by frog
This worrisome research article has appeared in a peer reviewed journal. Itś not telling us anything that we didn’t already know, but it does catalogue the situation and help us steer clear of the hyperbole.
Environmental scepticism denies the seriousness of environmental problems, and self-professed ‘sceptics’ claim to be unbiased analysts combating ‘junk science’. This study quantitatively analyses 141 English-language environmentally sceptical books published between 1972 and 2005. We find that over 92 per cent of these books, most published in the US since 1992, are linked to conservative think tanks (CTTs). Further, we analyse CTTs involved with environmental issues and find that 90 per cent of them espouse environmental scepticism. We conclude that scepticism is a tactic of an elite-driven counter-movement designed to combat environmentalism, and that the successful use of this tactic has contributed to the weakening of US commitment to environmental protection.
In summary, environmental scepticism consists of four key themes. First, environmental scepticism is defined by its denial of the seriousness of environmental problems and dismissal of scientific evidence documenting these problems. This primary theme sets environmental scepticism apart from earlier environmental opposition movements like the US ‘wise use movement’ and ‘sage brush rebellion’ (Switzer 1997). Second, environmental scepticism draws upon the first theme to question the importance of environmentally protective policies. Third, environmental scepticism endorses an anti-regulatory/anti-corporate liability position that flows from the first two claims. Lastly, environmental sceptics often cast environmental protection as threatening Western progress.
The fact that conservative think tanks have so successfully undermined the best in environmental science does not bode well for us as a species, primarily because we are so close to so many potentially catastrophic tipping points. Perhaps we’ve passed some already and don’t even know it.
I have no doubt that some of the politically motivated sceptics that troll this space will immediately jump on the bandwagon about how the Greens are arresting progress and are Luddites. No doubt we are all part of some long term, grand conspiracy to take the world back to the Dark Ages. The research discusses that tactic in detail. But we never bought into that crap in any case.
Published in Environment & Resource Management | Society & Culture by frog on Mon, June 16th, 2008
Tags: , conspiracy, denial, environmentalism, sceptic, think tank
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
No doubt we are all part of some long term, grand conspiracy to take the world back to the Dark Ages.
According to the article GW skeptics are are all part of some long term, grand conspiracy to take the world back to the 1950s.
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Sigh – yet again. Someone inspects their navel and finds that yes there is lint.
You look at environmentally sceptically articles and find they are funded by conservative think tanks. I suspect you would find similar results for “call for action” articles on the environment being funded by pro-environment organisations. ( I now expect the politically motivated believers to respond and say all there research is independent).
The research article from what I have been able to read so far does not mention whether the scepticism was backed by empirical research. The article just seeks to shoot who funded the research. Poor example Frog – lets stop shooting messengers and look at the information. Or have we returned to the Marxist dialectic discussions?
Ps will someone, possibly even the greens pick up the copenhagen consensus suggestion of funding Vitamin A. very cheap about $60m and has a Billion dollars with of social improvements to the poor and developing. Heck thats possibly less than the price of an embassy in Sweden, much better use of our aid budget I think. Improve a lot of lives and hey maybe even make the world a better place. Ahh nasty economics seeking yet again to make peoples lives better – can’t be having that now, that would be actually doing some good in the world.
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Well, maybe it doesn’t help that the scientific community has made a massive big mistake in the past before when it comes to climate. Who here remembers the 1970s? In the 1970s, we were all going to freeze to death because of global cooling; and guess what happened???
Absolutely nothing; instead, temperatures increased.
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What would Hayek say Says:
June 16th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
> You look at environmentally sceptically articles and find they are funded by conservative think tanks. I suspect you would find similar results for “call for action? articles on the environment being funded by pro-environment organisations.
A lot of the ‘call for action’ articles come from groups like Greenpeace, but the research they are based on usually doesn’t. In fact, the single largest source of peer-reviewed papers identifying evidence of global-warming related problems is NASA, which is a US government agency. And a huge amount of research is done by tenured university academics.
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john-ston Says:
June 16th, 2008 at 7:35 pm
> Well, maybe it doesn’t help that the scientific community has made a massive big mistake in the past before when it comes to climate. Who here remembers the 1970s? In the 1970s, we were all going to freeze to death because of global cooling; and guess what happened???
I’m not old enough to remember the 1970s, but I have read reviews of the academic literature from that time. And it was actually relatively evenly balanced between predictions of warming, predictions of cooling, and predictions that the temperature was going to remain about the same. Perhaps the mass media presented it differently. I wouldn’t know – I wasn’t there.
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All opposition to the climate change con MUST be silenced!
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John-ston: http://tinyurl.com/4h9ozc and http://tinyurl.com/3yzczf
WWHS: I think the Vitamin A thing would come under the Green policy of ‘give more aid’, though perhaps not specifically.
I also don’t think “the politically motivated believers” would cite research done by environmental organisations, either because they don’t actually do much research to talk about (although they probably do some), or much, much more likely because the environmental organisations cite those things called ‘peer reviewed journals’, unlike those chaps in the paper that frog cites in this thread.
The paper frog cites seems to just be a quantitative study i.e. counting, so is perhaps not *that* useful, except for a bit of point-scoring. This particular piece of research and is most likely situated in the context of all the other work that the authors have done on the subject, which featured a lot more in depth analysis. The paper done by Jacques entitled The Rearguard of Modernity: Environmental Skepticism as a Struggle of Citizenship is probably a better one to read than the one frog has got (read it frog, it’s much better!), as it’s certainly more in depth. I know people throw ‘really interesting/important/essential articles around all the time, but this one was really something.
It’s in the table of contents there: http://tinyurl.com/6ar8ej
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Well, some other people have been busy too…
Kahikatea, see my links on the 1970s stuff…
jh, yeah, that is pretty ooooold.
bb, in the words of phil u – …eh..?
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Frog, you’re sounding more and more desperate these days. What’s up?
The role of skepticism within science is important. Without the perseverance of earlier skeptics, who risked ridicule and being branded as heretics, we would still believe Earth to be the center of the Universe and continents to be motionless.
If funding is all you’ve got to go on, I sense your argument is lost.
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john-ston … you seem to be mistaken. You have of course got the classic skeptic mistaken here. There is a difference between peer-review scientific papers and the MSM. In fact, more peer review paper predicted warming (42) compared to cooling (7).
What would Hayek say – the Copenhagen consensus analysis is mis-leading- the results were biased. Lombong used a short time frame and allocated a tiny amount of money, to give any justice to the issues he was analysing.
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“the scientific community has made a massive big mistake in the past before when it comes to climate … global cooling”
Rubbish. Where’s your reference for “the scientific community”. Not to mention, where’s your reference for “the 70s”. And also, where’s your reference that anyone said “the new ice age” would have been in the decades between then and now?
