Tough oil

A couple of signs of changing times that were newish to me:

This year, the US overtook Russia to become the world’s biggest gas producer for the first time in a decade.

-- thanks to shale gas, reports Gideon Rachman

This year, the United States’ largest single source of imported oil is expected to be the Canadian tar sands.

-- reports Elizabeth Kolbert.

Before the Homoousians and the Homoiousians

Jesus’ morality has a brash, sidewise indifference to conventional ideas of goodness. His pet style blends the epigrammatic with the enigmatic. When he makes that complaint about the prophet having no honor in his own home town, or says exasperatedly that there is no point in lighting a candle unless you intend to put it in a candlestick, his voice carries a disdain for the props of piety that still feels startling...

Some of the sayings do have, in their contempt for material prosperity, the ring of Greek Cynic philosophy, but there is also something neither quite Greek nor quite Jewish about Jesus’ morality that makes it fresh and strange even now. Is there a more miraculous scene in ancient literature than the one in John where Jesus absent-mindedly writes on the ground while his fellow-Jews try to entrap him into approving the stoning of an adulteress, only to ask, wide-eyed, if it wouldn’t be a good idea for the honor of throwing the first stone to be given to the man in the mob who hasn’t sinned himself?...

This social radicalism still shines through—not a programmatic radicalism of national revolution but one of Kerouac-like satori-seeking-on-the-road. And the social radicalism is highly social. The sharpest opposition in the Gospels, the scholar and former priest John Dominic Crossan points out in his illuminating books—“The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant” is the best known—is between John the Faster and Jesus the Feaster. Jesus eats and drinks with whores and highwaymen, turns water into wine, and, finally, in one way or another, establishes a mystical union at a feast through its humble instruments of bread and wine.

-- from Adam Gopnik on the real Jesus

MPAs not MAD

Shortly before the election I recorded a thirty second slot for Greenpeace's 'Cut Trident' campaign. That message has only just gone up, more than a week after the election, here. (You'll need to search 'Caspar' in the box in the bottom right hand corner. If you find it, and like it, give me a 'heart'!)

Britain's new coalition government has agreed to go ahead with a replacement for Trident. This overrides the position taken by the Liberal Democrats before the election. They were the only one of the three largest parties to oppose a rush to renewal.

Greenpeace's campaign was framed for the run-up to the election so my message comes after the horse has bolted. I hope, however, that they and others will continue their opposition to this misguided, dangerous and costly policy.

I wrote a short backgrounder for the thirty-seconder and post it below. Even this, of course, simplifies many key issues. For an introduction to Marine Protected Areas you could hardly do better than Enric Sala's talk recently posted by TED. Callum Roberts of York University has also written about this brilliantly. And for a little more context on destruction of the seas, Jeremy Jackson TED talk is also good. Anyway, here's my spiel:

Trident is a weapon system of the Cold War, designed for the world of Mutually Assured Destruction or MAD. [1] But that’s not the world we live in today. We are moving into a multipolar world in which many, perhaps dozens, of emerging powers will have nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them over long distances, and in which non-state actors may be able to explode a nuclear device in a major city. This is a world of significant and increasing risks. None of them will be reduced by British possession of weapons designed for the mass slaughter of innocent people.

The best way to tackle our present nightmare is through international cooperation that leads to more effective control of nuclear materials in the civil sector, and to better control, limitation and, ultimately, abolition of nuclear weapons. [2] The framework for this, imperfect as it is, already exists. It’s called the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the overwhelming majority of nations, including Britain, are committed to it. Under its terms, the five officially recognized nuclear powers of which Britain is one are required to move towards nuclear disarmament. In return, other countries give up their programmes. After nearly a decade of neglect by the Bush administration in the United States, the administration of Barack Obama has breathed new life into this process. And there has never been a better opportunity for Britain to help reduce threats to its own security as well as the rest of the world.

A small part of the money earmarked for a new generation of British nuclear weapons could make a real difference here. 100 million pounds -- just over one tenth of one percent of 97 billion -- could promote sustained, creative engagement with and between other powers: trust-building exercises, exchanges of expertise - especially where trust is least - help for the creation of nuclear weapon-free regions and so on.

