China announces peak coal usage. This is fascinating. It may be an ambition that fails by a wide margin, but it is nonetheless a very interesting development, not least for Australia, which is still planning to double coal exports in the next decade.
Ice sheets: A new study confirms with greater accuracy than ever before that world's major ice sheets are melting at an accelerating rate. This is why sea level rise is happening 60% faster than was expected in the most recent IPCC report.
Coal boom: 1200 new coal plants planned. Three quarters of the new plants are to be located in China and India. A breakdown of the countries is available here. Though India's expansion plans need to be taken with a grain or two of salt.
Extinction is forever: Tim Flannery reflects on the challenges facing Australian biodiversity and suggests that the current approach isn't working. With a reply from David Bowman. Perhaps how do we triage conservation priorities?
Coal seam gas: Recent measurements (yet to be peer reviewed) suggest coal seam gas production may have significant "fugitive emissions" of methane that render the claims of the gas industry to be somewhat less bad for the climate questionable. Some have suggested that natural gas is methadone to coal's heroin.
Fracking: Stories from the front line in the US. In the UK, academics have just advised the government that it is "categorically clear" that pursuing a shale gas dominated energy strategy is incompatible with legislated UK climate targets. But it looks like they are going to do it anyway.
IPCC: The IPCC has been repeatedly wrong on climate change, frequently underestimating the rate and impacts of change.
Note that the first link makes an embarrassingly obvious mistake in its opening claim, confusing carbon with carbon dioxide and so getting the numbers hopelessly muddled.
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.
"When we think about global warming at all, the arguments tend to be ideological, theological and economic. But to grasp the seriousness of our predicament, you just need to do a little math. For the past year, an easy and powerful bit of arithmetical analysis first published by financial analysts in the U.K. has been making the rounds of environmental conferences and journals, but it hasn't yet broken through to the larger public. This analysis upends most of the conventional political thinking about climate change. And it allows us to understand our precarious – our almost-but-not-quite-finally hopeless – position with three simple numbers."
Apart from missing "s" in the title and a dodgy stat in the opening paragraph, McKibben's compelling 5-page piece is a good summary of some important elements of the challenge we face. The bottom line of his three numbers is that, according to our best understanding, if we want at least an 80% chance of staying under the internationally agreed (but still very dangerous) 2ºC limit we can only burn about 20% of our current fossil fuel reserves (not resources, but reserves, i.e. what is known and could be profitably brought to market under present conditions). This is the kind of statistic that can really serve to focus the attention. We need to leave four out of every five known and already profitable barrels of oil, tonnes of coal, cubic metres of natural gas underground.
Of course, the great difficulty is that no one country wants to do anything other than burn every last molecule of fossil hydrocarbon that can be brought to the surface unless all other countries agree to limit themselves also. And when some countries have far larger reserves (and so far more at stake economically in leaving 80% of them in the ground), then reaching such an agreement is basically impossible under present political assumptions. If you look at where the blockages in international negotiations are coming from, then it's no great surprise that these are also the countries with the largest reserves of fossil hydrocarbons: China, USA, Russia, Australia, Canada, various middle eastern states. Countries with tiny (or largely depleted) reserves are the ones at the forefront: small island nations, non-oil-based African nations and the EU (esp UK and Germany, which have historically had huge fossil carbon deposits, but have already burned most of their easily accessible stuff).
And so we are left with an international multi-player game of chicken, with no country wanting to blink first and lose market advantage, ensuring that all countries suffer horrendously as a result. The fact that those with least to contribute to the problem generally have greater vulnerability only serves to entrench both the injustice and the intractability of the issue.
The slim silver lining in recent extreme weather in the US is that it might bring home to US voters and policymakers that there are no winners in a game of chicken. Even if others are going to suffer more and sooner, the US is far from immune, especially to precisely these kinds of threats (droughts, wildfires, heatwaves, water stress). Russia is facing its own wildfires and floods. China has had large areas in drought almost constantly for the last five years and a flood this week has a death toll that could pass 100. Canada has simultaneously faced deadly floods and serious drought in the last couple of months. Middle Eastern petro-states are all too aware of their dire water situation as they rapidly go from grain exporters to zero wheat production within a decade (Saudi Arabia) after basically exhausting their fossil water. And Australia has all too quickly forgotten its own droughts, bushfires and floods just a couple of years ago.
Further complicating the picture is that it is not simply countries that are making these decisions. Apart from some nationalised oil companies, most of these reserves are held by for profit corporations with very, very deep pockets and who are generally not shy at throwing their weight around, spending up big on lobbying, misinformation and propaganda at every level in order to convince us all that without them we'd be living in caves and that they are struggling to get by in tough conditions.
