On the "Christian Values Checklist"

Each Australian election, a coalition of Christian groups promote a resource called the "Christian Values Checklist" from the Australian Christian Values Institute, comprised of a list of twenty-odd "issues of concern to Christians", with the major three parties and a few right-wing minor/micro-parties evaluated. For each issue, each party gets a green tick or a red cross (or sometimes a question mark). The list has varied only slightly each time, but the contents are dominated by a relatively narrow set of issues in sexual and bioethics, along with certain privileges associated with the maintenance of a "Christian heritage".

The results mean that parties identifying as Christian typically get all green ticks, the two majors get a mix (with the Coalition faring much better than ALP) and the Greens get all red crosses except for the very last line, which is a generic environment question where every party gets the same green tick. The overall effect is far more important than the specifics. At a glance, readers are confronted visually by the idea that the more right-wing the party, the more "Christian" it is.

Each election cycle, I've posted some critical observations on this document. If they wanted to call it "our opinions on some issues we care about", that would be one thing. But they claim to be addressing issues "affect[ing] the very foundation of our society" and implicitly, the most important issues Christians care about, which is not true either empirically or (I would argue) theologically.

So, to limit myself to two brief comments:

1. What is left out? Heaps! A brief list off the top of my head: corruption, military spending and priorities, health spending and policies, education spending and policies, taxation, welfare, homelessness, Indigenous justice, DV, banking regulations, freedom of the press, economic inequality, racism, sexism, homophobia, surveillance, foreign aid, foreign policy, industrial relations, agricultural policy, water policy, negative gearing, ABC/SBS funding, disability policy and more and more and more.

On some of these, one small(ish) aspect is singled out as the "Christian" bit: that wealthy private schools get "equitable" funding, that abortion funding be removed from foreign aid, that gender-selective abortion be removed from Medicare (interesting double standard there: if you're opposed to abortion overseas, why not make the abolition of all Medicare funding the issue?), and so on.

2. What is put in? Many issues where Christians disagree in good faith. Some direct contradictions (support free speech but want default internet censorship). And much that is oversimplified and thoroughly misleading. For instance, if the Coalition get a tick for their support "legitimate orderly immigration", then this means abuse and illegality are considered legitimate.

Yet the bit that makes me laugh the hardest every time is the final line.

As though the entirety of environmental policy can be handled with a tick or a cross, and then every party gets a tick! This is such a crass way of giving the most curt of nods to the near universal support amongst Christians for creation care (NCLS says that over 80% of churchgoers affirm it as part of Christian discipleship), while defusing it as an issue by saying that we're all greenies now and the differences between preserving a habitable planet and the thinnest veneer of greenwash are irrelevant.

So, as a document revealing one strand of Christian political beliefs and priorities, it is illuminating. As a document intended to guide Christians' electoral discernment, it is not.

Burden of proof

Yes, 0.1% = 1 in 1,000, not 1 in 10,000. But otherwise, amen.

In place of a post on nuclear power

Since even before the disaster at Fukushima, I was planning a lengthy post (or series) considering the place of nuclear power amidst our climate and ecological crises. Towards this post, I now have thousands of words and scores of links (as I do on a number of other topics that are too large for me to find the time to address them with anything like the attention they deserve).

As it seems unlikely that I am going to publish these thoughts anytime in the immediate future (given other deadlines), it seemed like a waste if I did not at least point any thoughtful readers towards this discussion between George Monbiot and Theo Simon. Consisting of a somewhat lengthy email interchange over the last few months now published by George on his website, it is is far and away the best exploration that I have found of the some of the key ethical and political issues behind the nuclear debate, which can get often mired in the technical and economic aspects of the question (as important as they each are).

So consider this discussion a primer for the day when I get around to putting forward my own thoughts in public. For those who may be interested to know where I stand, I will simply say that I am deeply sympathetic to both authors. Now go and read the thread.

Lines of evidence: How do we know about climate change?

For anyone still confused as to how we know that the climate is changing and that the changes are largely driven by human activities, this 26 minute video from the US National Academies gives an excellent and authoritative overview of the evidence. None of this is remotely controversial amongst the world's peak scientific bodies, despite much obfuscation and confusion through the media and blogs for political, economic and ideological purposes.