If we’re serious about our future security and well-being we should also consider other priorities. How an additional ten billion for education, for scientific research and development, and for greater energy efficiency? Hey, we could even use some of the money to reduce the government deficit.

And here’s another idea: the protection of endangered species and vulnerable ecosystems worldwide. As a writer on the natural world, I have found that people are only beginning to understand the wonders and the true value of this, our common heritage, and that we destroy it at our peril. But as we breath species and ecosystems are probably being destroyed faster than at any time in human history and perhaps for tens of millions of years.

The challenges of ecosystem protection and restoration are huge and complex. Many of them cannot be solved or even mitigated by throwing money at them. But a few can. And in this, the International Year of Biodiversity, Britain can make a difference where it matters most. One of the best ideas around is the creation of new Marine Protected Areas, or MPAs. These can do more than anything else to stem the destruction of the ocean life, at least in the near term. Relatively tiny sums - just one or two million a year for the Chagos Archipelago, for example -- have helped ensure some of the world’s most extraordinary coral reefs have a good chance of getting through the next few decades. A worldwide network of MPAs, increasing coverage from under one percent of the oceans to as much as a fifth or even third, is achievable for globally trivial sums, and it can be done in ways that recognize the needs of local people. Unlike the enormous subsidies currently paid to the fishing industry, it would actually deliver a positive return on investment. Similar initiatives to protect biodiversity on land can work too. A billion pounds from Britain would be a good start.

Footnotes

[1] According to Aron Bernstien of the Council for a Livable World, 192 independently targeted warheads on a Trident submarine can deliver 100 to 300 KT (The Hiroshima bomb was 15KT). This means that they can deliver, on a conservative estimate, 19 MT or more than six times all of Allied ordnance deployed against Germany, Japan and other powers in World War Two: " It's reported that UK Trident submarines carry 48 warheads.

[2] See, for example, A World Free of Nuclear Weapons by George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger and Sam Nunn. The Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2007.

P.S. Martin Rees on Disarmament Labs

P.S. 24 May: See An Arsenal We Can Live With by Gary Shaub and James Forsyth, and a useful Guardian article from 20 May: Deadly - and very, very expensive

'Reaching far beyond Realpolitik...'

Or not:

[Obama's] Cairo speech laid out a series of initiatives for America’s reëngagement with Muslim countries. Almost a year later, as a few of those initiatives have begun to take shape, a general pattern has emerged. The programs focus on entrepreneurship and business development, science education, women’s and children’s health, student exchanges. They do not cover human rights, political empowerment of women, or governance. After an internal debate, the Administration decided to stay away from these more sensitive topics at first and, instead, to build credibility in worthy but uncontroversial areas. It was a legitimate decision, [sic] but it has reinforced a view among some Arab reformers that, according to a recent report by the Project on Middle East Democracy, “President Obama has said the right words, but is unwilling or unable to offer substantive new policies to support the aspirations of people in the Middle East.”

-- George Packer. A recent FOOC report on Egypt here.

'Lotte hatt blaue Augen'

A.O. Scott gets it:

Jean Renoir is often described as one of the great humanists of world cinema. That’s a word that has an implication of high minded abstract maybe soft-headed sentimentality: “underneath it all we’re all the same and why can’t we just get along?” But...Renoir was not really motivated by abstract concerns about humanity...he was motivated above all by curiosity about and sympathy for his characters, by an interest in people. The film abounds in so many moments of humour of warmth, of sensuality, of surprise that make you realise that anything more abstract is really an illusion.

"The entire Indian subcontinent"

At the moment, virtually nowhere on Earth has a wet-bulb temperature of more than 30 °C. But with a global rise of 11 °C [by 2300], huge areas would have wet-bulb temperatures of more than 35 °C for part of the year. According to the climate model used by the team, these regions would include much of the eastern US, the entire Indian subcontinent, most of Australia and part of China.

-- Earth 2300: Too hot for humans.

Of course, it's just a model.

