Greenery at the top, up to a point

Good to find Peter Mandelson highlighting climate change in a speech at the LSE yesterday. As minister for the Business and enterprise, his take is, perhaps inevitably geared to economic growth. Thus:

“The core challenge of climate change politics is getting people to connect their choices now with outcomes in the relatively distant future and in different parts of the world. It’s going to cost in the short term, there is no way around that.” (good start)

People often find the scale of the challenge overwhelming. So somehow we have to go from awareness to engagement, rather than awareness to resignation. (yes, true)

The only way to do this is to stress that at the levels of individual choices, business choices and national economic choices, the shift to low carbon offers economic opportunities as well as costs. (well, it would be a good way, if it could be done. But the only way? I wonder. Could we have a plan B in case that doesn’t work? )

Most of the things he goes on to say sound like moves in the right direction  – though they are mostly still pretty unspecific, despite the years which keep passing as government tries to formulate a climate and energy policy which might actually make a difference. But that premise does seem unduly constraining. And, even in its own terms, it kind of avoids the politics of sorting out the costs and benefits, and where they fall – whether within one country or globally…

The future in Bristol

The guys at Futurelab led an interesting discussion yesterday about futures, and specifically the near-term future in Bristol. Interesting first of all that more than a dozen people came indoors for this on a Saturday afternoon when they might have been idling by the harbourside outside the Arnolfini in the sunshine (well, the sunny folk did outnumber us slightly). But also impressive how detailed some of the ideas about possible and desirable futures which were elicited in an hour or so’s discussion.

We had a particularly good bit, I thought, on the future of food, stimulated by wondering what it might be like to be a farmer in the UK in 20 years time. It reminded me of one of the best answers yet to a question I’ve posed a couple of times – what would you want to ask someone from the future about their world? “Are there still supermarkets?” struck me as a fantastically good query, because it wraps up so many questions in one.

Me, I think supermarkets are pretty adaptable. I would try and avoid them but my bit of organic foodie, sustainable, locally source obsessed Bristol is laid out so that I actually walk through a Summerfield’s to get to the Gloucester road from my house. The result is that we kind of use it as our fridge. A good excuse not to keep a freezer in the house, though, so it supports one green choice…

What I learned in school today…

We know the past but cannot influence it: we can influence the future but cannot know it.

So said, Stuart Brand, or something like that. It is one of those cute comments it is tempting to quote. But Andrew Curry of the Futures Company relates that once asked to reconsider it, he immediately realised it is wrong. Not the second part, but the bit about not influencing the past.

His point is about rewriting history, not in the Orwellian or Stalinist sense, but the more obvious idea that we constantly re-narrate the past from the context of the present. And at a meeting of the Futures Analysts’ Network in London this week he showed briefly how he is using this idea to help cyrstallise thinking about possible futures. The procedure is simply to produce a rough list of key historical events – those people can recall or a more intensively researched list going back further in time. Then consider a range of future scenarios and think how what are seen as the “key” past events will change, or their significance be re-evaluated.

It seems quite an illuminating idea, though not a particularly startling one to this one-time historian.

In any case, there is an alternative quote which captures the asymmetry Brand was pointing out – from an alternative guru, Kenneth Boulding: all knowledge is about the past, but all decisions are about the future. My frequently repeated observation to the same effect is that if you are in a conversation about the future the past is usually invoked within the first 30 seconds.

Signals from the future

The title is the phrase which leaps out from the thoughtful new report from Global Dashboard’s Alex Evans and David Steven. Their effort is directed at focussing ideas about how to respond to climate change on reshaping international institutions, which has to be right.

The phrase is supposed to mean that such institutions need to manage expectations, especially about the transition to low carbon regimes, so that people/governments act appropriately, that is to bring about the transition rapidly. OK, it is eye-catching, but it will be interesting to see if it will catch on as a way of describing self-fulfilling prophecies – good or otherwise. We all like to play around with these paradoxical word combinations (their blog is already subtitled “notes from the future”). But I would have thought the climate scientists have been sending pretty strong signals from the future for some time, without (yet) getting any very effective response.

