. Too many people there. They can’t support themselves — and it’s not an inhuman thing to say. It’s the case. Until humanity manages to sort itself out and get a coordinated view about the planet it’s going to get worse and worse.”

Let’s leave aside Attenborough’s silly claim that humanity is a plague. What is of interest here are the ideas that Ethiopia suffers from having too many people, and that ‘we keep putting on programmes about famines in Africa’.

Alex Cull deals with the first claim in a comment posted at The Telegraph and on another post here.

Taking a charitable view here, Sir David is being a little naive.

In terms of population density Ethiopia ranks 121st, well behind the United Kingdom, France and Germany. It also has vast areas of fertile arable land.

Drought and war undoubtedly played a part in Ethiopia’s problems during the 20th century but there’s a strong argument that the famine in 1983-85, for instance, was caused mainly by bad governance, including inflexible Soviet-style central planning (Kenya, by contrast, had worse drought in that period but avoided famine altogether.)

This has nothing to do with “too many people”.

Attenborough would have it that Ethiopia’s problems are the result of its relationship with the natural world, not the result of relationships between Ethiopians, and between other countries. It is the privilege of elderly natural history broadcasters from wealthy backgrounds to pronounce on what people with dark skin are doing wrong: existing in such numbers that offend him. He ignores the history of people in that part of the world. It’s much easier to say that a fecund, stupid people don’t ‘get’ nature than is understand what drives conflict and besets development to produce famine. It’s immeasurably patronising; nobody, if they came across someone living in poverty or without a home in the West, would say ‘what you need is sustainability’. Why then, is the ‘natural order’ the way social problems are understood when they happen thousands of miles away?

So is it true that ‘we keep putting on programmes about famine in Africa’?

No.

The BBC put almost all of their programmes online for a week following broadcast. These are all listed in categories. Here is screen capture of the ‘science and nature’ category:

So in the past week, the BBC has broadcast no less than 14 programmes about nature and wildlife. Notice also that this is the extent of the BBC’s ‘science and nature’ category — i.e. it’s all nature and no science. Furthermore, this includes two programmes that feature Attenborough himself: one on the animals of the Congo, the other a repeat of his 1961 ‘Zoo Quest to Madagascar’. Also noteworthy is the episode of ‘The Polar Bear Family and Me’ series. ‘The team returns in September and finds the polar bears are having a tough time’, says the blurb.

So where are the BBC’s programmes about Ethiopia, that Attenborough is concerned ‘we keep putting on’?

There aren’t any. The BBC is very keen on how animals live or are endangered, but the lives of millions of people, who, according to Attenborough, are not surviving, is not of interest. We care more for programmes about polar bear families than for films about people living in rural Ethopia. There are two series of films featuring Attenborough meeting animals in Africa, but not its people. The BBC’s schedule is full of Africa’s natural history, but rarely does it reflect on the continent’s social, political and cultural history. An entire collection of Attenborough films from the 1950s to the present is online (possibly not available to people outside the UK). Where people are mentioned, it seems they are typically tribal societies, living in ‘Paradise’.

No wonder, then, that Attenborough has such a limited view of humanity in general, and of Ethiopians in particular. When you are concerned with the flora and fauna of a region, rather than with its people, it’s no wonder that you can write people off as the problem afflicting ‘paradise’ once they develop beyond a way of life capable of producing more than subsistence. Humans become an invasive species… a plague… on what should rightfully be in their place.

I don’t want to sound harsh here on fans of natural history. That’s not the point. The problem comes when natural historians use their knowledge to try to explain the human, social world and its problems. Not only is it invariably wrong, it’s almost always dangerously wrong. It is presented as a ‘scientific’, empirical approach, but is deeply ideological. The natural historian’s perspective on the human world — albeit more straightforward than contested ideas about humans relate to each other and to the natural world — turns us all into monkeys. The only exception being the natural historians, of course. Only they possess the sight necessary to oversee the zoo, to pronounce on who or what should be where.

Typically, cold weather such as the UK is experiencing — an inch or so of snow that brings the country to a grinding halt — is used as the background to stories which challenge climate change orthodoxy. The tale needs barely any retelling: the milder winters and warmer summers we were promised simply haven’t materialised. As incautious as such arguments (like Boris Jonson’s) are, they are nothing compared to the absurdities of the argument they are countering. It was the extravagation in the first place which gives the ground to people who then ask, ‘where is this climate change, then?’ After all, the weather seems much as it was decades ago.

But today, it wasn’t as much the ‘deniers’ taking advantage of the cold weather, as the ‘Energy Bill Revolution‘ campaign. They got themselves an article on the front page of the Times, in the Daily Mail, and on Sky News. According to The Times,

More than 100 energy companies, charities and businesses have joined forces to warn David Cameron that Britain is heading for a fuel poverty crisis owing to a failure of government policy.