Yet according to the most recent data, fifteen out of the thirty most profitable companies in the world are directly fossil fuel related (many of the remaining fifteen also have significant, if slightly less direct, links).
The bottom line is that until a very wide audience grasps just how dire our situation is and starts to demand something different from our corporate and political leaders, then none of key climate numbers are likely to improve.
For me, the most telling number in McKibben's piece is the one that he doesn't mention. McKibben is an author with a string of respected publications about environmental and economic issues. He was the first popular writer to publish a book on climate change back in the 80s. Yet in the last three or four years he has re-invented himself as an activist after becoming convinced that writing alone is too slow to effect the changes that need to happen. He has built and become the public face of the world's largest climate movement, a movement named after and dedicated to a number: 350. His organisation, 350.org, refers to the highest concentration of CO2 in parts per million considered "safe" by some of the world's leading climate scientists. We are currently over 390 ppm and rising rapidly. For most commentators, 350 ppm is seen as a pipe dream, an impossibility, well outside the realm of the thinkable, let alone the achievable. International negotiations talk about 550 and occasionally 450, but many commentators think we'll be lucky to stay below 650 and our current path is heading for 750 or significantly higher. In this context, McKibben and 350.org have served as a witness to how far from a just and sustainable world we are currently travelling. And yet here, in one of his highest profile pieces to date, he doesn't mention the number to which he has dedicated the last few years of his life and of which he is a relentless promoter. Is this because he has been so successful in publicising 350 ppm that he felt he could move on? Or because he decided that this idea is now so detached from reality that he needed to lower his sights?
Image by ALS.
Having not followed any news over the weekend or yesterday, I discovered today that there have been three days of rioting in London (and now elsewhere in England), with one man dead and over five hundred arrested and perhaps £100 million worth of property damage, including widespread arson. The discussion boards are alight with people calling for water canons and baton rounds (a.k.a. rubber or plastic bullets), curfews and the deployment of the army, none of which have been used on the mainland UK in living memory. Last time I was in London a couple of months ago, I stayed in Hackney, not far from the area where the trouble started.
Has anyone come across any good analysis or does anyone have any personal insight into this situation? Please include links in the comments.
The great big tax on everything* based on absolute crap science* that has put the Greens in charge of government policy* and which will result in economic armageddon* has been given the thumbs up by the most powerful conservative leader in the world. Will David still get his Christmas card from Tony this year?
*These are all direct quotes from the opposition leader.
However, the endorsement also highlights the weakness of the plan. The UK is aiming at a 50% reduction from 1990 levels by 2025 (and has already managed a 28% reduction between 1990 and 2009, though with this important proviso). Gillard (and Abbott, officially) are aiming at 5% below 2000 levels by 2020. As I have said before, I think there are serious problems with the proposed Clean Energy Scheme. Criticising the opposition ought not be confused with uncritical endorsement of the government.
It is of course quite possible to pay too much attention to governments, and to find in their failures a salve for our own consciences or in their dramas a welcome distraction from our own inaction. But the reverse is also possible.
With all the current discussion about News International and its parent company News Corp, many pixels are being devoted to a discussion of just how things went so wrong. After a string of recent revelations, the claim, maintained by News executives for years, that it was one (or then a few) bad apple(s) in an otherwise honest company now appears as either deluded, deceitful or the result of seriously deficient oversight. Since it is nearly always better to assume incompetence rather than conspiracy, at best Tuesday's parliamentary inquiry revealed a string of failed leaders - spanning media editors, senior corporate executives, police and politicians - who remained dangerously out of touch with what was going on around them. At worst, collusion, corruption and cover up on an industrial scale dwarf the significance of the original criminal data acquisition. Whatever the true nature of the rot, it goes beyond a couple of apples, whether at the top or bottom of the pile.
When confronted with misdeeds on this scale, a common reaction (which I notice in my own instincts) is to seek to put a face on the problem, a single individual who can be held ultimately responsible. We want the buck to stop somewhere. The legal pursuit of the questions of who knew what when is important and such investigations are likely to take some time. In the meantime, an impatient public desires visible signs of justice. If we cannot get convictions just yet, we will settle for resignations.
We so desperately want to be able to find someone to blame, some focus for our fury at the damage caused by a system of corruption in which media, police and politicians were too close and saw their own good in terms of a small circle than the national interest they claimed to be representing. We want to know that our violated trust is being taken seriously. Resignations serve as symbolic steps in this direction; they speak to a collective desire to start again and are a metaphor of what it looks like for an organisation to repent.
