Today is World Environment Day, and it’s a good day to celebrate past achievements and point out the errors of the doomsayers who’ve long been over-represented in the environment debate. The central message of the doomsday school is simple:
we can’t protect the environment unless we are willing to accept a radical reduction in our standard of living.
Although they agree on this point, they disagree radically about its implications, dividing into two opposed groups[1]
* Deep Greens who say that we should radically reduce our standard of living and protect the environment
* Dark Browns who say that we should do nothing to protect the environment because to do so will wreck our standards of living
Experience since the first World Environment Day in 1972 suggests that neither of these positions is true.
On the one hand, claims that we are bound to run out of resources, made most vigorously by the Club of Rome in the 1970s, have repeatedly been refuted by experience. Most natural resources have actually become cheaper, but even in cases where prices have risen, such as that of oil, the economic impact has been marginal, relative to the long-run trend of increasing income. The recent increase in the price of oil, for example, might, if sustained, reduce income by about 1 per cent, or around 4 months of economic growth.
At this point, doomsayers usually point to a growing world population and the increased demands on resources that will arise when people in China and India aspire to Western living standards. The tone isn’t quite as apocalyptic as in the 1970s, when the Paddock brothers were advocating letting Bangladesh starve, but the analysis often hasn’t caught up with the data. Population growth peaked (in absolute terms – the percentage growth rate has been declining for decades) around 1990. Current UN estimates have a population of 9 billion in 2050, but if the declining fertility in wealthy countries is followed elsewhere this will probably turn out to be an overestimate.
In most respects, economic growth is consistent with improvements in the environment rather than degradation. Wealthy countries are unwilling to put up with polluted air and water and have the technical and scientific resources to fix them.
On the other hand, the Brown doomsayers have an equally bad record. Time after time, they’ve opposed environmental improvements as too costly, repeatedly overestimating the costs and underestimating the benefits. The debate over CFCs and the ozone layer provides a good example, since it was one of the first issues to be addressed on a global scale. The doomsayers repeatedly attacked both the science behind the ban on CFCs and the economics of the policy, claiming it would cause massive economic damage. In reality, even without taking account of health benefits, it seems likely that the CFC ban yielded positive net economic benefits. Most of the leading participants in this debate (Fred Singer, Sallie Baliunas, Julian Simon, Tom DeLay, the Marshall and Oregon Institutes) are familiar to anyone who’s followed the global warming debate, except that Bjorn Lomborg has taken Simon’s place.
All of this leads up to the one big remaining problem that of global warming (and the inter-related debate about Peak Oil). The doomsayers on both sides are out in force on this one. For the Deep Greens, it’s the one remaining chance to achieve support for radical change. For the Dark Browns, this is the real fight, for which the CFC debate was just a rehearsal.
All the evidence, though, is that we can reduce emissions to levels consistent with stabilising global CO2 levels over the next few decades at a cost of around 5 per cent of GDP – a few years worth of economic growth at the most. Quite possibly, as in previous cases, this wll turn out to be an overestimate.
fn1. Both groups engage in a fair bit of wishful thinking about their position, the Greens arguing that we’ll all be happier in the long run and the Browns claiming that the environmental problems will solve themselves if we ignore them.
John Quiggin 
When people ask the government to pay for things the cost always appears trivial, the benefit always looks significant and the damage is always diffuse. Which is why we continue to get supersized government.
Some things should not be done at the point of a gun simply on principle.
Terje (say TAY-A) Says:
“You seem to want it both ways.
a). Society is doomed because we will run out of oil.
b). Society is doomed because we will burn too much oil.”
Unfair caricature. Try this version:
a) Modern industrialised societies, such as Oz, require substantial amounts of energy.
b) This energy currently comes overwhelmingly from convenient hydrocarbon based sources.
c) Hydrocarbon based sources of energy, particularly oil based sources, are an increasingly finite resource, in an increasingly energy hungry world, which has serious international security implications (see current Iraq war).
d) Hydrocarbon based energy, particularly oil and coal based energy, are dangerously polluting sources of energy, on a global scale.
e) We do not use energy anywhere near as wisely as we could and should.
f) If we don’t bite the bullet and start using energy much more wisely and from much cleaner, safer and more politically secure sources, then we have a very and increasingly serious problem of our own making. And I don’t see nuclear (fission) as the answer.
And regarding your 10:47pm comment:
Some fair points there, except we are not talking about a minor social or political issue. Energy is one of the central necessities of successful modern societies.
I am not suggesting we uncritically throw money at anyone who says ‘I’ve got an idea’. We are not talking about funding research into the best colour to bedeck the halls of parliament, or the influence of Outer Mongolian 12th century carpet weavers on 1940’s Tasmanian Dadaist sculptures, etc. This fusion work is a lot more advanced and plausible and important than that, and funding for basic research into energy sources is not going to come solely or maybe even primarily from the private sector.
Besides which, do you know how hard it is to get public funding for any basic science research? Applications for science funding are peer-reviewed and amongst the most rigourously scrutinised of all public spending anywhere in the world.
By contrasting example, our current federal government has gleefully and largely unaccountably spent hundreds of millions on purely political propaganda during its term. And you think roughly (Aus) $10 million to experimentally assess promising basic fusion research is wasting money? I don’t.
Dogz have you got 3-4 spare Earths you can get your hands on quickly so those Indians and Chinese can have a US lifestyle?
Regarding The Club of Rome Ok they were off by a few decades but unless you can can up with those extra Earths, the fundamentals are still valid.
