Clive Hamilton and George Monbiot debate

Clive Hamilton is of The Australia Institute. George Monbiot is, well, George Monbiot. Come on.

The New Left Review hosted the two of them, as they debated (or rather, one posted and one responded) certain positions taken by Monbiot in his latest book, Heat. Specifically/primarily, Monbiot’s assertion that 90%, rather than 50% or 60%, is the minimum reduction in greenhouse gas emissions required to keep us all from burning up, and secondly that geosequestration of carbon dioxide is the answer.

Clive Hamilton has the white pieces. He criticises some of Monbiot’s book, including his writing and overall method (is that the right word?):

A work by Monbiot devoted to the politics of climate change would have been a more useful intervention than his opinion on how to achieve 90 per cent cuts in every sector. It is not the only time Monbiot has written a book that claims to solve the world’s most intractable problems single-handedly: The Age of Consent (2003), described as ‘a manifesto for a new world order’, set out a detailed blueprint for a new international democratic system, built on principles of justice.

In the battle between utopians and realists, my vote always goes to the former; yet not all utopian visions are equal, and Monbiot crossed the line that separates the inspirational from the fanciful.

Although he is broadly appreciative of the book (and of Monbiot, and Monbiot’s activism), Hamilton disagrees with Monbiot’s criticism of Pigovian taxation as a means of limiting demand, pointing out that there is little difference between this, carbon trading (as of which we find our governments currently enamoured) and Monbiot’s suggested rationing/carbon currency – and to be fair there isn’t the difference between the Pigovian and Coasian solution isn’t much more than the government playing banker in a game of Pollution Monopoly.

As Monbiot correctly identifies, the problem lies with the target, the permitted levels of emissions, and enforcement. That isn’t the argument, necessarily, against one form of trading in favour of another, but Hamilton points out that one fixes the Price, leaving the Quantity to the market (taxation), and the other fixes the Quantity, leaving the Price to the market (rationing/trading), without noticing that this is that for which Monbiot is barracking. The chances of success are greater with a government taking over the social welfare function for us, and telling what we can/can’t do.

The egalitarian aspect of the market suggested by Monbiot, in which permits are granted to everyone, rather than just the biggest polluters, is also a big feature that I think Hamilton undervalues. Unlike the current system, Monbiot’s currency (‘ice caps’, from memory), put consumer-behavioural responses to pricing carbon emissions right in our own pockets.

More generally, Hamilton provides a pretty good discussion of the psychological barrier (apropos, for example, Monbiot’s presentation of the path to safe climate involving no more easy air travel – this could also be a British/Australian difference of perspective? Probably not that much). I did get the impression Hamilton supposed Monbiot to be less sympathetic to this than I suspect he is. I do agree with Monbiot, however, that it’s probably inexorable. The technological changes we’ve had in the last 50 years have been wonderful, but I don’t have the imagination to fill in the gaps between current Aeronautical technology and the last 3 seasons of Stargate.

And Monbiot had the black pieces:

He begins with their basic disagreement (in terms of the science): his reduction target.

So while two degrees remains the nominal upper limit, repeatedly cited by government ministers, politics, not science, informs the carbon reductions they propose in order not to exceed it. The calculations I explain in Heat, which any numerate person can replicate, estimate the cut demanded by the science.

Hamilton says that the result—a worldwide reduction of 60 per cent—is ‘far beyond the cuts proposed by anyone else’. This is also incorrect. A paper published recently in the journal Climatic Change shows that in order to obtain a 50 per cent chance of preventing the global average temperature from rising by 2° above its pre-industrial level, we require a global cut of 80 per cent by 2050.

Monbiot’s justification however does run into the technology question. Personally I’m torn. I don’t believe that relying on technology to save us is wise (Hamilton himself made light fun of favouring a policy favoured by the likes of Howard and Bush, but then does the same with technology). Electricity needs to be provided in adequate capacity on-demand, and it can’t – currently – be stored in any manner that accords with rule number 1. If we could get around that, we’d have a lot of our work done for us. Tidal energy, solar energy, etc. would suddenly become a hell of a lot more feasible that it already is. It’s probably true that this technology will come to us, but I’m too chicken to bet every farm on Earth on that.

