Reflections on the Price of Spinelessness on US Election Eve

Another week, another set of evidence that Pres. Obama’s spine has gone missing.  Mind you, people did ask me when he was elected why I was pleased but not enthusiastic – the answer was that Pres. Obama has always been more of a blue dog Democratic Party member (centre right, really); that is no crime but it did mean his bold public agenda was likely to be a facade.  It was.  But this latest series of  lack of strategic and operational courage tell much:

·         Throwing the environmental agenda in the trash

·         The whole let’s-keep-the –media away from the BP soaked shores

·         Let’s trade offshore oil drilling for a climate/energy bill that the opposition would still not agree to (as they stated clearly) – and oops, right before Deepwater Horizon (sounds like a disaster movie name even before it really happened)

·         Let’s give into the Party of No and Know-Nothing

Bitterly disappointed?  Not really but I did expect it to be not this bad.  It does seem to me Pres. Obama’s spine has gone missing given this and many other issues (e.g. reluctant to understand that he will never win over people who have an irrational hate of him; bailing from DADT, same-sex marriage, a bolder health care bill, sort-of-but-not-quite supporting the right of Muslims to open a cultural centre on private and zone-approved land, etc).  He’s lost his base – his own press secretary insulted them and suck up to their screaming opponents – and yet may not lose the Senate mid-term because the monster raving loony faction of his opposition is strong enough to split votes and make people frightened to vote against them (not for the Democratic Party so much but against the Tea Partiers).  I would say this is arrogant of me except it is consistent with junior and senior pundits of independent or progressive vintage alike.

What will it mean for the environment?  Not much, I fear.  The weak climate bill probably still fails to pass.  Expect little else because even when there was a lock on Senate and House, the President did little in the way of bold initiatives.  He’s still better than Bush the 2^nd but, here it comes, worst than Richard Nixon.  Yes, Nixon, who had Walter Hickel helming major early environmental legislation (like Nixon though Hickel was conflicted in thought and action – he just died this year so his full legacy is now being assessed).

For those who disagree and say Pres. Obama is not spineless, examples are welcome.  Conciliation is one thing; giving into crazies is quite another.  History teaches that those who are not willing to take bold risks and confront irrationality doom themselves and their country; those who do (e.g. Lincoln, Roosevelt I and II, Jefferson, Trudeau) stand out.

Climate Change’s Dead Parrots

Being middle aged, I am a Monty Python’s Flying Circus devotee. It’s struck me about how similar those who will never admit the evidence for anthropogenic caused climate change resemble the Michael Palin character from the “Parrot Sketch”. The shiftiness, the blame-something-else-no-matter-what, the hidden agenda, and the outright lies – it’s all there. There are still a lot of interesting questions about where the change will take us or what we may do to prevent it but too many are still stuck in the rut of cherry picking data, blaming solar cycles, marvelling at how the troposphere seems to contradict evidence (it doesn’t unless you expect every layer to warm up), misunderstanding that in fact warm = open waters = more snow (ironically), and trying to sue Michael Mann (or who’s next - Joe Romm, or whoever else is handy; Andrew Weaver was last heard fighting back and good for him). My favourite, being a techie, is still about how people want to debate use of PCA (principle components analysis) – a debate that was fresh when I was in undergrad. Indeed, someone threw that at me during the summer because I do say, in general ecological work, one avoids PCA for complex models but that is because ecological models are not subject to major drivers or forcings in most cases. PCA can be used if data are linearly or at least closely related to one or a few variables. In my work (mostly ecological restoration), that is rarely the case. In atmospheric climate modelling, it is usually the case. One reason why you should never assume you have the whole story for a powerpoint slide downloaded without the actual benefit of the whole lesson – in other words, parroting a slide without the context or actual thinking 

Will it go away? Nope. The Koch Brothers appear to be financing a major push to repeal the key California’s climate laws related to energy use and somewhere you will find people like Chris Monckton flailing away at data that contradict his arguments but ignoring that fact. The Big Lie does work and people can be incredibly lazy and childish (go subscribe to the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson – he’s really coming on strong as a columnist and had much to say on that topic). Should we despair? Perhaps - but only in the sense that the fight is still there. It will be a long one; unlike acid rain or smog or ozone holes, the effects of climate change are too gradual for most to notice – unless you are living near the Murray River in Oz, parts of Pakistan, and several isolated islands. Then you notice. Too late. For most, it is not too late.

