Regular Features

Monday Message Board

John Quiggin6 Comments

Post comments on any topic. Civil discussion and no coarse language please. Side discussions and idees fixes to the sandpits, please.

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6 thoughts on “Monday Message Board”

  1. I accidentally discovered something interesting in the constitution of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Official English translation:

    Article 20.1 It shall be the concern of the authorities to secure the means of subsistence of the population and to achieve the distribution of wealth.

    SFIK it’s very unusual to have any constitutional provision on distribution. The Dutch constitution was updated in 2018, it’s generally minimalist, and the country prides itself on a legal tradition going back to Grotius. This is not a footnote in a sprawling aspirational manifesto like the 420-page Brazilian constitution. Note that while education, health care and social security can be shoehorned into a list of fundamental rights (though the Dutch have not done so) this does not work for distribution at all. A rather vague and directional provision like the Dutch one is the most you can ask for. Seems a good idea that should be copied.

    However, they boobed on the translation. The Dutch phrase, which is what counts in law, is “spreiding van welvaart”. The official French translation has “la répartition de la prospérité”, the German “die Verteilung des Wohlstandes”.

    “Distribution” must have the action meaning not the state one, and I would guess the Dutch gerund means the same as its English counterpart “spreading”. “Welvaart” means “welfare” not “wealth”, and it’s the word used in the title, and presumably the body, of the Dutch translation of Pigou’s >i>The Economics of Welfare (1921). So it covers welfare flows as well as stocks.

    Pigou goes into the distinction between “welfare” and “economic welfare” in chapter 1, section 5. The omission of the economic limitation in Article 20 can be presumed intentional, and is anyway effective. The Dutch government has a constitutional duty to promote wider enjoyment of cookery, autumn colours, and kisses, along with washing machines and other stuff in GDP. I don’t know if there is any jurisprudence, but the kisses have implications for LBGTQ rights.

    I have lived a pretty sheltered life, but my understanding is that kisses are not normally a part of commercial sex transactions, and fall almost entirely into the non-economic part of welfare.

  2. Jealous. I can only dream of living somewhere like this. Or in a country that could ban machine guns for civilians, as Australians did. (I love my country. But we are not smart.)

    Still I don’t know that I’d want to re-open our Constitution. It might get worse!!

  3. J-D: And? The Speakers in the parliaments mentioned are still expected to be impartial. Tie-breaking votes follow Denison’s Rule of preserving the status quo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speaker_Denison%27s_rule

    Those elected Speaker are MPs. They were previously elected to parliament under some party label. Nobody, in London or Canberra, expects them to abandon their general political orientation,, the question is how they carry out the job. Those elected by their colleagues to it will normally be likeable centrists (the abrasive John Bercow is an exception). My suggestion that the polarised US House of Representatives look outside its own rank dos not follow any Westminster model. It will have the same success as my even better suggestion that the Pope appoint some women cardinals. (Feasible, look up cardinal deacons.)

    In Westminster system, the government by definition holds a parliamentary majority. This will translate into substantial control of the agenda. But this is exercised through somebody else, in the UK the Leader of the House, a member of the government.

    PS: I have no idea why the blog software recognises my identity and not yours. I am currently using Edge. Worth a try.

  4. The comment above belongs in the shutdown thread, where I have reposted it. Apologies. JQ please delete here.

  5. Per Professor Eliot Jacobson, the global mean air surface temperature was +1.55 °C relative to the 1850-1900 IPCC baseline global mean temperature for the period 1 Jan 2023 through 31 Oct 2023.

    Per James Hansen, Global Warming in the Pipeline will be published in Oxford Open Climate Change of Oxford University Press sometime this week.

    Click to access HomePlanet.2023.10.27.pdf

    There have been two public hearings held on Oct 27 and 30 of an inquiry into the Climate Change (Net Zero Future) Bill 2023. It seems to me there have been some interesting exchanges at these hearings.