Gandamak ghost

In a useful piece published back in January on Obama's options in Afghanistan, Rory Stewart (who is now the Conservative Member of Parliament for Penrith) stressed that the situation in Afghanistan today differs from 1842 as much as it differs from 330BC and 1980. Still, Dalrymple's comparison has some plausibility.

One of the reasons nukes may not be such a good idea

You don’t have to obtain access to the nuclear fuel, get into the control room [of a nuclear power plant] or penetrate the containment shell. Most of the critical components of the cooling system, including pumps and water intake pipes, sit unprotected outside. If you can get a car bomb or a team with demolition charges near these components, you can shut off the cooling water to the reactor, and physics will take care of the rest.

-- Charles Faddis.

How it was

The Ambassador's Reception, broadcast earlier this month on BBC Radio 4, included two anecdotes from the publisher and editor Murat Belge, who was held by the military after the 1980 coup in Turkey.

At one time the jailor required Belge and other political prisoners to capture exactly one hundred flies every day and present them in the evening for inspection. On the occasions they failed they were required to eat the flies. 'Imagine having to eat ninety seven flies.'

Another time Belge was being tortured so badly that he gave way and agreed to sign a confession. He went to the next room with his torturer to sign a document. They both sat down at the table and the torturer's knee accidently brushed against his. Please excuse me, said the torturer most politely.

'Mind in nature'

Natasha Mitchell: I was interested to read that DH Lawrence talked about the mind in nature. It contrasted between what he described as a 'know it all' state of mind outside of nature and something different happening to the mind that interacts with the natural world. What did he mean by the 'know it all' state of mind? I think that's really interesting.

Richard Louv: Yes, I love that passage. He was writing about his experience of New Mexico. I had actually a park ranger tell me about the four corners of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Nevada, that nowhere on Earth or in few places on Earth was so much of the past so close to the surface. And the 'know it all' state of mind just assumes we've seen it all. You know, when we travel, 'been there, done that'. And what he was saying is that we can be fooled, we can fool ourselves into that belief, but underneath the surface of wherever we go are larger stories. I think that when you're in a natural environment you feel that more than anyplace else. I feel that natural history should be as important to a regions identity as human history, and that our sense of meaning and purpose and connection and place comes from natural history, not just human history.

-- from Nature Deficit Disorder on All in the Mind, ABC. Louv notes later in the programme:

David Sobel at Antioch in the US uses, 'ecophobia', that's the fear of environmental destruction. Sobel makes the point that we are programming our kids way too early to believe that the Earth is over, that nature is at an end

... [But] we're missing two-thirds of the story, [which] is that, because of those great changes, because of climate change et cetera, everything in the next 40 years must change. To any self-respecting creative 16-year-old, that could be good news, and we better be entering one of the most creative times in human history. That's exciting.

A reminder of the scale of just one of the challenges: the beaches on the most remote islands in the world's largest oceans are literally turning into plastic.

Ragnarök

Ash and lightning above Eyjafjallajökull. Photo by Marco Fulle via APOD.

Gold in the tar sands

[BP] Chief executive Tony Hayward received a 41% rise in his remuneration package in 2009 - meaning he took home about £4m in salary, bonus and share awards.

This was despite the firm seeing last year's profits fall by 45% to $13.96bn(£9.2bn).

-- from a BBC report, BP oil Canada plan faces shareholder vote.

Scolt Head Island

On 21 March I waded across Norton creek. An hour through marsh, sand and thick mud. This view, eastwards from the south side of the high dunes on the western part of the island, is towards towards Smuggler's Gap in the distance with Hut Marsh on the right:

And this is the view westward from the northern side the same dunes:

The view from those high dunes eastward and toward the sea:

Looking back to the high dunes from just above the beach on the northern side:

English Nature describes Scolt Head as "the prime example of an offshore barrier island in the UK...situated on a very dynamic coastline and...steadily growing westward."

Here is medieval glass showing the Man in the Moon at St Mary in Burnham Deepdale. A prayer on a pillar in the church begins: "O Thou who dwellest not in temples made with hands..." Scolt Head Island is right in front of you if you look north from the Saxon round tower of the church.


Snowdrops, still just about in flower in a spinney above Walsingham:

Later I wrote this.

