Judging by the comments on my “derp and denialism” post, we seem to be mostly agreed on the proposition, amply demonstrated by economic studies, that the global economy could be decarbonized at a very modest cost in terms of foregone growth. On the other hand, it is equally obvious that the commitments made so far are nowhere near enough to achieve this goal[^1], and that the reasons for this lie in the operation of political systems, most importantly in the US, China and India. This raises several questions
(a) Why have political systems failed to yield the responses we need
(b) Can climate stabilization be achieved without fundamental transformation of political systems
(c) If so, what transformation do we need
(d) If not, what kinds of more limited change do we need
In this context, it’s only really necessary to look at the US, China and India. The EU may drag its 27 pairs of feet a little (it is the EU, after all) but will certainly match anything the US does. And, if the US were fully committed to climate change, denialists elsewhere in the developed world, like Harper in Canada and Abbott in Australia, would have the ground cut from under them.
In the US (and other English-speaking countries), the primary obstacle is not the entrenched power of interests that would lose from climate stabilization such as fossil fuel companies. The big global energy companies, like Exxon and BP, are perfectly capable of shifting their focus from oil to gas and if the market gets large enough, to renewables. In any case, they are balanced by potential losers from climate change like the insurance and finance sectors. Rather, the problem is the climate change denial is a rightwing culture war issue, which has became (one of many) Republican shibboleths.
Sustained action against climate change requires that the Republican party either be marginalized or replaced by something quite different (though it would probably still be called the Republican party). That’s a big challenge, but not impossible. A two-term presidency for Hillary Clinton, even without full control of Congress, would probably be enough to get things done through a combination of regulation and international agreements, the model currently being pursued by Obama. And four losses in succession would probably be enough to force a shift within the Republican party.
The situation in China is more opaque (to me, at any rate) but also more promising. Having been the worst of the spoilers at Copenhagen, and suffered a fair bit of opprobrium as a result, the Chinese leadership now seems willing to take a constructive role. Moreover, the pollution crisis in Chinese cities has led to a dramatic shift in sentiment against coal. So, it seems likely that renewables will be given a fair chance, including effective pricing of coal externalities, which is all they need.
Finally, there’s India. For a long time, Indian rhetoric on the issue was dominated by Third World grievance politics: the rich countries had burned lots of coal to get rich, and India had the right to do the same. But that seems to be changing, in part because most of the losers from climate change are also in the Third World, and in part because India’s coal sector is a total mess, making renewables more attractive. The new PM, Modi (from the deeply unattractive BJP, but that’s another issue) seems strongly committed to renewables. The historical arguments have shifted to the more productive terrain of arguing about how to share an emissions budget constrained by a 2 degree/450 ppm target.
At some level, all this is academic, in the pejorative sense of the term. Either existing political structures, with the kinds of changes I’ve discussed above, will manage decarbonization of the economy, or they won’t. There’s no chance that any kind of fundamental transformation of the political systems of the US, India and China[^1] will take place within the next 10-15 years, which is the time in which the necessary decisions need to be made.
To sum up this post and the previous one: even though the global climate could be stabilized at a very modest cost, the political obstacles are formidable. It may not be possible to overcome them in time, but we have no alternative except to try.
[^1]: I’m a little less confident in making this judgement about China. The apparent solidity of a one-party state can crumble quite fast. But the initial result of such a collapse would almost certainly be chaotic, and the outcome unforeseeable.
[^1}; There used also to be a lot of concern over whether these commitments would be met. While a couple of countries, such as Japan and Canada, have reneged, and Australia seems likely to follow, most of the big players are meeting their targets quite easily, reflecting both the softness of the targets and the low cost of decarbonization.
John Quiggin 
I honestly don’t know how seriously to take the studies that suggest deep decarbonization will be relatively easy. The sources seem like mainstream, establishment sorts who I suspect would be happy to accentuate the positive. I’d be happier if I saw some academic types saying the same things, because I’d expect them to stay closer to the evidence in their pronouncements.
To talk about John Quiggin’s central arguments:
1. “… the primary obstacle is not the entrenched power of interests that would lose from climate stabilization such as fossil fuel companies.”
My mind is open on this question. It would be worth looking at corporate, worker union and rich persons donations to the US political process. Who does the weight of money come from and who does it go to? Also, are the pro-fossil interests, in aggregate, bigger than we might first think? They might well include all oil recovery and coal mining, fossil fuel generators, internal combustion engine and auto interests, airline interests, the military-industrial complex and the United Auto Workers to name just some. We cannot discount that some worker unions could well be reactionary on this issue.
We need also to consider the fact that the US is demonstrably an oligarchy not a democracy. A few rich people run the country and get the policies that they want. Majority demand for policy is not effective. I am referring to the Gilens and Page study “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens”.
“Our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts.” – Gilens and Page.
