Getting more serious about climate

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Recently, the tipping point concept has found a new application in climate science as a way to explain, and possibly engineer, social change. The way changes in attitude creep along at a glacial pace before suddenly bursting forth to take root across society is a classic tipping point. This process is useful because it moves ideas that were once on the fringes of mainstream opinion rapidly to the centre; ideas such as the need for deep economic and technological changes to avoid a real-life climate disaster.

Whether by accident or design, we recently passed one such social tipping point. In narrow terms, it is the sudden, widespread embrace of net zero. In broader terms, it means final realisation from all levels of society that we must take radical action or face dire, possibly terminal, consequences.

A year ago, net zero was creeping into the mainstream. Greta Thunberg was talking about it; two countries – Suriname and Bhutan – had achieved it, and four more, including the UK, had passed laws to aim for it. A dozen or so others were thinking about it.

Today, the picture has changed dramatically. Suriname and Bhutan still stand alone as the heroes of zero, but legislation has been passed or is pending in 21 other countries, plus the European Union. Three of the world’s four-biggest emitters – China, the EU and Japan – are in the club. If the US consummates its new relationship with the planet, that will be four out of four. According to the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit’s Net Zero Tracker. the US is one of around 100 countries in which net-zero laws are under discussion. Even Australia, which just four months ago was pushing back, and has recanted.  Countries on the outside look increasingly like a rogues’ gallery of backward-looking petrostates: Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia, Venezuela and Nigeria. You might call them the axis of ev-oil.

At subnational levels, enthusiasm is spreading too. According to Kaya Axelsson at the University of Oxford’s Net Zero initiative, 452 cities, 22 regions, more than 1100 big companies, nearly 50 investment funds and 550 universities have pledged to go net zero globally, with more joining every day. Axelsson says when she goes to talk to private companies, she finds she is pushing at an open door. (part of an article by Graham Lawton in the latest edition of New Scientist)

My comment: Better late than never.  But how are you going to persuade those in the US who believe that the slightest restriction on their “liberty” to do exactly what they like – to hell with the rest of us – is unconstitutional?   To them climate change is a hoax ( naturally. It is based on science!).  Prediction:  net zero will still be being litigated in America long after the rest of the world has realized the existential danger humans face.

Don’t believe all you read

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Quote of the day
“That’s what the people of our countries now want us to focus on. Building back greener, building back fairer, building back more equal, in a more gender-neutral and a more feminine way.”
Boris Johnson addresses his fellow G7 leaders while chairing the first working session of the summit.
My take:  Did he dream this up himself?  Sounds like a soundbite devised by a staffer desperate for his boss to sound selfless and interested in people.

Vacationing in Britain

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“I think we can all agree that the two worst things in the world are camping and picnics,” writes Giles Coren.  So, when you read “that there is a shortage of tents and picnic baskets which ‘could hit staycation plans’, you know that you are truly dwelling in the end times”.

A staycation in the UK can be wonderful, says Coren. “The only problem? Getting there. M40, M4, M5 all solid, in every direction, so that, with stops to charge my electric car, getting as far as Cardiff took as long as it would have done to get to our only other feasible legal holiday option, Australia.” But the bigger problem for Coren, he says, “is not that I am going to have to holiday in Britain – which is perfectly nice in its way – it is that everyone else is too. ( Giles Coren in The Times).

My comment:   Much as I love the countryside, when it is viewed from a vehicle moving three feet a minute in solid traffic, jammed as far as the eye can see, there is little to commend the idea of driving to the South West of England , along roads not widened since Roman times. Staying at home is more relaxing.

 Critical race theory

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Critical  race theorists often  comment upon ithe underlying structures and biases of legal systems and arguments. In one famous paper, for instance, then-Harvard Law professor Derrick Bell argued that the famous Supreme Court decision Brown vs. Board of Education may not have been so much about high-minded legal principle but rather the perceived self-interest of white elites. Jim Crow had simply become too disruptive, and too much of an international embarrassment, to be countenanced any longer. “Racial justice — or its appearance — may, from time to time, be counted among the interests deemed important by the courts and by society’s policymakers,” he wrote.

One can quibble with several of these types of argument, and indeed, like any academic school of thought, theorists are routinely squabbling with one another about various points. There is no unanimous set of views, and at bottom, critical race theory is just another intellectual movement in the classic Enlightenment tradition — a bunch of professional scholars making arguments using reason and evidence, mainly in books and academic journals. Until recently it was quite obscure.

The conservative picture of “critical race theory” bears no resemblance whatsoever to reality. Much like “cancel culture,” which is now just a mindless catchphrase conservatives use to deflect blame for anything from trying to overthrow the government to stuffing a racehorse full of steroids, their version of “critical race theory” is a made-up bogeyman being used to whip up a screeching panic among the conservative base so as to suppress honest discussion about American history and racism.

The immediate context here is that the George Floyd protests have inspired many schools to reexamine their curricula, which are very often out of date or an outright whitewash of history. The study of Reconstruction in particular is still influenced by the baldly racist Dunning School, which libeled the brief post-Civil War multiracial democracy in the South as corrupt and tyrannical, hence justifying Jim Crow apartheid. In response, many school districts and universities have incorporated new scholarship, to take better account of the manifestly ongoing problem of racist injustice.

Importantly, little of this is about critical race theory per se, which is fairly arcane and more for graduate and law students (though there is a lot of overlap in topics, and some broader influence). We’re not talking about interrogating the legal theories and argumentative structure of Supreme Court decisions here, it’s mainly bog-standard history and elementary social science — stuff like Black Americans’ hugely disproportionate rate of incarceration and economic deprivation, the legacy of racist housing policy, how slavery and Jim Crow worked, and so on.

In response, Republican legislators have proposed sweeping attacks on free scholarship and inquiry.  (The Week 14 May 2021)

My comment: As a young man I stayed for a while in Washington DC.  Taking a bus one morning,  I sat at the back.  An African American lady in front of me turned round and told me , “Them seats are not for you.  They are for us black folk”.  To which I replied, “Thank you for the information, but I will sit exactly where I like.” ( to some applause from other passengers).  My introduction to the ridiculous apartheid of the time. Still, aspects of that mindset persist.

Supporters of Epicurus believe in equal rights for all human beings, whatever their color, language, education, income, place of origin and political opinions.