I usually wait a day or two before reposting my Fin column. But the Liberal Party is such a rapidly moving target that this column, drafted on Tuesday, looks prescient in retrospect, but may well be obsolete by tomorrow.
Apologies in advance if this gets posted multiple times. The server is flaky, so I’m using Posterous which works, but sometimes too well. Please comment on the first (lowest on page) version.
Attentive readers of the Letters page may have noticed a letter from The Hon Wilson Tuckey MP (Quiggin sticks to problem not solution Letters 24/11). Mr Tuckey gave his account of a discussion of climate change policy held at Parliament House, organised by the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies Great Barrier Reef Climate Change Alliance, in which he and I took part. As is usual in such cases, I had a rather different recollection of events. But, since Tuckey appeared to be, in Malcolm Turnbull’s words a fringe figure of the far right, I saw little value in responding.
Now, however, the situation has changed. As one of Turnbull’s earliest and most vociferous critics, Tuckey can consider himself vindicated by the decision of the Liberal Party to replace Turnbull with Tony Abbott, someone whose views on climate change are much closer to his own.
More significantly, as Tuckey himself has pointed out, the proposals presented on his website http://www.wilsontuckey.com.au now represent the closest thing the Liberal Party has to a climate change policy. It may therefore be useful to examine these proposals, and, in the process, to recapitulate some of the points I made during our meeting in November.
As was noted in Tuckey’s letter, I did not discuss the specifics of the government’s ETS policy, canvass alternatives such as a carbon tax, or speculate on the amendments being negotiated between the government and the then leadership of the opposition. The position presented by the Great Barrier Reef Climate Change Alliance was that a 25 per cent reduction in emissions was needed by 2020, and that a market-based emissions reduction policy should be the central approach. We did not seek to promote one market-based policy over another, and my answers to Tuckey’s questions reflected that.
I was however, quite happy to explain the merits of a primarily market-based approach as against a centralised command-and-control solution, in which governments seek to determine and impose by fiat, particular technological fixes for climate change. Within a market based framework, there be room for some policies, such as feed-in tariffs for solar energy, aimed at nudging decisionmakers to adopt new technologies. But the central element must be to ensure that there is a price attached to carbon emissions, whether through taxes or through tradeable permits.
A visit to Tuckey’s website reveals a different approach. Tuckey is an enthusiast for the tidal power potential of the Kimberley region, as indeed am I. Given the incentives associated with a high enough price for carbon, and reforms to the National Electricity Market to encourage more investment in long-distance transmission lines, there is huge potential in tidal energy.
But such an incentive-based approach is of no interest to Tuckey. Rather, he suggests ‘To respond to these problems the Government should take an up front role investing in and developing Australia’s only significant and predictable renewable energy resource which is to be found in the tides of the Kimberley.’
Tuckey also proposes extensive public investment in High Voltage Direct Current transmission lines, noting that ‘China will not have an ETS. It will invest in Hydro, Nuclear and other renewable energy. Its Government is already building an extensive HVDC network.’
There are strong arguments for a return to greater reliance on public investment in energy infrastructure. But, in the context of a policy response to climate change, it is important to avoid ‘picking winners’. There are many candidate technologies for reducing our CO2 emissions, ranging from nuclear power and ‘clean coal’ to extensive investment in energy efficiency.
The most cost-efficient way to choose options for emissions reductions is to ensure that investors in energy infrastructure, public or private, face a price for each tonne of carbon they emit, and earn a return for each tonne they prevent. If that is done, standard commercial criteria will select the most cost-efficient path.
Tony Abbott has effectively ruled out such an option. Having denounced the government’s emissions trading scheme as a massive new tax, he can scarcely embrace the main alternative, a carbon tax. On the other hand, he has committed himself to achieving the emissions reductions promised by Labor.
In these circumstances, the Chinese approach endorsed by Wilson Tuckey is probably the only feasible option. It is, perhaps, surprising that, having elected its most conservative leader ever, the Liberal Party may have to turn to the Communist Party of China for policy guidance. But politics makes strange bedfellows.
John Quiggin is an ARC Federation Fellow in Economics and Political Science at the University of Queensland.
John Quiggin 
Alice,
That lot really is a silly response to Jarrah.