2. “… the problem is the climate change denial is a rightwing culture war issue, which has became (one of many) Republican shibboleths.
I do not find this theory very convincing. It seems nebulous and lacking in a material basis. The counter argument is that when ostensibly non-denialists are in power (Democrats, Labor) there is still either no action or much too little action on de-carbonising the economy. There must be, one would think, some other drag, some other intertia which is preventing the system from changing fast enough. I lack satisfactory theories on this myself, let alone explanations. The system seems to have an inertia of its own. A combination of cultural shibboleths (especially of the oligarchs), human predilition for immediate comfort and of actual material and system intertia might be part of the explanation. A system which is more or less in equilibrium and maintaining itself (our economy) tends to remain in that state until exogenous forces compel it to change. Internal forces for change (human demands for change from within the economy) seem inoperative while the majority are comfortable.
JQ, the extent of the US district gerrymander will be near impossible to overcome.
They’re going to need electoral reform first, which requires some of their supreme court appointments (literally) to drop dead to be replaced.
Perhaps China and India will advance quickly because renewable energy is energy security, like the German’s are discovering (re Russian gas).
(a) to (d) make no sense.
If (a) Political system has failed to respond, then (logically) you cannot expect it to respond as postulated in (b).
What should have been drafted is:
(1) Why have political systems failed to yield the responses we need
(2) Can political systems yield the response we need without fundamental transformation of other systems
(3) If so, what transformation do we need
(4) If not, what kinds of systematic changes do we need
Politics can not solve climate change because politics was not the original cause.
Actually JQ, do you think divestment efforts are frightening the BAU horses at all? I wonder what the quantum of $$$ shifted really is, or if it’s anything like significant. I’ve seen proponents claiming they’re damaging coal viability.
This article puts it bluntly
http://theenergycollective.com/robertwilson190/576116/climate-change-failure-now-inevitable
Alas I fear the response to high gas prices in eastern Europe and eastern Australia is a veneer of renewables backed by cheap coal largely uninhibited by carbon pricing.
That’s for electricity. Steel production in China and India uses a lot of Australian iron ore and Australian hard coal for which we gleefully take the money and lack of emissions on our books. I don’t think renewable energy will power steel making any time soon.. no Prof Sadoway’s ideas are not cheap enough. I seem to recall Direct Action was to be in full swing by now. At some point we’ll be forced to take unpalatable measures, before 2020 I think.
I’m pleased that JQ has raised the explicitly political angle to the ecological crisis. There is no doubt that the crisis is quickening. The personal impact of this quickening will be serious except for those people who are so delusional as to be able to sustain a state of psychological denial in the face of the evidence of their own senses. There are others already about the place, I’ve met a few, who have fallen into the grasp of nihilistic doomsday cults (see ‘nature bats last’ for an example). There will be many more like this. Naomi Klein is calling for global revolution, the world’s poor are calling for justice, first nature is under severe attack.
The fight for a habitable world incorporates the aim of sustaining a planet worth living on. To that extent we are engaged with what Arne Næss described as ‘a long front’ in which all struggles for justice, equity and democracy simultaneously advance the ecological cause.
As JQ notes, we may only have a slim chance but there is dignity in trying and none at all in kicking back with business and life as usual. I’m well and truly past even considering any monolithic models for change or the future. We are in a period of welcome radical political disequilibrium in which points of resistance will multiply. All we have to do is seize those opportunities and see what happens.
PrQ says that we are mostly agreed that the global economy could be decarbonised at a modest cost in foregone growth. That may be true — I certainly hope it is — but assuming it is I suspect the growth will look a lot different from what we have now, and have to entail a substantial decline in ecosystem services. A substantial portion of what counts as economic activity now will have to be shed. We are going to need to be a lot more frugal with concrete, steel and hydrocarbons. Given that some of these things will be required for low carbon intensity development, we are face some tough challenges.
I would like to see PrQ explain further how he thinks climate denialism has come to so grip the English-speaking right, and especially their far right. What, in his view, is its provenance? Why is this a culture war issue for them?
While it may be so that we can go around them more easily than figuratively running over the top of them and win the fight over rational policy responses (not sure this is so) if climate denialism is key to the right’s dominance, shouldn’t those of us with a left-social democratic perspective seek to better grasp the relationship of denialism to structures of power and authority in order to refute the latter and press for the kind of governance that would bed down not only rational and equitable policy on the human call on ecosystem services, but in settling the benefits and burdens of social labour as well?
Previously in history it didn’t matter if single society made wrong decisions, or persisted in failed strategies and failed. They just disappeared from history and their miscalculations were soon covered up by ecological recovery.
However, now we have a global economy operating well beyond the planet’s ecological capacity, so it does matter that global society makes the right choices. Sadly, human decision-making doesn’t seem to have got better over time.
The latest news.