But there are deeper questions at stake. Individuals did indeed commit crimes and moral failures (either of commission or omission). Many participated in looking the other way, being willfully blind to what was going on because it was more convenient to maintain deniability (or perhaps they continue to mislead political authorities). But to leave the analysis at the level of individuals fails to take account of the dynamics that can exist at a supra-individual level. The whole can often be greater than the sum of the parts. If the only lessons we take away from this saga involve the need for greater personal integrity, we miss the opportunity to ask how the very structures might have served to sideline, subvert or dilute integrity.
There are individual failures, but also failures of structure, failures of collective imagination. They are failures of systems that are based on seeking the wrong kinds of inclusion, systems that punish those who speak up while rewarding those who conform without questioning the quality of what is shared. Whether a for-profit corporation can simulatenously claim to be serving its shareholders and the common good is an interesting question, as is whether a political system in which an MP is required to win more votes than any other candidate every five years encourages a myopic and image-driven politics.
When a corporation is accountable to its shareholders' interests and those interests are understood in narrow financial terms (as they usually are), then the only place that ethical considerations enter into it is the impulse to avoid anything unethical insofar as it hurts the bottom line. Therefore, the recent fall in News Corp shares is the real crime Rupert and his various officers have committed.
But of course that way madness lies, and the reaction of the public to this scandal is partly media-driven hysteria (the very same hysteria that News have used to successfully to drive sales) and partly genuine moral outrage that speaks to a standard other than the bottom line. There is more to living well than making a profit and there is more to a flourishing nation (or world) than a growing GDP. Therefore, there must be more to a healthy company than a rising share price. Let us resist the colonisation of our ethical thought by cost-benefit risk analysis that seeks to put a price on everything. The language of money cannot adequately translate the full complexity and richness of our moral existence and to rely on it to do so is to abdicate our responsibility for pursuing good and shunning evil.
Amidst the repeated failure of not just scattered individuals but of our most trusted social institutions - of corporations and parliaments, banks and police, sensationalist newspapers and a reading public that buys them - it may be worth considering again the apostle Paul's exhortation to his readers in Rome, who were at the heart of a vast empire with powerful cultural incentives to fit in: Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds (Romans 12.2 NRSV). This is addressed not simply to the individual believers, but to the church as a whole. It is an invitation to a way of corporate existence based on the good news of God's mercies (verse 1). The church, of course, is not immune from moral failure. Yet the good news here is an invitation to discover anew a source of belonging that does not require us to narrow our moral vision lest we stick out, but which gives us permission to find fresh ways of thinking and seeing amidst a culture that has lost its way. The church has no monopoly on wisdom, has not cornered the market in corporate governance or collective integrity. Yet in its practices of humility, confession, forgiveness and love of neighbour to the glory of God, in its memory of Jesus accepting the outcast and breaking bread with the traitor, in its grasp of the promise of a Spirit who leads into both honesty and new begingings, it has something that is genuinely different and worth rediscovering and sharing by each generation.
In the last twelve months, two of the biggest news stories* have had some remarkable parallels. The best known character of each was male, born in Australia, worked in journalism and widely perceived to be arrogant and controlling. Both published secret information (allegedly) obtained by illegal means that others wanted kept private and which proved controversial and explosive. In both cases, the original source of the secret information was incarcerated. In both cases, the events opened the lid on the seedy underbelly of power acting in its own interests. In both cases, the Guardian played a major role in bringing the story to light and in both cases the subsequent legal drama played out in the UK (and to a lesser extent, the US).
*Biggest in terms of media attention they have received, not necessarily the most important at either an immediate or protracted scale.
But the two cases could also not be more different. In the first, an almost unheard of nobody took information that was leaked to him for free, which was of obvious public interest and revealed the double standards, corruption and abuses of power associated with some of the most world's most powerful polities. In the second, a household name and one of the most powerful people in the world owning and leading the world's largest media group was in charge of a newspaper in which a significant culture of double standards, corruption and abuse of power was rife, and which systematically stole and paid bribes for information that was very frequently not in the public interest from thousands of individuals and which was published for titillation and profit. The first, for all his faults, was holding power to account for its manifold abuses. The second, for all his strengths, is responsible for an immensely powerful organisation guilty of manifold abuses, repeatedly denied and (allegedly) illegally suppressed (and he apparently pays no tax). And yet some continue to compare or conflate the two as though they are both simply stories about "illegal hacking".
