Before I churn out the next instalment in my Sustainability Series (devoted to energy and electricity production, for those of you waiting with baited breath), I’ve decided to do a quick tour d’horizon of some of the things that have come up in the mainstream press this week, because there really are a fair few things there which merit some discussion.

Anti-wind lobby a wind-up, surely?

Firstly, how’s this for logical inconsistency.

On Tuesday, The Sydney Morning Herald ran a front-page story describing how a ‘astroturf’-style political campaign has sprung up in opposition to the expansion of wind farms in NSW, and the underhand influence that such groups are bringing to bear on decision-makers within the state government and parliament.

Given the conservative parties in Australia are racked by climate scepticism in a way largely unseen elsewhere in the world outside the US, I felt strongly enough about these developments to pen a letter to the editor, which was published the following day. It read:

So, let me get this straight.

Climate sceptic groups, which appear willing to dismiss a compelling body of scientific knowledge on anthropogenic climate change, are happy to oppose renewable wind power based on health concerns for which there is scant credible empirical evidence (”Wind farm opponents ‘aided and abetted’ by climate sceptic groups”, December 20)?

Given the links between many such groups and corporations at the heart of the unsustainable fossil fuel-based economy, it sounds to me like a case of not letting the facts get in the way of a self-interested ideological crusade.

The contradiction is not difficult to grasp. Cherry-picking evidence is a fairly universal trait in political commentary and activism in all its guises. I am becoming increasingly convinced that political beliefs, like religion, are generally formulated to satisfy individuals’ deep-seated yearning for certainty and consistency in their interpretation of the world and human society. The evidence doesn’t really bear out the assumption that people develop political and ideological values based on rational observation and reflection.

Nowhere is this tendency more starkly apparent than in the ranks of climate sceptics. The complexity of both climate science and climate change economics is undoubtedly bewildering, but the sheer weight of evidence underlying the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming is surely enough to sway anyone approaching the subject with a truly open mind into favouring precautionary policy solutions. As I have argued before, the inevitable points of contention and uncertainty within climate science that sceptics are so apt at exploiting in no way change the blindingly obvious: that evidence for man-made climate change significantly outweighs supposed evidence against. Once this fact, which is of course very difficult to dispute based on an open-minded examination of the evidence, is acknowledged, climate change policy becomes a simple matter of risk management – the costs of a relatively early transition away from an economy dependent on energy-intensive methods of production, distribution and consumption and fossil fuels would appear to be greatly inferior to those we risk facing in the event of runaway climate change. This is particularly true in the context of global peak oil (oil supply and price shocks, it can be argued, coincide too neatly with major world economic crises of recent times to be a coincidence).image

How, then, do we explain this surprisingly widespread distrust of climate science and sustainability discourse within public policy?

Quite simply, most ardent climate sceptics I have met personally appear to have some unusual personality trait which, I would contend, predisposes them to such a dangerously contrarian view. Most are simply garden-variety conservative reactionaries, whose borderline pathological suspicion of and resistance to all manner of progressive morality clearly trumps their ability to logically examine the broader nature and implications of the sustainability challenge. Others, like my steadfastly climate-sceptic university lecturer, appear to have let their contrarian identity cloud their judgment, their distrust of all manner of scientific, political and academic authority allows their views to break free from the bounds of rationality. Put simply, they would rather ignore all the weight of scientific evidence than conform to a ‘mainstream’ position.

Of course, it is the contrarians of history who have enabled humanity to supersede any number of injustices, untruths and outright crimes against reason. But the fact remains that not all contrarians are on the right side of history – indeed, it could be argued that only a select few ever are. In the case of climate sceptics, the twin challenges of peak oil and global warming mean that their chances of being vindicated by history, unlike the great resistors of centuries past, appear very slim indeed.

Aside from the likely psychological underpinnings of some of the more fervent opponents of progressive action on sustainability, which no doubt play no small role in explaining the scale and scope of the political movements springing up in resistance to alternative energy, there is the elephant in the room: corporate vested interests. The main anti-wind farm group mentioned in the Herald report, who go by the name of the Landscape Guardians, are indicative of the opaque power relations between such advocacy groups and powerful interests with a stake in the ongoing profitability of various fossil fuel industries. Loosely based on a similar group in the UK, the Landscape Guardians are linked to the corporate mouthpiece Institute of Public Affairs and that organisation’s astroturf-style spinoff, the Australian Environment Foundation.

In addition, the Waubra Foundation, another national group mentioned in the article which opposes wind power expansion on the basis of adverse health effects purportedly attributable to wind turbines, has been shown to be another front for the ‘guardians’ with links to the Liberal Party – the corporate class’s main champion within parliamentary politics.

To be very clear, there is little medical or scientific evidence that low-frequency ultrasound emissions from wind turbines have any impact on human health. As reported in the Herald this morning, a string of peer-reviewed studies have failed to identify any link between wind turbines and ill health. Appropriate regulatory controls on noise pollution are already incorporated into planning decisions on wind farms.

Of course, the planning minister, Brad Hazzard, indulges in the obligatory misrepresentation of the facts. He is quoted in the same article as saying ‘the jury is still out on health issues [linked to wind turbines], very much so.’ As is the habit of climate sceptics, he is taking the possibility that some skerrick of evidence to support his anti-progressive disposition may emerge in the future and presenting it as casting doubt on the state of scientific knowledge. This is a disingenuous tactic which seeks to manipulate public opinion and appease the powerful vested interests his side of politics overwhelmingly represents (and not just his side, of course). 