The group of 100 companies’ demands are simple enough:

An unprecedented alliance, including Npower, the Co-operative, Age UK and Barnardo’s, urges Mr Cameron to use money raised from the “carbon tax” to be levied from April to tackle the “national disgrace” of cold homes. A programme to fit houses with proper insulation would, they say, protect the vulnerable, help the environment and boost the economy.

But this is opportunism. The research in question was produced back in November. As this blog reported back then, the plan is to spend the £60 billion revenue from carbon taxes over the next 15 years on fitting the poorest 9 million homes in the UK with ‘energy efficiency’ measures.

But £60 billion is a lot of money. And I didn’t think that such a vast sum of money was worth it. Indeed, it would be enough money to buy 16GW of nuclear power plant. This would make it possible to reduce bills for all domestic energy consumers, and/or, if it was necessary or desirable, subsidise energy bills for the poor:

So how will this benefit people living in fuel poverty? Well, the ongoing plant costs under my scheme cost £1,099,180,017 — roughly a £ billion per year for the entire domestic sector. Between 25 million homes, that is about £43 per home per year, not including the cost of develiery. We’ve met the upfront capital cost of £55 billion through carbon taxes over 13 years. Now we can sit back and enjoy the cheap energy. According to OFGEM, 54% of a £470 electricity bill is ‘wholesale cost’. So that’s £253. And since we’re no longer producing any nasty CO2, we can remove the £47 charge for ‘environmental costs’ the government add to bills. The average bill now looks like this: £43 wholesale electricity cost, £84.6 for distribution, £23.5 transmission charges, £9.2 VAT, and £32.9 ‘other costs’, coming to a total of £193.2 per year. We’ve reduced the average electricity bill by £276.8 for everyone, not just the fuel poor. That’s taken many people out of fuel poverty — especially if they use electricity rather than gas to heat their homes. But if we’re still feeling generous, perhaps we could give some extra relief to the remaining fuel poor.

The problem is one created by making ‘efficiency’ an end of energy policy — a good, in and of itself. But efficiency is not necessarily a virtue. It might be (indeed, it clearly is) the case that energy inefficient homes could be better cared for by reducing the cost of energy, than by plugging up the gaps. If it costs 10 times as much to fill the gaps than it does to double the amount of energy used to heat the home, then clearly the greater virtue is in lowering the cost of energy.

But that’s not how the Energy Bill Revolution see it. Their call today is intended to put pressure on the government to use the Carbon Tax on their preferred measures, no matter what a cost-benefit calculation shows. So, then, it is not a surprise to see that the Energy Bill Revolution campaign counts a number of organisations and companies with an interest in energy efficiency. They include:

Anglian Home Improvements
Association for the Conservation of Energy
Carrillion PLC
Climate Bonds Initiative
Decarbonize consultants
EON
Gentoo
Good Energy
HIS Energy group
Home Heating Solutions Ltd.
Instagroup
Isothane
Jablite
Kingfisher PLC
Kingspan PLC
Knauf Insulation
The Mark Group
The Mears Group
The Mineral Wool Manufacturers Association
Nationwide Energy Services
National Insulation Association
N Power
Parity Projects
Passive Systems
Places for People
Red Roof Energy
Rockwool
Saint-Gobain
SSE Energy
SIG Energy Management
STO ltd.
USwitch.com
Willmott Dixon Group
Worcester-Bosch
WSP Group
YouGen

So a full 36 of the 100 organisations behind the campaign are in fact companies, with a direct interest in the government diverting £60 billion towards energy efficiency measures. What company wouldn’t get behind a campaign that would unlock such a vast sum of cash?

Then there are the NGOs. I won’t list the usual suspects — the Greenpeaces and FoEs. What is surprising is the number of organisations who claim to be protecting the interests of the elderly, the young, the homeless and the poor. The category of ‘fuel poverty’ that will include 9 million households in just a year’s time would be reduced substantially, were energy bills more affordable. But rather than campaigning for ways to make energy cheaper, leaving more money in the pockets of those people, these organisations have put their names to a campaign that will put money in the bank accounts of energy, construction materials and services companies. And we’re not talking small money here — we’re talkign about £6,666 for each of those 9 million households. In 2004, there were only 1.2 million households in ‘fuel poverty’. Sharing £60 billion between them would amount to £50,000 each — not inconceivably the value of an entire house, never mind a refitting of an old house. Why weren’t these organisations calling for that, in 2004? Why is it only energy that warrants the attention of this coalitions of companies and NGOs? Why not food poverty, clothing poverty, if there’s a category called ‘fuel poverty’? And if 9 million people really are living in inadequate accommodation, why campaign only on the basis of their homes ‘energy efficiency’ ratings? And why now?

