I’ll be appearing (on the big screen) at LaTrobe University tomorrow Friday 12-1 talking on the topic “Discounting and Intergenerational equity: the case of climate change”. Contact the School of Business for details.
I’m going to check if I can get a recording to post on YouTube. I’m also looking into streaming video, but that’s some way off.
I’m very happy about Barack Obama’s win in the Democratic primary. A win for Obama would do a lot to change the perception of the US in the world, and the reality, greatly for the better. Of course, given that we are now into the eighth year of the worst presidency in US history, Hillary Clinton (or any other Democrat) would also have offered a huge change for the better, but Obama offers, in addition, a clear break with the past. The converse is that, if Obama loses, the consequences for US standing in the world will be dire. McCain has a largely unjustified reputation in the US as a moderate and a maverick, but the world as a whole would rightly see an election victory for him as a continuation of Bush.
My record tipping elections is not great, though I called the 2007 election for Labor ahead of most pundits. It remains to be seen whether I’ll get even a passing grade on my prediction, in January, of a relatively narrow win for an Obama-Clinton ticket over McCain-Lieberman for the Republicans. I’ve got the nominees right, and Hillary for VP seems like a no-brainer. On the other hand, while choosing an ex-Democrat Independent as a running mate still seems to me to give McCain his best chance of winning, he doesn’t even make most of the lists I’ve seen, though this guy shares my view.
Assuming Obama-Clinton go up against a ticket of McCain-genericRepublican, I expect and hope for a Democratic victory in November. But in politics you can never be sure.
THE ACOUSTICS OF MUSICAL WIND INSTRUMENTS – AND OF MUSICIANS
PROFESSOR JOE WOLFE
Monday 2nd June 2008
6.30 pm (Doors open at 6 pm)
Ithaca Auditorium, Brisbane City Hall
This event is free – no booking required
There will be refreshments following the talk and Joe will be available to answer any questions.
For further information or to subscribe to the mailing list visit http://www.BrisScience.org or contact Joel Gilmore (joel@BrisScience.org) or Lynelle Ross (nelle@BrisScience.org).
Please forward this announcement to friends and colleagues
It’s time once again for the Monday Message Board. Please post your thoughts on any topic. Civilised discussion and no coarse language, please.
It’s time once again for weekend reflections.Feel free to write at greater length than for a standard comment thread. As always, civilised discussion and no coarse language.
I’m putting up part 1 of the talk I gave in Adelaide last week, on prerecorded DVD. I’ve posted it on YouTube for the moment.
I tried posting directly within WordPress, but that didn’t work well and I thought that even if I used FTP to put the file up, the effect on server load would be pretty bad. So, I’d appreciate any alternative suggestions.
Parts 2-4 are over the fold
In discussing Roger Bate’s response to my article with Tim Lambert in Prospect defending Rachel Carson against the slurs of the DDT lobby, I thought it would be best to leave aside the question of Bate’s links to the tobacco lobby (already discussed in comments to an earlier post) and focus on Bate’s substantive concessions that the supposed ban on antimalarial use of DDT was mythical and that the Carson-inspired ban on agricultural use of DDT was beneficial.
Unfortunately, a number of our more gullible local delusionists took this as an admission that Bate had never really been a tobacco lobbyist and that they hadn’t really been suckered by a particularly nasty piece of tobacco industry PR, in this case a diversionary attack against the World Health Organization. (Here, for example is Currency Lad at Club Troppo). If they had taken a moment to think, they would have realised that picking a fight with Tim Lambert over a question of fact is a very silly thing to do, especially now that he has access to that gift that keeps on giving, the tobacco archives.
This post from Tim (promised as the first in a series) lays out chapter and verse on Bate’s dealings with the tobacco lobby (and even finds a mention of his offsider, Richard Tren).
This is an appeal to my many numerate and well-informed readers to check my calculations. I’ve been asked to do a quick estimate of the implications of including motor transport (particularly petrol) in a carbon tax/emissions trading scheme. Since it’s easier to model, I’ve decided to look at carbon taxes at rates of $20. $50 and $100 per ton of CO2.
Since a litre of petrol produces 2.3 kg of CO2 when burned, the taxes correspond to 4.6, 11.5 and 23.0 cents/litre, and I’m going to assume that the addition of margins yields final increases of 5, 12.5 and 25 cents/litre.
Given annual consumption of around 30 billion litres (this is petrol + diesel, but I’m going to treat it all as petrol), the revenue generated is $1.5, $3.75 and $7.5 billion, ignoring demand responses (of course, we want demand responses, but I’ll leave this for alter I think).
Coming to a very rough assessment of compensation, if the proceeds were divided equally amoung households in the bottom half of the income distribution (about 5 million of them), the payment would be around $300, $750 and $1500 respectively.
If anyone can see any big holes in my calculations, I’d be very grateful to have them pointed out. More generally, any constructive comments appreciated.
Don Harding of La Trone University has been digging into the Budget Papers and he’s found something startling – Projections of a sharp decline in the labour share of national income. As he says, this seems implausible on the face of it, but if the projections are right it’s a much bigger deal than food or petrol prices.
Update I’ve add Don’s supporting calculations in Word and Excel formats
This piece by Edward Lengel n in the Washington Post has a lot to say about something I’ve long regarded as critically important in explaining the strength of the war party in the US: the absence of any real recollection of the Great War of 1914-18, the opening round of the bloody conflict that dominated the history of the 20th century, spawning Communism and Nazism, Hitler’s War and the Cold War, and even, in large measure the continuing war in the Middle East. Of course, the US came late to the war, and its losses (50 000 combat deaths) were comparable to those of Australia, with 10 per cent of the population. But there is more to it than that.
Lengel (a military historian writing on Memorial Day) makes the striking observation
Americans haven’t forgotten about the doughboys. We just didn’t want to hear about them in the first place.
and continues
“The boys would talk if the questioners would listen,” said one embittered ex-doughboy. “But the questioners do not. They at once interrupt with, ‘It’s all too dreadful,’ or, ‘Doesn’t it seem like a terrible dream?’ or, ‘How can you think of it?’ or, ‘I can’t imagine such things.’ It shuts the boys up.” … The Civil War and World War II seem to lend themselves to good storytelling, as long as one avoids the ugly, depressing bits. They appear to have clear beginnings and endings, with dramatic heroes and villains. They move. World War I, by contrast, with its images of trench warfare and mustard gas, is not so easy to manipulate in a marketable manner. Popular historians consequently avoid it.
It would be charitable to interpret the reluctance of Americans to talk about the horrors of the Great War as evidence of inherent pacifism and perhaps this element was present. As Andy McLennan points out in comments, the main reaction to WWI was an increase in isolationist sentiment: the problem was Europe, not war itself. After isolationism was discredited (which did much to strengthen the War Party) from a distance it looks like WWI was simply forgotten,and the end state is functionally equivalent.
In any case, in the long run, the absence of this most bloodily futile of wars from historical memory has been a huge boon to the war party. With a historical memory of war dominated by the “Good War” against Hitler and the Axis, it’s unsurprising that Americans have been much more willing than the citizens of other democratic societies to accept war as part of the natural order of things.
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John Quiggin 