SimonJM, if and when resources get scarce we’ll adapt. Humans are a resourceful lot.
But let me see if I understand your argument: because there are around 3B Indians and Chinese all looking to have western standards of living, 20M Australians need to reduce their consumption now.
Isn’t that like the old joke about the drunk searching for his keys under the street light because he can see there, even though he dropped them across the road in the dark?
Shouldn’t you be peddling your doomsday theories to the Indians and Chinese?
Dogz Yes we will adapt and if a few million or even more have to die in the process what does that matter?
“But let me see if I understand your argument: because there are around 3B Indians and Chinese all looking to have western standards of living, 20M Australians need to reduce their consumption now.�
You still haven’t picked up of the difference between the hard core green minority who follow the Ted Trainer drastic cuts in consumption with the majority A Lovins smarter sustainable lifestyles with a minor cut in consumption, while living smarter and more efficiently with certain necessary lifestyle changes that pays the true costs of luxuries and cuts out wasteful indulgences like single occupancy car travel.
The enlightened thing to do to would be to full heartedly follow the A Lovins approach first with a national energy & resource efficiency drive and local industries that do this plus major backing for renewables. This not only will this improve business bottom lines & profitability but creates jobs and improves exports.
Also have all levels of government get involved to educate and involve the community in encouraging sustainable efficient and smart living communities.
You are also still under a the fallacy that cuts to consumption automatically lead to cuts in living standards. As Lovins has pointed out we can maintain the levels of our living standards while using less resources which at the same time improving the business bottom line & freeing up those economic resources wasted in inefficient work & community processes.
BTW many of the design changes both in business and the community have many health and social advantages that can only improve social and economic capital.
Unlike individuals like yourself who add nothing but negativity and skepticism- an ostrich and sand come to mind- I suggest we could not only lead by example as a nation but encourage other first world nations to do the same and help transfer this knowledge and expertise to places like India and China to help them leapfrog the social and environmental problems that the ladder of affluence bring about.
SimonJM, all I can say is it ain’t me who has his head in the sand if you think Australia “leading by example” will have any impact whatsoever on China and India as they progress towards majority first-world status. I reiterate: tell it to the Indians and Chinese, since they are the ones you seem to think need all the extra Earths.
And I am not negative at all. Precisely the opposite. I believe humans have done very nicely indeed ignoring the doomsayers and hand-wringers. I am optimistic that rationality will mostly prevail, that we will continue to ignore them, and that we will continue to progress at an ever more astonishing rate.
“pays the true costs of luxuries and cuts out wasteful indulgences like single occupancy car travel”
Thus speaks the true social engineer. Who are you to decide which of my indulgencies are wasteful? I, like most people, greatly enjoy the freedom offered by single-occupancy car travel.
What do you enjoy? Two-week hikes in the wilderness? Dinner for two at your local Thai restaurant? Given the enormous poverty in the world, are they not wasteful indulgencies? Shouldn’t you be spending all your spare money and time helping the poor?
dogz,
Firstly, do you understand the literal meaning of the word ‘infinite’?
Secondly, regarding SimonJM saying that we should ‘lead by example’, we should at least give it a try. If we don’t, try then catastrophe is certain, instead of only being highly likely.
SimonJM, BTW, I count myself as one of ‘the hard core green minority who follow the Ted Trainer drastic cuts in consumption’ idea if I hadn’t already made that clear. Even if were to achieve Lovins’s ‘factor four’ increase in efficiency, or biosphere would still be in deep trouble.
“Firstly, do you understand the literal meaning of the word ‘infinite’?”
Can you be more specific, James: are you referring to ℵ0 or ℵ1 (or some other transfinite cardinal)?
“If we don’t, try then catastrophe is certain, instead of only being highly likely.”
I am certain you have insufficient information to determine that catastrophe is certain, therefore catastrophe is uncertain. I’ll take a certain chance of a comfortable life and an uncertain chance of catastrophe over a certainly uncomfortable life and equal uncertainty of catastrophe any day.
Dogz maybe first make people pay the true cost of things and that will sort out the indulgences and the allow people to prioritize their preferred ones. You want to go for your single person car ride fine include the externalities associated, pay the higher costs.
That would still have to within certain set pollution limits otherwise the rich could get away with polluting to their hearts content, maybe I could sell you my future C02 travel credits, interested ? 😉
James Sinnamon I’m still open to Trainer but admit myself something of an optimist in that with we could in fact do better than the Factor 4 if we set ourselves to it combining this with the core principles of sustainability and ethical consumption-I’ll deal with that in the next post-; that given the time that this would give us we could come up with the social and technological fixes needed to avoid the ‘Trainer’ solution.
At least from two aspects energy and mineral resources I expect that seeking resources off planet will become feasible and cost effective, so as long as we get through the resource and technological bottleneck of the next 50 years by taking the Lovins approach + ethical consumption I don’t see the need for drastic cuts quite yet.
What do see as the Trainer solution BTW?
Dogs pt 1
“What do you enjoy? Two-week hikes in the wilderness? Dinner for two at your local Thai restaurant? Given the enormous poverty in the world, are they not wasteful indulgencies? Shouldn’t you be spending all your spare money and time helping the poor?�
That would be an interesting thread all by itself.
I am a meta-ethical moral relativist and don’t think any moral system can be both complete and consistent and find morality more akin to rationalization than logical reasoning. Even so I still like to try to work within the common and foundational moral principles to see whether if you are by in large consistent.