AFAIK,
it was only a few scientists that predicted a new ice age, not the entire community;
it was mainly a thought experiment, not detailed predictions with timescales;
the theory mainly gained media exposure in the 60s and had stopped being discussed much in the 70s;
it was only very very slightly discussed in the media anyway, not the pervasive coverage of climate today;
no-one predicted a new ice age in the next few decades, so they can’t really have been proved wrong yet, eh?
If you can prove me wrong on any of those points I would love to see the reference!
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“I suspect you would find similar results for “call for action? articles on the environment being funded by pro-environment organisations.”
I think this is immediately refuted by even the most cursory search – quite obviously the majority of pro-AGW or pro-action on AGW reports do not come from Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth or whoever. Instead, pro-AGW reports come from a very wide range of sources: individual academics, national and international scientific bodies, local and national governments, government agencies, private businesses, pretty much every UN organisation, and the whole spectrum of NGOs from social justice ones such as Oxfam, through social policy and economic think tanks and consultancies to the more environmental ones such as WWF and Forest and Bird.
I would guess that there was 5 or 10% of each type of source; not 92% from a single type.
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Today’s Climate Change Historians are quickly trying to re-write yesterday’s predictions. It’s pretty embarrassing to have been so spectacularly wrong back then, that positioning it now as “just a few nut jobs” is almost offensive.
Time Magazine in 1974 ran a feature article of the impending Ice Age, and after a nice big chunk on how it’s probably man causing the ice age, but we don’t know for sure, so, just to prove scientific consensus:
Indeed, it is to gain such knowledge that 38 ships and 13 aircraft, carrying scientists from almost 70 nations, are now assembling in the Atlantic and elsewhere for a massive 100-day study of the effects of the tropical seas and atmosphere on worldwide weather. The study itself is only part of an international scientific effort known acronymically as GARP (for Global Atmospheric Research Program).
And best of all, just in case the Ice Age doesn’t pan out, they hint at the deadly combo with another major issue still being discussed today, max pop:
Whatever the cause of the cooling trend, its effects could be extremely serious, if not catastrophic. Scientists figure that only a 1% decrease in the amount of sunlight hitting the earth’s surface could tip the climatic balance, and cool the planet enough to send it sliding down the road to another ice age within only a few hundred years.
The earth’s current climate is something of an anomaly; in the past 700,000 years, there have been at least seven major episodes of glaciers spreading over much of the planet. Temperatures have been as high as they are now only about 5% of the time. But there is a peril more immediate than the prospect of another ice age. Even if temperature and rainfall patterns change only slightly in the near future in one or more of the three major grain-exporting countries—the U.S., Canada and Australia —global food stores would be sharply reduced. University of Toronto Climatologist Kenneth Hare, a former president of the Royal Meteorological Society, believes that the continuing drought and the recent failure of the Russian harvest gave the world a grim premonition of what might happen. Warns Hare: “I don’t believe that the world’s present population is sustainable if there are more than three years like 1972 in a row.”
Back then we were apparently right to be skeptical. Today, the debate is supposedly over. Except that the future will prove, no matter the actual outcome, the computerized models we used were certainly worth questioning.
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BP: “Frog, you’re sounding more and more desperate these days. What’s up?”
Surely there’s a typo here, obviously BP meant to say “BB, you’re sounding more and more desperate these days.”
and, by the way BP, funding is not all that we have to go on, so no worries there
use the frogblog search box to discover all the different pieces of evidence that frog has brought us over the years.
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good grief Zen, is that the best you can cherry pick? It’s not a very convincing compendium of quotes is it?
The Global Atmospheric Research Program was not set up because of “the new ice age”, rather to increase understanding of climate. Surely you don’t disagree with international multi-disciplinary scientific studies to increase human knowledge about the planet do you?
And the doomsaying quote from the Climatologist is about a drought, not “the new ice age”.
But you’re right, positioning it as “just a few nut jobs? is offensive, that’s why no-one has done that. The two of us that addressed this said “few”, but we didn’t characterise their mental states in any way. I’m sure the people that theorised such ideas were completely sane, they just didn’t have as much observational evidence as we have today.
But I accept that the theory lasted a bit longer and gained a slightly higher level of attention than I suggested, but a single article from Time magazine from 1974 is hardly evidence of a vast scientific consensus. Personally I think the episode of Doctor Who from 1968 (The Ice Warriors) is better evidence, and the new ice age on Earth depicted in that episode was, I believe, set in 3000, not 2000.
Hmmm … what’s that “it’s probably man causing the ice age” business, I’d love to hear more on that, I’d have thought that the theories were mainly about solar cycles, not anthropogenic.
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>>use the frogblog search box to discover all the different pieces of evidence that frog has brought us over the years
The science is not settled. Frogs evidence probably looks the same as Frogs evidence would have done in the 70s in support of global cooling.
The question remains open to discussion. Don’t be scared.
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in your version of reality perhaps
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The only way to understand what could be happening in the future is to look at what has happened in the past. And the past climate wasn’t always so pretty either.
The supposed start of the Ice age back in the 70′ could have been right after all (although I personally have a different view) according to the Vostoc ice core samples, this interglacial period has lasted far longer than the previous ones. So maybe GW has completely mucked things up.
The only thing we truely do know, is that we don’t know is what is going to happen next. Climate science hasn’t been around for that long. That’s why the models that scientist use to predict climate change are usually so sh*t at predicting climate change.
Something else that we do know is that since the 70′s there are 3 billion more people to wonder whether the planet will still be able to sustain them in the years to come.
And oh yeah, I think I mentioned somewhere before that there is apparently a scientific concensus about the overpopulation problem too.
Overpopulation isn’t just a matter of too many people though, it’s also caused when there are not enough resources. And there seem to be alot of things pointing to a slight shortage of certain resources at the moment don’t there? And climate change dosn’t help much with that problem either.
Zen I have a good little quote for you,
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Zen quoted,
“…Warns Hare:“I don’t believe that the world’s present population is sustainable if there are more than three years like 1972 in a row.?”
And it was around that time that the Green revolution was kicking in.
It’s just lucky that we live in the Oil age.
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>>in your version of reality perhaps
Just reality. I am certain that there is too much certainty.
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“what’s that “it’s probably man causing the ice age? business, I’d love to hear more on that”
I think that bit was where the media started interviewing their typewriters and got the answer that it was the smoke from factory chimneys blocking out the sun that was casuing the cooling
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StephenR – your right. As I was pointing out it looks to be just a quantitative study. We counted x papers and of this x% where funded from y. You could have gained the same information from Cindy and her Exxonsecrets work.
However the article so far from my reading does not say that the results of the papers where wrong or that there was error in the data. Just simply x papers produced by y.
The same applies to all other papers – x have been produced by Y. The validity of the data is what matters.
The article is just another example of dialetic nonsense.
Tsuhara – good to know that you reject economics out of hand and improving people’s lives. Good to see how your willing to turn on your own if they suggest any alternative form of action for improving the environment. You know like actually improving it.