The outcomes in each case could also not be more different. Julian Assange was quickly labelled a terrorist, pressure from the US government on PayPal, Mastercard and Visa cut off WikiLeaks' funding, there were widespread calls - even from senior US politicians - for his assassination, he was condemned by his own Prime Minister without trial and, ironically, Murdoch media joined in and helped magnify the character assassination on multiple continents. Yet, as far as I am aware, none of those whose abuses he revealed have been charged or resigned. In contrast, so far, Rupert Murdoch has had his next plaything taken away, fielded some embarrassing questions, received professional PR advice to eat humble pie, and taken another kind of pie in the face. Arrests and resignations continue to happen to other people. If we take his repeated professions of ignorance at face value, then my conclusion is that a corporation that has grown too large for the boss to take responsibility for a culture of systematic abuses within it is a corporation that is too large. Julian Assange is not the Messiah; Rupert Murdoch is far more than just a naughty boy.
Image by ALS.
This occurred yesterday afternoon at the Tate Modern Art Gallery in London. Rev Billy and his "church" have been developing this kind of protest against various abuses of consumerism for the last five years or so. Combining street theatre with the discourse and imagery of gospel revivalist preaching and song, they encourage people to think about what our consumption is doing to our ecosystems, society and souls.
I would love to hear what people think of this as a form of creative protest. Is it effective? Distracting? Humourous? Counterproductive?
Two apparently very different stories have been dominating the news in the land of my birth and where I currently live.
In the UK, the News of the Worldphone hacking saga continues to snowball, with more revelations promised. There are now over 4,000 targets identified (including royalty, celebrities, politicians (even Prime Minister Brown), police, as well as bereaved relatives of soldiers, homocides and terrorism victim), but the story has grown much larger as it becomes clear that the real issue is the cover up. The phone hacking itself was illegal and shockingly callous, representing an abuse of society's willingness to grant journalistic freedom in the pursuit of truth (compare the Wikileaks saga, where the revelations are of much greater social significance and the methods used by the media apparently legal). But knowing that the practice was indefensible, it is becoming clear that News of the World apparently went to great lengths to prevent the full extent of the abuse from becoming public: making payments to police, seeking to pay for silence from early victims in a way that would remove evidence from police investigations, obstructing those investigations by foot dragging, destroying evidence, making misleading statements under oath and contributing substantially to a culture of fearful self-protection amongst politicians who might speak out about the problem. It is not yet clear how far up the chain of authority blame lies, but it seems fair to say that if some of the people currently denying knowledge of what was going on are speaking the truth, then they have become immensely successful while simultaneously being willfully neglectful and culpably negligent. The relative portions of blame to be assigned to journalists, editors, owners, police, politicians and the reading public are still unclear, but the problems are systemic.
It is, however, hard to deny that a hefty portion of the culture in which such abuses can occur can be traced to a situation in which a single man owns such a large chunk of the media that he can threaten political careers and so create the complicit silence in which police corruption can flourish and his underlings feel untouchable. Numerous politicians, including Cameron himself, have been emboldened by the events of the last week to admit their fear of Murdoch had lead them to silence or a soft tread.
So my hunch is that such systemic wickedness arises not so much due to the press being under-regulated, as from its being too concentrated. The crimes and wrongdoings that occurred at News of the World (and likely at other major papers) occurred not simply through lack of oversight, but because editors felt that they were in certain senses above the law, that public figures who openly questioned their modus operandi could be crushed in the court of public opinion through the very media they would be trying to shine a light upon.
Removing that dangerous sense of invincibility includes diluting the power of any one individual through diversifying media ownership. And this, of course, is where the BSkyB deal is intimately related to the whole scandal. Not only ought it be thrown out in light of the revelations of widespread illegality and contempt of the rule of law operating within News Corp, but the appropriate response ought to include the break-up of Murdoch's existing empire into smaller pieces to prevent the kinds of concentration of power that help to generate such pervasive corruption.
And to make Murdoch and News Corp pay their taxes. They are amongst the worst offenders for tax dodging. Murdoch has personally dodged hundreds of millions of pounds of taxes, possibly billions. Of course, this doesn't stop his papers offering lectures on the need for austerity measures to balance the budget.
What does this have to do with the carbon debate in Australia? While phone hacking is getting some coverage, the antipodean front pages are filled with claim and counterclaim about atmospheric chemistry and tax reform. The link is Rupert.
Murdoch's media empire spans four continents and is, by some margin, the largest news media conglomerate in the world. And from Fox News to the Australian, from The Wall Street Journal to The Daily Telegraph (the Sydney tabloid, not the UK broadsheet), Murdoch publishes a huge share of the denial, false balance and misinformation about climate change to be found in the mainstream media (as documented here, here, here and many other places). This is not to say that he only publishes denial, but many of his organisations are the worst offenders at giving equal weight to the claims of highly reputable scientific institutions and ideological think-tanks with significant funding from major fossil fuel companies. It is clear that this is often deliberate policy in order to sow confusion and thus delay and dilute effective collective action.