Well, the Energy Bill Revolution website informs that

The Energy Bill Revolution is an alliance campaign coordinated by Transform UK, a programme of the sustainable development organisation E3G. Transform UK works to build alliances to accelerate investment into the low carbon economy in the most socially just way.

Transform UK, turns out to be ‘The alliance that campaigns to accelerate investment into the low carbon economy.’ It’s about page explains further:

Transform UK was set up in January 2009 to identify and deliver transformational solutions for accelerating investment into the low carbon economy to help build climate, energy and economic security.

A steering group was set up which included a broad range of stakeholders representing civil society, unions, academics, think tanks, business and finance.

In February 2009, in a collaboration between three members of the steering group, E3G, Climate Change Capital and Friends of the Earth, the first paper proposing the establishment of a UK Green Investment Bank was written and promoted. Subsequent analysis was undertaken by other key stakeholders including the Aldersgate Group, Green Alliance, Policy Exchange and the Institute of Civil Engineers.

This inspirational idea to set up a dedicated institution to leverage billions of private capital into the low carbon economy was agreed as the first campaign priority of the Transform UK alliance.

Transform UK operates as the national hub for the Green Investment Bank campaign and helped to get cross party political support for it in the lead up to the 2010 General Election. The Government subsequently confirmed in its coalition agreement that it would set up the Green Investment Bank.

The Transform UK alliance is committed to supporting the development of the Green Investment Bank, Green Bonds and other solutions for accelerating investment into the low carbon economy.

So Energy Bill Revolution is a project of Transform UK, which is itself a project of E3G, Climate Change Capital (bankers), and Friends of the Earth. The financiers clearly have something to gain, as do Friends of the Earth, who, as the public record shows, are the beneficiaries of many millions of EU and UK public money. But who are E3G? Their about page says,

E3G is an independent not-for-profit organisation, established in 2004, that works in the public interest to accelerate the global transition to sustainable development.

We build coalitions to achieve carefully defined outcomes, chosen for their capacity to leverage change. E3G founders had been working together and developing their shared thinking for several years before the organisation was constituted in 2004.
Initially undertaking high-level diplomatic activities linked to the personal experience and influence of its founders, E3G has since been gently growing its portfolio of activities. E3G now has four strategic programmes, twelve additional members of staff, and an extensive network of aligned individuals and organisations.

I always wonder about these ‘about’ pages. They say nothing. No who, where, or how, and with what. The organisation’s ‘governance and funding page’ doesn’t give much more away…

E3G is constituted as a private company limited by guaranteed. Our constitution commits us to work in the public interest, and to reinvest any surplus profits in the further pursuit of our stated objectives. E3G is registered as a company (5158916) in England and Wales.

E3G — aka Third Generation Environmentalism Ltd — maintains full independence in all its activities, and is funded by a mix of foundations, government bodies and NGOs. To date, E3G has received funding from:
Department for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs
Department for International Development
Environmental Defense
Esmee Fairbairn Foundation
European Climate Foundation
Italian Ministry for Environment and Territory
Natural Resources Defense Council
Shell Foundation
WWF

So, again, we see high finance, powerful NGOs, and government departments. It’s amazing to see the doublespeak: ‘Independently funded by foundations, governments and NGOs’.

A very helpful person at E3G told me by telephone that the largest part (~80%) of their funding comes from The European Climate Foundation. The ECF say,

The ECF was established in early 2008 as a major philanthropic initiative to promote climate and energy policies that greatly reduce Europe’s greenhouse gas emissions and to help Europe play an even stronger international leadership role to mitigate climate change.

So, who are these philanthropists? They are:

Nationale Postcode Loterij – which is, as far as I can tell, the Dutch National Lottery.
The Arcadia Fund – a fund set up by Lisbet Rausing to protect nature.
The Children’s Investment Fund Foundation – which ‘aims to demonstrably improve the lives of children living in poverty in developing countries by achieving large-scale, sustainable impact’.
The ClimateWorks Foundation – which ‘supports public policies that prevent dangerous climate change and promote global prosperity’, with money from the Hewlett-Packard and McKnight families.
The McCall MacBain Foundation – which ‘exists to improve the welfare of humanity through focused grants in areas of health, education and the environment’ with ‘the proceeds of the sale of Trader Classified Media, the world’s leading company in classified advertising’.
The Oak Foundation – which ‘commits its resources to address issues of global, social and environmental concern, particularly those that have a major impact on the lives of the disadvantaged’.
The Stordalen Foundation – who ‘step into the breach to finance and build companies that are to offer people the greatest number of options to current solutions’, whatever that means.
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation – who ‘solve social and environmental problems at home and around the world’ with their money.