One of the moral principles that I do remember was that you didn’t have give the shirt off your back so to speak if by helping others it seriously undermined your own wellbeing.
So if we take a Golden Rule approach one could help others, while not making your-self seriously worse off as it would lead to an atmosphere of social reciprocation. The other point to raise is that we are speciest -though some like to think otherwise- and generally we look to the welfare of fellow human beings if again it doesn’t seriously affect our own wellbeing.
But looking at this we don’t do this. While we applaud a stranger for running into a burning house we would not condemn a person for not doing so. What about a person drowning in a pond if all it took was reaching out with an available branch to help the person. In this case it doesn’t seriously affect your wellbeing so I would think in this case a person not helping would be condemned for not doing so.
Pt2
Now we wouldn’t allow people to starve or die from preventable diseases in Australia so why do we people who belong to our own species to die when we could be helping them if we made a concerted effort to do so?
We are nowhere near that limit as a society or as for many of us as individuals where it would seriously affect our national wellbeing, note the US cannot even give the % in aid that others give as a % of GDP.
Ok before someone argues about corruption of aid etc while there are in fact cases where aid is wasted there are many more where it could wipe out many such problems.
In the UK the eco sustainable lifestyle is called not called environmental it is now being looked at as an ethical lifestyle and I predict this will continue to grow worldwide.
If we at the very least live by a speciest Golden Rule and that we should help someone as much as possible without seriously effecting our own wellbeing then Dogz many people including myself think that instead of wallowing in our first world affluence we should be cutting our consumption of luxuries living, a sustainable and ethical lifestyle to the best of our ability and helping others to live in a similar way.
Now does this also mean I cannot go out to my favourite restaurant or an occasional trip overseas etc?
No it just means cutting back or could mean voluntarily adding a ethical consumption tax on top of luxuries and diverting that money to aid organizations or charities.
We seem to be able to pitch in and even make sacrifices in our own backyard but doesn’t the concept of only in our backyard seem trivial in the age of globalization?
I don’t expect this Ethical lifestyle to catch on much here after all we continue to turn a blind eye to third world conditions for some of our indigenous population let alone what is happening in other countries; that is apart from the feel good pass the hat occasions like tsunamis.
Seeker,
My wife seems to get funding without much difficulty. Either she is very talented or else it isn’t that difficult. Or possibly both.
Regards,
Terje.
SimonJM,
Quite a few people I respect consider me to be an optimist for believing that it is possible to avoid a world wide collapse of civilisation.
I think I am inclined to agree with David Holmgren, who said that an Amory Lovins style techno-green future may have been possible if we had got our act together in the 1970’s or 1980’s, but we have probably lost that opportunity now because of the enormous increase in human population and the enormous increase in the rate of consumption of natural resources.
Our best chance for preserving some kind of decent civilisation is to, as quickly as possible, reduce our consumption of non-renewable natural resources and to re-localise our economies so that expenditure of large amounts of energy, for commuting and the transport of materials, is unnecessary. We need to build agricultural and manufacturing systems, which only depend, directly or indirectly, on renewable solar energy and not on fossil fuels. We need to make our technology simple wherever we can, although, as I have said elsewhere, I am still hopeful that it will stil be possible to have an Internet for at least a few more decades.
I hold out a small hope that if we can harness extra-terrastrial resources we may find a way to maintain a modestly affleunt standard of living for the world’s population, but we would be extremely foolish to count on it.
Terje,
An enormous amount of the time of acadamics is spent chasing after a handful of dollars so that they can keep their research programs going for another one or two years.
This is is a stupid waste of the time and talents of people whose primary training was not (or should not have been) concerned with submission writing.
A sane research funding system would guarantee that very few research proposals having merit would be rejected, instead of (in my limited experience with the ARC program) guaranteeing that at least two thirds will fail.
Terje:
Or maybe your (obviously talented :-)) wife is doing something that is worth funding? And possibly in a politically popular, and hence well funded, field? (Nothing wrong with this, BTW, good luck to her. One usually takes research money from wherever one can find it.)
James Sinnamon:
I agree about the amount of time researchers waste just chasing even minimal funds, and that the funding for basic and applied science research is far too low. However, it would be impossible to fund all or even the vast bulk of worthy applications. Furthermore, just because a research proposal is scientifically worthy, doesn’t mean it is more broadly worth doing. There may be something to be said for deliberately not funding all (otherwise scientifically worthy) research applications in order to keep a healthy competition in the grants process, and keep researchers sufficiently connected to broader real-world human needs.
Regards, and good night.
Seeker wrote : There may be something to be said for deliberately not funding all (otherwise scientifically worthy) research applications in order to keep a healthy competition in the grants process.
Perhaps, but some of us have had a gutful of the kind of extreme competition that has been artificially created in academia and elsewhere by the policies of this Government.
I think if the costs of these policies were properly measured, instead of being measured with obviously deficient indexes such as the GDP, the grave economic and social harm done would be indisputible.
I would humbly suggest, from my own experience, that the degree of competition now forced on academia, and in many areas of the employment market, often tends to work against those who are more interested in getting on with the job at hand than in self-promotion.
This post is only a test, so please feel welcome to delete it.
Post no 167, by ‘fgdfg’, which is, or was, listed on http;//johnquiggin.com seems to be missing.
This is another test message.
http;//johnquiggin.com now shows that a message 168 by ‘slotsy’ has been posted.
It seems to be missing.
I learnt from the home page that ‘runwaycta’ has made entry no 169 to this thread.
But was this a peculiarity of Mozilla Firefox?