Murdoch is not, of course, the only wealthy individual deliberately throwing (bull)dust into the air.
This is part of the insidious effect of hyper-capitalism upon democracy. Rather than generating competition and diversity, the concentration of extreme financial wealth in the hands of the few that defines hyper-capitalism risks enabling the further conformity of politics to the interests of the ultra-wealthy. Media plurality is a necessary condition of a free society. So is the avoidance of extremeinequality.
And a postscript: stories like this give me hope. A young TV reporter with a dream career ahead of him makes an important realisation.
H/T Rod Benson.
The warmest UK spring for 350 years and the second driest for 100 has left the southeastern UK in drought. Water restrictions are in place in much of France and the government has set aside €700 million to support struggling farmers, while crop losses will be widespread in Germany too. Indeed, low water levels in major rivers could shut down French nuclear plants as the heat in 2003 did. The southern US has its own problems, with an estimated US$4 billion in losses due to drought already this year, despite the recent heavy flooding on the Mississippi nearby. Drought in China had left shipping on the Yangtze stranded and four million with trouble finding water until recent downpours now threaten floods in some areas. And this follows within twelve months of the Russian heatwave that was six standard deviations above the average and led to wheat exports being cancelled until recently, floods in Pakistan that displaced around twenty million people and decimated crops, while those in Queensland caused billions of dollars in lost crops.
These disasters combined with high oil prices (and no likelihood of them falling significantly barring a further worsening of global economy), an increasing share of fertile land being diverted into growing largely pointless biofuels, declining water tables (more than half the world's people live in countries where water tables are falling), a growing demand for land and water intensive western-style diets in the rising Asian middle class, soil degradation removing an area the size of Greece each year from the world's arable land, declining improvements in yields from agronomy (where something of a plateau seems to have been reached in many places as farmers catch up with scientists), and a volatile commodities market with cash looking for the next quick profit and we have a perfect recipe for the very kind of event that climate scientists, ecologists and economists have been warning about for some time: food price spikes. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has calculated a Food Price Index since 1990 and the last six months have seen figures rise to their highest since tracking began.
It might be frustrating for us in the UK if the price of bread goes up and we can't afford our holiday to Northern Africa (not that we're going this year; drought-stricken France it is then), but it is a bit more than an inconvenience or a disappointment in places where up to 80% of income is spent on food. It is a recipe for hunger, disease and social unrest. The last dramatic spike in 2008 led to riots in thirty countries and the government of Haiti being overthrown. The spike that has continued since early this year has already played a part in the Arab Spring and is pushing tens of millions back into malnutrition.
This is what climate change looks like (at least for now - remember we are only 0.8 degrees into what may well be a 4 degrees plus experience). Not that every hot day or drought or flood or snow storm can be blamed on us, but that our actions have affected the system to a degree that overall productivity of our agricultural system is made less reliable (one recent study claimed that our changing climate has already put a 5.5% dent in wheat yields), threatening in turn the political system. Climate change is not the only pressure on the food system, but it is the wild-card in the pack of predicaments. Another disturbing development is that projections for expected food production may need to be downgraded in light of another recent study that found that higher carbon dioxide levels contribute less benefit to crops than previously thought.
Rising population and dietary changes mean that food requirements are projected to double by 2050. There are bright spots of opportunity, but the target is looking increasingly out of reach.
What are we to do in light of this? All kinds of things. But we can begin by taking a closer look at the food on our plate and becoming interested in where it has come from, what it cost (socially and ecologically) to get it there and what alternatives are already available to us. If we pray "give us this day our daily bread", we cannot take food for granted.
Much has been made in the media here and in Australia about broken election promises. Nick Clegg promised (indeed, publicly signed a pledge) to not raise tuition fees. Then voted to raise tuition fees. Julia Gillard promised there would be no carbon tax, then announced plans to introduce a system which includes an initially fixed price on carbon.
Are these simply more examples of lying politicians, out to pursue short term political advantage by whatever means? Possibly, but the outrage whipped up by certain sections of the media in each case is, in my opinion, somewhat misguided.
In both cases, we are talking about elections that failed to deliver a clear majority government, thus requiring negotiations between parties to deliver a stable result. There is nothing especially wrong with hung parliaments, minority rule or coalitions. Yet under such conditions, it entirely possible that pre-election promises will have to be broken or modified in order to reach a new agreement.