Upon their debate around the conclusions of Nicholas Stern I will, sad to say, take the fence. I’m with Monbiot – the very fact that Stern breaks everything down to dollars to determine what is the optimal trade-off makes agreement or disagreement a matter of agreement with the method and the valuations, first. I know enough Cost-Effectiveness Analysis to know that tilting the scales one way or another is mostly a matter of methodology. And, in the case of everything from seatbelts to cigarettes to climate change, salesmanship.

Finally he discusses the reason for favouring his model for a Coasian solution, as I loosely described above, and re-affirms the nearness and the necessity of action (as would be expected – the debate concerned his book, after all).

The two sides of the very collegial debate are well worth reading. Makes a change from the discourse most of us, in our respective countries, are probably seeing most of the time.

They shoot horses, don’t they?

In today’s Guardian

After years of decline, France’s taste for horsemeat is showing signs of a revival. Brigitte Bardot, the film star-turned animal activist, has devoted 2007 to halting the consumption of “the noble beast”, but she faces a difficult task – a marketing drive has increased sales.

But in the US a campaign by another cinema icon, Bo Derek, is threatening French supplies of the meat. The US is one of the biggest suppliers of horsemeat to France, but the state of Illinois has ordered the country’s last working horse slaughterhouse to stop operations.

I just figured I would not let the hypocrisy go unremarked.

As with any mammal, cows produce milk only when pregnant and stop after their calves have been weaned. When a dairy cow delivers a female calf, the calf becomes a dairy cow herself, born to live in the same conditions as her mother. But when a dairy cow delivers a male calf, the calf is sold to a veal farm within days of birth, where he is tethered to a stall, deprived of food and exercise, and soon slaughtered for meat. Life is only a few years longer for the mother. Because it is unprofitable to keep cows alive once their milk production declines, dairy cows are usually slaughtered at 5 years of age. Thus, a cow’s normal lifespan of 25 years is cut 20 years short just to cut costs and maximize production.

The average productive life of a dairy cow is short (approximately 3 – 4 years). Many cows are culled primarily because of reproductive failure, low milk yield, udder breakdown, feet and leg weaknesses, and mastitis.

Do I seem angry? I’m a little angry. Do I seem like I’m on a moral high horse? I am. Watch me care.

Vote Labor

Peter Hartcher, political editor over at the Sydney Morning Herald, writes that

Despite the signs of public weariness with the Howard Government and despite the public infatuation with Rudd, Australia is not prepared to trust Labor with the task of economic management.

And this is how Howard will frame the election. Who do you trust to manage the economy? There is only one answer and one outcome.

The one outcome being, Team Howard/Costello, who get the credit for most of the 17 years of expansion we’ve enjoyed (just today my father-in-law was reminding me that 90% of everything is just showing up).

The Howard Government will probably win this year’s election. And if it does, it will be because Labor has not been able to persuade Australia that it can be trusted with the economy.

This corresponds to the latest from Roy Morgan, currently under discussion over at Crikey.com:

That’s some impressive loss of ground, though, and I don’t think it’s finished. As to trustworthiness:

Howard is fairly well pummelled (caveat – that’s still a decent, but good-deal-smaller, sample). And this precedes, as I understand the chronology, Howard’s Kirribilli house-party. Come election time, I’m sure other events from calendars past will be raised as well. At least they weren’t playing croquet.