Summer’s waning; back to complaining

As promised, time to ramp up the blog and push all the little feed buttons. Expect about 1-2 posts a week; again, I suspect this will be more for internal or alumni interest but thanks for the nice comments emailed to me or posted on FB (a dozen – which was impressive)

Lulz

Hats off to John Abraham and to St. Thomas University for supporting him.

On blogging

As noted, we in ERS are under no illusions the blog will become the 'next big thing'; its a nice means to communicate for a mainly university and departmental audience though as we do start running RSS and other push technologies as the fall begins, we will see some traffic.

People have asked by email why not "link to blog___.". The answer is that the links are all meant to be ones focused on environmental issues. There are great blogs not in these categories - check out PZ Myers and Ed Brayton who drive a lot of traffic for example. Inevitably, the environment does become political of course so we won't shy from controversy or turn into concern trolls. But for now the link love is mainly for environmental sites; suggestions welcome.

Scholar: That word does not mean what you think it means

Robert Laughlin has joined Freeman Dyson in the category of missing the point. His recent piece indicates a quite odd premise: let's not worry about global climate change because the Earth does not care what we do and will survive no matter what we do about climate change.

True on the "Earth not caring and will survive" but its not the point. We live in a bit of a 'sweet spot' in terms of a livable Earth for humans and that would be one of the big issues - not causing our own extinction and taking a lot of species down with us. Now human extinction via anthropogenic climate change is not likely but it sure won't make too many places more livable (ironically, parts of Canada may be an exception).

This reminds me of the similar arguments in the 1980s about biodiversity - 'hell, the Earth has seen many natural extinctions and most species are extinct'. Um, yeah. The old '99% of all species are extinct' saw was fine - except that's over a 3 billion year period. And the natural part, even the sudden ones, were all related to stuff like near earth objects blasting the planet. Either way, these are not things to be desired.

(I usually opened our 1st year foundational course with the following)

Contrary to the way humans often think, most issues are not simple dichotomies of good versus evil, heroes versus villains, right versus wrong. There are so many biophysical variables and interactions, so many social variables and interactions, so many interactions between society and biophysical phenomena that resolving environment and resource issues requires a lot of brain cells and a willingness to seek the best evidence while avoiding personal biases and assumptions. This is why this field of work can be so tough – you cannot just be an expert in one discipline and you cannot hide away and pretend the world is made up of people who are all well educated and have noble motives.

Environmental and resource issues are dependent on the basic biophysical limitations with the attendant ability to use science to analyze these aspects. But decision making is complicated by the fact that science never offers certainty – it offers the most probable answer given the data available. There might not be enough data or evidence available to be very certain our environment and resource decisions are correct and yet we may have to make a decision nonetheless because the consequences of dithering or inaction are far worse than choosing the wrong action.

Decision making is of course influenced by people who all have a complex series of motives and ways to arrive at decisions. Rarely are motives purely good or purely evil. Usually, the motives are a combination of logic, emotion, objectivity, subjectivity, self-interest, and altruism. Motives will depend on the cultural history of an individual. Though some may claim to be motivated only and always by the “greatest good for all”, this is not always the case.

We may claim that we’re always fighting for a just cause.

Sometimes we are.

But sometimes we’ve just swallowed our own self-aggrandizing bullshit whole.

This can be viewed as a depressing state of affairs – the world is so complex and humans complex in themselves and hence can make very shortsighted and dumb decisions. The trick is to recognize this is the reality and that if you want to really make a difference in changing the world and resolving environment and resource issues you must do several things:
• Examine your own motives and how you get evidence and make decisions. The answer should be that you are weighing the rights of individuals and the common good – you are weighing short and long term outcomes.
• If you do this, have confidence that at least you are trying to make the best decision possible.
• As you push your agenda though, remember to ask yourself if you have truly done what I list first here – examine your motives and evidence acquisitions and the basis for your decisions and agenda.

Welcome to Lucidus Viridis (bright green). This blog will be the unofficial extension of the academic community from the Department of Environment and Resource Studies at the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. We plan to ramp this up come September 2010 with a few posts a week on topics related to the environment.