Konqueror and Epiphany showed correctly that entry no 169 was made by James Sinnamon. Then, when I had another look with Mozilla Firefox (don’t use Micro$oft, so I can’t use Internet Explorer), I found that the home page correctly shows entry 169 as having been made by James Sinnamon.
James,
Could have been some spam or other moderated comment. I am using firefox, so cannot help.
Andrew, thanks.
I now see on the home page:
This is displayed on FIrefox, Epiphany and Konqueror, so the problem is on the web site and not in FIrefox after all.
If the link refers to deleted spam, it is still inconsistent with the contents of this page, so I would count it as a bug in WordPress.
Andrew Reynolds wrote in the “Back to Full Employment” thread :
… in response to :
I don’t see how crowding more people onto the Titanic when there are insufficient lifeboats, and then sailing full steam ahead into iceberg-strewn waters in the middle of the night, will solve anything.
Actually, David Holmgren, a co-founder of the Permaculture concept, advocates turning problems into solutions. As an example he advocates the harvesting of camphor laurel trees, which are considered a weed, rather than just their outright eradication. You should read his book, “Permaculture : Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability”
James, James, James.
Picturing Queensland as the “Titanic” may not be accurate. You regard it as the “Titanic”, others may picture it as the “Queen Elizabeth II” or the “Princess of the Seas”.
Personally, I think WA is much better. Besides, it would take a much bigger iceberg to sink a state 3 times the size of Queensland.
(Apologies for the mixed metaphors).
I would agree on the wordpress bug, though.
Andrew,
You should have a read of the plans that the Real Estate Institute of Queensland (REIQ) has for the residents of South East Queensland (“Owning a Slice of the Action” by Patrick Lion, Courier Mail, 23 June.)
(It looks like Patrick Lion also hasn’t read the document, you referred me to, which purports to show that leisure time has increased, either.)
We may no longer have the space or water necessary for gardens, but that need not be of concern, because everyone will be working longer to pay off the house, the average price of which the the REIQ estimates will rise from $365,000 to $800,000 over the next 10 years, so they won’t have time to tend to it, anyway.
So, how could anyone suggest that moving another 1.1 million into South East Queensland bt 2026 will not improve our quality of life?
Andrew,
The Titanic anology is a very appropriate analogy for our current circumstances. Even if we happened to be sailing on the Queen Elizabeth II, would it make any sense to cram more people on board than could possibly fit into the lifeboats and then sail full steam ahead into an iceberg strewn sea in the dead of night?
—
BTW, I note your assertion that that pollution has decreased in the thread “Back To Full Employment”.
How could it have, with the unprecedented global levels of mining, manufacturing and movement of materials and people? What is the basis for this extraordinary claim?
There is certainly more than enough pollution here in Brisbane because of our congested roads. And the reason that it is not greater is that it has been exported, together with jobs, to third world nations, especially China (and now, it seems, back to the US). See New York Times article, I include excerpts :
I might add, Andrew, that the minerals export boom over there in Western Australia (and here in Queensland) is feeding into this pollution.
James,
When I said published articles, I did not mean ones by the REIQ.
Yes, pollution in China has increased – as it has done in every developing country while civil and political institutions are weak. The same happened here and in the UK and in the US and in …
You get my point. Look at London now compared to even 30 years ago, when I first went there. Look at all of the US cities now, compared to then look at everywhere that the civil institutions have improved and the companies have seen the point of not spewing out the externalities they used to. The same process will happen in China as the government becomes more democratic. In India the same will occur. To me, at least, our role is to assist in this process – the same one we have gone through as a nation – and to try to speed it up so the damage is limited. Making them poorer will just slow it down.
You just seem to believe the solution to our problems (and we do have many) lies in having fewer, and poorer, people and in restricting their ability to choose their own way in life. I disagree.
Andrew,
The point still remains that the overall level of pollution on our planet has increased as I have written. After China and India has become as affluent as we are (which all informed people dismiss as a physical impossibiity on a finite planet), there will be nowhere else to export their pollution to.
We are making ourselves and everyone else, poorer by destroying our natural capital. No-one other than the few hunter-gatherer societies left on the world, some agricultural based societies and the likes of David Holmgren, referred to by me above, have any idea how our societies can function once, oil, and other non-renewable natural resources have been exhausted.
There is no society today, other than those hunter-gather societies and those who effectively apply the principles of Permaculture, (whether they refer to it by that term or not) who are capable of living off the interest provided by nature (essentially, solar energy, whether direct or indirect), rather than its capital.
To assume that we will find a way to maintain our current global society with anywhere near the same standards of living for as many people as now exist on this planet, once we have exhausted our natural capital, is reckless folly.
Also, can’t you see that it is laughable to suggest that Australia can help China become more democratic. ‘Democracy’, that is, Government of the people by the people for the people is hardly practised in this country as I have said extensively elsewhere, so we are hardly a great example for the Chinese people to follow.
Actualy, one further point need to be clarified. I am not opposed to drawing on our natural capital such as coal, oil and metals, but, the principle purpose of us doing so should be to build infrastruture and to manufacture artefacts that would allow our society to endure after our supply of these resources has dwindled away. That, in possibly different words, is one of the messages you will find in David Holmgren’s book.
James,
I think we are a bit better at democracy than the current Chinese government. IMHO, to say what you just did indicates at least a degree of detachment from reality.
As for your second comment, I would argue that this is what we, as a species, have done for millenia, is doing now and will do in the future. It is what the free market achieves – if sometime by a round-about route.