“The heirs of the Rockefeller family, who made their vast fortune in oil, have joined in a pledge to divest more than $56 billion of fossil fuel investments to reinvest in clean energy on the eve of a major climate change summit in New York.
The Global Divest-Invest coalition has drawn 650 individuals and 180 institutions, which control billions of dollars in fossil fuel assets, to switch to renewables over five years using a variety of approaches.” – ABC.
More promises to divest but we must watch and see what the real actions are. Does divestment mean sale (which means someone else buys the oil business and runs it) or does it mean genuine disinvestment that is taking a hit from and thus writing off stranded assets? Will we see ghost oil fields and ghost coal mines in the sense of ghost towns? That is what we need to see to know its real.
Ikonoclast – i would include the financial sector that has a lot of money invested in fossil fuel related portfolios and has high expectations of returns as a crucial and politically influential player. In some ways they may be more crucial than even those directly in fossil fuels or big users (eg steel) or industrial users of energy who operate 24/7. I think I’m also dubious of Pr Q’s assertion that the big players in fossil fuels will willingly forgoe expected returns without flexing their political muscle to impede change; Australia is surely a case in point. I’m not convinced that Labor is any more able to resist their influence over politics than LNP. I’d like to think Labor were a credible alternative; to some extent they face media prejudice and partisanship that is against them but they could and should show some backbone. Climate is seen as a vote loser and was when they were in office too. They could have elevated it, by the same kinds of stunts that Palmer has cannily embarked on – publicly engage with leading scientists and proponents of action, invite them to conferences, make a fuss and really go on the offensive with the LNP’s doubters, deniers and delayers. Hell, I could think of better questions to demand answers for than we’ve seen so far from any quarter – media, Labor or Greens. But Labor has never had their heart in it – under Rudd or Gillard or now Shorten. Greens seem unable to compose the right approach, aiming maybe at their support base more than middle Australia. And our media “informers” are useless hacks who are unwilling or incapable of being well informed, if they aren’t outright partisans pretending to be impartial.
I remain strongly optimistic that the technologies are largely available already, or else show sufficient potential for improvement, to believe there is no cause to resist commitment to a transition. I remain deeply pessimistic of the politics.
There’s actually a fair number of long-term structural problems with the US framework-of-governance [inability to handle hate speech, citizens united, gitmo, guns, taxes, legal status and control of the federal reserve, &c&c&c]. Fixing everything wrong — and I don’t just mean “gives results I don’t like” but “gives results that are terribly unpopular even in the US” — pretty much requires a reformat-and-reinstall, or sufficient careful patching that a reformat-and-reinstall would be quicker, easier, and more reliable.
US constitution is essentially life-expired. Americans are bad at handling life-expired infrastructure, so… twenty years, maybe? actual change will come before then, though.
[distraction, no response expected]
Back in the day when Rudd was PM–first time ’round–we had a fighting chance of getting some sort of ETS policy to the implementation stage. Unfortunately, the Greens quite correctly argued that the parameters in the policy were way too short of the minimum required to accomplish the task as it was then defined, by the climate scientists; the Greens did not vote with the ALP, and the policy ran into the rocky shoals of the coalition in opposition. I have a great deal of sympathy with the Greens position back then, namely that it is pointless painting some stripes on a horse and calling it a zebra, if a real zebra is what you want: a horse is still a horse. Whether the original CPRS could have evolved into the zebra we all want, we’ll never know. If I were to paraphrase the Greens position at the time, it would be to say “Stop wasting time on half-measures, do it properly the first time around, because we haven’t the time available to have a re-run.” Well, we are now hoping that a re-run gets a fighting chance, and that is with a strong political wind blowing the other way.
The ALP has a strong block of AGW policy blockers, many of them coming from the economic rationalist (?) believers within the party–or trade unionists with mining sector alignment. Their view of the world is difficult to dislodge…
@Ken Fabian
I hear this a lot, mostly from conservatives, but apart perhaps from being an appeal to be more right-wing on economic policy and socially conservative — which I take it, you’re not recommending — what does this mean in practice?
If there is such a thing as ‘middle Australia’ in social terms then almost all of our members and our most reliable supporters would be part of it. Most of us have had tertiary education. Most of our non-retired folk earn above average wages and those who don’t tend to be younger people who are studying.
Please offer more detail.
We do have a government that is very successful at making it appear, with rather too much media compliance, that it’s everyone elses fault that they don’t do what they don’t really want to do – the things they don’t want to do but find politically expedient to pretend otherwise. If they can contrive to get The Greens to vote against Direct Action it will be like a rerun of Rudd’s climate policy – they get zero climate policy, which I believe they would (privately) welcome, but in public can blame on The Greens and use, with great enthusiam, to discredit them. For this government that would be a win-win. For The Greens, I truly do not know which would be better. We absolutely need clear voices saying that only the minimum necessary is good enough, but it’s almost certain to be used against them if they vote down Direct Action. Vote it in but use every opportunity to make clear that it’s a poor substitute for a real climate/emissions/energy policy?
