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Archive: united-nations

The man-made climate guilt trip

20 December 2009 16:53

Categories: Current affairs, Politics

For the past couple of weeks, many big-wigs are meeting in Copenhagen for a chit-chat about climate change. This happens against the backdrop of the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit email hacking. This is said by some to offer evidence that climate scientists have manipulated data in order to boost the case that climate change is man-made.

The emphasis on whether or not climate change is man-made confuses me. For instance, the Met Office’s response to the hacking seeks to underline the fact that climate change is man-made: “The bottom line is that temperatures continue to rise and humans are responsible for it.”

Why is there so much concern over whether or not changes in temperature, and the knock-on effects that result, are man-made? Would climate change really be any less of a problem if it were caused by, say, volcanoes, sunspots, or other natural phenomena? The flood would come anyway.

Surely the correct question is not whether climate change is man-made. The correct questions are:

Is climate change happening?
What effects will it have?
What will be the net cost of these effects?
What actions can be taken to guard against these effects?
What will be the cost of taking these actions?
Is the cost of taking these actions greater than the net cost of the effects of climate change? (i.e. can the resources be better spent elsewhere, for instance on alleviating poverty, etc.)

If I see that it is raining, I don’t just stand there for ages pondering over whether or not the rain is man-made. I just put up an umbrella.

Is it raining? Yes.
What effects will it have? It will make me wet.
What will be the net cost of these effects? I will feel uncomfortable and may become ill.
What actions can be taken to guard against these effects? I can put up an umbrella.
What will be the cost of taking this action? I will have to carry my umbrella around with me.
Is the cost of taking this action greater than the net cost of the effect of rain? No.

Voila — I have successfully guarded myself against the effects of rain in the most efficient manner, without worrying about what caused the rain. So why worry about what causes climate change? As far as I am concerned, if the flood is coming, the flood is coming and that is the only information I need to know.

Granted, the causes of climate change are a pretty important thing to know. If you know the cause, you know what you can do to help prevent it.

But the debate over whether or not climate change is man-made implies that, even if climate change is happening, it doesn’t matter if it’s not man-made. But that is surely not true. The effects will be just as devastating whether it turns out climate change is caused by man-made or natural causes.

It just seems to me that the focus on whether or not climate change is man-made suits both sides of the debate rather too much. Climate change sceptics will apparently view any evidence that climate change is not man-made as a signal that climate change is nothing to worry about (which is surely not true).

Meanwhile, left-wing environmentalists love the focus on the man-made aspect because it gives them an excuse to lecture people on their behaviour. This can be seen in the ever-growing list of human behaviours that are said to cause climate change — everything from taking the car to eating meat and even — can you imagine? — having children.

I would like to hear a bit more emphasis on the effects of climate change in the event that it is not man-made. Otherwise, the anti-environmentalists seem like all they care about is their cheap flights and fast cars. And the moralising environmentalists come across as wanting to take us all on one big guilt trip for having the temerity to exist.

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My view on Scotland’s constitutional future

9 October 2008 02:13

Categories: Current affairs, Politics, Scotland

Common ground on Scotland's future

A series of posts

Finding the common ground
My view on Scotland’s constitutional future

If you haven’t read my previous post explaining what I’m trying to do here, feel free to take a look.

In this post I will set out the thinking behind my views on Scottish independence.

For what it’s worth, I think within a couple of decades the idea of the independent nation state will almost be completely alien. In a lot of ways, it already is. In an increasingly globalised world, countries are increasingly defined not in terms of their own peculiar characteristics but in terms of their relationships with other countries.

For instance, we think of countries as being members of transnational organisations. Countries are usually members of organisations such as the EU, Nato, the UN, the Commonwealth, any number of free trade blocs, special relationships… I could go on.

I have never heard it suggested that the SNP, or supporters of independence as a whole, would wish to do away with Scotland’s membership and / or use of such transnational institutions and agreements (though I’m aware that the SNP is opposed to membership of Nato — just making the point that it’s not the principle of such institutions that the SNP objects to). Nor should they. But unquestionably each of these in some way limits the independence of any country that signs up to it.

So what makes these institutions good (or at least tolerable) while Westminster is so bad? What I struggle to understand about the independence supporter’s position is why there is seemingly no part for Westminster to play in any plans for Scotland’s future.

To bring us back on to common ground, I should point out that my views are almost certainly driven by the same motivations that drive the feelings behind support for independence. Notably this would be the principle of subsidiarity, which means that decisions should be taken at as local a level as feasibly possible. As such, I would support an extension of the Scottish Parliament’s powers in many areas.

But it seems to me unreal to believe that there can be no role for Westminster; that there should be no reserved matters. One thing that is pretty neat about the UK is that most of it is made up of Great Britain, a relatively conveniently-sized island. It is certainly not too big to be adequately governed. It would seem quite silly not to take advantage of this geographical reality.

There are surely areas where the economies of scale trump subsidiarity. Foreign policy and defence might be one area, although I understand that many supporters of independence would find this difficult to swallow after the Iraq War (though a lot of people in the rest of the UK find the Iraq War difficult to swallow as well.)

National disasters could be another area. For instance, the 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak which affected both Scotland and England with Cumbria, right on the border, especially hit hard. In such a crisis situation, if the government had to place certain restrictions, or even emergency legislation had to be passed, it would be more efficient (and less costly) for there to be just one government involved rather than have to set up meetings so that you could get multiple governments to agree to a solution.

I’m not saying that it would be impossible for multiple governments to agree. But it would surely be efficient enough to make it worthwhile for there to be a UK-wide system in place. And having two governments involved would only double the chances of there being a cock-up, there is the danger that there will be crossed wires and so forth.