Can you find references that support your position in the published, academic, sphere or are you maintaining that a book (or the REIQ) is a better indicator of truth? If you believe books are just as good, I would encourage you to move on to anything by Lomborg.
Find some academic references, not books.
Andrew, obviously, Australia is a better democracy than China.
Clearly, we still have some right to express our opinions, to associate and vote for a Parliamentary candidate of our choice.
Nevertheless, the point remains that the State and Federal Governments in this country have shown little regard to the opinions and best interests of the citizens in regard to privatisation, PPP’s, education spending, IR legislation etc, etc as I have shown extensively elsewhere, and the outcome of nearly every election for the last thirty years has been decided in advance by Australia’s media barons, who are able to wield their infuence to trick large sectors of the Australian publlic into voting against their own best interests.
—
Believe it or not, I actually wish it were possible for me to be able to believe a ot of what you have written. The I would be able to sleep a lot easier some nights.
What’s happened for millenia is that civilisations have grown beyond the abilities of their natural environments to sustain them and collapsed as shown in the books “Collapse” by Jared Diamond and “A Short History of Progress” by Ronald Wright.
If you seriously believe that the invisible guiding hand of ‘free market’ forces will somehow save current globalised civilisation from the fates that befell the Mayan civilisation the Angkor Watt civilisation, the Sumerians, the Romans the Greeks, the Easter Islanders etc, without our representative Governments having to make any conscious choices about the overall direction of our societies, then I think you are deluded.
Lomborg is a largely discredited authority amongst the scientific community. If you are relying on him alone to judge how our environment is faring, then that probably explains a lot.
Andrew, I cannot attempt to win the argument by citing sources to back up every single point I make.
The ideas I have expressed are my honest beliefs formed from a lot of thought, reading (e.g. at least three scholarly thoroughly researched works referred to on this page and an article from the New York Times), experiences and discussion. I think others will most likely judge that I don’t make up facts to suit my argument, even if I am not able, to cite the source for every point I try to make.
I choose not to do this because I don’t have half a dozen paid researchers, although I did go to considerable trouble earlier to track down, from my e-mail folders the article from the New York Times to refute your nonsense, counter-intuitive and anti-commonsense claim that pollution has decreased in recent years. That shouldn’t have been necessary, because it has already been refuted at least once before on this blog site, as I recall.
I agree that the REIQ is a particularly authoritative source, but the fact that they anticipate, and even welcome, our working longer, in order to pay for the unearned windfall profits they hope for in the next real estate boom, does serve to reinforce my own feeling about the direction our society has been heading for a few years now.
Whoops!
I meant to write “I agree that the REIQ is not a particularly authoritative source …”
Also, in regards to the health of our Australian political system, the late Edward Zehr is worth quoting :
Although he was talking about the US, it is somewhat applicable to Australia, as well.
Andrew,
In regard to point 6 in a post of mine in the thread “Back To Full Employment”:
You should read the article from The Age, “Renters in bidding war for homes”:
47 people at one rental inspection? Typically 100 at others? How many months of searching do you think it would take to secure a roof over your head?
A similar, but not quite as acute crisis, was reported on 7 May in Queensland’s Sunday Mail, which is completely in accord with my owndirect experience with a number of friends adn acquaintances.
This further confirms my point that we are working much harder than we have for a very long time, whether it is for paid work, or for essential tasks of life.
I will await with interest to see how you try to explain away this as consistent with your view that our quality of life has improved so fantastically in recent decades as a result of neo-liberal economic policies.
Andrew,
I also suggest you listen to “Water in India” on Background Briefing on Radio National at 9:05AM, if you can catch it in WA. It’s repeated on Tuesday at 7.10PM (The transcript should be available after a few more days.) It’s about India’s water crisis – falling water tables, dry and and contaminated rivers and lakes – and attempts by the World Bank to ‘solve’ the problem by forcing the Indians to privatise their water utilities.
Again, when Lomborg claims that the world’s environment has improved, it seems as if he is not giving us the full picture.
Well, at least we have improved from the REIQ to the newspapers. Is “A Current Affair” next? Good, balanced reporting with no barrows to push.
I have not used Lomborg as an example except to say that you can write what you like in a book. I would, respectfully, submit that the authors claiming that the sky is falling and we need to go back to hunting and gathering are also not giving us the full picture.
Andrew, once again, the sky did fall in, figuratively speaking, on the Ancient Sumerians, the Angkor Watt civilisation, the ancient Mayans, the Easter Islanders the Norse Greenlanders.
The essential point remains in the last 300 years, humankind has increased, by several orders of magnitude, its consumption of non-renewable resources. This is what has made possible the percieved progress in that period of time.
I would suggest that the onus should be on those who believe that the current circumstances, which are unprecedented in all human history, can be sustained indefintely without a terrible and catastrohic collapse, to prove their case.
Western Black Rhino Extinct
By the way, have you noticed that the Western Black Rhino, Diceros bicornis longipes, has been driven to extinction by poachers who value its horn as an aphrodisiac?
A spokesperson for the poachers is reputed to have said:
And you are, no doubt, just as certain that those guiding the destiny of the world would not be stupid enough to allow our stocks of natural resources to be exhausted before suitable alternatives are found.
No doubt you also believe that Queensland Premier Peter Beattie who has helped to increase the population of South East Queensland by 1,000,000 in the last 15 years without considering where the necessary water would come from, and who now wants to increase it by another 1,000,000 by 2026, is a rare exception amongst our political leadership.
