Climate change

I don’t think there is any real doubt that climate change is happening, or that human activity is an important cause. There is still doubt as to the nature and extent of the effects it will have. These sorts of questions are largely imponderable. This sort of change is unprecedented in recorded human history, so we cannot realistically expect to get any sort of precise idea of the likely impacts.

At this point, the debate seems to have become about what should be done. I think this move can be put down to a number of factors, including the noticeable effects climate change is already having on the environment, the widespread agreement in the scientific community, and the increasing support of public and political figures, such as Al Gore.

As far as responses go, I find it pretty odd to hear people talk about carbon credits, and restricting emissions to say, 1990 levels as solutions. These kinds of measures only serve to keep the emissions where they are now, and to redistribute who gets to do the emitting. The problem with this approach is that it is the current levels that have gotten us into this situation in the first place! Keeping levels static, or somewhat decreasing them will only serve to reduce the rate of acceleration of global warming, but cannot help to solve the problem. An incremental response to global warming is only going to work if the increments are large and frequent.

It seems to me that we need to fundamentally change the types of energy generation we use, and how we use the energy generated. To do this, we need to change the incentives involved. At the moment, oil is too cheap, because the price of it does not represent the environmental costs of using it (these costs are left to be borne by future generations, in the form of a degraded environment). One response to this would be to tax oil. This would be a good response, as it would give incentives to develop alternative energy sources. However, it risks stunting the world economy if it is not accompanied by positive measures to create alternative energy sources.

To do this, I would suggest trans-governmental “prizes” for firms which develop cost effective, clean energy sources and delivery systems.

In theory, the market will provide incentives for the development of alternative energy sources as oil becomes more scarce, and thus more costly. The problem is, I don’t think we can afford to wait that long. Effectively providing a big government incentive would lead the market to take into account the environmental and social costs of our reliance on oil, and would help to jump-start the process of finding alternatives. Basically we would be using positive incentives to correct a market failure. Coupled with gradually increasing taxes on oil, this would steer the market towards sustainable energy.

Overrated

I find the latest interest rate rise by the Reserve Bank pretty frustrating on two counts.

Firstly, the economy seems to be slowing, and inflation is undercontrol. An interest rate rise just seems to be unneccesary. The Reserve Bank seem to have an attitude which views any inflation as a huge problem, and which views growth and low unemployment as problems, in that they cause inflation. It just seems so odd to view economic growth as a potential problem to be overcome in the pursuit of low inflation, rather than the other way round! I think this is a consequence of continued over-reliance on monetarist economic theory across the western world. Note that I am not saying that monetarist economics has no value, or that inflation control is not valid. What I am saying is that too much emphasis has been placed on this.

Fortunately, this is somewhat balanced by Cullen's fiscal policy. While this is seldom recognised, Cullen seems to be running a pretty classic Keynesian programme, running a surplus in times of growth, and hopefully running a deficit in times of recession. It remains to be seen though whether people will actually accept new borrowing when we next have a recession.

My second, more specific point about the Reserve Bank is that Bollard can only seem to use one, blunt intrument to target inflation. Specifically, he is concerned about the residential property market, yet the only tool he can use is one that not only has spillover effects on other sectors (such as business investment). It is not even effective at deterring residential property purchase This is because of the prevalence of fixed term loans, the ability of residential investors to write off much of any losses against taxes, and because of the banks' ability to extend the amount and term of loans to compensate for rate rises. Indeed, probably the only people rate rises will deter are first home buyers who are already on the very margins of being able to borrow.

Even if we do accept that inflation is a problem, and I think too much emphasis is given to it, we need to find more precise ways of targetting the sector of the economy which is actually the problem. Any ideas?

Charity begins in Parnell

There has been much talk this week about which is best, private charity, or public assistance. I highlight the "or" because this seems like a very strange debate to me. Personally, I doubt that the government are really saying that private charity is a bad thing. Of course, if people want to give money to worthy causes, that is great.

However, as far as I can see, charity is problematic in a number of ways. For a start, almost by definition, people will probably only give enough to charity to avert the very worst catastrophes. People will give to charity to help starving people, but they are unlikely to give enough to fix substandard lving conditions, or other less dramatic cases. As such, a charity based "safety net" would not bring in enough money to put an ambulance at the bottom of half the cliffs, let alone fencing the cliffs off in the first place!

It also creates a huge problem in the sorts of things that will attract money. Only causes attractive to coporates, or the wealthy will have any hope of attracting money. If your cause doesn't involve cute kids or fluffy animals, you'd better watch out!

Finally, the whole notion of people being reliant on charity is just so unattractive. I think this is what Cullen is talking about when he derides "tory charity". The prospect of people being beholden to the wealthy, and having to go cap in hand to them just gives rise to a view of society that is the opposite of egalitarian; a paternal, top-down, Victorian nightmare. For all the faults and strange incentives of the welfare states, at least it gives people some rights, and removes the need to grovel in the dust for a muesli bar!