And there the follow-the-money trail ends.

There may not be anything nefarious going on in any one part of this bizarre network of relationships, which started off as a letter to David Cameron, and now turns out to extend all the way back to the people who made a rubbish printer I once owned. But there is something that should make us uneasy about public policy being dictated by a cabal of super-rich (1% of the 1% of the 1% kind of rich) philanthropists, through transnational campaigning organisations which serve no obvious constituency, but who fund in turn, not-for-profit campaigning companies, in partnership with NGOs, financiers, government departments, and big firms, who in turn finance campaigning front-organisations like Energy Bill Revolution. EBR is passed off as a coalition of civil society organisations concerned with the plight of the poor. But once we exclude the commercial interests, state agencies, and those who are nakedly making instrumental use of the poor for political ends, there are no organisations left to sign the letter to Cameron, except perhaps for the Girl Guides and Boy Scouts.

The reason this stinks is not simply the misleading claims of ‘civil society’. Call me old fashioned, but I believe public policy should be determined by the public, through democratic processes, not by mysterious benefactors through strange networks of organisations, none of which are democratic, none of which are accountable, and none of which are transparent about their aims.

Even if, at the end, the letter to Cameron from the Energy Bill Revolution campaign parters bears the names of organisations with a genuine desire to help the poor, there is no mistaking the weirdness that belies such a straightforward, noble aim. Even if they aren’t self-serving, the day I’ve spent trying to get them to answer my criticisms of their preferred policies certainly makes me suspicious. What the state does with sums as large as £60 million ought to be the subject of debate, not decided by cosy relationships between the privileged, moneyed and powerful, seemingly for the benefit of the poor. Civil society, then, shows itself to be as intransigent, ignorant and indifferent to the poor as it is to democracy.

There have been endless pastiches-upon-pastiches of the zombie movie genre in recent years. As far as I can tell, the only significant development in the basic plot is that whereas zombies were once driven by supernatural forces, the contemporary living-dead seem more often to have been rendered flesh-hungry by some kind of virus, typically engineered by some mysterious agenda. What does this revision of an already hackneyed metaphor stand for in today’s world, then? A cautionary tale about our incautious meddling with the natural order perhaps? No. This phenomenon of remakes is not unlike the phenomenon it depicts. The contemporary zombie perfectly mirrors the zombie movie writer. What drives the zombie is the death of his author’s imagination. The future is gone, eaten away by his nihilistic malaise. Unable to author a new story, he drags one out of the past.

Does this remake sound familiar?

Can a collapse of global civilization be avoided?

Environmental problems have contributed to numerous collapses of civilizations in the past. Now, for the first time, a global collapse appears likely. Overpopulation, overconsumption by the rich and poor choices of technologies are major drivers; dramatic cultural change provides the main hope of averting calamity.

In this case, however, the authors are re-making their own work. The words belong to Paul and Anne Ehrlich, who brought Malthus back from the dead in the 1968 epic, The Population Bomb.

The Ehrlichs have been claiming that ‘now’ is the ‘first time’ that ‘a global collapse appears likely’ for nearly half a century. Their many failed predictions are well understood, and need no re-telling here. Suffice it to say that the world’s situation is precisely the opposite: there are more people, but there are more resources. There is less suffering, disease and poverty. People are wealthier.

In spite of which, the Ehrlichs drag out that Zombie script…

But today, for the first time, humanity’s global civilization—the worldwide, increasingly interconnected, highly technological society in which we all are to one degree or another, embedded—is threatened with collapse by an array of environmental problems. Humankind finds itself engaged in what Prince Charles described as ‘an act of suicide on a grand scale’ [4], facing what UK’s Chief Scientific Advisor John Beddington called a ‘perfect storm’ of environmental problems [5]. The most serious of these problems show signs of rapidly escalating severity, especially climate disruption. But other elements could potentially also contribute to a collapse: an accelerating extinction of animal and plant populations and species, which could lead to a loss of ecosystem services essential for human survival; land degradation and land-use change; a pole-to-pole spread of toxic compounds; ocean acidification and eutrophication (dead zones); worsening of some aspects of the epidemiological environment (factors that make human populations susceptible to infectious diseases); depletion of increasingly scarce resources [6,7], including especially groundwater, which is being overexploited in many key agricultural areas [8]; and resource wars [9]. These are not separate problems; rather they interact in two gigantic complex adaptive systems: the biosphere system and the human socio-economic system. The negative manifestations of these interactions are often referred to as ‘the human predicament’ [10], and determining how to prevent it from generating a global collapse is perhaps the foremost challenge confronting humanity.

There is nothing new here. Consider this United Nations video from 1972, which features Paul Ehrlich.

Part 1.

Part 2.