Of course, we are in a bit of a crisis at the moment. Alex Salmond has made much about what an independent Scotland maybe might have possibly been able to achieve. This is mostly fantasy talk though, because we have no way of knowing how an independent Scotland would have coped (meanwhile one of an independent Scotland’s blueprints, Iceland, is facing quite acute difficulty at the moment — sorry for straying off the fluffy consensus-seeking territory there!). I suspect Salmond is only using the crisis to advocate independence, but as leader of the SNP that’s his job.

But there has been plenty of hand-wringing among commentators about how difficult it has been to get world leaders to agree on the best way to tackle this global crisis. What if some kind of major crisis hit the former members of the UK and the leaders got into a stalemate? You can say we have that in this globalised world anyway and there’s nothing we can do about it. But creating even more failure points is hardly a constructive way to approach this.

So that is, in brief, the thinking behind my view on the constitution — how I see powers being distributed between Westminster and Holyrood. I’m delighted to see that Adopted Domain has already written his take on this, and I think our viewpoints are quite similar. A good start!

« Previous in series — »

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The Max Mosley verdict

24 July 2008 18:44

Categories: Opinion

Max Mosley has won his privacy case against News Group Newspapers Ltd, the publishers of the News of the World. A full PDF of the verdict is here. I am in two minds about this verdict.

On the one hand, the News of the World is a scumbag newspaper full of scumbag stories, owned by a scumbag, written by scumbags and read by scumbags. Their respect for privacy is a national disgrace, and watching media types bemoaning their apparent new-found inability to pry into people’s lives this morning has been pathetic.

It was pretty clear that the Nazi angle of the story was exaggerated somewhat by the News of the World, even if it was perhaps not totally unfounded. Thinking back to the original story, around half of it or maybe even more reflected on his family background rather than his wrongdoings in the bedroom department. The attempt to connect Max Mosley to fascism on the flimsiest of grounds, on the basis of who his parents were, was disgusting. Max Mosley did not choose his parents.

Even so, in my view there has been no satisfactory explanation for the overtones that allowed the Nazi conclusions to be drawn. The recordings include German speaking. This was explained as being down to the fact that one of the prostitutes was German. However, what has not been explained is why they were speaking English in a German accent. Phrases such as “I sink she needs more of ze punishment” (uttered by Mosley himself) and “We are the Aryan race!” do not strike me as being part of just another S&M orgy.

Max Mosley apparently had a sudden hearing loss during the phase of the conversation. Mr Justice Eady concedes that this sounds like a rather tall story, but says that it doesn’t matter because it was “clear… that the remark was unscripted”. He seems to think it was as though they were discussing whether an episode of EastEnders had Nazi overtones.

I also find it incredible that the judge has decided there was no public interest in the story. Oh really? The Crown Prince of Bahrain, Sheikh Salman Bin Hamad Al-Khalifa, was interested. King Juan Carlos of Spain was interested. Prince Albert of Monaco was interested. Galeb Majadle, Israel’s minister for sport was interested. BMW, Mercedes, Honda and Toyota were all interested. Bernie Ecclestone was interested.

The fact is, no matter how disgusting I think it is that the News of the World should invade people’s private lives, once the world had the knowledge that he indulges in that kind of behaviour it affected his ability to do his job. That in itself surely demonstrates sufficient public interest in any sense that would be meaningful to anybody not sitting in an ivory tower.

There were a lot of people who scratched their heads about the huge £100 million fine handed down to McLaren by Max Mosley last year. I think a lot of people have a feeling that they now know it is because Max Mosley gets a sexual thrill out of inflicting a harsh punishment. The next time the FIA has to hand down a punishment to someone, it will be an open goal for easy jibes. This puts Formula 1 and the FIA itself into disrepute. It ability to govern the sport properly has been diminished.

It would be bad enough if Max Mosley was just the “boss of Formula 1″ or the “head of motor sport” as the media constantly referred to him as. This probably made the public at large a lot more sympathetic towards Max Mosley than they otherwise would have been. The fact is that the FIA has a huge responsibility not just for sport but for the motor industry as a whole.

The FIA has a huge amount of weight and influence when it comes to aspects like road safety and green technologies. The FIA works together with the United Nations and the European Union among other organisations to make things happen. The FIA was pivotal in the formation of Euro NCAP, the European car safety assessment organisation.

Max Mosley is so much more than just an F1 man or motorsport president. He is responsible for cars full stop. This gives him a huge amount of power — probably more than most British politicians can dream to have.

I think the public saw this as quite a jokey story. Yet if we were talking about a cabinet minister or the CEO of a multinational company he would never have lasted this long. It might well have been a different story if the public realised just how much power Max Mosley has.

Do we really want someone who gets his sexual kicks out of inflicting pain to have so much responsibility over road safety? Do we want someone whose judgement is so questionable that he would regularly cheat on his wife and lie to his family to have such responsibilities?

As I have said countless times, Max Mosley should have done the honourable thing and resigned months ago. But we know from years of experience that Mosley is not an honourable man. Had he resigned, I would have fully supported him in his court case today.

However, his behaviour since the revelations have demonstrated that he does lack judgement and that he does have too much power. The FIA General Assembly vote simply demonstrated that it is a rotten borough, and the FIA is filled to the brim with Max Mosley lackeys.

Ideally, Max Mosley would have resigned and News Group Newspapers would have lost its court case. As it is, Max Mosley will go to bed tonight feeling vindicated. And that makes me angry.

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