I am more optimistic than even John Quiggin. I think the trajectory of change in our energy system towards renewables is so firmly entrenched that no likely coalition of political forces will be able to stop decarbonisation of the economy. The costs have come down and are coming down so fast, particularly for solar, that in 10 years or so in almost all parts of the world, it would be economically stupid not to install renewables for new energy generation. Right wing political forces will delay decarbonisation, and if the delay is great enough that may be a problem, but decarbonisation will come.
There is still an argument for better political structures which limit the influence of these troglodytic right wing political forces, but (unfortunately in some sense) it is no longer an argument of necessity in the climate change space.
.
I might add that we seem to be seeing an updated version of the Jevons Paradox.
“In economics, the Jevons paradox (sometimes Jevons effect) is the proposition that as technology progresses, the increase in efficiency with which a resource is used tends to increase (rather than decrease) the rate of consumption of that resource.” – Wikipedia.
The modern version of this combines the classic Jevons effect with an added variant. The added variant is that as we become more adept at more getting energy from more sources (adding in solar and wind energy stc.) then we simply continue to consume more energy overall from more sources and more from each and every source.
Is the modern commerical-industrial system simply a system beyond all human control; an out-of-control system? Out-of-control-system events occur often enough even when the systems have human drivers/pilots. Clearly a car can spin out of control (driven beyond its limits) or a plane can have a serious structural or control failure of some kind and then be essentially unflyable. Is our current system too big, too complex and/or spiralling out of control? Structural and control failures are possible in this case too. There is a possibility that with all the political will, technical/scientific knowledge and political-economic strategising available and used to their fullest extent we might still find this system (including its fateful coupling to and dependence on biophysical systems) is now beyond out control.
What I mean is we can still control component systems (e.g. supermarket supply chains, oil logistics etc.) but we have doubtful control over the “metasystem” meaning the system of all our systems. I rather doubt that we can control our metasystem all that well now. Then we have to add into that meshing and complicated feedbacks of two metasystems, the human economic systen and the natural biophysical system. External shocks (external to the human economy) from the biosphere will severely test us.
@Fran Barlow If Greens supporters mostly earn above average incomes perhaps the Greens need to be more attractive to people on lower incomes (am I correct in thinking average wages are above median wages?)
Megan McArdle has a post on the political difficulties of even ‘free’ measures.
Timothy Taylor has a summary of the short run benefits of carbon pricing perhaps something we need to emphasise more, instead of future problems people find it difficult to believe in.
Of interest.
Rockefellers to switch investments to ‘clean energy’
Ikonoclast @17, the Green Growth report that JQ linked to on the From derp to denialism thread claims to have found a way through the Jevons Paradox.
@Ikonoclast
But Ikonoclast, our energy use has flatlined and our energy/$ of GDP is in decline – that’s why the RET’s projected 20% target significantly overshot the actual 20% mark.
@Ikonoclast
And similarly to the point made by Nevil, despite more fuel efficient cars, people in developed countries are driving less
http://www.economist.com/node/21563280
Carbonisation was achieved (mostly) by big govts or statist entitities eg building large power stations next to state owned coal mines. Now we find that big govt has made a big mistake (again, some would say). People are understandably wary of big government, particularly after the promises and declarations made over the Iraq wars.
The issue has to be pushed by the people and this is where social media kicks in. The recent vote on Scotland came close to achieving what was once unthinkable – social media was seen as a critical component to this particular political process.
The real fight for renewables will be to maintain open energy markets, that do not allow ever cheaper renewables to be refused access because it’s forcing fossil fuel plant into intermittency. Forcing them into intermittency is exactly what is necessary on the road to low emissions.
Reducing feed in tariffs hasn’t stopped PV installation that feed in to the network and actually forces prices down, making it harder to argue on greater costs to consumers grounds. Variable pricing looks likely to exacerbate the coal generators’ problems, as rising evening prices make battery storage more attractive. I’ve been dubious of reliance on market forces to fix the climate/emissions/energy conundrum, but it’s beginning to look like a de-facto carbon price could be an unforeseen consequence of renewables forcing incumbents into intermittency.
When it’s cheaper, renewable energy should be allowed to take full advantage in the market. Other dirty tricks that seems to be emerging is to shift the balance of electricity costs from usage to fixed charges in order to reduce incentives for self supply and imposing extra charges for those that do feed into the grid. The incumbents want the cheaper and inconvenient newcomers to bear the brunt of the costs that arise from their possession of outdated and unable-to-cope-with-intermittent-competition infrastructure.
I should say I’ve been dubious of market forces in the absence of carbon pricing to fix the climate/emissions/energy conundrum.
South Australia’s state government has decided to set a 50% renewable energy target by 2025.