That, of course, is the problem the report, which is well worth digesting, addresses. Response? Well, it does give an extra resonance to a comment, something of a throwaway, in a talk in Bristol last week from Arup’s tame futurist Chris Luebkeman. Toward the end of a generally upbeat talk, he remarked that he could not imagine how democracy can survive the advent of real climate change. Not sure if he meant that it will be so disruptive that governments all collapse and are susbstituted by dictatorial regimes, or that we will have to suspend democracy in order to deal with the consequences of global warming in any meaningful or effective way. I guess either interpretation could be argued for: the first one seems more plausible, if only because worst case climate change will wreck so many things…

aaah… singularitarians are resurrectionists, too

Always fascinating to read about Ray Kurzweil’s dogged extrapolation from where he thinks we are now to where he wants to be – that is, immortal. He’s putting himself about a bit in the UK in connection with the new film about him. First in the Guardian, now in New Scientist.

He says all the usual things about uniting with our technology sometime in the next few decades (should be in time for me, too, as a tail-end baby-boomer – possibly the most fortunate generation to have been able to join, unless of course we turn out to fit the title of Damien Broderick’s Last Mortal Generation).

A new thing, though in Liz Else’s piece in New Scientist. Turns out it is not his own death which really motivates him, but his father’s. And he’d like to bring dad back, as well. Thus

“Using DNA from his grave collected by nanobots, then adding all the information extracted by AI from my memories and those of other people who remember him. Plus all the mementos of his life that I’ve kept, in boxes and elsewhere, could be downloaded. He could be an avatar, or a robot or in some other form.”

So the immortals will surround themselves with facsimiles of those they have lost. Singularitarians are resurrectionists, too. I dunno, wouldn’t it just be easier to become a Christian? Their deal seems about as plausible as secular minded efforts to sustain belief in endless life through technology. Wonder if Kurzweil will be inviting Frank Tipler to his new “singularity university”?

Flying cars relaunched (not)

forget the flu commentaries, what we need is flying cars

sorry, that should read, what we need is sensible discussion of why flying cars aren’t going to happen, and here is one, for a change…

which doesn’t mean the next flying car “in development” won’t be leapt upon with grateful cries by journalists the world over

bit like a flu pandemic, really, except you don’t get to use the phrase “armageddon virus”, which a cheery and competent sounding chap arguing how well prepared we are was eventually prompted to utter on the Today programme this morning.

presumably a Thought for the Day will follow explaining why it is all part of God’s plan to make us think about our sinful ways, or even a judgment on our lust for flying cars?

more on little helpers

don’t want to obsess about drugs to enhance neuro performance here – anyway the book is going well, honest – but this piece in the New Yorker is intriguing. Don’t have much to say about it but, in true New Yorker style, one of the best pieces I’ve read on the subject. If all the stuff about the gradual death of print journalism turns out to be true, and I fear it may, it is this kind of thing – well-researched, well-written, fact-checked to the Nth degree – which we may miss.

Politics of climate change

Tony Giddens’ new book on climate change is attracting some interesting crits. Giddens is a good specimen of that rare species in the UK, the public intellectual. He’s steered a nicely judged path between devoting his life to the promulgation of a single idea, like Richard Dawkins, and offering views on so many things you are bound to wonder how he can possibly know what he is talking about – the, ahem, higher journalism route.

Andrew Gamble’s review of The Politics of Climate Change in Times Higher Education suggests that the author identifies “Giddens’ paradox” – that since the dangers of global warming are not immediate of obvious, they are ignored: but by the time they are obvious enough to induce action it will be too late. Hard to believe that this deserves to be called after Giddens, as it seems one of the  most common, and unfortunately correct, observations about the topic. It is why, I suspect, the normally optimistic James Martin said flatly in Oxford the other week, “we are going to muck up the climate”. Have to read the book to see if Giddens really does claim this is a key novel insight.