Interesting to see you drag this old one back up.
On Beattie, I would not like to comment, except to say that you are the one normally calling for more government action. I say governments are normally part of the problem. Thanks for (seeming) to agree with me on this.
The Western Black Rhino is a good example of the tragedy of the commons – the incentive, because it was owned by no-one was to over-exploit. Now it is probably gone.
Where animals are held privately and farmed, they are in super abundence. Does that not tell you something?
Andrew wrote :
This tells me that you are once again avoided the essential point of my previous post and have attempted to lead the discussion off on a tangent.
I was attempting to show that there was good reason to fear that, figuratively speaking, the sky will fall in if we don’t change the direction of our society.
You attempted to sidestep my arguments by again raising some of the same arguments in support of your free market extremist views which have already been dealt with on other threads.
1. The argument that if one ever disagrees with any government policy then one can’t possibly be in favour of more governement intervention in our economy. I don’t see that such an argument requires any further response.
2. Only when an asset is owned privately owned will it be properly looked after. I have heard countless horror stories of rainforest being bulldozed almost the minute freehold title has been granted. In the area in which I live, scarce inner city rainforest has been largely eliminated so that the land-owners can gain windfall unearned profits by covering every available square metre of ground with units, townhouses and concrete.
The main driver of the extinction of the West African Black Rhino is the globalised free market and not the fact that the land, on which they once roamed, was commonly owned. Given the way that so much rainforest on privately owned Australian land has been destroyed, your contention that having handed across to private corporations all the land on which the West African Black Rhino once roamed would have saved it from extinction is laughable.
James,
As for “dealt withâ€?, I would disagree. Sidestepped, obfuscated, ignored, yes – “dealt with”, no.
Almost every time you comment, you disagree with a government action, not a market one. Have a look and a read of your comments. It is (almost) uniform. You further avoidance is not surprising, but it is disappointing as well as being consistent.
The problem with the rhinos is that they are worth more to the locals dead than alive. That is why they appear to be extinct, and may actually be. To try to maintain that the “globalised free market” has a huge effect in Cameroon is laughable. They are one of the most restricted countries in Africa. Where the nation is open, trading at least somewhat freely, the wildlife is better or much better protected. Most of the rhino sub-species are coming back nicely from the brinks they reached under the worst of the (Soviet trained) governments of Africa in the 1960s and 70s.
This may be due to government action in many cases, but the wealth that allows that government action to be taken without beggaring the country is provided by a freer and (more) open trading environment.
In South Africa many of the best stocked game preserves are private and run for profit.
Try again.
Andrew,
Firstly, if you want to accuse me of “sidestep(ping), obfuscat(ing), and ignor(ing)” your arguments, how about just simply responding the simple case I have put here and, earlier, here and was put, in a different form, earlier on another thread by Greg Wood :
… instead of leading us off onto that tangent about South African gaming parks?
You have never responded to this.
—
I don’t have time to follow up your data which supposedly proves that the free market helps prevent, rather than cause, extinctions. In any case, I thought I had made it clear many times that I have never apologised for the way many ‘publicly’ owned assets have been managed by corrupt and unaccountable governments.
That privately run game preserves, that, no doubt, depend upon money flowing in from mega-rich overseas tourists, do better than public game preserves in South Africa proves nothing.
Sorry, James, but you actually revived the thread to introduce the Western Black Rhino into the discussion. If I disprove your point you do not have the luxury of saying it is irrelevant.
BTW, I have never said that the free market helps to protect species. If it is allowed to work it will correctly price such things as diversity. We, the market participants, can then make our own decisions on things, just with better information. The market itself cannot do anything.
On the point about Malthus – I have responded time and again. If you choose not to listen, it is not my problem.
I should add that our good host has also answered your point in the initial post, as have many and diverse other commenters from various points of view all the way through the thread. I cannot, and will not, be able to claim sole (or even majority) ownership of the answer.
Andrew,
I was motivated to respond, if belatedly, to what you wrote :
… when I learnt the sad news of the extinction of the Western Black Rhinoceros.
I had not anticipated that you would attempt to turn this around using the extremely limited set of data that you have provided in order to ‘prove’ that free markets, or at least free markets, if allowed to operate according to the (conveniently) unattainable pure ideal that you espouse, would act to prevent, rather than cause, the extinction of other species on this planet, or as you would put it to “correctly price such things as diversity”.
The whole world economy is overwhelmingly driven by the interests of individuals, particularly extremely wealthy individuals, rather than the common good. In the case of the Western Black Rhino, this would include the poachers, the international traders, the wholesalers, the retailers and, finally, the opulently wealthy Chinese consumers who would use its ground up horn as an aphrodisiac.
In this whole picture of selfish greed turning its back on the needs of this and future generations, you isolate one aspect that doesn’t conform to the way the world should run according to neo-liberal economic theory, that is Cameroon allegedly being “one of the most restricted countries in Africa”, and attribute to that all the blame for the Western Black Rhino’s extinction.
If there are parts of the world, where private enterprise appears to be taking good care of wildlife, I would suggest that these would be rare exceptions to the overwhelming trend, where wildlife and natural habitats are being destroyed to benefit the short term needs of today’s mega-wealthy. This would include the seas to the north of Australia which appear to have been largely denuded of exotic marine species and the rainforests of South East Asia, Oceania, Brazil and much of Africa, and Australia.
