Pirates – I was reading an article in the Economist recently which made the case (backed up convincingly with data) that for pirates to flourish they need some base level of governance – anarchy in fact does not suit them. Under anarchy they are liable to have their booty pinched (ooer) and there is no ready market, no network of sales people (however dodgy) to fence their ill-gotten gains to. Even the pirates du jour, Somali pirates, are mostly based in Puntland which apparently is the nice part of Somalia – sort of the Somali Edgbaston or Chorlton, whilst all around is collapse and calamity (I understand it's rough around Puntland too). There are no, or few, pirates in places like Haiti or Liberia because things are too far gone. So, it turns out, taking somewhere like Haiti and making some improvements to the basic rule of law may lead to more pirates in the short to medium term.
This is by way of introducing a topic which is interesting to me – the counter-intuitive or “anti-common-sense”. In other words: “anyone with common sense can see that we live on a flat Earth from which we see the Sun whizzing round us”. Sometimes put “everything you think you know is wrong”. Probably.
I have a wariness toward common sense. I particularly dread the phrase in the mouth of a politician. Anyone who tells me something is “obvious” or “stands to reason” had better be able to back that up with summat a bit more pithy.
I am reminded of an earnest climate-change activist on some breakfast telly thing one time, clearly a bloody nice bloke, but perhaps not the brightest energy-saving bulb in the pack. He was lamenting the carbon emissions involved in carting something or other exotic from Thailand to supermarket shelves in Britain. Fair enough. But his answer was to grow the stuff in this country, under glass. When it was pointed out to him that it could be proved that there was in fact less emissions involved in transporting the stuff than in heating and fertilising for months on end you could practically smell the cognitive dissonance coming off him... all he had was “it's obviously crazy to fly this stuff all around the world”. Well it might be but not if your alternative is demonstrably worse.
OK – not the best example I suppose, I'm sure many people would have spotted that coming but (also I think in the Economist) there has been an analysis of the comparative emissions involved in trucking fresh produce the length and breadth of UK (in modern, well-maintained, huge lorries in a highly-efficient manner) versus thousands and thousands of more or less well-maintained family cars (many of them I'm sure fluffy Volvos and Saabs etc but still) doing short trips to the local farmer's market to pick up an organic cabbage once or twice a week. That claimed quite convincingly that the former was the better for the planet. And don't get me started on organic versus high-intensity agriculture....I mean “obviously” organic is so much better but if you think we're going to feed the world on organic produce then we'd better get cutting the last of the rainforests down pronto because we're going to need every scrap of land we can get our hands on (and it won't be enough, most likely).
I realise I might be coming across as a closet climate change denier here so let me say now that I'm highly in favour of renewable energy vs. oil and coal, in favour of fewer car journeys, basically in favour of not screwing with the environment any more than we have to by pumping all sorts of crap into the atmosphere, but at the same time I recognise how incredibly, mind-bogglingly complex the problem space is. No one understands it and it can be dangerous to meddle, however good the intention. It's highly possible that we're going to end up breaking something by fixing it.
If you doubt that then think about the world financial system. No amount of money, effort, brainpower and political hot air has been spared on modelling and understanding that system over the long-term and where are we? Barely 3 years after 2008, that's where. So if we assume (I mean it's obvious, innit??) that the global climate and weather systems are at least as complex as the financial ones – why should we believe we really know what's going on?
I mean, besides me. Going on. That is.
Take your point on organics - to a point. The real issue - surely - around food production (leaving aside the vexatious question of over-population) is the amount of land turned over to meat production, and the amount of animal flesh consumed. We could manage a whole lot better if we all went vegan and ate beans we have grown in our own gardens.
ReplyDeleteAnd that would put paid to the pirates as well, because you couldn't really have a vegan pirate.
Broadly agree. Particularly with your pirate point, with which no sane man would argue.
ReplyDeleteYes, nobody, least of all anyone who could actually do anything about it, wants to engage with the vexatious problem of over-population do they?. Never mind, the way things are going that will deal with itself if we keep ignoring it...
High consumption of meat is a problem but not all meat is created equal in this respect - red meat is considerably more costly to produce from an environmental point of view than chicken and fish. Plus there is a lot of open ground between where we are today and everyone in the world going vegan (ain't never gonna happen). Reduction of meat consumption is more do-able, and more palatable for most people to consider. A reduction of 10% would be significant - reduction of 50% I suspect would fix the problem altogether. I don't eat a lot of red meat day-to-day but would not want to give up my occasional fat-boy steak.
Use of synthetic fertilizers is another problem with agriculture (although this is exacerbated by meat consumption as per above and yes, I realise is by itself an argument in favour of organic production) but I read recently that scientists are optimistic about teaching the legumes' trick of fixing nitrogen to other plants such as cereals. Assuming this could be done it would actually take some of the pressure off meat production too.