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Kevyn says,
” think that bit was where the media started interviewing their typewriters and got the answer that it was the smoke from factory chimneys blocking out the sun that was casuing the cooling”
What you are refering to Kevyn is called “global dimming”.
http://www.celsias.com/2007/05/09/veiling-our-true-predicament-part-i-global-dimming/
http://environmentaldefenseblogs.org/climate411/2007/04/03/global_dimming/
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WWHD, the article that I linked to at the end has bits in it like:
I think if you look at the subject of peer-review here, and decide whether that matters or not…I wrote to Jacques a couple of years ago to request a paper he had presented which had some interesting graphs on the subject, i’ll see if I can find it…probably tomorrow.
Many conservative think tanks have publishing capacities (e.g., Cato Press and American Enterprise Institute Press), providing them with perceived legitimacy in the eyes of the general public and allowing them to advance science-related positions outside of the peer reviewed scientific community.
There was an article written called Defeating Kyoto: The Conservative
Movement’s Impact on U.S. Climate Change Policy on how much exposure the non-peer reviewed thinktanks/industry sources were given in the lead up to Kyoto…and it was quite a lot. One of those organisations even wheeled out Michael Crichton for a U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works!
I don’t think frog’s article proves anything except to confirm some suspicions…we cannot act on suspicion, of course. Seems more like a ‘dog-whistle’ to…’sceptics’ to come out of the woodwork, oddly.
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StephenR – thanks for the information. I’m not against good research – I was just concerned that this article came across as stating the obvious.
I’m still concerned that we are not taking action on the environment (and peoples lives) by focussing on climate. By this I mean that climate change has become too big – hey a bill that comes back with 1000+ amendments suggests that we have made this as big as Ben Hur but with less return(more like Waterworld). We scrap over this and abdicate doing things that:
a) have immediate effect;
b) low cost;
c) and very high return (like providing Vitamin A, improving access to fresh water)
d) NZ could do (e.g. via govt aid budget and/or with philanthropic support – Tyndel foundation does a lot, so do the Morgans)
e) and we don’t even need to worry about having to lead or wait from the rest of the world.
The best thing is that these would help the environment and people giving them a better life qualitatively and quantitatively.
But then as an economist I am biased.
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“no-one predicted a new ice age in the next few decades, so they can’t really have been proved wrong yet, eh?”
That’s not entirely true – The Clash predicted an imminent ice age in their song London Calling.
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What would Hayek say
Great suggestions, however they will fall on deaf ears. Unfortunately, AGW delivers more opportunities to tax n spend.
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Ah yes, there was a bit on Cost-Benefit analysis in the ‘Modernity’ article which touches on Lomborg a bit. The thing with these aid proposals is that they exist in a different sphere to a market for carbon. One (aid) is money taken from the taxpayer and given to relevant programmes, mostly overseas. NZ’s/the world’s carbon market however requires companies to pay for their emissions, usually by funding low-carbon projects overseas, so I don’t really see the potential for company money to be appropriated for aid programs, without say, more taxation or more legislation.
I’m not sure if Lomborg addresses the cost of dealing with 2/3/4/5 degrees of warming either…
Hmm..hayek…economist…I’m just about to rip into this:
http://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-50th-Anniversary/dp/0930073193
Approve?
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BP, did you know we have an aid budget? It’s about $400 million a year.
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Yes, I know we have an aid budget.
Now we also have a Russian aid budget which will decrease global temperature by 0 degrees.
A quality spend, certainly.
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Michael Crichton is no fool. I do not know what the US Senate wanted to talk to him about but I suspect it might have been his proposal that government funded research should be “double blind.” The greatest invention of modern medicine is probably the double blind clinical trial when neither the person administering the drug on trial, nor the person receiving it knows whether they are taking the drug or the placebo.
I am a strong supporter of the idea that the scientist being asked to research the effect of vehicle exhausts does not know whether the money comes from the MED or the MfE and the department granting the funds has no idea who has won the contract.
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Owen I’m not sure the Senate actually called for him – I think it was more that he was someone that the ‘sceptics’/whatevers wanted to be heard, regardless of the ‘MD’ by his name.
Your second idea doesn’t sound like it would hurt, but I doubt it’s so simple.
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Hi StephenR, not a bad book. You may also want to have a look at some “fun” but still serious contemporary books.
I recommend EconomistTim Harford – the undercover economist http://www.timharford.com/
Tim does a good explanation of why coffee cost so much compared to the price of raw ingredients (coffee beans and water are very low cost). Good Coffee is something I really care about (i’m sure I will now be flamed about evils of coffee industry, I will agree however that starbucks is evil but thats from the perspective that what they serve is not coffee but flavoured stuff)
Freakonomics http://freakonomicsbook.com/ by Stephen Levitt and Stephen Dubner. This work looked at why do drug dealers live with the mothers, and whether the choice of babies name predicts their future life outcomes.
What I am starting to get really interested in is the development of behavioural economics. A starter is Dan Ariely http://www.predictablyirrational.com/ – Dan looks at behavioral economics, a newish field that to a large extent is being developed by psychologists. Looks at issues such as would employees be more motivated by a $1000 in cash or an all expenses paid weekend away worth $1000.
Reserving judgement on behavioural economics field but certaintly interesting perspective.
The above three also have good blogs that are quite readable.
For more weighty stuff you could have a look at The Calculus of Consent – Legal foundations of Constitutional Democracy by James Buchanan. This is a bit weighty on the Public Choice theory but it is available online see http://www.econlib.org/library/Buchanan/buchCv3Contents.html.
Otherwise try Understanding Regulation: theory, strategy and practice by Robert Baldwin and Martin Cave. Looks like you can get a preview from google books. Or have look at reviews on amazon http://www.amazon.co.uk/Understanding-Regulation-Theory-Strategy-Practice/dp/0198774389
Good luck with the reading, I do warn you once you get interested in the dismal science then it can really take you on an adventure of the unexpected but rather fascinating.
Don’t get too hooked up on austrian economics vs chicago school vs LSE squabbles. Take time to form you own view passed on a wide range of literature. Everyone in some form includes a personal political judgement/ethical framework into there writing. We are after all human.
Apologies if the links don’t work.
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Ta. Here I was thinking you were some stodgy old classical liberal economist. I suppose I was looking for something broad and introductory to read that also deals with contemporary political issues too – in this case unions, minimum wage etc…
The fourth link doesn’t work, but only cos there’s a dot at the end.
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In which case – go straight to the undercover economist – Tim also has a new book out called “the logic of life”. But his first book is a great economics starter without having to reach for text book.
Not a classical liberal economist – I try to follow the empirics before reaching for political policy prejudice. The world is a great big fun complex place – i’m starting to wonder about quantam theory and its application to economics.
