On mercenary decisions: when economics trumps ethics

When considering a marriage, economics ought not figure prominently in the decision. You first decide “do I want to be with this person?” rather than “will being with this person improve my financial situation?”. Economic viability is a secondary matter, involving questions of how to pursue your goals given your fundamental relational commitments. With a marriage, it may affect how large your wedding is, or where you may live, or the choice of engagement ring. But to make it the primary question in determining your fundamental allegiances is to depressingly mercenary, and makes people wonder whether you've really understood what marriage is about. Even when you look at the other end of marriage, which is often much messier and more complex, to place economics first is to be guilty of mercenary relationships: if you leave because of "for poorer", then you're breaking your vow; if you stay only because of "for richer", then you're just as guilty of breaking your vow to love and cherish despite financial situation, even if the breach is not as obvious.

And though it is considerably more complex, there are parallels to the question of Scottish independence. Both sides (but especially the “no” camp) are acting as though the primary matter is economic: will an independent Scotland be able to afford its current way of life? But this is to confuse means and ends. The real questions in this debate relate to matters of fundamental political identity. Economics only comes into it after these matters have been solved, in order to guide the means by which goals defined by fundamental commitments are pursued. The 1707 Parliamentary Union was brought about in a situation of economic duress, with the Scottish economy on its knees following the disastrous failure of the costly Darien Scheme. It would be a shame if economics dominated or decided the debate about a potential divorce.

In the above, I haven’t said whether I would vote yes or no were I still in Scotland, though my answer to that question is no secret to those who have discussed the matter with me recently.

Scotland: world's greenest nation?

For all kinds of reasons, I love living in Scotland. One of them is the fact that I can pay for 100% renewable electricty for what is now a lower price than most of those who are relying on fossil fuels.

Indeed, Scotland is something of a world leader in its carbon reduction goals. Scotland has the world's most ambitious legally-binding carbon reduction goals (42% from 1990 levels by 2020 - compare Australia's target of a 5% reduction from 2000 levels by 2020). It is also aiming to produce enough renewable electricity to cover 100% of domestic demand by 2020, and is largely on track towards this goal. It is leading the field in research into some promising new varieties of renewable power based on waves and tides.

But the current Scottish Nationalist government also plans to exploit its large (though rapidly declining) North Sea oil and gas reserves, which, when extracted, refined, sold and burned, will add something like 5-10 billion tonnes of CO₂. It will take many decades for the emissions saved by the previously mentioned targets to "pay off" this carbon debt. The value of these reserves is critical to the government's economic case for Scottish independence, yet exploiting them seriously undermines the image of an independent and green Scotland that First Minister Salmon wants to sell.

In the end, if we want a habitable planet that bears any resemblance to the one we currently enjoy, we need to leave the vast majority of fossil hydrocarbons safely underground.

Test tube hamburgers, and other stories

Artificial meat: closer than you think? Would you eat meat grown in a test tube? If not (and you eat meat), are you satisfied with your knowledge of how your meat is produced?

Air Con: As the world warms, we'll just crank up the air con, right? Wrong. Since 1987, new air conditioners are no longer a threat to stratospheric ozone, but the replacement for ozone-destroying CFCs have been a range of climate-disrupting alternatives, each far worse than CO₂ molecule for molecule: "The leading scientists in the field have just calculated that if all the equipment entering the world market uses the newest gases currently employed in air-conditioners, up to 27 percent of all global warming will be attributable to those gases by 2050."

Land grab: An area of agricultural land larger than Texas in developing nations (80% in Africa) has been bought up by foreign governments and corporations over the last few years, according to a new study from the Worldwatch Institute. Some of this has been European corporations keen to make a profit from biofuels regulations, some has been from large nations with serious and growing domestic food security issues, such as China and Saudi Arabia.

Flatter highlands: At least in biodiversity terms. Climate change is flattening the biodiversity found in the Scottish highlands.

China: The fastest growing economy in the history of humanity is not making a happy nation.

House sizes: Australians have some of the largest houses per occupant in the world. This is a significant part of the reason why we have the highest per capita carbon footprint in the OECD.* Large houses not only require more energy-intensive building materials (concrete and steel are both associated with very high emissions), but - all other things being equal - have larger energy needs than smaller dwellings. It doesn't help that we have one of the most coal-reliant electricity systems in the world.
*And that's even before we consider our imported manufactured goods or our exported coal. We export more coal than any other nation.

Solved: Four significant ecological issues have been adequately addressed since 1992. Only another eighty-six to go.

Fracking: the real danger. I wholeheartedly agree and am glad to finally see someone in the mainstream press pick up on this. There are all kinds of legitimate questions about the safety of fracking shale for non-conventional gas, but the biggest one is most rarely addressed, namely, tapping into this resource massive expands the available pool of fossil carbon we will be moving from safely underground and into the active carbon cycle where it can mess with ocean pH and the climate.

Endangered species: The International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) Red List is widely regarded as the most authoritative attempt to account for the level of extinction threat faced by the world's species. Species are categorised according to the degree of severity - Least Concern, Vulnerable, Endangered, Critically Endangered, Extinct - yet of all the world's species, the IUCN estimates it has only assessed 4% so far. Of the dangers faced by the other 96% we have as yet little clear idea.