This was forty years ago, but it could almost be the most recent UN climate meeting. Zombie protesters. Zombie world leaders. Zombie conference. Zombie ideas. Like the remakes, all that changes is the film stock, the clothes and some of the back story. The United Nations is the longest running zombie movie franchise.

Having their zombie prophecies proven wrong by billions of people every day for nearly half a century has not caused the Ehrlichs to pause and reflect on their failure, much less revised the script.

“What is the likelihood of this set of interconnected predicaments leading to a global collapse in this century?”, they asked, as though the question had never been asked before.

There have been many definitions and much discussion of past ‘collapses’ [1,3,28–31], but a future global collapse does not require a careful definition. It could be triggered by anything from a ‘small’ nuclear war, whose ecological effects could quickly end civilization [32], to a more gradual breakdown because famines, epidemics and resource shortages cause a disintegration of central control within nations, in concert with disruptions of trade and conflicts over increasingly scarce necessities. In either case, regardless of survivors or replacement societies, the world familiar to anyone reading this study and the well-being of the vast majority of people would disappear.

“A future global collapse does not require a careful definition. No, any old careless zombie definition will do. All that is necessary is to say that a catastrophic end of the world is possible. And then, by virtue of it merely being possible, we must take it seriously as a fact and act to stop it. In fact, why not choose the zombie apocalypse to be the definition of a ‘global collapse’? After all, it does seem to be the case that a bunch of people infected with an idea that causes them to be preoccupied with the end of humanity seem the most opposed to the expansion of humanity, its development and prospering. That looks like a zombie apocalypse to me.

One such organisation that has been infected by such a poisonous agent is the Royal Society. As I reported back in April last year, the Royal Society made Paul Ehrlich a fellow, just as they released their report on population, ‘People and planet‘. The report was an attempt by the Royal Society to expand its reach over policy-making on the basis of an immanent global catastrophe. And it is in Proceedings of the Royal Society B journal that Ehrlich’s latest zombie tome is served up.

The Ehrlichs’ essay continues, with the familiar claims about the environment going to hell in a handcart. References to 163 papers seem to make the case that war, pestilence, plague, famine, flood, drought, biodiversity.. and the rest… will overwhelm civilisation. And then we get to the nub of the argument. In order to avert the crisis, there is a ‘need for rapid social/political change’.

Until very recently, our ancestors had no reason to respond genetically or culturally to long-term issues. If the global climate were changing rapidly for Australopithecus or even ancient Romans, then they were not causing it and could do nothing about it. The forces of genetic and cultural selection were not creating brains or institutions capable of looking generations ahead; there would have been no selection pressures in that direction. Indeed, quite the opposite, selection probably favoured mechanisms to keep perception of the environmental background steady so that rapid changes (e.g. leopard approaching) would be obvious [132, pp. 135–136]. But now slow changes in that background are the most lethal threats. Societies have a long history of mobilizing efforts,making sacrifices and changes, to defeat an enemy at the gates, or even just to compete more successfully with a rival. But there is not much evidence of societies mobilizing and making sacrifices to meet
gradually worsening conditions that threaten real disaster for future generations. Yet that is exactly the sort of mobilization, we believe is required to avoid a collapse.

But the Ehrlichs always believed that the ‘mobilization’ they wanted to see was the only thing that could save the world. Like the unlikely heroes at the centre of every implausible zombie film, the Ehrlichs exist in the centre of their own fantasy. The advantage such protagonists enjoy in zombie films is that anyone they might have to negotiate with has already succumbed to the sea of the living dead. Any remaining doubters find that their doubt is the agent of their own demise, except for a handful of doubters, perhaps, one of whom is redeemed at the last moment as the heroes risk their own lives to save him or her. But the real world is neither made out of movie clichés, nor does it revolve around the Ehrlichs.

In most blog posts here, I usually attempt to work out what the argument I am taking issue with is. But the Ehrlichs do not offer one. Like a zombie, the Ehrlich’s essay has no real identity, only an insatiable appetite to devour humanity. There is no serious analysis of society’s systematic failures. There is no real attempt to quantify the actual — much less hypothetical — problems they are referring to. Indeed, they admit that they don’t think they have to identify the issue, they only need to demonstrate that it is plausible. And just as there isn’t any argument, there isn’t any science. There is the environmental litany… A zombie, again, which has plodded on and on in search of flesh since the 1960s. And there is a conclusion — the claim that on the basis that a catastrophe is merely plausible, the institutional apparatus to prevent it is necessary — which has the moral depth of a zombie film’s final moments.

This is what happens when you tell the same story for fifty years, non stop. The Ehrlichs offer no more than banal science fiction. It dominates the scientific establishment — the Royal Society and its journal — just as zombie movies dominate the Sci-Fi section of NetFlix. It’s time to kill the Malthusian franchise.