No doubt much of the wealth derived from this environmental destruction goes into the pockets of those who are able to patronise the gaming parks of Africa to which you have referred, so the apparent good care taken of our natural environment in a few corners of the globe is at the expense of widespread destruction elsewhere, not to mention the continued extraction of finite non-renewable natural resources such a fossil fuels and metals.
If you have responded to my posts and to Greg Wood‘s post, which argue that we have no basis to assume that consumption of natural resources, whether renewable or not, at levels which are orders of magnitude greater than what has been consumed for nearly all of human history, can go on indefinitely, then please reproduce your response, or, else, provide links.
Your only response, thus far, has been that human creativity and ingenuity, unleashed by the supposed magic of the free market (but only if that free market conforms to the pure neo-liberal ideal) will overcome all the physical limitations of this planet, has little more basis to it than the belief by New Guinea’s cargo cultists that gods descending from the skies will one day return to provide for all of their needs.
(BTW, I had personally hoped – although this is not a widespread view amongst neo-Malthusians – that the exploitation of the resources or outer space might have provided some respite for humankind, but we seem to have largely blown this opportunity, thanks to the explosion in the world’s human population (and corresponding decrease in the numbers of other species), the squandering of so much of the earth’s natural resources in the last generation, the Vietnam War, and to the constraints that the subsequent world-wide experiment of neo-liberalism have placed on public expenditure, particularly on space exploration. Now that this opportunity seems to have been lost, a return to a hunter-gatherer form of society looks highly likely to me.)
James,
Your examples of short term exploitation generally involve land/sea that is either not privately owned or else has poor property rights. In such an environment short term exploitation seems to be the historical norm (tradgedy of the commons etc). In such places you have two basic options. You can establish and defend private ownership or you can establish and defend public ownership. In many places neither is established and that is usually where the problem of short term exploitation occurs.
When it comes to some of the rainforests in Asia that are notionally government owned there seems to be a high amount of short term exploitation.
On your other point:-
If you look at expenditure within the global economy a significant percentage is undertaken by the government sector. It may not overwhelm the world economy but likewise it is not a trivial amount. The living expenses of extremely wealth individuals would not amount to a significant amount of the world economy unless you want to attribute the wages paid by companies like Microsoft as being part of Bill Gates spending habits.
Just by way of example Australian governments in 2004 consumed about 18.6 percent of GDP. However they directed the expenditure of about 35% of GDP. And Australia is regarded by many measures to be less inteventionist in this regard than most nations of the world.
The gorilla at the party is the government. Then in most nations it is the mass called the middle class. The consumption habits and tastes of these two sections of society are of far more influence than “extremely wealthy individuals”. Data that shows that the rich control a large slice of the wealth pie only work if parts of the working class are included. If you only focus on “extremely wealthy individuals” they simply don’t rate. Unless we have a very different understanding of extreme wealth.
James,
I may or may not have directly responded to your points, but many others on this thread have. I suggest you have a look. I am bored with covering the same ground over and over and having you ignore it. Read our host’s initial comment opening the thread and the many replies to it. As I said, I am not the only one here with this position.
Terje has answered several of the major questions you asked or points you made, so I will not attempt to add to that.
There is one point I would make, though. You keep insisting that the “neo-liberal ideal” only works in “purely” competitive markets. This is (IMHO) clear hogwash. Even a small amount of competition in a market is enough to reign in the worst abuses of pricing power by a putative monopolist. This may even just be the threat of competition.
The threat of competition normally only disappears as the result of – guess what – government action.
Nowhere in any of the literature on free markets (beyond that published at high school level or perhaps first year university and then only in books published by Keynesians) do any of the people that I presume you would be classing as “neo-liberal” claim to rely on perfect markets for their theories or their demonstrated real-world examples.
I suggest you actually read the literature rather than rely on strawmen for your targets. I keep going back to Hayek – I believe he would be a very good place to start as, unlike most recent economics writers, (pace Ernestine) he does not rely on mathematics. If you have only read high school books then the mathematics may be a bit daunting for you (I didn’t like it – I switched to Commerce).
Andrew
You seem to share the common fault of market libertarians, and most ideologues of any persuasion for that matter, in simply not paying attention to the palpable realities that limit the theory you espouse. Just a few of these to chew on:
We do not have and never will have perfect information in the market place. The bigger and more complex a market structure grows the more this critical deficit will grow. Consequentially pricing signals alone can NEVER be an adequately accurate or reliable guide to resource allocation and responsible management of resource depletion and equity issues.
The legal status of corporations means that lack of Govt. regulation in the marketplace leaves these entities with free reign to apply their capital advantage to the consolidation of resource and market monopolies. This in turn also gives them an unduly close influence upon Govt. decision making – or the strategic lack of it. Calls for market ‘freedom’ usually equate to less restraint upon those with the power to inhibit the fair expectations of other less robust players.
You may well suggest that this system corrupting status of corporations is an example of wrongful Govt. decision-making. (But then you may not. As I recall you think Corporations are pretty nifty organisms, in which case your denial within this element of obvious reality is transparent.) The culpability of Govt. in bringing corporate commercial entities into the economic game may well be so, but only as far as it was a direct consequence of a fundamental that you will also steadfastly deny. This is that a significant % of individuals will be motivated by the ‘free market’ value system to strive and connive to maximise their individual private gain within the system REGARDLESS OF OTHERS. They will, and do, innately seek power and use it to turn the game to their ongoing and unrelenting advantage. This makes any theoretical benign and self-regulating character of the free market completely vulnerable to the very effort that it purposefully and powerfully stimulates in the very ‘worst’ of its constituents. You reject the right of the broader social interest to collectively organise (called Govt.) and decree against such predictable individualistic predation upon that interest.