I see Frogblog managed to post about coffee straight after my post – almost prescient. Warning to Frogblog – don’t mess with real coffee (but feel free to slag off Starbucks and other faux coffee makers) you wouldn’t like me when you take my coffee away.
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Why the ‘Hayek’ in your name then?
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Can also highly recommend the Undercover Economist and Freakonomics.
Thanks for the recommendation about predictablyirrational.com.
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Because Hayek stuck his neck out and pointed out why market economies will beat planned economies. This was going against the then orthodoxy which saw planned economies as being the way of the future.
Hayek looked at the need for people to be making there own decisions about what goods and services they wanted and the feedback this provides to suppliers/producers i.e. people want more IPOD’s and less microsoft Zune’s. A planned economy (which includes one with significant government share) doesn’t receive this feedback and then you end up with trabants (compared to a VW beetle).
An additional reader for you is I Pencil by Leonard E Read (seriously). Its not very long and you can read it here http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/rdPncl1.html You can have a look at the background from Wiki at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Pencil
Post 1987 there was a number of former soviet planners who came to the west to find out how western businesses work. What was discovered was that they had no conception of what to produce/manufacture based on the chaos of the market. Someone had always told them how much and what of they had to produce even if no one wanted what they made.
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Continuing the discussion of interesting economic theories… I am surprised no one has brought up Herman Daly.
I have a fair interest in economics and a lot of exposure to neo-classical theory, and I have found Joshua Farley and Herman Daly’s textbook Ecological Economics by far the most comprehensive and compelling take on classical theory in a finite world.
I even gave it to my father, a professor of finance and econ of the most neo liberal tradional bent, and he read the first few chapters and said he thought it was absolutely correct.
Very readable and clear, as a bonus. You should all check it out: (hope link works)
http://www.amazon.com/Ecological-Economics-Applications-Joshua-Farley/dp/1559633123/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1213669429&sr=1-1
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Conservative rely on – and expect – the average person to know little about most things, be curious about less than they know, and to respond primarily to emotional arguments.
One of the best expressions of this credo comes to us from Jeb Bush, the US President’s brother and former Governor of Florida. He is reputed to have said the following to a colleague back when Jeb was a real estate agent:
http://www.tv.com/jeb-bush/person/407217/trivia.html
Jeb Bush: “The truth is useless. You have to understand this right now. You can’t deposit the truth in a bank. You can’t buy groceries with the truth. You can’t pay rent with the truth. The truth is a useless commodity that will hang around your neck like an albatross all the way to the homeless shelter. And if you think that the million or so people in this country that are really interested in the truth about their government can support people who would tell them the truth, you got another thing coming. Because the million or so people in this country that are truly interested in the truth don’t have any money.”
We would hope this isn’t true, but the reality of the past 20 years is that it is most often true and the few exceptions tend to prove the rule.
Invade Iraq anyone? People are STILL falling for that one as they are for the so-called “War on Terror”.
Meanwhile, Artic sea ice is melting at 3.5 times the expected rate……and these “skeptics” are still at work hiding the truth.
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Cheers Julie – I would encourage more sharing of economic thinking. Especially some of the contemporary writers. People tend to look back to the works of Marx and Keynes (and even Hayek) and stop there. The discipline has learned a lot since then, for example input-output tables and marginal utility came out after Marx.
You may also want to look into work of Richard Posner http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Posner#Major_publications and Gary Becker. Their blog debating law and economics, http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/ gives an interesting perspective on frameworks for thinking about policy solutions to real problems. I admit the two gentlemen refered to are not exactly “contemporary’ but they have done a lot in the last 30-40 years in developing micro-economic thinking and in part influencing the new behavioural economic thinkers.
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BluePeter Says:
June 17th, 2008 at 10:15 am
> Yes, I know we have an aid budget.
> Now we also have a Russian aid budget which will decrease global temperature by 0 degrees.
I presume you are referring to the possibility of polluters buying carbon credits from Russia, when Russia isn’t going to use them anyway. Indeed that would rather defeat the purpose of having an emissions trading scheme. The Green party has certainly been arguing for the emissions trading laws to be written in a way that prohobits that trick, and I’m hoping they will succeed.
The probelm is that Helen Clark may well want companies to do just that, because she’s more interested in the impression of doing something about climate change than the reality.
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>>the possibility
More an inevitability, unfortunately.
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BluePeter Says:
June 17th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
>> the possibility
> More an inevitability, unfortunately.
It’s not inevitable.
Carbon Credits from different countries are not automatically convertible. You can only exchange Russian carbon credits for New Zealand carbon credits if the government decides to recognise the conversion.
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Stuey, I didn’t Cherry pick from many sources, that was all part of the Time Magazine article in 1974. It was a quick reponse to you saying “the theory mainly gained media exposure in the 60s and had stopped being discussed much in the 70s;”.
And the doomsaying quote from the Climatologist is about a drought, not “the new ice age?.
Like today we see people blaming cold snaps and changes in the river delta sea levels on global warming, some scientists were explaining how droughts would also occur with global cooling.
It was certainly being discussed in the early to mid 70′s, although they were starting to figure out they were wrong. So they moved on to Acid Rain.
Now just to be clear, I am not equating the two periods. I’m simply stating that there was a fair amount of hype back then that made it to the popular press that advanced imminent doom from global cooling and population explosion.
It didn’t happen.
Now this time, we have a “consensus” of scientists saying that it’s man-made global warming that is the issue. It might happen.
But I repeat: even if it does, it wont be because of the accuracy of the computer models.
And hype/consensus aside, I’m all for sustainable practices and I am warming to the idea of resource levies as input costs for businesses, providing it is handled the right way.
As for the ongoing panic about population, Hayek advanced some pretty sound ways of curing that problem, and even spent some time explaining why population growth helped advance civilisation and isn’t necessarily as fearsome as it is often regarded amongst Greenies (am I right?).
I don’t think his economic theories would go down well on a socialist blog – I’ll leave WWHS to that endeavour. Short answer is – help make the poorer peoples of the world wealthy.
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Conservative rely on – and expect – the average person to know little about most things, be curious about less than they know, and to respond primarily to emotional arguments.
And of course, Greenies are all technology luddites that paint the imminent demise of our planet, usually with a hint of distaste for people and the damage they cause for existing, and then declare their solution is the only way to save us – the solution often not matching the actual problem.
Well, glad we got that sorted. What stereotypes shall we sort out next? Liberals? Don’t get me started on liberals….
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i’ve noticed this before, that whenever agw “optimists” wish to mock climate models, they can’t help referring to them as “computer models” – as if that were a bad thing.
once upon a time, models were developed on paper, then with the aid of a calculator. i don’t remember any scoffing about “calculator models” – why should the method of calculation be singled out by critics, unless it were more primitive than the best available?
models are just models, but as the calculator has become more powerful, the mere fact that it was used has become a selective point of derision. odd.
and that from the same team who like to hurl the “luddite” insult.
i don’t know how it measures on an overall scale of fearsomeness, but population growth is certainly harming the environment here as the intensive rate of construction creates a perpetual blight of ugly sights & noises.
to name only one problem.