Hartcher mentions the Babushka-doll argument (people compare Liberal and Labor in layers. First security, then the economy, have to be breached, and only then is Labor considered on its merits), and the fact that Labor have the security thing covered:

Just not the economy. I hope Hartcher’s wrong, because I hate John Howard. I believe Hartcher is wrong, because Labor is polling very well on issues of the moment:

I.e. workplace relations, social welfare and, with any luck, providing affordable housing. John Howard has always seemed to me too happy to don an akubra and moan about his little Aussie battlers than knuckle down to the lack of affordable urban and/or suburban housing (it goes without saying that he probably doesn’t care either way about remote Indigenous well-being, but bear in mind when I say that that I don’t like the man, still less the Prime Minister).

It’s all about timing, with Australian politics. The true advantage of the incumbent in a parliamentary democracy (or constitutional monarchy, if you want to get Very Correct) is the ability to, say, call an election after your SAS troops have bordered a tanker full of asylum seekers. At the moment – particularly if another rate rise comes in time – I think the balance of circumstances favours Kevin Rudd in the Ledger of Australian Political Stereotypes. But John Howard hasn’t been Prime Minister for 11 years for nothing…

Australia’s housing shortage

The preliminary results from the 2006 Census shows the Australian population grew 1.4 per cent during the 12 months ended December 31, 2006, as the country recorded 265,922 births, the second highest on record.

Oddly, I had always assumed our population was over 21m already. This is an upwards revision of population estimates, and it has lead a senior economist at Westpac to new expectations concerning the housing shortage. Or rather, ’shortage’. It is more a shortfall, between houses, trends in building, and trends in population.

Needless to say, the trend is towards a housing shortage in the future. Of course this is a shortfall of 92,000 domiciles (the old estimate was 50,000). Housing starts (that is, new houses that have begun to be built) this year are about 150,000, compared with this underlying demand of about 172,000. Which really isn’t all that much, when you think about it.

Average incomes for Australia are in the AUD55,000 p.a. area (for as long as I’ve cared, the website of the Australian Bureau of Statistics has been a nightmare to navigate). That puts the maximum mortgage payment (affordable) at about AUD1650 per month, by my rough calculations.

Average mortgages in Australia are going for AUD318,000. AUD382,000, in NSW. Average mortgage payments in Australia are around AUD2,400 per month.

So…not a lot of slack there. Oddly enough the report by Matthew Hassan (the Westpac guy) and Housing Industry Association chief economist Harley Dale both pointed to the clear disconnect in affordability as keeping demand down (and why wouldn’t it? On average, mortgages should not be incomes x 6…), which in fact can help. But at the same time, vacancy rates are already around 1 or 2% all over. Every day the Sydney Morning Herald is on about this, one way or another. And that’s demand for new houses – it doesn’t mean those people disappear.

This has two interest sequelae (for me. I neither live in Australia, now, or own a house – and living in New York, I’m not going to any time soon): first, the intersections between this issue, the economy, the pressure coming for the Reserve Bank to raise, like many other central banks these days, interest rates (although John Howard is telling not only us but the Reserve Bank that rates don’t need to rise (and this is not the first time he’s tried to lean on the Reserve, by-the-by), and the as-yet unaddressed issue of housing affordability (I say ‘issue’, the papers say ‘crisis’) in Australia.

Secondly, there is the issue of land availability, and how much of it is being made available for estate, etc. housing. This is a state issue, rather than a federal issue (although the Howard government will use it, because it’s still an attack on Labor governments), but I expect it to become more and more prevalent.

This will also dovetail nicely with the fact that Sydney, for example, only has power and water for a couple of years more (and fully 20% of water usage is for power generation, as it is). Look for the pro-nuclear crowd to come along on the tail of this issue.

Meanwhile the UN’s Special Rapporteur on adequate housing meanwhile, has taken a slightly different approach to the housing ‘crisis’:

During a trip around Australia last year — which took in Aboriginal communities, shelters for domestic violence victims and public housing — Miloon Kothari found “reductions in public housing stock, soaring private rental rates, an acknowledged housing affordability crisis and no real reduction in the number of homeless”.

Poor people? Does he have any idea how far back in the queue they are? Urbanites and suburbanites first, thank you very much. This is an election year, after all.