Nowhere did he say any parts of that mantra, which would more correctly come from the extreme Left in any case. No one I know of on the libertarian right would advance those propositions at all. Just get your head around that and you may make a more intelligent argument. We live in hope.
As for the second, it is a well-proven phenomenon that increased wealth results in fewer children. Do you have any thing like facts to throw at it or are you restricted to the sorts of nonsense you gave above?
Jarrah
First they said, the best way to end wars is economic growth
Then they said the best way to fight inflation is economic growth
Then they said the best way to fight unemployment is economic growth
Now they say the best way to avoid crisis is economic growth
Now you say the best way to avoid population growth is “economic growth”.
I suppose you have not considered the Club of Rome report (which appears to have been broadly vindicated), and perhaps you have read but dismiss Schumacher’s classic (ISBN085634012X).
Our Western growth is THE problem. We must get to a sustainable level, and this could well entail less growth in the West and more growth in the developing world.
Why should the West have two car families if the entire globe can NEVER attain this goal?
Growth mania is worse than nuke-mania. As I see it – If it was not for growth-mania there would be no nuke-mania.
Growth = long-run nuclear destruction.
@Fran Barlow
But not as a component of household insurance which is what I thought you were referring to, so your premiums would not rise.
Chris,
Which strawman said all of that? The one in the Wizard of Oz?
So I assume you opposed Kevin Rudds economic stimulus package.
p.s. Last time I checked much of the developing world (ie China and India) was growing much faster than western nations.
hermit
If you want to relate Chernobyl deaths (as proxy for nuclear deaths) to bushfires (as proxy for non-nuclear deaths), then you are better off using Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
IN any case if a Chernobyl covered the same area as Victorian bushfires the deaths would skyrocket.
What costs have you added up to claim that “uranium is still relatively cheap”.
So far all the processed known to obtain it from yellow cake seem relatively expensive to me.
But I will wait for your clarification.
Poor ol Andrew Reynold’s
Straw men – try:
Keynes/Beveridge/Marshall
Friedman/Thatcher/Samuelson
Fraser/Howard/Viner/Stone
Various central Bank Governors round the world plus of course
Rancid newspaper columnists.
No TerjeP
It is unreasonable to say I opposed the stimulus.
I was too busy rolling on the floor laughing to bother opposing.
Stupid capitalists. If they think they can stimulate themselves out of crisis – they are wanking.
Is this your position?
Chris,
How about finding where they said this, rather than replying with a list of names – a lazy approach at best.
Just as a side note Chri’s – learn to use an apostrophe as well.
.
In the case of Friedman, at least, the best way to fight inflation and unemployment (along with many central bank governors) was not growth, but monetary discipline. One down, at least.
Andrew
Coming from a straw man, that is a bit rich.
I suggest, it was your query, so you wander off yourself.
Stop wasting time.
@Chris Warren
Exactly Chris – we hear this over and over again from delusion central. Just keep ramping growth up everywhere and it will solve every economic problem and probably even the reason for the big bang. It isnt half obvious that excessive growth is also producing a plethora of plug in devices we really dont need and valleys full of toxic landfill and skies full of acid rain. Excessive growth is convincing us to buy cheap garbage we never even wanted before, made to last only a season before it falls apart. But no, the luny right think growth is the cure for everything. I have a new motto…for the right.
“Just keep on consuming folks and let us not worry about pollution”
@TerjeP (say tay-a)
Terje says “p.s. Last time I checked much of the developing world (ie China and India) was growing much faster than western nations.”
Tell me this Terje. Have you checked the growth of Chinese Coal power plants that we are happily and merrily shovelling the coal into???
All to employ a measly 40,000 people in Australia which represents 0.20% of the population here who might “according to labour flexibility” have moved to less destructive industries if they did something responsible and reduced the output of the black pollutant with a decent ETS. Not only that, to get this employment we susbidise mining with your taxes and rates to the tune of millions each year (900 odd million of government subsidies to mining across Fed, State and local).
Isnt it the right who says “oh bad luck – some industries fail when we leave it to the market but thats OK – people just move to new industries and thats a good thing isnt it?” On the other hand when you talk about penalising big coal with an ETS (or even with reduced subsidies) they are the first to scream “you cant do that – think of the jobs”. Mining in Australia is not a market operation. Its an operation that relies heavily on the generosity of our politicians and they have been extremely generous.