    Per an except from the UNCORRECTED transcript of the public hearing at the Preston Stanley Room, NSW Parliament House, Sydney, on Monday 30 October 2023 (on page 21):

    The Hon. JOHN RUDDICK: You stated:

    “Many coastal areas in Australia will experience what are now considered ‘once-in-100-years extreme-sea-level events’ at least once a year by 2100.”

    We were told 30 or 40 years ago that we would imminently face rising oceans. I don’t think that’s happened. Other people have appeared before the Committee and claimed that it has. I am pleased to see that you’re saying that it is something that will happen, but are you in agreement that we have not yet seen oceans rising as was predicted?

    PENNY SACKETT: No, I don’t agree with that point. Oceans have risen; the evidence is very clear on that. It’s also clear—and this is rather recent science—that that rate of increase in the ocean is now accelerating. That is, it’s rising faster and faster. So the oceans have already risen, and they will definitely rise further. How much further lies currently under our control, partially, by how much we limit greenhouse gases.

    The Hon. JOHN RUDDICK: How much have oceans risen in the past 100 years?

    PENNY SACKETT: I’m talking now about an average, and I would like to take this on notice, if I could, so I can get you a precise answer.

    The Hon. JOHN RUDDICK: Thank you.

    PENNY SACKETT: If you’d allow me, I’d like to take that on notice, and I will return that answer very quickly to the Committee.

    The Hon. JOHN RUDDICK: It might have gone up a centimetre or two, but it’s not having any impact. Demand for real estate on coastal properties continues to soar, so I don’t think it’s actually having any real-world impact. I mean, a one- or two-centimetre rise will be negligible for all communities.

    PENNY SACKETT: It is more than that, and I would disagree that it’s not having an impact. There are many companies, for example, that are already working, quite worried about the infrastructure that they have built next to coasts. There are already airports considering how this might affect their runways and so forth, so I would not agree that it has not had any impact. I’m not a real estate specialist, I admit.

    John Ruddick MLC, is a member of the NSW Parliament Legislative Council, declared elected on 20 Apr 2023, and is the first member of the Liberal Democratic Party to be elected to the NSW Parliament. In 2020, Ruddick started JR Mortgages, a mortgage broker house in Sydney.

    Professor Sackett is a physicist, astronomer, and was the Chief Scientist of Australia from November 2008 until March 2011. She was a member of the Scientific Advisory Board
    of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, serving a three-year term from 2017-2019. From 2015-2021, she was a Councillor of the Australian Capital Territory Climate Change Council, serving as its Deputy Chair and then Chair. Currently, she is a Distinguished Honorary Professor, Institute for Climate, Energy and Disaster Solutions at the ANU.

  6. On 2 Nov 2023, Oxford Open Climate Change published a journal article titled Global warming in the pipeline by James E Hansen et. al. It includes:

    With current policies, we expect climate forcing for a few decades post-2010 to increase 0.5–06 W/m² per decade and produce global warming of at least +0.27°C per decade. In that case, global warming will reach 1.5°C in the 2020s and 2°C before 2050 (Fig. 24). Such acceleration is dangerous in a climate system that is already far out of equilibrium and dominated by multiple amplifying feedbacks.

    …

    Earth’s energy imbalance (EEI) is the net gain (or loss) of energy by the planet, the difference between absorbed solar energy and emitted thermal (heat) radiation. As long as EEI is positive, Earth will continue to get hotter.

    https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfclm/kgad008

    The Guardian article by Oliver Milman on Nov 2 headlined Global heating is accelerating, warns scientist who sounded climate alarm in the 80s includes:

    Hansen said there is a huge amount of global heating “in the pipeline” because of the continued burning of fossil fuels and Earth being “very sensitive” to the impacts of this – far more sensitive than the best estimates laid out by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

    “We would be damned fools and bad scientists if we didn’t expect an acceleration of global warming,” Hansen said. “We are beginning to suffer the effect of our Faustian bargain. That is why the rate of global warming is accelerating.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/02/heating-faster-climate-change-greenhouse-james-hansen

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