Two cheers for coercion, and other stories

Coercion: Do we ever think coercion might be a good thing? Brad contemplates what a cheating athlete can teach us about the place of law in public life.

Magic economics: The economy is a Pied Piper - a delightful and insightful image from Gillian.

Debate vs argument: What's the difference? And what difference does it make to recognise the distinction?

Peak coal: John celebrates the 140th anniversary of the death of William Stanley Jevons, an English writer who foresaw the end of British coal-expansion from way back in 1865 (and who also gave his name to the Jevons paradox). Jevons was aware that relying on finite resources brought a false complacency to social questions by enabling the deferral of questions of distributive justice. If we expect the economy to keep growing, then we can skirt of over gross inequality, trusting that a rising tide will lift all boats. If we accept that the global economy faces certain physical limits within timeframes of human interest, then the deferral of questions of distributive justice can no longer be maintained. In short, faced with limits to growth, there is a certain sense in which it becomes incumbent upon us to make wealth history (which is also the name of this excellent blog, in which Jeremy wrestles with the economic and social implications of this insight).

Mortality: Ben Myers is dying.

Chalk wars: Chalk it up to the suppression of dissent; increasingly, people are being arrested for chalking pavements, at least in the Land of the Free™. The Edinburgh Festival would go out of business if this attitude were introduced over here. And Arthur Stace (a.k.a. Mr Eternity) would have gone to gaol.
H/T Gordon for the final observation.

Twenty questions: The questions that the US press ought to asking of those who oppose climate action. These questions, from climate ethicist Donald Brown, would make for some interesting discussion starters for groups wanting to wrestle with some of the ethical implications of climate change.

Growth myths: Herman Daly walks us through eight fallacies about economic growth. A very useful and insightful summary of some of Daly's contributions to these discussions.

Last words: The final unpublished letter from eco-author Ernest Callenbach, discovered after his death. His top tips? Hope, offer mutual support, gain practical skills, organise, learn to live with contradictions.

Climate intro: The basics of climate science. It's worth posting pieces like this from time to time, since I am constantly reminding just how common it is for otherwise intelligent people to have some basic misunderstandings (myself included!).

Compliance: You never know you're in prison until you try the door. Glenn Greenwald reflects on why oppression and tyranny are often invisible when close to home.

Is carbon dioxide a pollutant?

With all the discussion surrounding climate change and its causes, effects and responses, it has become common for people to speak of "carbon pollution". Some object to this phrase, for a variety of reasons.

First, some think that the failure to specific that we are talking about carbon dioxide makes "carbon" a highly ambiguous modifier of pollution, and so quip that if carbon is pollution, we should all be getting rid of our diamonds (not to mention the carbon in each of our body's cells). However, in the context of contemporary political debate, to speak of a "price on carbon" or "carbon pollution" is an entirely understandable and acceptable shorthand. The context makes clear that we are concerned with mitigating the deleterious effects of an enhanced greenhouse effect from rising levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Granted, in certain circumstances this needs to be spelt out carefully and fully to avoid confusion, but in the daily cut and thrust of political debate, "carbon" is sufficient (and also manages to include a couple of the other non-CO₂ GHGs, such as methane (CH₄), though I suspect this is more happy accident than by design).

Second, and more importantly, some reject the phrase because they do not believe carbon dioxide ought to be classified with other harmful substances. This may be (a) because they think carbon dioxide is natural and pollution is unnatural; (b) because they believe that only substances that are directly toxic to life ought to be called pollution; or (c) because they think that carbon dioxide is harmless.

Regarding (a), this common position is based on a couple of basic scientific and philosophical confusions about the nature of pollution. Many naturally-occurring substances are classified as pollutants: mercury, asbestos, arsenic, just to name a few of the better known ones. Furthermore, almost every substance can be harmful in certain doses. Pollution is a relative term. Nothing is a pollutant in itself, but substances pollute when too much of them is found in an inappropriate location. Remember, it is possible to die of water poisoning, or oxygen poisoning.