@Tom Davies
I meant to say that of those in full-time work, most would be in the top 40% of income earners. This reflects the large number of us in semi-professional or professional work. We have many teachers, lecturers, doctors, lawyers, accountants and similar. We also have a good many students, semi-retired or retired folk of course.
We do aim to appeal to those on lower incomes of course, (and often do in the case of retired people or the young) but many of them are either tribally ALP (occasionally LNP) or are fairly apolitical. It wouldn’t matter what we said to most of the tribals and the others are hard to get engaged. Certainly, pandering would not be the way to go.
@John Quiggin
I am guessing then that the Jevons effect is only applicable where fuel is cheap and a small component of total costs. It might also be true only in the infancy of an industry and not in the mature stages though what factors might then change in detail I do not know. What is driving the drop in driving of I.C.E. cars I wonder? Engines are more efficient but if fuel is more costly by a greater percentage than the efficiency gains then I guess this would drive the decline in driving. That increase in price could be any combination of a scarcity price and carbon price. Of course, other things can drive a drop in driving petrol cars from concern about CO2 emissions to better public transport.
If the Jevons effect disappears because of high differentials in fuel costs (solar/wind electrical cheap versus fossils expensive) then this problem could correct itself. Personally, I can’t wait to own an electric car. But I do insist that it must not cost me more than a petrol car of comparable size and travelling range. Ok, I would accept 25% less travelling range but I would not budge much on cost. As it is I think I drive far less than the average driver though maybe not less than the average for a retired driver. A tank of petrol in my Mazda 3 usually lasts me 3 or 4 weeks depending on particular requirements those weeks.
@Ikonoclast
I suspect that the obvious response on cars is that what ‘drives’ usage is need, and what constrains it is not the cost of fuel, which remains cheap, but the reluctance to drive and to some extent other marginal costs. If the cost of petrol fell by 50% would people drive anything like twice as many vehicle miles? I suspect not.
I leave my car at home and take the train, not because fuel is expensive, or even because I’m a Green, but because it’s less stressful commuting by train, and is also quicker. It wouldn’t matter if petrol were given away free. I’d still take the train.
There is only one way out now, and there are only a few voices making the point.
Developed countries must “degrowth”. See for example:
Degrowth .
It is not good enough to state
[John Goss]
without mentioning why political forces oppose decarbonisation. This is essentially economics.
It maybe too late now. With all the political games that our politicians have played over the last 30 years and spin over renewables – this is the result;
New High Carbon
John Quiggin,
I’m too busy for a lengthy comment, but your statement
“Judging by the comments on my “derp and denialism” post, we seem to be mostly agreed on the proposition, amply demonstrated by economic studies, that the global economy could be decarbonized at a very modest cost in terms of foregone growth.”
I am only in the middle of reading one of the sources you gave – the UN deep decarbonisation report – But it does not decarbonise sufficiently by 2050 to stay within 2 degrees I have yet to finish the whole report, but might have a bit of spare time tomorrow –
But, that source wasn’t considering other ghg emissions, and still had Australians emitting significant ghg emissions in 2050 of 3 tonnes per capita, while the worldwide per capita now would be around 5 tonnes per capita by my rudimentary calculations, although I have seen others lower than that at around 1.5 tonnes per capita so I might have miscalculated. Regardless – 3tonnes is too much for 2050.
Other commenters have shown problems with the other two sources as well. And I have mentioned several times now how the IPCC technical report says the economic modelling is based on unlikely socio-economic policy making premises and non practicable technologies. I am keeping an open mind – but all this seems to me to lead back to my conclusion that the changes being mooted are not going to be enough – and are relying on things going to plan in unlikely sort of ways which we all know from following current events is not the way of the world, and we need more significant changes requiring a much more co-ordinated approach not relying on the vagaries of the market so much.
It worries me that some people are not at all even willing to consider we might need a coordinated approach – even when their sources do not give a scenario for us keeping within 2degreees.
It further worries me , because yourself and the author Tristan Edis from Climate Spectator who wrote “Banishing the hippies from the energy-climate debate” misrepresent that deep decarbonisation report as keeping within 2 degrees – even though the report states plainly it would go above 2 degrees
Tristan Edis: “Recently (Pathways to a climate-contained, affluent 2050, July 9), I touched upon an international collaboration led by economist Jeffrey Sachs. This collaboration analysed how 15 of the globe’s biggest emitting nations could reduce emissions consistent with containing global warming to 2 degrees while still tripling economic output by 2050. ” This is blatant misrepresentation of what the report actually says, the editor should take him strongly to task indeed
Of course since Climate Spectator sold and now is a paper run by Rupert Murdoch the editor is likely a spineless fellow who won’t take the reporter to task for misrepresentation
Fran, I didn’t see your question to me earlier. My real point is that no-one appears to be able to call out the current government and corner them and I don’t think it’s because they are so much cleverer or so remarkably cunning – even when it’s clear they are experts at dodging the questions, even dodging the questions can and should give room to take them to task. Do they read the CSIRO and BoM and IPCC reports? Do they accept those reports? If they say it’s not so bad as the ‘alarmists’ say, does that mean they repudiate Australia’s scientists? Has ASIO got any evidence of a Climate Conspiracy? Have our leading Science bodies any evidence of incompetence, bias, data tampering or fraud? Have they consulted to clear up the bits they don’t understand or think are wrong or exaggerated? Why not? Do you agree with your advisors – and Julie Bishop and George Brandis that about eco-authoritarians limiting free speech? Do you have the courage of your convictions or is it just political expediency to knowingly mislead and deceive the Australian public on your true intentions?
