I recently had an email discussion on the subject of climate change with James Knight over a period of a few weeks. James published an edited copy of the contents of this discussion on his blog and then added further comments of his own. This means that the email discussion went through five iterations, with James' edited and supplemented copy on his blog being the fifth iteration. Of course, should I take up the challenge and respond to his blog post with its extra content then that would be the sixth iteration.
I thought I'd better make available the full original discussion (i.e. up to the 4th iteration) which can be accessed here. At some stage I might get back to James in reply to his fifth iteration. However, I have to confess my interest in the subject began to wane as I find physics and mathematics far more exciting and, if truth be known, much easier to handle. Climatology by itself is an interesting subject as it's all about systems theory, but it is the theory of very complex systems. Climatologists are respected scientists but no doubt the sheer complexity of the system they are dealing with makes it difficult to arrive at firm conclusions. But that's nothing compared to the chaos of politico-economic thought which deals with how humanity should react to climatology. It is here that huge vested interests and valued judgments make themselves felt as left and right extremists exploit a climatological scare story to agitate for social unrest with the aim of realizing their particular socio-political vision.
James often uses the term "climate alarmism", an emotive term used by those skeptical of the predictions about dangerous levels of climate change. Climate alarmism as an emotive term is unlikely to be a monopole, and so in order to express its opposite pole I have coined the equally emotive term climate complacency. A less emotive term is climate concern. But from the perspective of the politically polarized extremes climate concern looks to be either a form of climate alarmism or climate complacency depending on which polarity floats your boat.
At one point in the discussion James said I had constructed a strawman of his position. I'm very glad he saw it like that because that means he didn't take ownership of these strawmen.
Nevertheless, it was a fruitful discussion and, many thanks to James, got me out of my intellectual comfort zone for a while: I publish the introduction to Iteration No 4 below. It remains unfinished business as far as I'm concerned and iteration 6 calls. But things are moving so fast with the atmosphere that I have a feeling the climate itself will have the last word!
INTRODUCTION
The eruption of Santorini circa 1200 BC probably help bring the otherwise rich Minoan civilisation on Crete to its knees. That they were quantitatively rich was no help in this one off disaster. What they needed was to be the right kind of rich: that is, to be rich in the kind of technology that would help proof them against the tsunami caused by the Minion eruption. Likewise a blind libertarian market may find itself helpless in the face of one-off environmental challenges because with a sample of zero a blinkered market learns nothing and simply isn’t ready with the right technology. Efficiency in current technological needs will be an irrelevance.
In my opinion a realistic portion of the capital generated by the market must be invested in blues skies research which looks for possible threats to civilisation (e.g. Rogue asteroids, super volcanoes, tsunamis etc.) and investigates how to respond to them. Hence, the quantitative riches generated by free trade must be supplemented by qualitative technological riches which facilitate proactive environmental control. Proactive environmental control entails extending the human environmental bubble rather than sitting passively in the bubble we already control thinking that as long as we have stacks of cash to defend that bubble we are OK. But in actual fact the history of human civilisation is one of proactively extending the environmental bubble humanity controls; this started with the transition from hunter-gathering to agriculture.
I have little optimism in a wait-and-see policy which hopes that the unforetold riches of the future will make civilisation environment proof in the face of threatening one-off environmental challenges. The libertarian blinkers must come off and a passive market must become a proactive one; that is, one that is aware of the technological changes needed for the next stage in the extension of civilisation’s environmental bubble. Therefore the market must have a qualitative vision toward the end of proactively extending environmental control and not just a quantitative vision of being rich in the abstract.
A major worry I have about capitalism is its proneness to the social cancers of Marxism & Fascism, products of the social discontent it seems to generate. We must view the market as a tool of humanity and not an unaccountable process that humanity must submit to at all costs: Therein lies the problem, however: Humanity doesn’t readily submit to a blinkered market and the result is social disaffection and discontent. It may therefore be necessary to cool the market down to help freeze out the inequalities, resentments and alienation that are fertile ground for the growth of Marxism and Fascism. It’s all but useless to attempt to convince the discontented, the disaffected and the alienated that the capitalism of the past has made them as rich as they are currently: Yes, in times past they might have worn rags, suffered from cold and gone hungry, but moderns who can only get a cut out of societal wealth by going down to the foodbank and get help to pay bills don’t feel rich; instead they may feel humiliated by the one way dependency – let’s remember here that once the base of Maslow’s hierarchy is secured the feeling of being rich is a sense of well-being conveyed by one’s position relative to the rest of society. In short feeling rich is about social status; that is how one measures up against the people of society as a whole. Therefore, it is also futile to tell the poor that free-for-all capitalism will make their children’s children stinking rich.
Of course this doesn’t mean we should dispose of capitalism and the market but it does mean that political & social solutions are needed in order to stabilise an otherwise socially rickety system which could find itself teetering on the edge of the Marxist and/or fascist revolutionary abyss.
Humanity has a tense relationship with its systems of government; probably because government is at best hard put to it to promote justice and wealth among its citizens, and at worst is the seat of despotic power. It is no surprise therefore that both Marxists and libertarians seek to replace government with a folksy idyll where the trappings of state and government are minimised. But the Marxist and libertarian way, after the overthrow of the status quo are liable to leave a power vacuum that would attract autocratic rule. Marxism and libertarianism may start out by going in the opposite directions of collectivism vs individualism but they end up arriving at the same place – the dictatorship of the few.