You cite cumbersome, corrupt and stupid Govt. for what it unfortunately has become, and you tirelessly use this simplified portrait to justify the polarised alternative of your libertine dream. What you overlook is that these shortcomings are the direct result of the growth in scale of Govt. that itself is a direct result of the very growth that most ‘free’ market activity stimulates. This scalar expansion of Governance leads directly and unswervingly to the dissipation of genuinely democratic involvement, to the Governing structures working primarily for themselves rather than their theoretic constituents, and thence to the undue influence upon Govt. by organised pressure groups, especially ‘free market’ lobbyists.
I could go on. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel. Sadly, no matter how close that barrel is put before your eyes, you just refuse to see the fish.
Scale of activity is the fundamental problem at hand, corrupting the function of markets, Govt. and social groupings. It most certainly is the most basic problem affecting the bio-physical integrity of the planet. Social scale has only ever been successfully and sustainably managed by collective social policy construed and employed at an appropriate scale that allows full social participation and suitable connections of care and knowledge to local landscape (resource) values. ‘Free market’ notions inherently work toward expansion and diametrically away from those vital social values. And then once broken, as with DNA and cancer, the growth limiting templates of sustainable social form are likely to erupt irreversibly to terminal condition.
Notions have to be checked for their probable function in a real world dynamic. Your free market notions are practically valid only upon the planet Fantastic which seems to exist in the arcanely corroborated space between the ears of its acolytes.
Greg,
Perhaps you should turn your own arguments around and look at them through the same filters you apply to others. All I see in your argument is the argument of the ideologue you claim I am. The line that “…pricing signals alone can NEVER be an adequately accurate or reliable guide to resource allocation…” is just the most obvious example of this. This is purely ideological and something you are repeating as dogma. It would be laughed out of any publication other than one like “Marxist-Leninism Today” or “Green-Left Weekly”.
You seem to believe (without support) that the “broader social interest” can “collectively organise (called Govt.) and decree against such predictable individualistic predation”. I am not debating their right to do so (that is another argument) I just debate the utility of doing so. All I see when I look at the history of attempts of governments to decree in this way is failure, mitigated by the ability of the more able in a society to get around the more egregious examples of that stupidity.
Like James above, you seem to be desperately trying to create a strawman as a strawman is far easier to demolish than a real argument. A strawman is even easier to shoot in a barrel than a fish – it floats. I repeat what I said to James:
.
If you claim that I have ever said that a perfect market is required, I challenge you to find the quote. If I did, I was wrong. Please reply to my argument, rather than trying to construct some artifical edifice of your own imagining.
I agree with the first sentence.
The second sentence makes some sence also.
The third sentence, and the notion of “adequate” implies that there is a better alternative. If the alternative on offer is a command and control structure (ie let the government do it) then I would simply ask why you believe that the market place would be deprived of information any more so than the government? Government officials are not of extrodinarily above average intelligence and God did not grant them all a crystal ball. So why do you expect a network of beauracrats and commitees to do a better job?
If you think about it for a moment the difficulties associated with a lack of information, knowledge, insight and understanding is far more troubling for a governmental system based on a hierarchy of decision makers than it is for a distributed self organising system such as a market place.
Andrew
Reply to your argument? That’s rich.
You avoided the entirety of mine.
I actually think you missed seeing a hell of a lot of it. Not because you’re stupid but because you are so indoctrinally blinkered you just can’t see stuff outside of set familiar paradigms.
Why do you separate my evidently accurate comment re the lack of perfect information in the market place, and the effect of increasing market scale and complexity upon that deficiency from your judgement of ideology upon my summation that price signals cannot be adequate or reliable? Can’t you grasp that vital connection and its effect?
A belief without evidence is an ideology. I gave very pertinent evidence of my conclusion which you conveniently discarded – as you serially do to any such threatening factual constraint to your belief.
Yet without any plausible evidence you maintain that the ‘free market’ is a superior mechanism. You even go so far as to say this ‘free market ‘doesn’t have to be perfect to be superior. And propose that I had assumed you said it did. My earlier comments specifically canvass both dimensions and propose them both as inadequate – the imperfect reality particularly so.
So you’re happy with that imperfect model. What then about innate market tendency toward corporate monopoly? Local resource depletion and system pollution due to profit taking by powerful corporate owners within governing regimes of little strength or detached loyalty? The starvation and poisoning of local populations as remote ‘legal’ owners of the local resources maximise their profits to serve the hunger of the insatiable and increasingly fickle shareholders?
To restate my point more pointedly for your very pointy vision, I am essentially saying that markets have to be subject to socially constructive rules and objectives, and not be the primary determinant of them, The fact that Governance is generally as bloated and corrupt as it is, and so woefully inept as the social manager it should be, is actually quite largely due to the growth effects of the exploitative ‘free’ market mentality.
But I would like you to deal adequately with my third paragraph in this post before you leap into the escape avenues available within this necessarily broad restatement of my overall view.
On the face of it this seems an odd chain of logic. You seem to be saying that due to a “free market mentality” we have bloated and corrupt government. And yet I observe that in many instances people who have a “free market mentality” claim that they do so because of bloated and corrupt government.
If A causes B and B causes A then we are in for a run away chain reaction. As history progresses we should expect more and more bloated and corrupt government and more and more “free market mentality”.
The question is have we already crossed the tipping point into this danger zone?