Regarding (b), critics say that calling CO₂ pollution implies that breathing ought to be regulated, as we exhale CO₂ with every breath. Defenders sometimes reply by pointing to the possibility of carbon dioxide poisoning (which has historically caused a number of deaths). Yet the direct physiological effects of elevated carbon dioxide levels can be overstated in an effort to justify the use of the term "pollutant". I have seen research (can't find the link at the moment) that suggested that there would be no observable direct effect upon human physiology until over 1,000 ppm. Pre-industrial levels were about 275ppm and we're currently at 390 ppm, with the most commonly-cited goal of aiming to stabilise at 450 ppm (though this is considered by many climate scientists to still be highly dangerous; the last time the earth had CO₂ concentrations above 400 ppm, sea levels were approximately 25 metres higher). So 1,000 ppm is a long way off and would mean we'd already burst through all kinds of very nasty threshholds (though remember that reaching 1,000 ppm by 2100 is not outside the realm of possibility if large positive feedbacks kick in). In the US, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has set a permissible exposure limit (PEL) for CO₂ of 0.5% by volume, which equates to 5,000 ppm, a level of atmospheric CO2 so staggeringly high that the last time they were anywhere near there was over 400 million years ago (for reference, dinosaurs don't appear in the fossil record until 230 million years ago). Well before we got anywhere near 5,000 ppm other effects of carbon dioxide would have wiped us out, so worrying about shortness of breath from global CO₂ concentrations is a bit like worrying about how a bullet hole in your head might make it difficult to comb your hair. This is a red herring.

A better line of reply to those who believe the term "pollutant" ought to refer only to substances that are directly toxic to life is to speak of ocean acidification. Rising CO₂ levels are leading to falling oceanic pH levels as the oceans and atmosphere reach a new gas exchange equilibrium. These startlingly fast (from a geological or ecological viewpoint) changes in ocean pH are already having measurable detrimental effects on a wide variety of marine life and are projected to become much worse as concentrations rise. This is a direct physiological harm of carbon dioxide that does not rely on complex human social changes and so alone justifies calling this dangerous substance a form of pollution. Nonetheless, it is directly dangerous only to certain critical forms of marine life.

And so we reach (c), which is, I suspect, what really drives this discussion. The quibbles above are really just extra confusions muddying the waters. The truly vital issue is whether the climatic effects of rising levels of CO₂ and other greenhouse gases are on balance harmful or not. Considering all the likely indirect effects - increasing heat waves, droughts, floods, extinctions, sea level rise, habitat loss, surface ozone pollution, ocean acidification, public health problems, and so on (not to mention the likely knock-on effects of increased food stress, water stress, migration and conflict) - our present trajectory of substantially CO₂-driven climate change will almost certainly be disastrous on human health and well-being, indeed is potentially catatrophic. So I have no qualms about labelling CO₂ a pollutant when we are talking about the volumes of it currently being dumped into the atmosphere (and these enormous quantities mean it is facetious to reply with a comment about breathing or soft drinks, as some do in order to ridicule the idea of CO₂ as a pollutant). If you think these impacts are implausible, then you would obviously have a problem with calling CO₂ a pollutant. The physiological point becomes a distraction. But rather than having a conversation about definitions, it is far more honest and direct simply to have the debate about the impacts of climate change. This complex and evolving scientific debate continues with much energy in the peer-reviewed literature, though it must be acknowledged that, with the exception of a handful of fringe figures, the mainstream debate is not between those who think impacts will be bad and those who think they will be minor, but between those who think that impending climate changes spell human misery on a scale never before seen and those who think it is much worse than that. The debate is not between climate change being bad vs neutral (or even good); it is between disastrous and utterly catastrophic. There are many more publishing climatologists who are worried about the fall of civilisation and even the extinction of humanity than there are who believe the impacts will be minor or even beneficial. In this context, even if the outcomes resulting from complex causal chains involve other factors as well (not least human social, economic, political and cultural systems), nonetheless, calling carbon dioxide a pollutant is quite logical - as is taking action to slash our emissions as quickly as we can.

Is environmentalism failing?

Is Environmentalism Failing? from Australian Broadcasting Corporation on FORA.tv.
A fascinating debate held in Melbourne and broadcast by the ABC last year. It is 90 minutes long but worth watching in full as each speaker has important points to make. Speakers include: Clive Hamilton, David Suzuki, Christine Milne, Ian Lowe, Anna Rose and Philip Sutton. A number of the older speakers highlight just how far social attitudes, behaviours and policies have come in the last fifty years (i.e. since the birth of the modern environmental movement with the publication of Silent Spring in 1962). All of them emphasise the size of the task ahead, particularly in the face of climate change.