I know that the media goes for the single sentence comments but those people are on Arctic thin ice and the temperature is rising – I can’t believe they are invulnerable. It’s clear they are operating on the basis that mainstream climate science is not merely in doubt, they are operating with a conviction that it is wrong yet the extent they are willing to be misleading and deceptive makes them a target. Despite large sections of the media being as keen to find things to like about Abbott as they were to find things to dislike about Gillard, Rudd and Labor no-one is managing to cut them down to size.
I just don’t see that The Greens are managing to do it any better than the media or Labor – whether it’s failure to connect with the glass jaws being presented or failure to connect with (the imprecise categories) “middle Australia” or “battlers” or whatever they are not managing to gain significant ground in this vitally important battle where the facts, expert opinion and truth and justice are on their side.
Much as I want The Greens to hold to their demands for much better, for policies sufficient to the task, if Abbott baits them into voting down Direct Action he will get both zero climate policy and be able to lay the blame for that on The Greens – and the media will lap it up.
Oops again – Last sentence of 2nd paragraph, despite all that some-one, anyone and everyone should be able to cut them down to size.
Good questions, and already answered by the always reliable Chris Hedges.
For those who prefer reality and politics without the delusional denial of the requirement for revolutionary action.
The Coming Climate Revolt
If we appeal to self-identified liberals in the establishment who have no capacity or desire to carry out the radical reforms, we will pour energy into a black hole. And this is what the corporate state seeks. It seeks to perpetuate the facade of democracy. It seeks to make us believe what is no longer real, that if we work within the system we can reform it.
We will have to cease our appealing to the system. We will have to view the state, including the Democratic Party, as antagonistic to genuine reform. We will have to speak in the language of … revolution. We will have to carry out acts of civil disobedience that seek to cripple the mechanisms of corporate power. The corporate elites, blinded by their lust for profit and foolish enough to believe they can protect themselves from climate change, will not veer from our path towards ecocide unless they are forced from power. And this means the beginning of a titanic clash between our corporate masters and ourselves.
This reminds me of Frederick Douglass (c. 1818 – 20 February 1895) African American abolitionist, orator, author, editor, reformer, women’s rights advocate, and statesman who was born a slave as Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey who said
@Fran Barlow
It is not only need that drives car driving. One needs to go to work by car if one is employed and not on a public transport route to a distant work place (say beyond practical cycling range). One does not need to go to the coast almost every weekend for recreation like some people do. One does not really need to go all grey-nomadish and motor around Australia for a year either. Quite of bit of driving has been driven by recreational desire not by real need. Either it’s a change in cultural and recreational habits or it’s a change in the price of fuel or it’s both that have effected changes in fuel consumption. I don’t think you can state that fuel costs at not becoming an issue.
According to a short 2013 paper, “The Trending Price of Petrol” under the banner Innovative Synergies by Malcolm Moore:
“This short document looks at the affordability of petrol / diesel / LPG powered vehicles by Australians in the longer term. Historically, the price of fuel is rising at a hyper-exponential rate with a constant exponential index that steps up by about 2.5% in nominal 40 year intervals.”
Currently this historical step is moving from 6.5% pa to 9.0 % pa in line with long-term historical records. This step rise now very clearly exceeds the long-term inflation rate (2 to 4 % pa) in Australia, so within a few years, most people and most busineses will not be able to afford petrol / diesel / LPG / Aviation fuels as they do now. It is obvious that rapidly increasing transport fuel costs are becoming a disproportionately large component of the average Australian wage and of most Australian businesses. The Federal Government has to take a very strong lead by immediately funding massive transport infrastructure changes to provide Australia with far more economic transport infrastructures in to the future.”
These are strong words, at least about petrol price rises. He goes on to write;
By about 2020 long distance Road Freight (ie > 50 km) will become prohibitively expensive because of massive diesel fuel costs, and all this and associated highway infrastructure will become local distribution networks. Long distance Rail Freight will become the national Freight transport standard by 2025, but to date most rail infrastructure has been left to ruin or privatised with an absolute minimum of maintenance. This infrastructure will require a massive
investment so that Rail Freight can be transported in near linear corridors capable of over 200 km/h and utilise low-cost electric power for their motors.