Consider the UK. We are governed by a coalition between a party who promised more nuclear power and to support the Trident nuclear programme and a second party that promised to end Trident and to build no new nuclear stations. How is it possible for such a coalition to not break promises?
I think there is actually too much emphasis on campaign promises (in the media and by politicians). Representative democratic government is not, despite all the rhetoric, about implementing the will of the majority. It is system whereby elected representatives are entrusted with the authority to make wise judgements on our behalf. A government that makes an unpopular decision is not thereby undemocratic since representative democracy is not about how decisions are made but how representatives are elected.
It is possible that many people do not like this and would prefer a direct democracy. While this has many advantages, especially in polities of a smaller scale, under our present conditions, I'm not sure I trust my fellow citizens enough (or rather the media that all too often guides us by the nose down paths of its own liking - or should I say, of Rupert's liking). In any case, it is not the system we have.
We consent to certain decision-makers, not to certain decisions. How then are we to discern who is to lead us if we are not simply looking for someone who promises to do things we like? All kinds of ways. We examine their history, their qualifications, their character, their party values, their voting record, their ability to demonstrate critical thinking in their public and personal communications, our impression of them from meeting them personally and engaging them in conversation, their ability to persuade, their ability to bring people with them, their vision for the future - and so on. While pre-election promises are clearly part of what we base our electoral judgements upon, they are a relatively small part of the package and must always be taken with a grain of salt in a world where politics is the art of the possible.
To the best of my memory (I'm a little hazy about my first couple of local elections), since turning eighteen I think that I have voted for (or given first preference to) candidates from at least nine different parties (counting independents as a single party; if counted separately, it may be a higher). I've also now voted in three referenda, all failed.*
How many of my votes have I come to regret? Nearly all of them. Voting is such a blunt instrument (even with electoral reform) and I'm more and more tempted towards supporting demarchy.
*The AV referendum has not yet been officially called, but it stands close to zero chance of passing.
The primary benefit of AV is that allows voters to give more information about their desires. In particular, since there is no requirement to fill in all preferences, by leaving parties blank that you definitely do not want to see in power, extremists are excluded. Unless a candidate can gain the goodwill of a majority of voters, they will not be elected. It is not a perfect voting system, but it is better than first past the post.
The "No" group have really run a very dirty campaign. Their lies may be taken to court. They have not revealed their sources of funding. They claim that the BNP will be more likely to be elected. Not true: the BNP are the only party officially endorsing the "No" campaign because they know that they will be wiped out in a system that requires any candidate to gain the trust of 50% of voters. They claim that it will be more expensive because voting machines will be needed. Not true: Australia has had AV for eighty years without machines. I have been employed as a returning officer doing the counting. It really is very simple. They say that voters will be confused, which I find quite insulting as it implies that voters don't know how to count to five. Indeed, if anyone really is confused, they can simply put a "1" for their first preference and leave the rest blank, giving them the option of continuing to vote as they always have. They say that AV gives people more than one vote, which is a half-truth. Yet insofar as people get more than one vote, everyone's vote is recounted every time. It is just like having multiple rounds of an elimination election condensed into a single day. The "no" vote have (as far as I am aware) never answered how it is that the method used to elect party leaders (AV) is deficient for the nation as a whole.
The "Yes" campaign are guilty of overselling, as though AV is going to singlehandedly reform UK politics. It won't but it's still an improvement. A "Yes" vote is a vote for a system that lets voters have more say, a system that recognises the UK is no longer a two-party state (35% of voters at the last election voted for someone other than Labour or Conservative), a system that excludes extremists by preventing candidates with strong minority support being elected without majority backing, a system supported by the leaders of the following parties: Labour, Liberal Democrats, Greens, SNP, Plaid Cymru, UKIP. The only leaders who are supporting the "No" vote are the Tories and the BNP.
One of the criticisms made against proportional voting is that it makes it easier for extremists to gain a seat in parliament since a successful candidate only needs to secure a relatively small percentage of the vote. Indeed, it had been looking like Pauline Hanson, the extremist Australians most love to hate, was going to get a seat in the NSW Upper House after the recent election.
However, it was not to be, because proportional voting in Australian Upper House elections is combined with preferential voting, and so even though Hanson won more primary votes than the two other candidates with whom she was competing for the final two seats, on preferences, they both overtook her.
Preferential voting prevents extremist candidates from winning in races where multiple candidates split the vote, since it allows voters the chance to indicate who is their last preference, as well as their first. UK voters, vote "yes" to electoral reform on 11th May.