Apologies for the ad at the start.

What has smoking got to do with climate change?

DOUBT from The Climate Reality Project on Vimeo.

Do cigarettes contribute to the warming of the planet? Not really, but the deliberate manufacturing of public doubt in the face of widespread scientific evidence has been the hallmark of industry attempts to delay regulation in both cases. Not only has big oil used the same arguments and tactics as big tobacco, but in some cases, the same individuals. Certainly many of the same anti-regulation think tanks appear as sources of claims that are subsequently picked up and repeated in the mainstream media. Numerous publications have documented the history of these groups, who act as a PR smokescreen for industries in danger of serious public backlash over the dangerous activities from which they profit (for instance, Merchants of Doubt). The goal is not refutation of the science but merely the seeding of public doubt through the appearance of ongoing controversy on topics considered resolved amongst the experts. The question is how long they will be successful. For the link between cigarettes and cancer, such tactics effectively won the tobacco industry three decades of public confusion and regulatory hiatus in which to maximise profits. We don't have three decades in which to delay over climate.

Rupert's pollution: What does UK phone hacking have to do with Australia's carbon debate?

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 World phone 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 extreme inequality.

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.

A shared understanding

Each of these reputable scientific institutions is staking its reputation on the claim that human carbon pollution is dangerously altering our climate. Credibility is their most valuable asset to risk.

The list of reputable scientific institutions staking their reputation on the denial of that claim can be counted on the fingers of one head.

Arguments from authority are a legitimate secondary form of argument, and are quite relevant for non-specialists such as myself (and, I assume, most of my readers).
This question is discussed in more detail by Kate at ClimateSight: "Is there a consensus in climate science?"

Are you certain you know what uncertainty means?

I've said before that there is indeed still some significant uncertainty in the scientific literature concerning our ongoing and increasing climate disruption, that is, there is genuine scientific debate between those who argue that climate disruption is likely to be horrendous and those who argue it could well be catastrophic.

Within this context, Michael Tobis points out that arguments highlighting the uncertainty of climate science increase the reasons for taking aggressive policy action. Greater uncertainty means greater risk.

The real climate debate

"The scientific debate [concerning climate] is not between deniers and those who can prove that releasing massive amounts of warming gases will make the world warmer. Every major scientific academy in the world, and all the peer-reviewed literature, says global warming denialism is a pseudo-science, on a par with Intelligent Design, homeopathy, or the claim that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS. [...] No: the debate is between the scientists who say the damage we are doing is a disaster, and the scientists who say it is catastrophe."

- Johann Hari, There won't be a bailout for the earth".

There are many more climate scientists who think that the IPCC position in the 2007 report is understated, conservative and outdated than who consider it alarmist. Debate still rages and the science is far from settled, but amongst those in the field, the uncertainty is almost entirely between those who think that our current path leads to misery, precipitous ecosystem and biodiversity decline, stronger droughts and more damaging floods, to dangerously rising sea levels, huge financial losses, widespread food insecurity and large numbers of refugees, and those who think that things are considerably worse than that.

It doesn't have to be this way.
Image by JKS. H/T Bryan for the link.

Partisanship: not a zero-sum game

An interesting letter signed by over 130 former members of US Congress (from both major parties) urges all candidates for election to treat each other with respect as opponents or adversaries, rather than enemies. Their goal is for all members and prospective members "to conduct campaigns for Congress with decency and respect toward opponents, to be truthful in presenting information about self and opponents, to engage in good faith debate about the issues and each other's record, to refrain from personal attack, and if elected, to behave in office according to these same principles". Otherwise, "the prognosis for our politics - and with it our economic health and our security - is grim."

Rowan Williams in debate: economics and ethics in a crisis

Rowan Williams has a new book and is to discuss the ideas with an interesting panel tomorrow night from 6.30pm in a live webcast.