International flight costs will become very expensive to the point that a second Sydney International Airport, if constructed, will quickly become a White Elephant because the patronage will quickly fall off well before 2030.”
He makes some other statements or claims of general interest.
“In this time, World War 1 transpired, and the history that we were specifically not taught “Who Won the Oil Wars” shows very clearly that this war was really about restructuring Turkey (the Ottoman Empire), so that the vast oil fields here could be controlled by the main Western Economic powers (USA, England, France and Germany). This reference clearly shows the petrol
interest implications of WW2, and the more recent USA takeover of Iraq to secure that
oil for the USA.”
Footnote: I don’t know what the author’s credentials are or how much credibility this document has.
@Ken Fabian
I know that your comment was directed to Fran but I’ll interpose a response: the Greens are waiting leadership from the movement. The political wing of the environment and justice movement has done an excellent job sustaining a presence, that’s The Greens. No small thanks to Bob Brown, an Arhat in my view.
However, rebellion needs rebellious people who are not to be found within the parliamentary parties. It needs people who are prepared to live according to ethics and principles, whatever the cost.
@Ikonoclast
I’m pleased to see that you’ve referred to the working class’s role in contributing to the ecological crisis. There will be no leadership from that direction. The industrialized world’s working class is as deeply imbricated in the ecological crisis as capital. The old metaphor of ‘class war’ obscures the interdependency of the working classes with the ruling class; the relationship is not at all like a war and much more like a bad, warring marriage. Both classes are united in the common cause of the exploitation of first nature, in the interests of the actual, individual members of either class.
There will be no general strike in favour if life.
War is the predominant mode of resolving conflict in this epoch. Peace is the way, of course, but the working classes won’t be leading that.
@Ken Fabian
You’re missing an obvious constraint. The media determines who has been called out, not the regime’s rivals. At the moment, that scrum is being led by Murdoch, and he’s riding shotgun for Abbott. The regime could send its members out into the streets to bite babies and the Murdochracy would celebrate their lack of political correctness.
Public discourse is not an artefact of reason, but a commodity owned by the boss class.
I hear your pain, but until Murdoch’s monopoly is swept away or some catastrophe that nobody can ignore occurs, Murdoch will continue to shut down debate.
You keep slipping into this view that reason can triumph over power. Being unable to live by the rules of the boss class can subvert their power and then reason will wander in to be embraced by even the hitherto half-hearted and dissonant, but until that happens …
Yes, they will. Frankly though, that would be the lesser evil, given, as I said, we have no leverage and the ALP is too vapid and craven to use what it has. As things stand, Christine Milne has offered to negotiate on DA but the terms of her offer exclude Abbott from agreeing — essentially he’d get to keep the name and we would rewrite it — and the RET would stay. He’s never going to accept what we would sign.
If that occurs, Abbott does nothing at all and tries blaming us, we will remind him that he promised not to do deals with the minor parties and so he is in no position to complain. His failure to act is entirely on his own head. In the long run, he will look bad even if in the short run, he’s off the hook.
Other possible explanations for the reduced amount of driving in the developed world are congestion and parking costs. The former makes driving a pain, while the latter is a cost that can be as high as petrol (certainly here in Japan the cost of parking is probably more severe than the cost of fuel). Many people claim that because of the high up-front costs of cars, people need to use them more to make efficient use of their capital investment; but since most of that capital investment for most people manifests as a loan (i.e. large, ongoing expenses) it could be that this leads to the need to economize with discretionary aspects of the budget, especially in a period when people are running out of credit options (post-2008). Could it be that the high upfront costs of modern cars and the decreasing credit options available to the middle- and working-class in the UK, southern Europe and the USA has led to a reduction in the amount they’re used, even though they are a huge capital cost?
John’s follow-up to the “derp” post shockingly doesn’t respond to a point I made in comments there, that the finding that decarbonisation is very cheap or free is very recent. No political system can be expected to respond instantly to such a change of paradigm. And we are seeing policy shifts, net – China and India (plus Mexico, Iran, Turkey, etc etc) matter much more than Australia. And have you noticed that Obama is winning on coal regulation? The fight-back is feeble.
@jungney
I feel that the 21st century working class in the West is very different from the working class of the industrialised West of the 19th C. The working class of the 19th C grew up in a much harder “school” so to speak. There was child hard labour, female hard labour and male hard labour. There were atrocious conditions and the gap between the rich coal mine owner and his coal miners (for example) was enormous and obvious. Wealth gaps are just as enormous now but not so obvious (we simply don’t know how the rich live anymore) and much of the working class now lives passably comfortably (though this is going backwards again). The conflict of interests in the 19th C between capitalists and workers was very open and stark.