However, even if significant evidence of damage to human health due to wind farms were to emerge, the proposed guidelines for NSW reported in the press this morning remain ridiculous. Any hypochondriac living with a two-kilometre radius of a wind turbine would have legal recourse to block the development and trigger submissions to be lodged with regulatory bodies relating to noise, visual impact, effect on land values and other issues. While there is nothing wrong with accountability in any of these areas, the proposed restrictions outweigh anything that applies to coal- or gas-fired power stations, coal mines or coal seam gas developments. Given that somewhere in the order 170 000 people worldwide are killed by particle pollution from coal-fired power plants every year, this is patently ridiculous.

So here we have it – yet another prime example of Australia’s crisis of governance in overcoming vested interests in dealing with the sustainability challenge. Wind power is rapidly becoming more commercially viable, with upfront government subsidies able to accomplish the rest in helping fundamentally shift Australia’s energy mix in favour of renewable technologies. The signs of our fundamentally compromised governance systems being capable of resolving the conundrum in an ethical and forward-thinking way are far from positive.

Asylum seekers: time for a rethink

Also in the news this week: asylum seekers. How unusual. In fact, the sickening media cacophony over this issue has largely prevented me from revisiting it in the 18 months or so since I last tackled it. This is despite significant evolution of my views during this time.

Robert Manne, a self-identified progressive and opponent of the Howard government’s ‘Pacific solution’ to irregular maritime arrivals, penned a thought-provoking article in the Fairfax press earlier this week. Entitled ‘How the left got it wrong’, Manne’s piece pretty neatly reflects the changes in my personal views on the subject in recent months.

Like Manne, I believe that many on the left opposed Howard-era policies on account of the thinly-veiled xenophobic dog whistle politics brought to the issue by the government of the day. I certainly count myself among those who fall into this category. And indeed, I maintain that opposition – after all, John Howard in 2001 didn’t invoke the tragedy of deaths at sea in justifying his hard-line stance; rather, his jingoistic slogan ‘we will decide who comes to this country and the manner in which they come’ offered political legitimacy to the worst in Australia’s national psyche – the latent racism that defined political discourse and policy action in eras past, from White Australia to One Nation.

But in our rush to (justifiably) condemn this heartlessness, Howard’s opponents buried our heads in the sand somewhat on some of the fundamental parameters of the issue. We flailing pointed to ‘push factors’ of overseas conflict and natural disaster to explain fluctuating numbers of boat arrivals in the face of all the evidence. We somewhat naïvely contended that Australia could revert to full onshore processing and dismantle mandatory detention without risking grave consequences for the desperate wretches who took to the boats.

The deaths of up to 200 asylum seekers off east Java earlier in the week has cemented my conversion to offshore processing. It is not a matter of futilely punishing the victims of the people smuggling trade, as I have contended in the past, but the only plausible means of preventing tragedies like we’ve seen this week from being revisited time and time again.

That said, not all proposed solutions are of equal value. Tony Abbott’s policy on the issue ignores the decreased deterrent value of processing in Australian-run centres in third-party nations (most asylum seekers end up in Australia anyway, as shown by the figures for Nauru detainees during the Howard years), as well as the deplorable intellectual dishonesty in claiming Labor’s Malaysia solution is unworkable based on humanitarian grounds while proposing the two boats back to Indonesia (a non-signatory of the UN Convention on Refugees like Malaysia) – with all the risk of sabotage and diplomatic furore that would entail.

The answer probably does lie in some kind of refugee swap, such as the policy proposed by Labor but opposed by the Coalition on spurious, base, and purely political grounds, whereby Australia increases its humanitarian intake program in exchange for returning boat arrivals to a third country. Very stringent checks and balances would be required in order to uphold the international principle of non-refoulement (not returning legitimate refugees to their place of persecution).

In any event, it is unconscionable for progressives within this debate to continue to support onshore processing, which likely sustains the situation where people are exposed to the risk of catastrophe on the high seas, merely out of reflexive opposition to some of the more distasteful viewpoints out there.

This simple observation makes the two main parties’ politicking over the issue particularly nauseating. Meanwhile, the Greens may also require a solid dose of introspection on the ethical implications of their policy.

Meanwhile, in Pyongyang

A little further afield, and this week also saw the death of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il.

The passing of the Dear Leader instantly set of a torrent of moral posturing, frenzied speculation and outright fear-mongering throughout the Western media, Australia’s included. Take, for instance, the December 19 headline from the New York Times: ‘Kim’s death inspires worries and anxiety’.

Without even a whiff of evidence than any prospect of major destabilisation was afoot, the liberal press reinforced a series of irrational jitters within various pro-Western nations’ political classes through several days of anticipation of some kind of belligerence on the part of the ‘hermit state’.

Needless to say, nothing of the sort that actually warrants concern has transpired as of yet. Meanwhile, there is little doubt in my mind that the combination of dismissive satire and overblown fear about the country’s military and nuclear objectives merely reinforced North Korea’s diplomatic isolation, hence aggravating the problem.

Of course, the deeply corrupt system of state socialism espoused by North Korea deserves to be deplored the world over. The best evidence suggests that millions of impoverished people have perished there from starvation over recent decades, while the ruling military/communist class featherbed their own nests with tacit Chinese support.

But the fact remains that the North’s nuclear ambitions, which have incited so much angst in the West and in the country’s north-east Asian neighbours, really only appear to have ramped up when the war-mongering neo-con George W. Bush identified Kim’s regime as part of the three-pronged ‘axis of evil’ with Iraq and Iran. Given the historical precedent in Iraq, why wouldn’t North Korea – and indeed Iran for that matter – wish to acquire some form of nuclear deterrence?

[/rant] Merry Christmas, everybody.

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