Hypocrites. Just banal hypocrites who only yell “more consumption, more growth” and dont give a fig about more pollution.
@Chris Warren
This is the latest discussion on The Oil Drum of an ongoing series on future U supply
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5984
Earlier articles in the series had harder hitting comments. As to future gas needs here is a list; ammonia based fertiliser, industrial process heat, peaking electrical power, LNG export, domestic gas, combined heat and power (CHP) and a potential biggie in CNG diesel substitute for trucks.
The liberal party has just been exposed as bunch of big government, closet facist. Abbott trashed the feeble ETS proposal which was great, except now the liberal party is likely to present a big government carbon mitigation proposition that Mousillini would have been proud of.
I will add that the ETS is no different as essentially through carbon offsets and free permits the government picks winners. What ends up happening is were lobbying is most effective is were all the rent seeking goes on. For example the resources companies will lobby for offsets and free permits, but those who drive cars have no lobbying power and end up wearing the majority of the costs. Picking winners isn’t the states job, this should be left up to the entrepreneurs.
Of course the irony is that if one of these carbon mitigation schemes that involves a financial cost on carbon, is implemented nuclear energy becomes all the more viable. Even if it takes thirty years, nuclear is here to stay and advances in nuclear technology will eventaully deliver clean nuclear energy in a cost effective manner if not with carbon subsidies without. I would have thought the anti-nucelar bloggers/ pro-science, deterministic types would have seen that one coming.
Here is a pro-nuclear report from the WNA . They think nuclear is viable from an economic perspective.
Click to access economics.pdf
@Alice
Too right, Alice (pun accidental)! I’ve worked in the academic sector, which has been squeezed on employment conditions for a good couple of decades – to the cheers of a fairly vocal group of people. I’ve worked in IT for several organisations, all of them squeezed at various times by different economic forces – standard small business type concerns, the IT tech wreck which sent the multinational I once worked for back offshore, except for a small outpost, and also political games by a previous government cost jobs at one organisation. Noone cried a river for any of these employees who fell into different lines of work or had to transfer across from one organisation to another, or who got given the redundancy (which I’ve never faced, thank the lucky stars).
What’s a few coal mining jobs? Remember recently in WA BHP was getting ready to run a mine, and the town came alive with new businesses and people (can’t remember the small town’s name unfortunately)? Then BHP hit a small speed hump with the GFC and changes in metals and commodity prices, so they nixxed it. Well, the town was deader than a very dead thing within weeks. Imagine having your business, your mortgage, etc trashed just like that, and without the benefit of a big market such as Perth to buy the properties out for a reasonable fraction of the original price.
But cut one coalminer’s job as a side-effect of a rational planned retreat under an ETS…and they come down on you like a ton of bricks. The media and the Bolt-ons, for example. And remember how Mark Latham’s attempt to save a Tasmanian old forest from logging went? There were a few loggers involved directly and yet Howard’s one day intervention to save there jobs was all that it took to knock Labor out of contention. We can’t even prevent a few old growth forests from being destroyed, because it might cost some jobs.
But that’s politics.
@Andrew Reynolds
Andy says about me
“Do you have any thing like facts to throw at it or are you restricted to the sorts of nonsense you gave above?”
In case you hadnt noticed I fight fire with water and libertarians give off a lot of smoke and not much heat. And they use statements like these examples below regularly, with no supporting facts
1. Andy says “it is a well-proven phenomenon that increased wealth results in fewer children.”
No where, no regions, no specifics, no figures, no dates, no times Andy – in short just a blanket decree by Andy.
2. Jarrah says
“Besides, the best way to reduce population growth is to encourage economic growth.”
No facts, no figures – just two examples of libertarian “decree absolutes” of the type you criticised me for making. Yet the ridiculous part about it is, I didnt make those grand sweeping factless, baseless and not applicable to all regions and all occasions, comments. I actually called Jarrah on his “blanky” statement…and now Im calling you to account on yours. Ill wait for the accounts to roll in Andy.
@Donald Oats
Thats right Don and in this country Politics means all for big business.