So of course charity is a good thing, or course it is great when people give their money to worthy causes. We just need to make sure it isnt an excuse to reduce state assistance to the needy, or to make people reliant on the good grace of the rich.

My absence

Sorry for the lack of posts this week, I am in the process of buying and moving into my first house, so time is tight! Between yelling at the solicitor and trying to cram my things into altogether too small boxes, I just can't find time to blog. Hopefully I should have some time on Sunday.

It never did me any harm....

This week's award for moral panic goes to....the opponents of the anti-smacking bill. Many of the bill's opponents give the distinct impression of not even having read it!

Apparently once this bill is made law, our jails will be overflowing with parents thrown into chokey for whacking their kids. As the Select Committee report notes, parents could also technically be prosecuted for kidnapping when they send kids to their bedroom, yet amazingly, this doesnt seem to happen! I cannot imagine the police prosecuting a parent for smacking their child on the backside. As it is, police use their discretion in deciding who to charge. The only concern in my mind is that police might use that discretion to prosecute people against whom they have a particular grudge. It is always concerning when police have wide powers of interpretation over the law, but it is worth remembering that this is possibly unavoidable in such a fraught area.

In any case, the Select Committe report includes a recommendation which would allow parents to use reasonable force in the "normal daily care" of a child. I would expect juries to use such a clause to acquit a parent who lightly smacked a child. Incidentally, the Select Committee also recommended an amendment which would clearly allow physical force used to protect the child, or another person (if the child is about to touch a hot surface, for instance).

Frankly, I think the current situation, in which parents can hit their kids with lumps of wood and other foreign objects, is despicable. Personally, I would rather that parents did not hit their kids. However, this may not always be realistic, and we do not want to see good parents in the dock because o a light smack. This bill is a pretty good compromise I think.

Take a look at Michael's post about billboards. These things are just such an ugly intrusion, and the "free and easy with the facts" campaign run in support of them is further reason to get rid of the damn things!

Religion and politics.

There have been a few bloggings recently which have looked at the intersection of religious and political questions. Michael posted on progressive Christianity, while Span posted on sexual politics and religion.

Personally, I am not religious. I have never seen any reason to believe in the existence of god, at least in the specific forms the major religions claim. Further, I think religion does a lot of harm to good political discourse, and is not helpful in constructing a decent moral code. This post has two main points; to say that it is not possible to be a liberal and a proper Christian, and to say that religion is basically incompatible with pluralistic politics. I am not arguing for a return to conservative Christianity! I am arguing that religion ought to be left out of politics, and preferably disposed of altogether. I have chosen to post about Christianity and politics, mainly because I know more about Christianity than other religions, and to keep the size of this post manageable. I do not think Christianity is any “worse” than other religions in terms of its tolerance or compatibility with politics.

Michael’s post outlined an argument for progressive Christianity. He is absolutely right that this is something which has been sorely lacking from Christian politics in this country. If I had to choose a form of religious politics, progressive Christianity would be it. However, there are a number of problems even with this form of religious politics. While progressive Christianity obviously serves to emphasise the progressive aspects of the religion, it cannot totally downplay the fact that there are many regressive aspects of Christianity. It is still hard to deny that Christianity is not a liberal faith. The Bible still contains views on homosexuality, the death penalty and myriad other things which are violently at odds with those of liberals. Basically I think progressive Christians soft-pedal or ignore the illiberal aspects of their faith. While this is absolutely admirable, and certainly results in a much better form of Christianity from a liberal stand-point, it doesn’t gel at all with traditional Christianity as derived from the Bible (especially the Old Testament). People often focus on the New Testament as part of this change in emphasis. This might help to make Christianity more warm and fuzzy, but it isn’t really honest. The Old Testament is just as much “God’s Word”, and can’t be ignored just because it is inconvenient.

It seems to me, that to be a liberal Christian, you have to ignore an awful lot of the supposed word of god. If you have to ignore so much of his word, it doesn’t speak of a traditional Christianity. In fact, I think that if someone ignores that much of the Bible, and of traditional church practice, it essentially means one has created a new religion, based on liberal politics. This is fine if that is what you want to do, but it seems to me you might as well just own up to being a committed liberal and leave the religious aspect out.

Religion and plurality:
Religion is about dogmatic certainties. People have faith in the revealed certainties of their creator. This is totally at odds with the reality of politics, which is that differing groups and people make compromises with one another. If two different groups have conflicting religious beliefs, they can’t reconcile them without setting religion aside. If you believe God has told you to do A, how could you possibly do C, or agree to do B as a compromise? This suggests two things to me, First, religious people of necessity set their faith aside when acting politically, and second, that it would be better for all concerned if religion were punted out of politics altogether.