"During the ongoing global financial crisis, the values on which our society and economic structures are based have been called into question. In a new book to be published by Palgrave Macmillan, Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Larry Elliott, Economics Editor of The Guardian, have brought together a collection of leading commentators to examine the role of morality and ethics in business. At this event, both discuss these fundamental themes together with Zac Goldsmith MP, Editor of The Ecologist, and Robert Skidelsky, professor of political economy, politician and historian."

Climate science vindicated again

A couple of hours ago the Muir Russell inquiry into the hacked CRU emails was published. Here are the key findings from the executive summary (emphases original).

13. Climate science is a matter of such global importance, that the highest standards of honesty, rigour and openness are needed in its conduct. On the specific allegations made against the behaviour of CRU scientists, we find that their rigour and honesty as scientists are not in doubt.

14. In addition, we do not find that their behaviour has prejudiced the balance of advice given to policymakers. In particular, we did not find any evidence of behaviour that might undermine the conclusions of the IPCC assessments.

15. But we do find that there has been a consistent pattern of failing to display the proper degree of openness, both on the part of the CRU scientists and on the part of the UEA, who failed to recognise not only the significance of statutory requirements but also the risk to the reputation of the university and, indeed, to the credibility of UK climate science.

The full text (120 pages) is here. This is basically what I said back in November and confirms the earlier two inquiries into the CRU emails and also stands with the two-part PSU inquiry into the conduct of Michael Mann, who was also decisively vindicated. Claims of a whitewash need to take this into account. This latest finding also needs to be put together with a recently published Dutch review of the IPCC 4th report, which found only minor faults.

If this all makes no sense to you, then you are fortunate for not having been following the media circus over the last few months. If you don't believe a word of any of these independent vindications of climate science, then perhaps you need to think about the nature of conspiracy theories. If you're wondering why this even matters, it is because what we do with what we know is important.

In it for the money? Climate science funding

I often hear the claim that the 97% of active climate scientists who accept anthropogenic global warming must only take that stand because it is profitable to do so and they would lose their jobs or funding if they didn't. Here is a two part series showing why such an argument is ludicrous.

Part I
Part II

The bottom line? "In the United States, it is essentially impossible to get rich from public funding for research because there are rules that forbid institutions from allowing that to happen."

Why do our conversations so often fail?

A guest post by Alastair Roberts

The convictions that we have about the form of the truth are undoubtedly among the most important that we have. They shape our notions of the sort of thing that we are looking for when we are looking for truth and our ideas of how we ought to go about it. One of my fundamental convictions about truth is that it takes the character of a conversation. Truth can never be reduced to a single perspective, or even be borne by a single voice.

Studying the New Testament played a crucial role in leading me to this conviction. Many people read the epistles of the Apostle Paul as if he were delivering lots of monologues on the doctrine of salvation, and fail to situate his voice within the context of particular conversations. The frequent attempts to recast the thought of Paul in a monological form, or to abstract Paul’s theological pronouncements from contingent dialogical contexts, can produce all sorts of difficulties when we seek to establish the consistency of his thought. In a similar manner, the relationship between the gospels is a lot easier to understand when we think of truth as a conversation. Taking such an approach we won’t seek to reduce the gospels to a single narrative, nor will we constantly play their differences off against each other. We also won’t leave them sealed off or isolated from each other.

If truth is a conversation, the way that that we should look for it is through dialogue. The truth is profoundly and inescapably multifaceted, involving various counterbalancing perspectives. Rather than seeking the complete annihilation of our conversation partner’s perspective, our goal should generally be the purifying and deepening of conversation. In pursuing such a goal confrontational and agonistic forms of dialogue can be profoundly important. If truthful and illuminating conversation is our goal then in all likelihood we will also frequently find that we are arguing positions that seem quite at odds with each other at first glance, arguing both sides of particular debates.

Given that I hold such an understanding of truth, it should come as no surprise that the character of productive discourse and its facilitation in various situations are matters of considerable interest and concern to me. Despite frequently failing in the area, encouraging healthy and fruitful conversations, with plenty of give and take, is something that I seek to aim for. I often wonder about the various reasons why certain conversations end in acrimony, fail to proceed beyond certain impasses, fail to produce any light, or isolate certain persons who could provide important or challenging contributions.