Jo Nova reports that  Prof Richard Parncutt, who suggested that climate change sceptics could face the death penalty for their crime, has taken down the original text of his argument and has apologised.

Though I would have preferred a more convincing reflection on his mistake, all’s well that ends well. So what follows is not intended to browbeat the professor at the University of Graz — of music, after all, not a discipline that typically reflects on the rights and wrong of killing people. Nonetheless, one doesn’t get to the position of professor (I used to think) without some broad acquaintance with ideas and their histories and some capacity for reflection on one’s own perspective. The mistakes he makes demonstrate the problem with many arguments that put the environment at the centre of their perspective, even those who do not call for the execution of sceptics. I hope to point out those mistakes — which are broader and deeper than just calling for your political opponents to face the death penalty — below.

Parncutt states his objection to the death penalty…

I have always been opposed to the death penalty in all cases, and I have always supported the clear and consistent stand of Amnesty International on this issue. […] Even mass murderers should not be executed, in my opinion. Consider the politically motivated murder of 77 people in Norway in 2011. Of course the murderer does not deserve to live, and there is not the slightest doubt that he is guilty. But if the Norwegian government killed him, that would just increase the number of dead to 78. It would not bring the dead back to life. In fact, it would not achieve anything positive at all. I respect the families and friends of the victims if they feel differently about that. I am simply presenting what seems to me to be a logical argument.

… But then he finds an exception to his objection…

I don’t think that mass murderers of the usual kind, such Breivik, should face the death penalty. Nor do I think tobacco denialists are guilty enough to warrant the death penalty, in spite of the enormous number of deaths that resulted more or less directly from tobacco denialism. GW is different. With high probability it will cause hundreds of millions of deaths. For this reason I propose that the death penalty is appropriate for influential GW deniers. More generally, I propose that we limit the death penalty to people whose actions will with a high probability cause millions of future deaths.

Parncutt claims that his idea has been produced by thinking ‘logically’ and ‘objectively’ about the problem of what to do about all those pesky climate change deniers.  I don’t find that claim at all plausible. The argument I make on this blog is that what appears as self-evident to the environmentalist owes much more to environmentalism than to facts unambiguously presented to the environmentalist by the environment. The environmentalist’s thinking is littered with his own prejudices.

Indulging Parncutt’s incautious rant allows us to bring out environmentalism’s ‘ideology’ — it’s presuppositions, prejudices and logic — more starkly than is typically possible with more guarded environmental waffle.

For instance, Parncutt asks us to think about doing something wrong (executing people who deny climate change) to correct a greater wrong (preventing the deaths of people from climate change). But how does one get to such a position using ‘logic’, per his claim?

It’s certainly true that killing people who disagree with you prevents dissent. Similarly, we could claim that all crime, no matter how petty, should be punishable by death. Suddenly crime rates would plummet. What’s not to like?

It turns out that we prefer justice to be proportionate. And that is a trickier metric to get to grips with than ‘logic’ or ‘objectivity’can help us with. There simply isn’t an objective or logical measure of proportionality — it’s a complex idea, which different cultures and different ideologies form different perspectives on, for historical reasons. And so it is with the Parncutt’s blood lust.

The passages of Parncutt’s text are an example of a knot that moral consequentialists find themselves tied up in fairly often. When trying to weigh up the rights and wrongs of doing wrong to do right, consequentialists find themselves committed to some unpleasant ideas, as the Stanford Online Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains:

A well-worn example of this over-permissiveness of consequentialism is that of a case standardly called, Transplant. A surgeon has five patients dying of organ failure and one healthy patient whose organs can save the five. In the right circumstances, surgeon will be permitted (and indeed required) by consequentialism to kill the healthy patient to obtain his organs, assuming there are no relevant consequences other than the saving of the five and the death of the one.

Even if we grant — for the sake of argument — that Parncutt’s argument proceeds logically, it proceeds from a basis where something like consequentialism has been presupposed. Another view might be that even if the consequences of allowing people to speak freely is an environmental disaster of the magnitude he predicts, it is nonetheless incumbent on environmentalists to make the persuasive argument. So there are now at least two views — with very different consequences — that ‘logic’ and ‘objectivity’ can proceed from. The problem being that logic and objectivity have little to say about the right way to navigate the between allowing free speech on the one hand, and terminating interlocutors on the other. Ending up at such an extreme speaks about something else that’s going on inside the professor’s head. ‘I am simply presenting what seems to me to be a logical argument‘, he says. But we can see as plain as day his self-deception. Rather than admitting that his argument is based on something like consequentialism — or more crudely, the ’24’ defence of torture — Parncutt tries to use the weight of the consequences to make the argument.