Further evidence about why we will proceed to wreck the climate comes from Will Hutton’s commentary on the book in The Observer. Hutton, who prides himself on economic and political realism from a vaguely progressive perspective (but only as progressive as consistent with continued capital accumulation, old boy) has one of those commentaries which reveal more about the commentator than the book he jumps off from.

He takes Giddens’ analysis of the politics as an occasion for bashing greens of all shades for their “mystic, utopian view of nature” and “attachment to meaningless notions such as sustainable development”.  This by way of defending the need for a third runway at Heathrow airport, and decrying arguments which attempt to combat the “so-what” factor on climate change with “scary tales from a far-distant future”. Hmm…  wonder how distant counts as far distant for Hutton?

To be fair, he does suggest that a third runway should go along with plans from government which compensate for growth in air traffic with radically lower carbon emissions elsewhere. Ah, but cabinet minister Geoff Hoon is already on to that. According to the Guardian, he suggested last week that “a 5% switch to electric cars would offset the extra emissions from a new third runway at Heathrow”. OK, he’s the transport secretary, not the energy secretary, but if that is what he really said it is depressingly incomplete. Here’s hoping when the official announcement this piece was previewing – about some kind of economy-boosting subsidy for buying a shiny new electric car – is made it contains  some hint about where all that carbon free electricity is actually going to come from, this side of the far distant future. Otherwise, Hoon’s little gesture toward joined up thinking sounds either ignorant or deliberately misleading. I’m not (yet) disillusioned enough to entertain the idea that it might be both at once…

Alternatives to growth?

It is easy to sympathise with the green commentators who are unimpressed by the results (as opposed to the rhetoric) of the various stimulus packages, and how far they fall short of a “green new deal”. However, there are more radical critiques than that which are worth considering, even though they lead to even more downbeat conclusions. For instance, I spent much of the day of the G20 summit reading the UK sustainable development commission’s think piece on whether there could be any stability to be found in a system which has somehow been adjusted to manage without growth, in the already rich countries anyway. It’s an impressively argued piece, worth spending time on. It suggests that “responses to the crisis which aim to restore the status quo are deeply misguided and doomed to failure”, both economically and environmentally. Like lots of others, the SDC paper argues that the downturn presents an opportunity to reappraise the culture of consumption, recognise the disadvantages of being wedded to growth at all costs (and that the costs are in the end likely to be catastrophic), and generally rethink our priorities. In that light a Keynesian strategy, be it ever so green, is still fundamentally missing the point. The SDC recognises the profound difficulty of thinking this through, and even the difficulty of imagining how it might all work. It still manages to end the paper with 12 policy measures Governments might consider which would help move things in the “right” direction – which are duly highlighted in the accompanying press release. However, the report’s main author, economist Tim Jackson, rather undermines this positive impression in an interview which goes out with the report. There, he admits that “the reason why nobody asks the difficult questions that we are asking here is because nobody really has any answers to them”. If he is right, and I reckon he is, where does that leave us? With an analysis which suggests both that business as usual is impossible and that there is no credible alternative, I suppose. Gee, thanks, Tim!

(yet another) flying car

Damn thing just won’t go away…

This one is “practical”, though. I see. You can fly it on a light sport aircraft licence, apparently. Inevitably, it will be commercially available in “late 2011″. Orders taken now. I don’t care: I’m still tagging this as futures past.

Oh, and built by MIT students. Easy to forget they have a department of good old-fashoned Aeronautics and Astronautics when the place gets so much publicity for insectoid robots, artificial life and such. New fossil-fuel hungry modes of transport are just what we need for, er , job creation maybe?

I still prefer the one Bruce Willis uses in Fifth Element…