These libertarians really are dummies, Alice.
Fact is throughout most of human history economic growth and increased productivity have always been accompanied by population increase which up until the Industrial Revolution tended to cancel out a lot of the economic growth gains.
And the key thing about the Industrial Revolution was not the technological innovations per se fuelling labour productivity, but the transformation in industrial *organisation” itself, the over-riding importance of which the market fetishists stupidly misunderstand, ignore, or oppose today in their horror of social organisation, collaboration, regulation, planning, and government or other forms of enabling and democratic oversight.
Marching forward to the past are our brilliant economic warrior klutzes who god-knows why like to call themselves “libertarian”!! The mind boggles at their chronic social autism and historical ignorance.
Thanks hermit for the oildrum link.
Its a pity other nations are rushing into uranium exports – it seems to pre-empt Australian cuts. Have the nuke-lobbyists admitted that uranium supplies are so short-term?
However the right thing to do, is to get well away from the nuclear economy and invest heavily in R&D for alternatives.
Given the variety of approaches, I am optimistic that alternative sources, combined with cuts in Western energy gluttony, will win out in the end, at least in Australia.
Sample new research includes simply producing electricity from the ionic differences between fresh water and salt water [New Scientist – 28 February 2009, p40f].
The constant mushrooming of possibilities continues to amaze me.
Only regulation and government tend to bring out libertarian cynisim. On the other hand social organisation, collaboration, planning and democratic oversight are all good things. Although generally when libertarians talk of democratic oversight they mean democratic oversight of governments.
@Philomena
A more apt statement of libertarian beliefs I have not heard Philo “The mind boggles at their chronic social autism and historical ignorance “.
Even Terje above doesnt realise that when the world was closer to their beliefs on small community governance (the supposed freedom they seek as refuge from the dreaded “state”) you could move from one small county in England and be reprimanded for the same crime in one county and depending who ran the next county – you could be tortured or hanged in another county. This, they seek to impose on us as a remedy for the “state”. The tyranny and unpredictability of small community fascisms.
@Chris Warren
I think the main point is that fuel costs for Gen III reactors will never be more than a few percent of total running costs (labour, finance etc) even if they have to get uranium from seawater. If they get the bugs out of mass produced Gen IV reactors ongoing fuel costs will be almost irrelevant while greatly reducing the waste problem. On energy ‘breakthroughs’ generally there seem to be several a year then they mostly drop off the radar. In my opinion if a new idea doesn’t sprout wings within 2-3 years it probably never will.
ha – moderated again. I could begin to take this personally.
Alice,
Are you seriously claiming that total fertility does not drop as GDP increases? I have seen some real counterfactuals from you over time, but that one just seems to indicate that you do not read at all. Just have a wade through gapminder if you really doubt that one. The stats are all from the UN. Sheesh.
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Chri’s
You really need to learn how to argue – I would suggest a quick check. You advance a proposition – I ask you to defend it. You give a meaningless list of names and I point out that it is both meaningless and wrong – that, for example, Friedman never said that.
You then, as the one advancing the idea, need to defend it.
The simple idea of putting an argument together seems beyond you.
.
Philomena,
So – you just discount the industrial revolution altogether, then? I just have to wonder who the fetishist is – the one that imagines that everyone working together can achieve something or the one that that imagines you need a government to tell them all what to do.
@Andrew Reynolds
Andy – I never said “total fertility drops as GDP inncreases”.
Where did I say that Andy?. Twist my words indeed and then drop in a two bit nonscientific site like “gapfinders.”
Answer my first question first and dont twist what I say like the jellyfish you libertarians are (slippery bastards!) but you wont get one past me Andy.
@Andrew Reynolds
Andy – go back to the bank work. You have just doomed yourself.
Andrew
That is your opinion, and you are only trying to divert the issue onto some pretend argument about what Milton Friedman may or may not have actually written.
This is a game I will not play.
You winge about a list when your list was “The Wizard of Oz”.
You obviously know little about how Milton Friedman’s philosophy was used to supposedly to produce growth in (for example) Ireland, which was tagged as being in “The Age of Milton Friedman”.
Friedman’s philosophy was directly linked to Irelands supposed tiger economy, so it (supposedly) became the regions richest country within one generation.