Objectivity aside, the argument fails on logic, too, though. Consider this passage:

GW deniers fall into a completely different category from Behring Breivik. They are already causing the deaths of hundreds of millions of future people. We could be speaking of billions, but I am making a conservative estimate.

Deniers ‘are already causing the deaths of hundreds of millions of future people‘. In Parncutt’s logic, the future is the present. There are two problems with this.

First, the linguistic sleight of hand is something looked at previously on this blog:

It would all be so much easier for everyone concerned if we could just linguistically lump the present in with the conditional future from the word go. Something like ‘Climate change is will being responsible for [insert climatological ravage here]’ should cover it.

How can an action in the present ‘already’ have caused a consequence in the future?

Parncutt might well be right, and us ‘deniers’ will have campaigned against action to stop climate change, leading to the deaths of millions or billions of people. But it might also be the case that he is wrong. And there are many other possibilities. Climate change may continue at any degree between benign and something worse than even Parncutt has considered. But even then, such changes in the environment may not cause a single death, because — as is argued on this blog — human society is less sensitive to climate than Parncutt estimates, or because we are capable of organising ourselves against such problems as they happen. After all, we have thousands of years to cope with sea level rise. The migration away from, and the loss of the twentieth century’s great cities may cause people in the thirty-first or forty-first centuries no more anguish than the loss of Anglo-Saxon villages causes the average Briton. The human race might well prosper in the future, even without ice caps.

Second, a moral perspective premised on bringing the future victims of our carbon profligacy to the present is fraught with problems, as has also been discussed here before. Nearly five years ago, I reviewed James Garvey’s attempt to set out ‘The Ethics of Climate Change’:

Producing carbon dioxide – that is to say, using more than our fair share of carbon sinks – is not simply a moral wrong in the present, according to Garvey. What we do now carries consequences into the future. Accordingly, he challenges us to consider that moral responsibility isn’t limited by any kind of proximity. We have as much a duty to reduce our carbon emissions for the sake of the starving child on the other side of the planet as we do the starving child a thousand years into the future.

But Garvey’s moral calculations are easily challenged. How might the same starving child, were he standing right in front of us, be helped by us reducing our CO2? To suggest that it would help would seem entirely uncaring, and not at all ‘ethical’. Garvey might answer that CO2 emissions are what have caused hunger and injury. But this would seem to forget that famine, drought, and disease have historically always been part of life for individuals and communities living at the edge of society. Such forms of poverty are not new, but they are ‘natural’. If we can’t say that reducing CO2 emissions would help this child, it is hard to see how Garvey’s argument against proximity can be sustained. If, in a wealthy country, we were to stumble across some case of poverty, we would not say that the conditions people were living in were the result of climate change. We would not, as Garvey does, say that it was a consequence of our ‘moral failure’ to consider the connection between our CO2-producing actions, and their consequences. We would instead suggest that it was a social problem, arising out of material inequality. So why aren’t the problems faced by Garvey’s victims, thousands of miles away, not also problems of material inequality? Why are our responsibilities to people thousands of miles away different to our responsibilities to people right in front of us?

[…]Garvey’s portrayal of the remote, poverty-stricken victims makes use of the environmentalist’s maxim that ‘climate change will be worse for the poor’. But the sense of responsibility that Garvey appears to wish us to understand is not responsibility in the sense of commitment, or duty, but culpability. We are asked to engage with Garvey’s view of the world as culprits. And as culprits, we are asked to stop what we are doing, and ‘give’ back to the poor what is theirs by some kind of right. In this relationship, the poor are like puppets that Garvey uses to act out a kind of morality play to elicit our sympathy – or guilt – for his cause. And just as Garvey needs distance and poverty on this stage, he also needs victims to make his case. After all, where is this system of ethics, if there are no victims? He does not allow us to consider how we might begin to change things so that people are not poor – to make things better – but how we can avoid being responsible for making things worse.

The imperatives of ‘sustainable development’ demand that we consider the interests of ‘future generations’ — people who do not exist yet, but who are represented by the likes of Garvey and now Parncutt. It’s an interesting paradox: people who aren’t yet alive have some kind of rights in the present, whereas people in the present who speak in public about the daftness of giving non-existent people rights in the present deserve to be put to death.

What strange ‘ethics’: killing today’s sceptics so that tomorrow’s sceptics may live. But again putting its more egregious consequences to one side reveals the broader problem with environmental ethics.