Tell'em Paul

If we are going to be part of a third industrial revolution we are going to have to have a frank discussion about power.

All the power has been centred on finance and the financial model and, funnily enough, we have just hocked our entire economy to save that broken system.

-- Paul Mason

War games

By attacking without Washington's advance knowledge, Israel had the benefits of surprise and momentum - not only over the Iranians, but over its American allies - and for the first day or two, ran circles around White House crisis managers.

-- from Imagining an Israeli attack on Iran.

Roger Cohen notes a shift in thinking in the U.S.

Worse than a crime

Marc Thiessen's Courting Disaster embraces horrible, foolish crimes. In letting these go, Jane Meyer reminds us, the Obama administration has made a grave mistake:

By holding no one accountable for past abuse, and by convening no commission on what did and didn’t protect the country, President Obama has left the telling of this dark chapter in American history to those who most want to whitewash it.

That's not entropy, man

John Gray finds fault with Jeremy Rifkin's The Empathic Civilization (review). Some of his points may be well taken. But he says something rather odd:

How could human empathy possibly defeat the force of entropy, an irreversible physical process?

It seems Gray equates behaviour by human groups, nations and civilisations as a whole, and the outcomes of those behaviours, with the second law of thermodynamics. Eh? A defining characteristic of humanity and indeed life in general is that it/they exist despite the second law by using energy from outside the immediate system of which they are part (i.e. from the sun and to a lesser extent radioactivity from inside the earth).

It is not hard to find grounds for pessimism regarding progressive action on climate change and much else. But entropy is not the issue. If there is to be progress it is likely to be grounded on a whole lot of rational self interest, including the possibility that there is more money and power to be derived from generating and using energy in smarter ways. And there may, even, be a role for empathy.

Where the grickle grass grows...

Approaching the derelict shell of downtown Detroit, we see full-grown trees sprouting from the tops of deserted skyscrapers. In their shadows, the glazed eyes of the street zombies slide into view, stumbling in front of the car. Our excitement at driving into what feels like a man-made hurricane Katrina is matched only by sheer disbelief that what was once the fourth-largest city in the US could actually be in the process of disappearing from the face of the earth. The statistics are staggering – 40sq miles of the 139sq mile inner city have already been reclaimed by nature.

-- Julien Temple

" 'Reality' is dispensable"

The message of what is now James Cameron's most popular movie thus far, and the biggest-grossing movie in history—like the message of so much else in mass culture just now—is...that "reality" is dispensable altogether; or, at the very least, whatever you care to make of it, provided you have the right gadgets. In this fantasy of a lusciously colorful trip over the rainbow, you don't have to wake up. There's no need for home. Whatever its futuristic setting, and whatever its debt to the past, Avatar is very much a movie for our time.

-- from The Wizard by Daniel Mendelsohn.

Cameron see things differently. When Andy Revkin asks, why build a fantasy world? he replies:

People connect to that world, to the Na’vi and Na’vi philosophy, but it really is about reconnecting with our own world here. That’s how I see science fiction, functioning as a kind of a mirror. It’s often talked of as prophetic. But it’s generally been pretty lousy at predicting the actual future. To me, it allows us to step outside our own parochial interests and lets us look back at ourselves, at human nature, at the way we do things, without all the normal guilt-inducing buttons.

'A very good election to loose'

In the general gloom I have only one piece of potentially good news, and even that might be wishful thinking. The bank bonuses this year are so grotesque that there are only two explanations for them. One is that investment banking culture truly is psychotic, in the strict sense of being out of touch with reality. That’s possible. The other explanation is that, as a French economist said to me when the crunch kicked in, ‘It’s over.’ He meant the whole obscene-bonus culture, the model in which the banks’ shareholders let the bankers pay themselves half what the bank ‘earns’, in the context of a regulatory and political framework in which the banks are allowed to do whatever they like. The proposals now being touted do not guarantee systemic safety, but taken together they will, for sure, make the system much less profitable. Maybe, just maybe, the bankers are pigging out this year because they suspect this is the last of the good times. If we’re looking for a glint of silver lining, does that count?

from The Great British Economy Disaster by John Lanchester