Friedman’s philosophy was so used to supposedly fix the economy, so tough luck.
QED.
@Andrew Reynolds
And Andy – Id like to know exactly where Philo “discounted the industrial revolution”.
Exact quote Andy? Let the audience vote.
Just dont twist other peoples words is my advice to you.
Alice,
I was going off this quote:
The drop in total fertility has continued for every one of the high GDP nations, with (perhaps) a recovery up towards a total fertility of 2 over the last few years.
There is simply no support for your statement in any of the population stats. If you really wish more on it, try wandering down to a nearby Uni library and checking this one out. If you want something easier to read, try this one. Seriously though, are you really claiming that? If you are I will dig it out further.
.
No Chris – you introduced an outright opinion (above – at number 2 or 152 on the thread) and I have challenged you to support it. As you continue to fail to do so, I must presume you either cannot or are too lazy to do so.
Next time, try using such intellectual midget stuff on a blog where the host is not good enough to allow dissent.
Alice,
There are much better ones here (and elsewhere) at twisting words. I try to avoid it.
I read Philomena’s comment (jargon laden as it was) as attempting to indicate that the industrial revolution itself can be discounted as all it did was to change industrial organisation – and therefore it cannot be counted as an argument in favour of welfare growth ultimately reducing fertility.
If I has misinterpreted, please feel free to correct me.
@Fran Barlow
Fran,
14% of the world’s electricity comes from nuclear. Electricity accounts for around 25% of the world’s carbon emissions.
If you double nuclear power over the next 15-20 years (which is highly unlikely) you will reduce total world carbon emssions by around 5% once you factor in carbon life cycle costs of bringing on the new nuclear power.
The basic maths for this is straightforward – just read the science:
Click to access FS03%20Nucl%20Power%20Clmt%20Chng.pdf
By all means, go ahead, pick nuclear as a “winner”. It certainly is a “winner” at making a very small and insignificant dent in carbon emissions, and at great cost.
Alterntively, just place an effective and fully encompassing price on carbon emissions, within an effective market, and let the winners emerge.
Andrew
You are being deliberately disruptive.
Your knowledge of the impact of Milton Friedman (in various hands) to supposedly promote growth (for example in Ireland, is inadequate.
The face at the bottom of the well is your own.
You are being provocative and misrepresenting others views to over compensate.
You have not made any substantial point.
In Australia the notion that 5% growth is a reasonable goal to achieve economic objectives pretty clearly indicates how growth mania has dominated considerations of “economic objectives”. In the end, most of this growth-lust actually relied on population increase through immigration and preferential access external stimulus.
The twits in Treasury have claimed that; “if we slowed growth, future generations will be less well off than otherwise”.
It now appears that, by not slowing growth, future generations will inhabit a wasteland.
If the only issue was long-lived waste then there is no comparison. Releasing CO2 into the entire atmosphere is far more damaging then the potential damage of putting the entire world’s long-lived nuclear waste into one salt-pan. Nuclear energy doesn’t need to be operated in a way that generates long-lived waste but even if it is, people should realize that CO2 is actually a worse problem than nuclear waste.
Chris,
I am not trying to make any substantial point (at this time at least). You are asserting that someone other than a strawman of your own creation said those things. I am challenging you to come up with even one – I very much doubt anyone (other possibly than on the Marxist Left) would spout such twaddle.
I would also be interested to hear which “twit” in Treasury had said what you claimed in that last comment. Find one, other than a strawman of your own devising, and you may be considered to have made a point worth answering. So far, you have just another bloke spouting BS at the pub.
I would like to see how you imagine you could support this assertion? Looks like you are just as guilty of what you accuse others of, which, in this case, involves you also making a statement that disproves itself. The statement gives an example of someone (other possibly than on the Marxist Left) who would spout such twaddle. Well done.
Yes Freelander, it is a poor, unacademic response from a supposed academic to legitimate inquiry from a questioner, isn’t it?
Ad hominems, anyone?
Heaven forbid a didactic reponse, as an alternative.
@paul walter
You will find that there is now great variation in the quality of academics, at least in Australia. At one end you still have quality, like JQ, but at the other end you have a complete waste of our tax dollars.