What others are doing

Jason offers a pastoral reflection upon the Christchurch earthquake.

Kate summarises why climate change is bad for biodiversity, otherwise known as the web of life (though as a couple of comments point out, we're really talking about anthropogenic environmental change, not just climate change, as there are other factors contributing to the current precipitous biodiversity decline).

Jeremy is in search of the biodegradable shoe. He also thinks there are three basic paths ahead for the world over this century.

Bill discusses what he thinks might be the most popular tax in history.

David distinguishes (very helpfully) between stuff and things, and while he's dishing out useful advice, he also gives some tips on how to make trillions of dollars.

Halden is a little underwhelmed by ecumenism.

And Brad relates a tale of two Protestantisms, in which O'Donovan sides with the Augustinian English Anglicans against the Donatist Scots Presbyterians (perhaps unsurprisingly, since O'Donovan is an English Anglican who happens to live in Scotland). If nothing after that last comma made sense, don't worry, the post itself is very readable.

Scotland as you've never seen it before

You may remember this guy from his little trip around Edinburgh (a video featuring yours truly). I've been to many of the places in this latest video and it has made me look at some of them in a whole new light. Jaw-dropping (or breaking) stuff.

Scotland 2050

The David Hume Institute, an Edinburgh think-tank, is tomorrow publishing a report called "Reducing Carbon Emissions - the View from 2050". It is already available for download from here. In it, sixteen experts in different fields were asked to offer a retrospective on the effects on climate change on 21st century Scotland from an imagined standpoint in the year 2050. A summary of their crystal-ball gazing can be found here. The report offers a range of scenarios reflecting the areas of concern of the writers: from refugee movements, energy production and political instability to the rise of a Vegan Party and a renewal of eco-spirituality. One of the authors, Michael Northcott, is Professor of Ethics here at the School of Divinity in Edinburgh University.

Such predictions are usually wrong, often humorously so. The range of factors affecting the possible outcomes are myriad and complex in their interactions. But the value of these predictions does not lie in their accuracy. Instead, such pictures act as invitations to our imaginations and affections to come and see the world in a particular way, to try loving certain aspects of it and recognising present and potential threats to those good things. We can only resolve upon particular actions here and now, not in fifty years time or fifty years ago. But imaginative anticipation and memory are crucial elements in our deliberations and in the shaping of the loves and hopes that bind us together.

Running from the past: Breakfast with Jesus I

An Easter sermon from John 21: part I
Introduction: Sweeping it under the carpet
From here, Britain is on the other side of the world, about as far from home as it's possible to go without joining NASA or using illegal substances. And up the very top of Britain is Scotland. Near the north-eastern corner of Scotland is the grey, cold city of Aberdeen (no points for this picture!).

If you go even further north from Aberdeen you’ll eventually come to a little town called Mintlaw. North of Mintlaw is the village of Strichen, where the accents are nearly incomprehensible and the food nearly inedible. A good drive outside Strichen is a byroad through the middle of nowhere. On a sidebranch of that byroad is a little house. And that is where my friend lives – about as far from Sydney as it is physically possible to get.*

Here we are in the local pub when we visited him two years ago. On the table is the food: deep-fried, plastered with pastry and washed down with Scottish ale. Also on the table is a map so that we wouldn’t get lost while driving from this obscure village to my friend's even more obscure house.

Although I love him, I’m not showing my friend’s face, because this man is on the run.

He hasn’t always lived in the backwaters of Scotland. For years he lived in Australia, and had a life and friends and a future all here. He proposed to a lovely local girl and she accepted and they were planning a wedding, a marriage, a life together. But sadly, it didn’t work out. Just weeks out from the big day, it was all called off. Having had a few friends go through this situation, I know something of how messy, painful, embarrassing, confusing and awful it can be.

And so, as far as I can tell, my friend ran away. He left his broken engagement, his confused friends and family, his once bright future here and went about as far as it’s possible to run into the obscurity of rural Scotland. He started a new life elsewhere and didn’t want to talk about his old life, the failed engagement or the girl who had once filled his life with promise and hope. The bitter disappointment was too much, and it’s easier sometimes to sweep it under the carpet, to move on.**

It's a common phenomenon. Although my friend's flight from his past was obvious and extreme, in more subtle ways I’ve done it myself over many things. Faced with a mess, with a mistake, with a hurt, it’s easier to cover it up, deny it happened, avoid the topic, avoid the person, avoid the whole situation, to walk away and start again elsewhere with a clean slate. Have you ever done this?
*Some details changed.
**At least, this was how his actions appeared to me. I could be wrong on this. He may have had other excellent reasons for the move. NB I preached this sermon before I knew I was going to Edinburgh myself. Unsurprisingly, a few parishioners have since asked me what I'm running from.
Series: I; II: III; IV; V; VI; VII; VIII; IX.

In the news

My surprising wife has just sent me this article from today's SMH. Worth a read, especially if you know Jess.

While I'm giving some personal news, we now have a departure date for Scotland. We'll be leaving Australia on Monday 4th August, which is a little earlier than we expected, but gives us a chance to visit some good friends on the way.

I think my posting might continue to be a little less regular than usual until we are there and all set up.