Sadly, so many of the discussions and conversations that I witness seem to be thwarted by prejudices, rushes to judgment, stereotypes, seeing imaginary threats when reading between the lines, heightened sensitivities, feelings of offence and other similar things. There are certain conversations that I hardly ever engage in any more as a result. I have often puzzled and pondered over whether there are key common causes for such breakdowns of conversation, something which I am witnessing in a huge range of social interactions. The impression that I have arrived at is that the underlying issue in numerous cases is a sort of paranoia, arising out of people’s sense of being vulnerable, out of control or persecuted.

Virtually everyone seems to think of themselves as a sort of victim nowadays. The liberal rhetoric of victimhood has been adopted by numerous groups and minorities. Even among those where such rhetoric isn’t widespread, a sense of persecution is not hard to find. Atheists, Christians, men, women, gay, straight, left wing, right wing, libertarian, authoritarian, rich, poor, people from virtually every racial or ethnic background, we all seem to have discovered ways to portray ourselves as being under threat and allow such portrayals powerfully to shape our engagements with others and our sense of self.

If you feel out of control, criticisms start to feel like personal threats or attacks (something that is a huge issue when dialoguing with people in the realm of identity politics). People who feel vulnerable and feel that they lack direct power also start to give meaning to every little thing. The term for this is paranoia. Every action or engagement with the paranoid person can become an occasion for a conversation with themselves, trying to deduce the meaning of insignificant acts. This is one reason why conspiracy theories flourish among the weak.

Academia is no longer the preserve of a privileged white male elite and increasingly the most important conversations that we need to have are with members of vulnerable minorities, or of groups who have been denied power or voice within society. The problem that we face is that of crafting productive and critical discourses in circumstances where many of the people that we most need to talk to are suffering to some degree or other from paranoia. On the one hand, these people have many things to say that we need to hear. On the other hand, there are often many areas of their perception of reality that derive more from paranoia than from a clear sense of the way that things actually are. These things need to be challenged, without provoking a sense that they are being personally attacked.

The traditional agonistic and confrontational style of discourse works well in an academy dominated by privileged white males. A traditional model of masculinity involved the raising of men in a competitive setting, where they were trained to get over their sense of vulnerability, stand up for themselves and take what came at them, without taking things personally, or running to an authority figure. This prepared men very well for fruitful engagement in a fairly confrontational and challenging form of discourse. Put a more paranoid person in such a form of discourse, though, and the conversation swiftly explodes or closes down. I think that there are valuable aspects to such form of discourse that we don’t want to lose. I am uncertain about how we could go about producing a more inclusive form of discourse that would be as successful a setting for critical discourse.

I suspect that this dynamic lies behind many reactions to N.T. Wright’s thought. People raised on the idea that the gospel is always under threat and the church always under attack, but with little sense of the actual power of the truth and authority of the church can succumb to a theological and ecclesiastical paranoia. So the church becomes threatened by some vast liberal conspiracy, every marginal theological party within the denomination is an attempt to take it over, every different theology is an attack on the heart of the gospel, any questioning of a theological formulation is regarded as an attempt to overthrow the truth, critics are demonized, and everything becomes polarized very quickly. I have yet to find an easy way to defuse this besides patience and long-term friendship and fellowship.

This post isn’t an attempt to present an answer to this issue. Rather, it is a tentative attempt at a diagnosis of a problem. I would be interested to hear the thoughts that people have on the accuracy or otherwise of this thesis, and of ways in which conversation can be encouraged in such cases.

Alastair is a PhD student at Durham University working on the developing format of Bibles in 16th and 17th century England, and on the effect that they had on engagement with the text. He used to blog prolifically at Adversaria and over the years, more than a few of his posts caught my eye.

How inevitable is decline?

Have we passed the point of no return?
Our contemporary industrial society is sick. But how bad is our diagnosis? Do we have a mild illness requiring a brief lie down and an aspirin, a major problem requiring emergency surgery, or a terminal illness beyond curative treatment, leaving only better or worse palliative care?