Many academic jobs are quite poorly paid and students are admitted simply to get their money. Having admitted them, ‘Universities’ then feel compelled to give them degrees. If they don’t the next batch wouldn’t front with their money. Some of these ‘graduates’ then go on to ‘teach’. Real academic find it difficult to work in these down-market ‘universities’ as they are surrounded by idiots and are starved for intelligent conversation.
@Andrew Reynolds
If fertility was so reduced by the industrial revolution and its contribution to global economic growth since that time, would you mind telling me, in your humble opinion, what exactly is it that accounts for the huge growth in global populations since that time?
The world population was stable at around 1 million people in 70,000 BC. Interestingly the devlopment of agriculture (which of course provided economic growth not lower fertility as you suggest) caused a surge in the population. During both the agricultural revolution and the industrial revolution the life expectancy of children increased dramatically. So Andy, while you obsess about fertility rates you ignore other factors entirely. It is a fact that if more children survive and live longer, then more generations of a family can be fitted into a hundred year period. Now isnt that an increase in the population by any other name?
Lets also move to Europe in the 18th and 19th century which Europe experienced a doubling of its population and a doubling again in two centuries. Undoubtedly linked to the industrial revolution. (dont dare quibble about commencement dates for IR). As by product of this economic growth, sanitation methods improved and vaccinations were invented amongst other factors enabling children, and their children to survive and live longer. As living conditions improved in Britain in the 19th century – its population doubled every 50 years.
I dont suppose you would consider these events to be aligned to economic growth would you Andy?
Your fertility rates link by country that you attempted to use to discount the proposition that economic growth is a causative factor in population growth Andy, is rather weak, sorry to have to say.
Andrew Reynolds
The Industrial Revolution was not succeeded by a lower birth rate or population decline. Nor did it increase the economic well-being or wealth or overall welfare of the majority. In fact the contrary is true, so your simplistic universal theory is not helpful.
My initial point was the the IR was not mainly about its technological inventions. The profound transformation in industrial *organisation* was the major factor producing all the great political and economic long-term changes. The key organisational changes were the factory system and the brutal discipline it demanded, the substitution of machines for human skill and effort, of inaninate sources of power (water, coal) for animate ones (horses, cattle), the development of engines for supplying almost unlimited energy and the way in which all this meant abundant raw materials in particular minerals could be used to generate a continuing flow of investment.
The IR widened the gap between rich and poor and helped to generate class conflicts of unprecedented bitterness and ferocity.This was its main political effect A major reason for the growing poverty of the working classes, certainly for the low wages they were paid, was because income was diverted to the new business classes. For the majority, the IR transformed the character of poverty from rural and agrarian poverty to urban poverty. The essence of the IR for the working class of England was the loss of common rights by the landless and the increasing poverty of many trades.Driven off the land the working classes were sucked into the filthy, overcrowded, unsanitary cities. As historians like Hobsbawm have pointed out there was a marked deterioration in the conditions of the working class at the beginning of the 19th century. Between 1800-1840 there was a shortage of meat in London; out of 8.5 million Irish, close to a million starved to death in the famine of 1846-7; the average wage of hand-loom weavers fell between 1805 and 1833 from 23s. a week to 6s. Riots mostly related to food shortages broke out in Britain in 1811-13, 1815-17, 1819, 1826, between 1829-35, 1838-42, 1843-4 and 1846-8.
It is not economic growth per se that will or can regulate population growth. The optimal conditions for controlling population growth involve giving people, especially women, control over their lives and where there is economic equality. These preconditions do not exist anywhere in the world.
Alice,
If you want a demographics lesson I would suggest a course in it. If you wish to display wanton ignorance on the topic, though, don’t let me stop you. I have given you a couple of references, if you read them and want more, let me know. If you want something more academic, try this one which you may have access to.
To answer your specific question, it is not increased fertility that caused the demographic boom, but a reduction in deaths – resulting from better food, better working conditions, better medical care and better education. All of these were made possible by the accumulation of capital.
Even the first page of that article clears that up, with total fertility in the UK remaining static throughout the period.
.
Paul,
The supposition that I am an academic is entirely yours.
.
Freelander,
I am merely waiting for Chris to support his assertion about the people he has claimed made such silly statements. So far, he has resorted to personal ad hom (as, I note, you have by implication).