The question of the
role of market and government in the face of threatening environmental changes
seems just as murky as when I started considering it. Yes there are lots uncertainties
and hand waving associated with those climate models, but the uncertainties and
hand waving are even greater for those who are trying to work out the implications
of the climate projections for the notoriously difficult world of politico-socio-economic
policy adoption, whether those policies be to impose emission targets or to
adopt live-and-let-live libertarianism or, which seems most likely, something
in between.
Relevant links:
12 comments:
Hi Tim,
We have to consider the Markov process here too. In this consideration, we have at least two concomitant lines (x and y). Say line x measures the problems we have to solve due to climate change; line y measures our technological advances over time. In this particular process, we are looking at a finite number of states and some probabilities, where the probability of line x worsening should be considered alongside the probability of y improving.
As an analogy, consider another case where x represents a disease, and more and more people are infected by it. If you just measured x, then it might like very precarious for the human population. But the y line measures the medical intervention we can undertake, and as that improves, the severity of x diminishes. This has happened in real life with smallpox, polio, measles, mumps and rubella.
Similarly, with the climate, the majority of the commentary simply tries to measure probability states in line x, but overlooks the advancements that will occur along line y – which is a massive error.
We have two variables here: The Environment E and human society H. These two symbols represent the state of the environment and human society respectively. They have a coupled relationship: That is E effects H (e.g. via environmental perceptions) and H, especially nowadays, effects E. Given this model then it seems that H is responding to E not just via commentary, but also through the politico-techno-economic system in that it is affecting innovation and political & buying choices. But as we clearly have a feedback system here which is probably non-linear, exactly where it's going to end up, who knows! But I see no rationality for either right-wing climate complacency or "Just stop oil" fanaticism. It is simply not clear that unspecified future riches will bail us out at some unspecified future date should the environment stress human wealth. It clear however that the politico-techno-economic system is reacting as we speak, either for good or bad.
A coupled feedback system is also apparent in your disease example: For example, with Covid people didn't sit back and hope that some abstract concept of "advancement" would come along to save them but both commercial and government institutions got off their butts and started problem solving and in a record time addressed the problem apparently. In general, environmental conditions effects commentary and commentary effects material advances and material advances effects environmental conditions and so it goes round and round! Markov may not be very appropriate here as human beings have a memory of history which effects their actions now.
Here's an interesting prediction from physics. The physics of the cosmos looks to be Markovian: That is, physical systems development in the next increment of time in a way that only depends on the current state: That is, physical systems have no "memory" of previous states. So given that human beings obey the laws of physics how can they behave in a non-markovian way? For that it to happen it follows that human beings must accumulate physical historical materials, in form of memories, documents, paintings, oral traditions etc. In short human beings have a culture and the complexity of that culture means we are had put to it to use first principal physics to predict human behaviour!
And let's not forget the political wild card that has the potential to turn those fragile economic predictions about the inevitability of increasing wealth completely on their heads: We should be concerned, alarmed even, about TRUMP, PUTIN & the political traditionalist axis which only understand dictatorship. We need to be vocal about this threat. Culture isn't just about economics.
Your "E influences H, and H influences E" is, of course, correct. Humans influence the environment, and the environment influences humans, both of which occur in a largely non-linear feedback dynamic, and both of which have negative and positive externalities. But the climate alarmists are only really focussing on how humans influence the environment negatively - which means they are overlooking the three other factors in the equation.
It might be that AI is an even more urgent threat that needs more of our attention.
The negative and positive externalities are a rather subjective measure*, and in any case their action can be bundled into the H/E system and therefore be dropped. After all this is systems theory not economics (economics is a subset of systems theory). So if climate alarmists are exclusively focusing on H => E (i.e. how H effects E) then that means climate complacentists are failing to focus on E => H (that is how E effects H)!
* e.g.: To one fanatic the very existence of humanity is less benefit than the cost to the environment!
I'm still pondering the AI question, but I suspect that like all technology its good or bad effects depends on who is using it. That even applies to those stone axes of the paleolithic! I'm guessing that there were Putin-like gangs and Trump-like gangs who ran amok with stone axes!
Come to think of it climate complacentists are not very good with H=>E either: Many of them are inclined to see it as all part of what they believe to be the flawed science of climatology (e.g. Ken Ham & his followers) or a big hoax (Donald Trump & his followers)
You have to remember, though, that complacency and alarmism works both ways - and all human activity ought to be measured according to what is true. I'm pretty alarmed at the insane and harmful errors being made by those who want to stop all fossil fuel use before we as a species have a clue how to manage it. You can't just bring a premature end to fossil fuels without bringing catastrophic harm on the world's industries (which will affect everything else) - because pretty much everything (directly or indirectly) still relies on fossil fuels. Weaning ourselves off fossil fuels seems like a good idea, but it has to be done more steadily in accordance with the technological and scientific capacities to switch to alternatives - not as a result of political panic based on duress from climate extremists. We are nowhere near ready to move precipitously into a post-fossil fuel world, and we don't have a clue how to even do it without trying to suppress and conceal all the harm it will do (and is doing). The climate alarmists are very complacent and ignorant of this fact - so it does work both ways.
On a scale of 1-10, where 10 is a climate loony of the Just Stop Oil variety, and 1 is someone who is relaxed and has confidence in human ingenuity alongside some hopefully sensible top down decision-making, I'd score myself about a 2.
Yes, I think I'd largely agree with that! But I'm excited about some of the technologies that perceived climate change is bringing about!
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