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Well if it’s relevant to a particular thread, put it out there, don’t wait and hope someone else will!
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I’m not into knokcing models, Elle Macpherson is a model and some could say flawless (WWHS suddenly ducks to dodge strong gaze from the better part of the population who are not happy at the reference to Elle Macpherson).
The main contention in economics over modelling is that models are only as good as the assumptions built into them. Forecasting is an incredibly difficult art and while I applaud the work being done we need to remember its limitations. To some extent there is a general problem that the MSM is treating forecasts how they used to treat the word of doctors – that is a pronoucement from god and infallible.
There is specific concerns about the predictions on climate change because some of those predictions are not forecasts (in the sense that they have used a forecasting methodology) a number of them are simply extrapolations, which whilst a starting point I would not want to rely on for a medium term let alone a long term forecast. If you did this in the financial markets you probably would come out better off handing out money on the street to passer-bys (at least that way you would make a few random people smile for a moment).
I wouldn’t call greens luddites – Most greens and a large part of the activist movement are high tech users. The amusement is that the tools being used by some (and I would say a small fringe part like you get with all political groups whether right or left) greens to argue against people and growth only exist because of people and growth.
I argue for growth because it has enable us to improve our lives enourmously even within the last 10 years let alone the last 50 or 100. Think how much better of a future we will be able to give our children and grandchildren through growth. Halting growth will result in preventable loss of life and even add to destruction of the environment.
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good answer, though that preventable loss of life stuff may have to do with distribution as much as growth… & there may prove to be some unwanted costs to that beneficial growth
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Hayek wrote:
“Tsuhara – good to know that you reject economics out of hand and improving people’s lives. Good to see how your willing to turn on your own if they suggest any alternative form of action for improving the environment. You know like actually improving it.”
Sorry, I don’t know where you got this from. My criticism of Lomborg’s Cost Benefit analysis is justified. His analysis was poorly done analysis seemed to have been designed to concluded with the results it did. It analysed the issues over a short period and allocated a tiny fraction of the money needed to actually deal with the issues (50 Billion over 5 years).
Your criticism of me is not. No where in what I wrote rejected ‘economics’ or improving peoples lives, if you really wanted to improve peoples lives and the environment for long term problem solving, you would not use the Copenhagen Consensus.
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’ve noticed this before, that whenever agw “optimists? wish to mock climate models, they can’t help referring to them as “computer models? – as if that were a bad thing.
Oh for goodness sake, take off the paranoia glasses. I wasn’t trying to mock climate models by saying computer models, I really don’t care what they are called. Call em what you will. I’m just saying they appear to me to be vastly inadequate, and therefore potentially inaccurate.
Just the other day, I saw an article suggesting long time assumptions about temperatures from tree ring growth may be inaccurate for example. We may have to go back and revisit calculations based on our new understanding.
Andrew, re population growth. Put it the other way around. If mankind had stayed at a steady 100,000 people for the last 20,000 years, how far along do you think we would be at this time?
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“Halting growth will result in preventable loss of life and even add to destruction of the environment.”
Hayek-
I believe there is quite a difference between economic growth , i.e., increasing physical throughput of the human economy — that is, increasing the use of ecosystem services, which implies an overall reduction in the resources available, and increasing the waste byproducts that cannot be re-used–
and economic development, which increases the efficiency with which ecosystem services are used, and thus does not increase physical throughput.
Economic development increases quality of life, without using more resources or creating more waste than we can afford.
A quotation from Herman Daly that nicely sums up this point:
“The way to get richer has been thought to be by economic growth, usually as measured by GDP. I do not here question the first proposition that richer is better than poorer, other things equal. But I do question whether what we persuasively label “economic growth” is any longer making us richer. I suggest that physical throughput growth is at the present margin and in the aggregate increasing illth faster than wealth, thus making us poorer rather than richer. Consequently our traditional economic problems become more difficult with further growth. The correlation between throughput growth and GDP growth is sufficiently strong historically so that in the absence of countervailing policies even GDP growth frequently increases illth faster than wealth.”
I would again refer you to the Ecological Economics text which explains this very clearly.
I think the Greens position is fairly clear that economic development is highly desireable, but economic growth is counterproductive because it is is actually uneconomic (the value of resources consumed is greater than the value of the products created). This reduces quality of life for most humans, probably all humans in the long term.
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Great article here by Daly —
http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue22/Daly22.htm
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What is the Green party economic policy? I wonder how it can work given that (for instance) there is a heavy commitment to the DPB and open armed immigration policy. The word that comes to mind is “presbyterian” … work hard/ smarter live frugally but enhance aspect of lifestyle such as community, environment etc. I don’t think we have seen Green economic policy anywhere in the world yet, and i fear an over confident socialist approach. I confidently expect the greens to romp in next election so it will be intereting to see all the changes….
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Maybe Sweden…which is apparently Lutheran
http://www.economist.com/daily/news/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11477890&fsrc=nwl
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it could have reached one or 2 billion & then stayed there zen tiger.
can you point me out a source for this? a 10 minute search of http://greens.org.nz reveals nothing like that
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jh can you direct me to a source for this: “What is the Green party … policy?… open armed immigration policy.”
i can’t find anything on the website to that effect.
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Winston Peters is at it again. His immigration policy, released yesterday, makes for depressing reading for anyone who believes in an open-minded, open-armed, and compassionate New Zealand. In his speech launching the policy,
http://blog.greens.org.nz/index.php/2005/05/28/ejecting-the-squinty-eyed/
New Zealand has a well-deserved reputation for being generous and open-hearted when it comes to giving refuge to those displaced by upheaval
http://www.greens.org.nz/searchdocs/PR8924.html
“Under New Zealand First, New Zealand would lose its compassion and become an inward looking society deaf to the cries of those being persecuted in other countries,? Mr Locke says.
“We should not be forcing migrants and refugees to go to court to try and make New Zealand live up to the spirit and the letter of the international conventions it has signed on refugees, and migrants.?
http://www.greens.org.nz/searchdocs/PR10401.html
“New Zealand should be a welcoming country, not one where bureaucrats have greater powers of surveillance and detention,? said Mr Locke.
http://www.greens.org.nz/searchdocs/PR9716.html
“The Passport Office shouldn’t hide behind ‘international requirements’ for this new step towards a ‘big brother’ society,? Mr Locke says.
http://www.greens.org.nz/searchdocs/PR8903.html
“The Greens welcome a sound public consultation process, but call on Mr Swain to ensure that Maori, as tangata whenua, have a key role in the development of the policy. To do otherwise would show a complete lack of regard for the Treaty.