An eco-centric perspective means robbing people in the present and the future of the thing that makes them different — being alive rather than merely being a life. Being alive means (for humans) being aware of oneself, and a sense of your own desires, will, ambitions and future. But the desire to protect ‘future generations’ denies people in the present and the future a right to express their own ideas about their own interests. After all, how can people in the future express themselves in the present? They can’t; they can only exist as statistical quantities, with statistical approximations of ‘interests’… so much water, air, and carbon. The remainder — things that make life worth living — is thrown out. Humans are not moral agents on this view; the concept of agency doesn’t exist at all, except in the sense of blame. Hence, the consequence of putting so much emphasis on life as a metabolic process, rather than on the experience of being alive. Environmentalism’s ‘ethics’ are as cold as spreadsheets.

This very limited view of humanity causes environmentalism to conceive of people as helpless without it: unable to adapt to changing environmental conditions, incapable of overcoming their dependency on natural processes, and driven by material instincts to consume until everything is gone or the waste overwhelms the consumer.

For instance, Parncutt claims:

When the earth’s temperature rises on average by more than two degrees, interactions between different consequences of global warming (reduction in the area of arable land, unexpected crop failures, extinction of diverse plant and animal species) combined with increasing populations mean that hundreds of millions of people may die from starvation or disease in future famines. Moreover, an unknown number may die from wars over diminishing resources (more). Even if that does not happen, thousands of plants and animals will become extinct. Islands, shorelines and coastal communities will disappear.

Parcutt’s claim to objectivity and logic weakens even more here. There is no scientific basis for the two degree limit. ‘Two degrees’ is a horizon of uncertainty, not a threshold of the environment’s functioning. And the consequences of exceeding two degrees that he lists are equally mere speculation. Previously, this blog has argued that global warming and its consequences can be divided into first and Nth-order effects. While we can be more sure of first order effects, Nth order effects such as feedback mechanisms are far less understood — climate sensitivity remains a controversy, not a matter of fact. And we have barely got into the discussion of ‘interactions between different consequences of global warming’. These interactions and their sensitivity to climate change are presupposed by environmentalism — they have not been detected by science. But much worse than this is the way in which Parncutt imagines that human society is sensitive to these speculative Nth order effects.

Starvation, disease, famine, and war over diminishing resources are as inevitable consequences, it would seem, as the melting of ice. You heat ice, it melts. You heat the planet, you get wars. Parncutts denial of human agency in his ethical framework is matched by a denial of human agency in the real world. The limited, metabolic view of humanity in his eco-centric ethics corresponds to his highly deterministic view of society’s relationship with the environment. This deterministic framework allows him to prophesize: ‘interactions between different consequences of global warming […] combined with increasing populations mean that hundreds of millions of people may die’. Looking to the future is just a matter of doing the math.

Were it not for the seemingly shocking argument that climate sceptics should be executed, Parncutt’s hollow argument would have gone unnoticed. It would have been a run-of-the-mill, boring whinge about people who don’t agree with him. We’ve seen thousands of them. Arguments such as Parncutts pour out of government departments and organisations that have sought to identify themselves with the climate issue in recent years. But nobody was listening. The environmental movement failed to achieve any momentum. Nobody believes people who dress up as planet-saving superheroes. In order to explain their failure, environmentalists had to invent a demon — the denier… An all powerful being who could manipulate the public. Says Parncutt…

Much more would have happened by now if not for the GW deniers. An amazing number of people still believe that GW is a story made up by scientists with ulterior motives. For a long list of climate change deniers and their stories see desmogblog. The opinions of everyday GW deniers are evidently being driven by influential GW deniers who have a lot to lose if GW is taken seriously, such as executives in transnational oil corporations.

This is why intellectually weak arguments like Parncutt’s tend to alarmism and to shrill, shocking, and sensational statements. ‘GW deniers’ were never powerful, influential, or well-funded. Environmental alarmism was born out of a growing isolation of the political class from the wider public. Terrifying stories about the immanent deaths of millions of people was not intended to engage the public as much as it was to arm organisations and governments with a sense of legitimacy and purpose in spite of public opinion. Efforts to turn environmental alarmism into international treaties and organisations was never set back by public opinion — they were never vulnerable to democratic control. Meanwhile, radical organisations that attempted to use environmental crisis to engage with the public merely secured their own isolation. And as environmentalists isolation from reality and the wider public increased, so they sealed themselves away from criticism of their ideas. Nobody would challenge the logic of arguments such as Parncutt’s, they would merely say ‘yes, logic and objectivity, hurrah’. Consequently, the quality of the arguments offered by environmentalists has diminished as their tone has grown ever more shrill.

Parncutt’s essay, far from being logical and objective, reflects environmentalism’s failure to make logical and objective arguments, much less persuade anyone with them. In his frustration, Parncutt escalates his claims against those he blames for environmentalism’s failure. Along the way, he reveals the ideological nature of environmentalism, and betrays his own inability to reflect on his failures, and to take responsibility for them. It wasn’t deniers who held up environmentalism’s progress; it was environmentalists.