.
Chris,
As for my statements, the CPA website has a feast of them – mostly focussing on China. This one for example, has Deng arguing that development is needed to cure the ills of China. The fact it has not is probably because residual Marxism is one of the ills of China.
Again – if you want to understand that it is Marxism and other forms government control that actually creates many of these ills, I am happy to provide further references.
Meanwhile, though, do you mind trying to support your assertions?
@Andrew Reynolds
Andy – I would suggest it is you displaying wanton ignorance. I cant help you with that.
Andrew, it relieves me no end.
Alice,
Did you bother reading any of the references, or are they just too likely to challenge your ideas?
Since poverty is fundamentally connected to and an outcome of the capital accumulation process we can expect world population to continue to increase indefinitely and uncontrollably, especially in the underdeveloped sectors and amongst the poorer layers generally.
We can expect global population to outpace the ability of the planet to accommodate it and we can expect that the reciprocal relationship this overpopulation has on the depletion, destruction and eventual eradication of the natural resources and conditions fundamental to life: clean water and air, healthy soils, climactic stability, etc,, mean that one day human life itself will face extinction.
I didn’t think one small sentence could precipitate such a large quantity of argument and invective.
To clear some things up – firstly, by saying the “best way to reduce population growth is to encourage economic growth”, I was referring to the uncontroversial phenomenon of people having smaller families as they get richer. (At least I thought it was uncontroversial, until Phil and Alice blew a gasket.) This pattern is separate from other important factors, like empowered women and family planning.
Secondly, contrary to Phil’s ridiculous assertions, the Industrial Revolution both reduced fertility rates and increased economic wellbeing. To even attempt to argue against these plain-as-day facts is to demonstrate a Graeme Bird-like disconnect from reality.
Lastly, growth does indeed present problems like ecological sustainability, as several have mentioned. However, I’m yet to see any achievable plan for steady-state economies. In addition, technological change means that an increase in consumption or living standards does not always have to entail greater stress on the environment. Regulatory changes can help this, which is one of the reasons I support a carbon tax.
“poverty is fundamentally connected to and an outcome of the capital accumulation process”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
“we can expect world population to continue to increase indefinitely and uncontrollably”
Utterly wrong.
So – Phil, there was no poverty before there was capital accumulation if I understand you correctly. I find this position of your utterly inexplicable. Can you provide any references at all that show that, without capital accumulation, there is no poverty?
I have a comment in moderation addressing some previous comments. Opponents, please hold your fire until it’s released. Thanks.
Andrew Reynolds:
Where, pray tell, did I make that assertion? I make an assertion but I’m amazed how you come up with a different one. I made an assertion that I believe is supportable from comparing the massive damage that is and will occur from global warming: several per cent at least of the world’s GDP over just the next hundred years in addition to the non-GDP-affecting natural damage. And that’s just the next hundred years. Human caused global warming will last for many tens-of-thousands of years. So the timescale of its damage is comparable with the timescale of long-lived nuclear waste. The length of the timescale means that the Greenland and West Antarctic ice-sheets will be nearly entirely melted so the changes we will cause are absolutely massive.
Long-lived nuclear waste in one salt pan, on the other hand, will not have such massive world-wide effects. It is not difficult to confine nuclear waste within a salt pan for 250,000 years if left undisturbed. There is no comparison between making one salt pan (that doesn’t need to be very big) useless for any other purpose and the massive world-wide damage of global warming.
In any case, generating long-lived actinide waste is a tremendous waste of energy and any rational nuclear energy system would not generate such waste.
@Chris O’Neill
Chris – Andy is an entirely slippery character who twists the argument down a blind alley of his own making.
Andy
We were debating that wild assertion of Jarrah’s that economic growth does not lead to an increase in the population and you want to go down some narrow tortured misleading paths about fertility rates, ignoring all the other factors about economic growth and advance that give rise to increased populations (higher survival rates, longer lives etc) the bleeding obvious outcome of both the agricultural and industrial revolutions across the globe.
Are you mad Andy? (or just uneductated?) but dont twist my words. Jarrah’s comment was utter undigestible rubbish which Ive long since come to expect from the libertarian crowd.