“We believe our immigration system should be based on a regard for human rights, balanced against our own ecological limitations. So fair and properly managed family re-unification refugee quotas are vitally important. We also hope this review will look at the category list to ensure that a broader range of skills are considered when people are applying to come here,? said Mrs Turei
http://www.greens.org.nz/searchdocs/PR8693.html
Mr Goff entirely ignores the major concern of the petitioners – that Samoans should be able to visit and reside in New Zealand more easily,? said Mr Locke, the Green Party’s Human Rights Spokesperson.
http://www.greens.org.nz/searchdocs/PR7757.html
“In my Minority View in the report, I have proposed that we offer New Zealand citizenship to the estimated 52,000 Samoans detrimentally affected by the 1982 legislation. They would have the individual choice of accepting or rejecting that citizenship.
http://www.greens.org.nz/searchdocs/PR7474.htm
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Only when my post gets out of moderation brother.
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Zen Said: Andrew, re population growth. Put it the other way around. If mankind had stayed at a steady 100,000 people for the last 20,000 years, how far along do you think we would be at this time?
Andrew Said: it could have reached one or 2 billion & then stayed there zen tiger.
Zen Replied:
That doesn’t answer my question, or perhaps it implicitly agrees?
Do you see how a world population of 100,000 would not create advancement to even a fraction of where we are today?
Do you see how pressures to improve as people compete for resources actually generates cooperation via specialisation? Do you see how the specialisation of tasks is not guided by a centrally planned style government, but on people having the freedom to respond to trade as they see best? Do you see how only those that can can act “civilised” towards others can move the entire community forward? Civilisation is ultimately, a lot of people free to do what they want, but accepting of restraints designed to look after the community as a whole.
Population growth has enabled all of this, it has been the base ingredient to stimulating everything that flows from that growth. War or cooperation, stagnation or advancement. On the whole, we’ve done OK.
Andrew Said: it could have reached one or 2 billion & then stayed there zen tiger.
How exactly? What would have been your formula for selecting the right 1 or 2 billion? Isn’t this merely wishful thinking given we are now at 6 billion plus?
—————-
Re Nuclear war versus Pop Growth:
Asimov was wrong. He predicted 6 bill or whatever, and we got there, but not with the dire results. Even if this is right, and it meant that billions starve and die and the population drops to a manageable number – that would still be better than the entire world a nuclear wasteland for however long, surely?
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As far as I am aware, Asimov didn’t say anything about dire results at 6 billion. What he proved is that population grows exponentially. And the human race will continue to grow untill the limits to that growth are met.
Increased human intelegence is not a bi product of population growth, population growth is a bi product of increased human intelegence.
Unfortunatly the majority of people are in the average intelegence range, which means that they do not usually have the intelegence required to understand the limitations of the intelegence that has got them to this point in the first place.
And I also believe that even highly intelegent people are also prone to forgetting the limitations of their own intelegence.
Also. A high level of intelegence does not gaurantee a high level of wisdom. But, the higher the intelegence of a person, the more they realise how little thay actually know.
To someone like me, the world is a finite place that has a finite amount of matter. Some might argue that the universe is infinate, but we only have access to what is here on Earth. When something is made or created, the matter that created it is taken from something else, because you can’t make something from nothing, so there must be an ultimate limit to growth for everything. The limits to our growth, is the matter (or resources) that we need to survive. The fact that some resources seem to be more abundant than they were in the past, is nothing to do with resources becoming more abundant, but that we are able to access the resources that we were not able to access in the past. The amount of resources has never actually changed. But as the ability to access these resources has increased, so has the population. Nobody really knows what the ultimate limit to growth is, because we continually develop new technology that allows us to gather resources that we never had access to before. But matter is finite, so resources are too, it’s just that we don’t know what that limit is. I believe it is more prudent to limit the need for resources than to try and access more of them.
I don’t understand why some people don’t see that maintaining a stable population will allow the human race to prevent the eventual reaching of the ultimate limits of the resources we need to survive. Degradation of the environment, and the decline in populations of other species (plant life included), that do not (as far as we know) directly effect our own survival, can only be signs that we are nearing the limits of the resources needed to maintain our population, because many of the resources we need are also need by other species too.
Some people say that there are already signs of stabilisation in some countries. It is true that there are even some countries with declining populations.
If you look at the birth and death rates of these declining (or stable) countries, you will actually see that the majority of them have similar birth rates to the majority of developed countries. The death rate on the other hand is generally above the average death rate of developed countries though. Is this the kind of stabilisation that is acceptable to most people?
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My point has nothing to do with intelligence levels. Nothing.
Specialization and invention is not solely in the realm of the intelligensia and the bright sparks. I’ll get around to finding some reference material that explains this better than a 200 word comment.
Also, population growth need not be exponential, as you say at the end. It hasn’t been exponential in many developed countries for the last 20 years – and could be even without immigration, especially of poorer migrants who have large families. I think you have it the wrong way around, birth rates in developed countries are often below replacement rate.
Predictions range for future growth, I’ve seen a couple of reports where it pay peak at 12 billion around 2050 and decline thereafter, even though people will live on average to age 95.
Making the poorer countries richer is the key.
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> Predictions range for future growth, I’ve seen a couple of reports where it pay peak at 12 billion around 2050 and decline thereafter, even though people will live on average to age 95.
Making the poorer countries richer is the key.
Two comments on this – supposing it is correct:
(1) 12 billion is an awful lot of people we need to sustain – twice the current population – and the planet’s ‘creaking’ already!
(2) How do we change from a growth-orientated market to a stable or declining market? Most of the world’s economies rely on growth – more production and purchase of goods, for example. Unless we end up with an even greater per capita consumption. Which tends to defeat the whole raison d’être for facing the ‘population problem’ in the first place!
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My point has nothing to do with intelligence levels.
Oh, but that is not to say intelligence (and there are many different types of intelligence) does not play its part.
When something is made or created, the matter that created it is taken from something else, because you can’t make something from nothing, so there must be an ultimate limit to growth for everything.
Interesting to think that billions of galaxies, each containing billions of stars was all created from nothing, and in an instant.
But the point I think you are making is that matter in a closed system (earth) is constant, but energy can be increased as we get it from the sun. Energy from the sun is converted into plant structures via photosynthesis for example. We need to learn how to capture and use energy more efficiently, and we can go a lot further with transformation of matter.
Our current issue is that energy resources, such as oil, took a long time to make and are finite. Also, we need to ensure we manage our resources so that the planet is self-sustaining. We have a long way to go on that score, but we have been constantly improving – it’s just been hard to notice because of the rapid increase of population in the last 50 years. As population stabilizes, and improvements continue (and they will and they do) we should see improvements.
I’m not suggesting we need to do nothing about the waste and pollution, but I’m also not quite as paranoid as my Green friends.
This post (remember the post) brings an interesting point into play regarding my previous point.
The Greens represent 5-10% of the political voice in NZ, and yet they produce 50% of the noise. It’s a healthy thing in a democracy. It plays its part.