A final reminder that if any other UK residents would like to save £50 off their next electricity bill, then let me know before the end of Sunday so I can send you an invite. You will then have until the end of April to make a decision about whether to switch to 100% renewable Good Energy. Full details can be found in my Tuesday post.
For UK residents: an advertisement/endorsement
I very rarely advertise or endorse products or companies. I have a deliberate policy of not accepting Google ads on my site, even though I could be earning hundreds (or, if the marketing is to be believed, thousands) of pounds a year. I think that the vast majority of advertising that swamps our attention is a net deficit to social health through creating artificial dissatisfaction (the basis of most marketing), that is, through the corruption of desire, which, in theological terms, is a cause and symptom of sin. However, there are exceptions.
And I am going to make one in this case. Sometimes, I am quite happy to recommend a product and believe that doing so is not promoting destructive cravings or artificial needs.
How to save £50 and slash your carbon footprint
I agree with Žižek that ethical consumption is insufficient to meet the scale and breadth of problems we face. Yet almost everyone uses electricity, and very few are able to generate their own. This means that the vast majority of us pay an energy company for our power generation.
The selection of a power company is an ethical choice when there are genuine differences between them and between the results of various ways of producing electricity. Sources of power that require the combustion of finite fossil fuels and the emission of significant volumes of greenhouse gases contribute to the dangerous pace of climate change we are beginning to experience and leave a legacy for countless future generations. They also continue the process of ocean acidification and are generally associated with a wide range of other ecological and social ills. Therefore, reducing one's power consumption and switching to cleaner sources is an expression of love for God's good creation in its biodiversity, for one's neighbours who rely on a stable climate for food and for future generations whose societies will be shaped by the chemistry of the atmosphere and oceans that we leave behind.
In the UK, renewable energy has the potential to supply most or all of the nation's energy requirements. It is not perfect, but it is vastly superior to the alternatives when all ethical factors are considered. While many energy companies offer "green" packages, many of these only include small fractions of generation from renewable sources. As far as I am aware (feel free to correct me) only two companies currently offer 100% renewable energy to households in the UK: Ecotricity and Good Energy. Having looked into both of them, we chose Good Energy, which is the only energy company to receive the highest rating from Ethical Consumer on their Ethical Company Index.
Ten reasons to consider switching to Good Energy
1. Carbon free. All Good Energy generation is from renewable sources (no fossil fuels or nuclear) with zero carbon emissions.* Switching from a standard energy package to 100% renewable will reduce most people's carbon footprint by up to a third. For many people, this will be more than selling the car, giving up flying or becoming vegetarian. This difference is independently certified under the Green Energy Supply Certification Scheme.
*Yes, there are still emissions associated with the construction and materials, but these are relatively small compared to alternatives. For those with gas as well as electricity, Good Energy also offer gas, which obviously does have emissions, but they put the profits back into supporting renewable generation. Switching electricity (but not gas) to renewable generation will still reduce most people's carbon footprint by about 1.5 tonnes per annum.
2. Easy. This is probably the single largest reduction to most people's carbon emissions that can be made as a once off action in a matter of minutes without any further thought or change in lifestyle. Although many of the steps I think we all need to consider taking are difficult (and I'm suspicious of lists that claim "ten easy steps to save the planet"); this one really is very easy.
3. Not too expensive. When fossil fuels are subsidised to the tune of over £300 billion per year globally (more than ten times the amount received by renewables), it is no wonder that we consider them cheap energy. But good energy doesn't need to cost the earth. Switching to Good Energy, the average household will pay the grand sum of approximately £1 more per week - though that is before we get to #10 (see below).
4. Human scale. You are supporting a small, accountable and responsive company, rather than filling the coffers of a huge multinational. I think that size does matter. There are better and worse companies at all sizes, but my impression is that human-scale operations are less likely to be truly evil and that few giants are truly benign.
5. Local. As a UK-based company, it is subject to UK laws and taxes and so isn't trying to avoid its social responsibilities through tax avoidance. It works with thousands of small-scale energy suppliers and so is like buying from a farmers market rather than a supermarket. You can read more here.
6. Resilient. Once constructed, renewables have the advantage of much shorter supply chains and are less vulnerable to geopolitical disruptions than fuels that must be imported from elsewhere. This makes them (and the communities they power) more resilient during bumpy times.
6. It's the future. In this interview, a discussion of trends in new energy production might surprise some in how far renewables have come.
"For the past two years 40 per cent of all new electricity generating capacity in Europe came from wind turbines. (Add solar and other renewables and that rises to 63 per cent.) From Spain to Sweden so many new turbines are being erected that Europe is on target to produce 15 per cent of its electricity from wind by 2020 and 50 per cent by 2050."