Dark Mountain
There has been an interesting debate on this question upfolding recently on the Guardian website between what may be viewed as different branches of environmentalism. To understand the debate, you first need to get a bit of a handle on a new movement in the UK called The Dark Mountain Project (DMP). Launched just over a year ago by Paul Kingsnorth and Dougald Hine, DMP is a literary and cultural project exploring new stories for an age of collapse and transition. Their manifesto can be found here, though this quote might give you a taste of their perspective:

"This project starts with our sense that civilisation as we have known it is coming to an end; brought down by a rapidly changing climate, a cancerous economic system and the ongoing mass destruction of the non-human world. But it is driven by our belief that this age of collapse – which is already beginning – could also offer a new start, if we are careful in our choices. The end of the world as we know it is not the end of the world full stop."

So while being deeply pessimistic about the chances of continuing life as we know it, they are searching for new (or renewed) cultural narratives to guide us through what they expect will be a period of widespread ecological, social, economic and political change. In particular, those at the DMP are quite critical of an optimistic environmentalism that sees us developing and implementing technological solutions to ecological crises based around a low-carbon economy that will enable the continued economic development of a social and cultural trajectory not too dissimilar to the one we're already on, that the future will be merely "an upgraded version of the present". Nicholas Stern's newish book is one example of this kind of thinking. In other words, DMP are questioning whether sustainable development is really sustainable if it assumes the necessity and desirability of ongoing industrial development in even the developed world. I have previously quoted John Michael Greer, who spoke about contemporary industrial society facing a predicament, not merely a series of problems. That is the basic idea: that we need to work out how to best cushion a now inevitable descent from our current level of social complexity, and Dark Mountain wants to explore cultural narratives other than the myth of progress.

Dark Mountain is gaining a bit of a following, and are holding their first festival in Wales in a few weeks' time. One of the keynote speakers at the festival is well-known Guardian journalist and environmentalist George Monbiot.

The Guardian debate
Monbiot started the Guardian conversation on Tuesday with an article titled "I share their despair, but I'm not quite ready to climb the Dark Mountain. He accused the DMP of "giving up" on industrial civilisation, being content to wait for its downfall, which will become a self-fulfilling prophecy if we ignore the real opportunities to reform the current system.

Kingsnorth and Hine, founders of Dark Mountain, came back yesterday with "The environmental movement needs to stop pretending". They rejected Monbiot's portrayal of their ideas and charged mainstream environmentalism (including Monbiot) with having been co-opted by capitalist dreams of endless growth, just with wind farms replacing coal.

And then today, Simon Lewis, Royal Society research fellow at the Earth & Biosphere Institute, University of Leeds tried to find a mediating position in "Yes, we can change society before global crises overwhelm us". Lewis argues that Monbiot is too optimistic about the life expectancy of industrial civilisation while Kingsnorth and Hine are premature in issuing a terminal diagnosis. Instead, there is a rapidly closing window of opportunity.

A growing conversation
All three articles are contributions to an ethical and cultural debate that I think will only continue to grow in coming years. It is not a new debate, but it is likely to become increasingly mainstream as more people come to see the depth and breadth of ecological crises our industrial society has spawned. I think this exchange includes its fair share of misunderstandings and misrepresentations (for instance, it is clear that Kingsnorth and Hine are not advocating any kind of quietist despair, nor does Monbiot hope for endless growth. Nonetheless, these authors differ in their estimation of how deeply ecological crises cut into the arteries of our present way of life and how radically and rapidly things need to change as a result. Anyone who takes seriously our present crises will need to face these questions, and on our answers, new alliances and battlegrounds will be drawn.
Speaking of interesting Guardian articles, this one is also worth a read, pointing out that most of the current climate debate is way too simplistic and that scientific, economic, political and ethical questions are not be carefully enough distinguished.
Monbiot and Kingsnorth had an earlier run-in over these questions a little while back.

UK 1; Australia 0: Monbiot vs Plimer on Lateline

A case study in the ancient art of avoiding the question
Yesterday, prominent Australian climate sceptic Ian Plimer debated UK Guardian columnist George Monbiot on ABC's Lateline. The result? UK 1; Australia 0. You can watch it for yourself here.

After some initial conversation about the hacked emails, the discussion turns to two of Plimer's best-known claims, that volcanoes produce more carbon dioxide than human activity and that global temperatures have declined since 1998. Time and again, Plimer sidesteps the questions of both Monbiot and the host Tony Jones when they point to published studies refuting his claims. It grows increasingly comic.