And here we have a study that managed to find 141 environmentally skeptical books published in the last 30 years. I had a look at the list. One was specifically refuting the population bomb doomsday book from 1968(?) that turned out to be a load of crock. You think the Conservative think tanks weren’t entitled to produce a counter argument? The Silent Spring take on DDT may have helped ruin a useful tool against malaria in Africa etc.
141 books from largely CTT organisations, but no deep analysis on how many pro-argument books published by them, and no good figures on the weighting of the impact of these in the open market – do they produce 50% of the noise? Is it good to have debate? Have scientists ever got things wrong before?? Remember, Greens often are suspicious of scientists when they work for Monsanto or Proctor and Gamble, or the FDA
If I had a bit more time, I’d go through this in more detail, but my initial thoughts are really “so what”? If AGW has a case, its being made bard by the Al Gores and IPCCs of this world, sometimes using overly emotive and wrong information to push the barrow. I don’t see anyone here apologising for that. You guys cant handle a dozen dozen critiques?
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Most Americans believe in the rule of God arriving on Earth in their lifetimes. Why would they have any motive to take a future environment problem (based around the impact of human opulation society) seriously, if they think God will solve the problem by killing the unbelievers?
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This might also explain their acceptance of an increasingly authoritarian government, they can hardly die in a ditch to defend their rights in a democracy, if they are waiting for God to end their democracy.
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“Making the poorer countries richer is the key.”
I’d say that with the growing economy in China, we’ll see if that comment is true.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/world/asia/26china.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
China is is really going to test the theory that economic growth is better for the environment.
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The Libertarian stance adopted by the likes of ZenTiger (above) relies heavily on Mankind forever advancing – to the detriment of the natural world. Not only is Mankind portrayed as being vastly superior (if not infinite) to anything else on Earth (at least) but also capable of survival and ultimately progress by dominating everything. They are deeply reliant on the success of technology and Man’s ability to use this to advantage.
Now, there are obvious drawbacks: How can we always tell just what technology is good for us? Eugenics? Germ warfare?
Could it not be argued that this position has strong links to an ancient belief that the Earth is at the centre of the Universe simply because it is inhabited by humans? An extreme anthropocentric viewpoint indeed!
Libertarianism is historically diametrically opposed to Environmentalism and especially to Deep Green Theory which generally believes that everything in existence has some intrinsic value – a sort of extension of Kant’s ‘a person as an end in itself’
Whether or not prosperity will bring about population stability is debatable. What is not disputed is that so-called developed nations seem to be encountering serious problems of their own – such as localised poverty (aren’t there a few million Americans who are regarded as being impoverished?) and or course anti-social behaviour (e.g. crime) is on the increase. Very few seem to be any happier despite their ‘wealth’. These facts do not bode well for our libertarian friends, for surely, shouldn’t we be creating more harmonious societies rather than ones which seem to be socially destabilising?
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“Interesting to think that billions of galaxies, each containing billions of stars was all created from nothing, and in an instant.”
I haven’t got a clue how the the universe was created. If you want to talk to someone about that, as Stephen Hawking. But I gotta warn you, he is worried about overpopulation too. And he’s way smarter than me.
“But the point I think you are making is that matter in a closed system (earth) is constant, but energy can be increased as we get it from the sun.”
The point I was making was that we are becoming better at getting the resources we need to survive (and grow), and the sun is one of those resources that we draw from, as all life directly or indirectly does. But the rate of energy coming from the sun is finite (although it does fluctuate a little), and the sun has a finite amount of energy too. One day it will eventually burn out, but the human race will probaby be extinct or left the planet by then. And besides, I didn’t even say that energy was the limiting factor in our growth, I said that we don’t really know what the ultimate limiting factor will be.
Would you like to be around when we find out Zen Tiger?
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Wish I’d been here for the past couple of weeks.
Libertarians have to oppose AGW because AGW implies that there is a control for our planetary climate.
Crude, but if there IS a control then there has to be a person or organization to manage the adjustment of the control. It’s a planetary phenomena, the only way to control it at the moment (taxing the destruction of the environment) seems to slow/stop growth.
Such a person or organization is a hideous thing to a libertarian. Unlike libertarians a green understands that a balance between personal individual freedom and collective decision-making is required for human development and progress… not growth, is the important rising tide to get under all our boats. Libertarians reject the collective (in the form of government) instinctively. They often fail to recognize the collective when it appears in the form of a corporation.
The problem for the libertarian is that if they accept that there is a control then they MUST regard the development of an organization that uses it as inevitable and for many this is a step too far. Rather than accept the science, they abandon reason and promote with wild abandon, every half-baked, misunderstood, under-researched opinion that can be substituted for the science.
Not all libertarians do that. Some understand and attack the problem that they actually have which is the form that the government control will take. Not easily but where they do that I applaud and we generally find areas of agreement.
Making the poorer countries richer is the key.
Well yes… but this is not to come at the expense of the wealthiest?
That’s actually a big problem when the top 5% own everything and the rest own nothing at all. This is where green and libertarian philosophies really hit the rather stubborn wall of human behavior.
It becomes bigger if we have really started to hit “limits to growth” and people are dying in their thousands and stunted in their development in their millions, in the poorer nations of this earth.
…and inherent in AGW is that we really have started to hit those limits. Not the only limits either. AGW is only part of the damage… we are acidifying the oceans quite rapidly as well, and that could be an even larger problem than the temperature change.
The problem is that at this point, even if it is not a purely zero-sum game, it is for all practical purposes exactly like one, and there is no way in human behavior to pry the wealth from the hands of those as have it and provide for those as need things without using a far more invasive “government” than the green proposal that we tax the abuse of the environment entails.
For one thing, any analysis I’ve seen shows that if we tried to do that we’d impoverish everyone without raising the poorest out of poverty sufficiently to matter. That’s a standard argument from the right. It implies however, not only that the wealthy should keep all they’ve managed to accumulate, but the alternative, that there are too many of us for us all to have a reasonable standard of living.
I suggest that 2-3 billion on this planet is quite sufficient and if we want to grow further we build ourselves another planet or put additional collectors of energy in space to provide useful concentrations of energy to support our surplus.
Suppose the “thermostat” became instead of control of greenhouse emissions, some mirrors to increase apparent global albedo? There’s still a government issue… but the great god of growth is not offended so we destroy the ecology of the ocean instead and wind up killing ourselves ANYWAY.
The idea that there are no limits to growth when we cannot escape the gravity well, is anathema to anyone with a firm grounding in the hard sciences. I tend to become rather derisive when people appeal to our innovation and invention and technological achievements at that level. The end result will either be that we control ourselves or Mother Earth will administer a hell of a spanking…. or we will get big enough to leave home.
respectfully
BJ
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zen tiger said
“..The Silent Spring take on DDT may have helped ruin a useful tool against malaria in Africa etc..”
sorry..can’t let that pile of bullsh*t/attack on rachel carson go unanswered..
i had to go to my archives..
http://whoar.co.nz/2008/who-is-responsible-for-the-attacks-on-rachel-carsonstand-upthe-tobacco-industry/
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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I see that magic figure of 2-3 billion population again. Can anyone point to studies that prove this figure, or is this all an emotive “just sounds right” kind of number?