7. You're not alone. Public attitudes towards wind power in particular are overwhelmingly positive. I don't deny that there are downsides, but it is the best option available, especially in Scotland where it is coupled with hydro power for both storage of excess production (extra wind energy can pump water back uphill for later hydro use) and for immediate demand when wind drops.
8. Accessible. At Good Energy, a real person will answer your calls and emails. I actually called yesterday, didn't wait in line, didn't face fifty sub-menus on an automated system and got a direct and helpful answer to a query I had about our energy use. We've been with them for over six months now and every interaction has been positive. I was going to post about them earlier, but decided to wait and see if it turned out to be too good to be true. It hasn't. So it's no surprise to us that Good Energy recently came top in a Which? survey of customer satisfaction with utilities.
9. Visible. Most energy production today happens out of sight and so stays out of mind. Being more mindful of where our energy comes from means taking greater responsibility for the energy choices we make in both production and consumption.
10. Special offer. Good Energy have a standing offer to encourage customers to spread the word. If you quote my name and customer reference number (003060766), then both you and I receive £25 credit on our accounts with Good Energy. Yes, I am in effect being paid a commission for this ad, but I am happy to do this as this product is not based on the creation of artificial "needs" or the corrupting of desire. Most of us also have plenty of room to reduce our energy consumption through all kinds of measures (better insulation, behavioural change, energy-efficient appliances, reduced consumption of other goods and so on), but few will end up using no electricity at all, so I am not helping to create an artificial desire. If you let me know before the end of the week,* then as a special offer for Climate Week, Good Energy are doubling the usual reward, i.e. £50 credit for each of us. Once you join, you too can tell others and cut both your bills and those of your friends and family. Recruit enough people and your energy is not just carbon free - it's free.
*You can email me via my profile.
If you would like to compare different companies and what they offer, try Ethical Consumer or Green Electricity, which both offer side-by-side comparisons of the options from independent third parties. Please take a moment this week to consider your energy supplier and contact me if you're curious or keen. Even if you're not sure, let me know and I can register your interest before the end of the week and then you'll have until the end of April to sign up and still get the £50 credit.
Here ends the advertisement. Your regular programming will resume shortly.
Lockheed Martin won the tender for the 2011 UK census and will be collecting 32 pages of information from every household in the UK, except for those willing to risk a £1,000 fine and a criminal record.
I don't identify as a pacifist, though I have deep misgivings about the influence and scale of multinationals who trade in military hardware. Lockheed Martin built the UK's Trident nuclear system, continue to make banned cluster bombs and have supplied much of the equipment being used to suppress dissent in the Middle East, including the most recent violence in Bahrain.
I understand that government is an exercise in compromise, of doing the best that is actually possible, but some compromises are more important than others. Count me out are running a campaign highlighting the problematic nature of this particular government contract.
The UK faces a referendum on 11th May over whether to switch from a voting system in which you can select one and only one candidate (known as First Past the Post, or FPTP) to one in which you can express all your preferences in numerical order (switching to something much closer to the Australian system for electing MPs, and which is known as Alternative Vote or AV).
Some critics of first past the post want to see a more radical change to a proportional system (closer to elections for the Australian Senate), or a mixed system, with some proportional and some preferential by constituency.
Those in this latter camp, who think that the proposed reforms do not go far enough, are split in what to do. If they vote for electoral reform and it goes through, then perhaps the politicians will feel that they have "done" electoral reform and the chances of a proportional or semi-proportional system will recede into the background for another decade or more. Others think that at least preferential is better than the current system and they should take what they can get.
The irony is that if the referendum were to be held with a preferential vote on different options, the supporters of proportional representation would largely swing behind the more limited preferential reform as at least better than the current system. As it is, they are placed in the very situation that First Past the Post fails to account for and have to decide whether to vote tactically for their second preference or vote "no" in protest.
A similar thing happened in the 1999 Australian republic referendum, where opinion polls indicated a majority of voters wanted a republic, but disagreements over the specifics of the proposed model led to a split in the republican vote and the motion being defeated in every state. However, the current example has the added irony of being precisely a vote about how to reform voting, which might well lose due to the very factors that give rise to a desire for reform.
If you've forgotten why voting "Yes" to electoral reform is important, see these seven reasons. I think that supporters of the new system frequently oversell their case, but it is still true that AV is a noticeably better system overall than FPTP.
Byron is a husband, and father of two small children. He keeps worms, bees and a compost pile, with a small garden to justify them.
In his spare time, he is an ecological ethicist, author, activist, speaker, assistant minister and postgraduate student.
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