Eventually, Tony Jones asks this in apparent exasperation: "Is it reasonable for journalists to ask questions about something which you repeatedly claim in your book and to actually get answers to those questions?" Plimer's response was, unsurprisingly, to dodge this question about his question-dodging.

Note that Plimer has repeatedly challenged Monbiot to a public debate, but like his evasive answers on Lateline, when Monbiot accepted, Plimer didn't follow through. From yesterday's showing, perhaps we can get some idea why.

UPDATE: Monbiot's summary of the experience.

CRU Hacking: the end of the world as we know it?

Or, on not being able to see the wood for the trees
Although it may still be too early for a final call, the illegally hacked emails from the Climatic Research Unit in the University of East Anglia are yet to turn up anything that comes close to justifying the "conspiracy", "smoking gun" and "final nail" headlines doing the rounds. There are plenty of cherry-picked quotes that initially sound bad, but isn't it important to presume innocence until proven guilty? So where is the proof?

Well, having had a week to find incriminating evidence, there is very little substantially proven beyond some rudeness from a few scientists when discussing those who have dismissed, misrepresented and distorted their work. Most of the "smoking gun" emails currently generating traffic are "shop-talk" taken out of context. Thus far, it would appear that the claims being made of a grand collusion are themselves merely one more conspiracy theory.

I could well be wrong. There may be more information to come to light in the coming days and weeks. There may be some elements of genuine concern. The discussion of freedom of information requests may indicate that certain individuals didn't want to spend yet more of their time answering the same old questions from dishonest opponents and (maybe) considered unethical actions to avoid doing so. There may be a couple of embarrassing revelations of too much spin (though I am yet to see one published paper decisively compromised by the scandal, and all the relevant journals are looking into the situation). Calling denialists "idiots" and so forth may not increase these scientists' chances of receiving a Christmas card from them this year. But the bottom line at this point is that there is no smoking gun, because there is, as yet, no bullet-ridden body. That is, there is no evidence that I have seen or heard about so far to indicate that any published papers were compromised, that any illegal activity took place, that any conspiracy exists. Amidst all the fuss, it is important to not lose the wood for the trees here.

What the emails do illustrate is something of the internal workings of all sciences, filled as they are with political feuds, concern for reputation, ongoing criticism of methods and interpretations of data, petty squabbles and everything you'd expect to find amongst any group of sinful humans trying hard to sort out various questions about how our world works with limited time, budgets and patience.

There is an interesting and often insightful discussion of some aspects of the ethics of the situation here, including the emails that discuss spurning partisan journals. And there is further detailed discussion of many of the more quoted emails that allegedly show "data manipulation" here. Perhaps the most quoted phrase about "hiding the decline" has been repeatedly shown to be a storm in a tea-cup (e.g. here and here).

Now those who were already convinced that one of the most researched and heavily scrutinised fields in contemporary science is all an elaborate conspiracy may see otherwise, but the onus remains on those who think this is much more than a publicity stunt leading up to Copenhagen to give answers to the following questions: What specific studies have these emails discredited? How does even a least charitable reading of these emails, mainly involving around six scientists at one centre, discredit the work of hundreds of contemporary climatologists and other earth scientists related to climate change in dozens of countries? Where are the faults in the more than thirty thousand published papers that comprise the body of work in this science? Answers must be specific and preferably in peer-reviewed journals.*

So what about all those headlines about the end of the world as we know it (for climate research)? Looks like we're back to the end of the world as we know it (for us and our children).
*NB Those who claim that there are four hundred and fifty peer reviewed papers against the generally accepted understanding are once again on very thin ice indeed. The vast majority of these papers are not actually peer reviewed, and/or known to be false, and/or irrelevant, and/or out of date, and/or not supportive of climate change denial. There are of course many legitimate continuing debates about a number of key factors involved in climate change (e.g. cloud formation, glacial movement, feedback mechanisms and more), but these are almost all happening within a widely accepted general framework that accepts alarming anthropogenic climate change.

PS Apologies for the multiple posts on climate change debates recently. It is just that these issues are quite timely with Copenhagen less than two weeks away.

PPS More interesting commentary.

PPPS And a new joint statement from the MET office, the Natural Environment Research Council and the Royal Society on the state of climate science.