The other difference I think is that the 19th C working class had its own intelligentsia component. Some men and women of the working class worked very hard at mental self-improvement, broadening their minds and gaining an intellectual understanding of what was going on in the political economy. Much of our 21st century working class (what’s left of it) is dumbed down and largely disinterested in intellectual pursuits so far as I can see. Much of our middle class is not much better. We are now clever perhaps at our trades and professions, but it is a narrow technical cleverness. People take far less interest in having a good general knowledge or reading subjests like history and philosophy which very much take us out of our current time and place parochialism. People can be time-parochial as well as place-parochial, Knowing no history means knowing no times and no possibilities other than what is existent now. Only somebody who reads no history can believe that there is no alternative to our current system (late stage capitalism).
PS: JQ did not cite the latest report of IPCC WG3 on mitigation, here. They made a mistake IMH by presenting the finding that mitigation too met the 2 degree target would involve a reduction on the global growth rate of GDP by “0.06%”. Robert Stavins – at the Kennedy School at Harvard, so you’d expect better – solemnly projects this to 2100 and comes up with a shocking 5% loss of GDP. That’s 5 off the increase of 1170 if you project the IPCC’s 3% baseline growth rate. The number is well within measurement noise, for past GDP let alone future. The correct reading is “zero net cost to well within the margin of error”.
@James Wimberley
The finding that complete decarbonization is very cheap is recent, and does seem to be tipping the scales. But the fact that the first steps would be cheap was known 20 years ago, as this piece indicates
http://www.uq.edu.au/economics/johnquiggin/news96/Greenhouse9612.html
That didn’t stop powerful resistance emerging.
These three sentences are unfortunately wrong, irrelevant, and wrong respectively.
Taking the second one first, the international oil companies now control less than 25% of production and 10% of reserves. More importantly, as Jim Hansen has repeatedly pointed out, oil is not the problem, coal is.
To see the falsity of the first sentence, consider the likely responses to a proposal that Australia ban the export of coal. And who would be making those responses.
Insurance and Finance are brokers. They will make their money whatever happens, so they do not constitute a balance to fossil fuel interests.
The answer to question A is clear: it’s a textbook coordination problem, as discussed in introductory game theory. Unfortunately this implies that the answer to question B is almost certainly no, unless one of the players threatens global nuclear war. The cure is much worse than the disease, at least in the short run.
@James Wimberley
I think that’s a good point James and it affects all the decrying of how small the percentage of energy is renewables to date is; Pr Q correctly noting that more new generation installed around the world is now wind and solar than anything else, reflecting that shift. A Derp indeed. That term being a new one for my vocabulary.
Most of the PV in Australia has been very recent, and whilst pulling all subsidies out may be a temporary price rise, there’s every reason to believe the financial incentives to install it will remain and grow, but there is no shortage of supply here and supplanting existing capacity is what renewables in Australia have to do.
Fran, I don’t think I missed the constraint of a partisan, biased and incompetent media. Certainly I’m dismayed when members of Abbott’s team offer up straight lines that beg for follow up and journalists don’t follow up – or do so so inanely as to be giving them a pass. Yes, they are very good at not answering questions but I still think there’s a widespread inability to ask the right ones; and the right ones can make it through to the public and the failures to answer them along with them. I’m not sure mine are necessarily the right ones – certainly failure of journalists to be knowledgeable enough and quick witted enough to call them out and follow up with the right ones.
Fran, the more I think about it the more I think it will be a mistake for The Greens to vote down Direct Action – they can vote it in and maintain their strong criticisms of both it’s inadequacies and Abbott’s government’s denial and obstructionism. If they vote it down all the focus will turn back on The Greens. Perhaps even Labor should consider such a tactic – “DA is crap but let TA have it and let it be revealed as crap”.
Another comment. Decarbonisation of the economy is necessary, but it is not sufficient. Unless the economy is decarbonised rapidly, so-called “natural” phenomena will take over. Namely, the thawing of permafrost, the aridification of major rainforests, and either the stratification of the ocean or the destabilisation of major methane clathrate regions.
Taking this back to economics, we need a rapid, large and sustained rise in the share of economic output allocated to investment. This necessitates a corresponding drop in the share allocated to consumption. Almost certainly, household real incomes must fall significantly and quickly. Unless we are visited by the altruism fairy (or, as mentioned above, the god of war), this will not happen irrespective of our political systems.
My understanding is that part-motivation for the possible Green shift to at least trying to implement DA, even though it will stick in the craw, is that it will force a $/tonne price to be revealed in operation.
This can REALLY be used to club the hopelessness of DA to help return, almost precisely, to the scheme just abolished.
@Ikonoclast
There were some people in the nineteenth century who were interested in history, philosophy, and general knowledge. So there are some now. Is the number much smaller now, or the level of interest much lower? What’s the evidence?