There are a few studies that talk about footprints and energy consumption, all the kinds of challenges we will need to manage into the future, and yes, ones that we are capable of managing. No disagreement with BJ that if we don’t manage it, we’ll get a spanking. (Are we allowed to use that word now? It connotes some superior authority disciplining us for our transgressions, and the Green party has clearly indicated such a form of discipline is illegal and undeserved. Do we sue the planet for its inability to discipline us in a loving, positive way that maintains our esteem and suggests we just need to express ourselves? – but I digress.)
And so does everyone else on the thread anyway. When I talk about the indications that population growth will naturally level out, the conversation falls back into the chant of “unlimited population growth is unsustainable”. Well, yeah, I don’t know if anyone is disagreeing with that. Of course unlimited, ad infinitum population growth is ultimately destructive. Apparently more destructive than 10,000+ nuclear bombs going off all over the planet, says Asimov.
The points of contention for me is this magic 2 billion max number, and how you propose to get the population down to that number.
BJ: Luckily, I’m not a libertarian
and the idea of resource levies seems to be a good one, if done at a world wide level (although I’m not sure libertarians are totally against this concept either – you just need to put it in terms of property rights for them) . On the other hand, I still think Kyoto is stupid.
Phil U: I couldn’t make much sense of your link in regards to my point. Are you saying DDT in small amounts on interior walls would not kill malaria mossies? And what part of “may have helped” means that I blame Rachel Carson for it, versus ascribing some weight to the impact she had on all thoughts of pollution, pesticides and the use of DDT. She did have an impact didn’t she?
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ZenTiger,
Its a myth that DDT was banned for use against mosquitos in the Third World, because it wasn’t. If anything its overuse ensure that mosquito populations evolved resistance to it and it became ineffective.
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Ok in defence of the humans again. For all those predicting (yet again) the fall of humanity, please note that economic thinkers were worried about this for. Specifically Malthus with An essay on the principle of population. Malthus also saw that societies through history had experienced at one time or another epidemics, famines, or wars: events that masked the fundamental problem of populations overstretching their resource limitations.
So we now know that the population limitiation debate this is now an old discussion since Malthus wrote and worried about it in the late 1700′s early 1800′s. Since then economics has happily enjoyed hearing people bring up the doomsday scenario time and time again. Just like people bring up the idea that socialism will work this time, because we won’t be like everyone else who have tried it and failed.
Why does economics smile and enjoy the frantic worrying and hand wringing. Because whilst there is finite resources, the ability to use those resources more productively is only just starting. Popultionn growth has occured through productivity improvements through specialisation and new technology. Productivity provided the ability to increase farm yields (and/or increase amount of tillage per person). Higher yields reduced poverty and hunger and in turn meant more healthy babies who could live longer and happier lives.
This has only really just started on a worldwide basis in the last 50 years and you can note the massive population growth occurring.
I’m happy to argue that people in very wealthy countries e.g. US have some problems and that all not all people who are rich are happy. But everyone wants the opportunity to find out what bored, healthy life is like.
And again we can look to the Berlin Wall coming down as the example proving the higher value of capitalism as a means of social distribution than socialism.
“So is Marxism-Leninism scientific?? A: “Surely not. If it were, they would have tested it on animals first.? Old Soviet joke.
Most arguments against democracy/liberalism/capitalism are basically arguments of fear. The fear of a world that seems so random and without order, yet somehow works.
Its often the reason why socialist love trains (rather than buses). Trains can be told to go from point A to point B with the objective of arriving at a specific time. Cars however are so much more random. That randomness seems irrational, yet somehow it works in providing people with socially meaningful lives and provides such enormous productivity improvements.
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jh:
the links you’ve given include a blog smearing winston peters in standard fashion; a couple of press releases protesting at depriving would-be immigrants of legal rights & procedural matters of law-enforcement; something about refugees; some things about the specific categories of people who can be admitted (families of refugees, samoans), i can’t see anything in there stating clearly that green policy (especially in 2008) is open-armed immigration policy. this gives me hope that they can gracefully extricate themselves from their largely pro-immigration statements of the past, & indeed one of your sources mentioned that immigration policy should give heed to sustainability.
just because growth had its benefits when it took us from 100000 to 1000000000 doesn’t mean that growth will be good when it takes us from 6.5 billion to 9.5 billion.
who said there’d be any selection involved? i’d be happy with me & 999999999 others, but if i wasn’t one of the billion i’d scarcely be unhappy with that, would i?
i’m so glad to hear you say that! i’d always thought the gradual loss of my reassuring certainties was just another unfortunate side effect of getting older.
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What would Hayek say Says
Why does economics smile and enjoy the frantic worrying and hand wringing. Because whilst there is finite resources, the ability to use those resources more productively is only just starting. Popultionn growth has occured through productivity improvements through specialisation and new technology. Productivity provided the ability to increase farm yields (and/or increase amount of tillage per person). Higher yields reduced poverty and hunger and in turn meant more healthy babies who could live longer and happier lives.
It looks as though you are implying that we humans have the capability of (and indeed are well on the way to) devising a global economy in which we need to no longer be reliant on natural processes including energy and resources. In other words, we have the capability of completely ‘managing nature’. This is certainly the logical conclusion to his apparent belief that there is no limit to Man’s ingenuity.
Historical examples are used to support this view – so that history is regarded as a reliable predictor of the future. Malthus’ (and even the Club of Rome’s) limits to growth is portrayed as being just so wrong. But haven’t there been great qualitative changes in the recent past? Our flirtation with fossil fuels and the classical economic model with its support for unchecked and continuous growth seems to be creaking at the seams. There is now a large gathering of scientific opinion that cries out for us to consider the environment as a significant, nay fundamental, factor in our economic thinking.
Indeed, there is a growing plea for the economy to be a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment. I understand that eco-economists are not favoured species by conventional economists but at least they do seem to be prepared to expand their discipline to meet the comparatively new discoveries of related sciences (such as ecology). Does this not constitute progress in science?
Hence, can’t the economists devise and defend a new economic theory that accommodates itself to the basic conditions of life as articulated by the life sciences (e.g., ecosystemic stability and population limits) and the physical sciences?.
I don’t believe that to place the environment before the (traditional) economy need be misanthropic per se: it is just that perhaps we need to move away from the “Man is the Centre of the Universe’ cult to one that embraces a certain humility in our interaction with the environment – of which we are indeed a part. To this I would add that it just might be possible that management of the natural order which created and nurtured our species, might be forever beyond our capabilities.
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