Happy New Year 2011... (I wish)

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By Bruce Hearns on 8 January 2011 - 10:51pm

It's a new year. Along about this time, all sorts of people make lists of things, predictions for the year (my prediction: most predictions will be wrong), and retrospectives of the past decade and so on. Actually, I'd like to see people do a decade-retrospective every year, as I think the changes over th 10 years between 1995 and 2005 were far more instructive than the ones between 2000 and 2010, but that's just me, since during that period the world did some pretty spectacular course changes, not all for the good, but not all for the bad, either. But I digress.

In keeping with the spirit of 'words to retire' , what I wanted to put forth was my very short list of phrases that I really wish I never heard again. Top of my list is the phrase "Global Warming" or it's more current version "Anthropogenic Global Warming". Right behind it is the phrase "climate change". I wish I didn't ever have to hear them again, not because they are incorrect, but because they sound so benign and soft, as if welcoming in some gentle summer afternoon and because they give the deniers so much wiggle room, particularly when there is a massively heavy snowfall in one tiny corner of North America. What most people do not grasp is warming is no different from warming up a pot of water on the stove. After a bit, observe how convection begins to increase. That means that some parts of the pot have water that is rising and others have water sinking down. Exactly where in a pot is random, but it is not random on earth: the area at the equator gets hotter, air needs to come from somewhere, so, across the globe, it draws from points north and south, which, in turn, means harsher winters in the temperate zones as cold arctic air moves towards the equator. The seas warm, which increases evaporation, which creates a tendency to fiercer hurricanes. That's why storms are getting worse, if less frequent. Snowfall, from heavily laden moist air actually increases near the coasts. So Vancouver and New York and the Maritimes are going to see heavier snowfalls, even as the temperature increases. Of course an increase of a couple of degrees isn't really noticeable when it's below freezing, but that doesn't stop the deniers from pretending that because there is more snow, Global Warming is a scam/hoax/tax grab/excuse for enviro-commies to keep you, yes you, Mr. SUV-driving suburbanite, from, say, your God-given right and freedom to burn rubber tires on your private property.
The phrase "climate change" is only marginally better, but it still allows the denial machine to pretend that somehow, because climate has "changed" in the past, that the massive increase in CO2 (in amounts not detected since the Pleistocene, 11 MYA) that is due entirely to human activity, can possibly  be responsible for the ecological devastation that is unfolding.
Instead, I'd like to hear the phrase 'Climate disruption', because that phrase doesn't give anyone any wiggle room, or at least, makes that wiggle room much smaller. The term 'disrupt' implies something willful and malicious. Really, when was the last time you heard of something being disrupted that wasn't a maliciously deliberate act? Klingons use disruptors, not 'changers' or 'warmers'. The word has a very dark connotation and it also implies something chaotically unpredictable, which is also a very good description of what is happening to our climate. Deniers would have a difficult time pretending that a snowstorm wasn't an effect of the problem, and they would have a much more difficult time pretending that there is anything natural going on.

Then there is the question of predictions. Every year, people make predictions, but I'll make two:

First, we are going to have another recession. Officially, that is, as I am not entirely convinced we ever "recovered" from the last 'official' one.  Depending on exactly how one measures it, of course. Japan, we are constantly told, has had the worst 'depression' ever, yet has had lower unemployment than the U.S. had during its great economic "boom". (see: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/aug/11/paul-krug...) But the reason I hold we will have a recession is because, since oil became an important element in the industrial economy, 150 years ago, for heating and lighting and then for running engines, every time oil price has gone above the equivalent of $80 /Bbl, it is followed by a recession within the year... 100% of the time. The price of oil went over $80 in late 2007 and, lo, we got a recession. But unlike every previous one, this time the price barely came down: it stayed high at around $70/Bbl, because demand is right at the limit of production, thanks to the growing industrial economies of India and China. All through December 2010, the price of oil was over $80 per barrel, which is why the economy is going to be indisputably in trouble about 6 months from now. If not sooner, given the fact that most of the "recovery" has existed only on paper.

Secondly, we are going to have

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(Where did the rest go...?)

Submitted by Bruce Hearns on 10 January 2011 - 4:30pm.

... I think, more rancorous and more irrelevant "debates" in Parliament. This actually follows on from the first prediction, because the increase in psychic tension across society as a result of higher oil prices. Really.

See, at some level, the politicians in the Conservative and Liberal parties are experiencing some cognitive dissonance over the mismatch between the wealth that the industrial-capitalist "free" market system is supposed to provide everyone and the fact that, not only has it failed to eliminate poverty as advertised, the middle class is, in fact, noticeably shrinking. Their economic policies and ideas worked during the period of easy, cheap oil, but now that oil is no longer cheap, nothing else is, either. Gasoline cost half of what it does today; we have a food-system that depends on oil from the fertilizer and mechanical planting and harvesting to the centralized production plants that truck products back and forth across the continent. Consequently, as the price of oil rose, food prices have doubled in the past five years. Food is a pretty inelastic demand and there's no cheaper substitute. (Remember mainstream economic theory says that "the market" will just switch to some lower-priced substitute.) For example, a package of macaroni and cheese that cost $0.49 in 2005, now costs $.079. Similar price jumps can be found for most necessary items. That means real inflation, from my completely unscientific, personal study based on my own receipt records, is effectively running at about 12%, not the official 3% (or so) that includes items such as consumer electronics and clothes and factory equipment.

Voters in the suburbs, who have no choice about whether to drive or eat, are finding their lifestyle cramped. Paycheques are not stretching as far as they believe they ought to. This creates a vague sense of anger, which then focuses on the nearest irritant, and thus, in Toronto, things like downtown bike lanes become major issues for suburban drivers stuck in traffic jams, who then elected Rob Ford as their spokesman. Their anger is real, but misses the point.

Anguish over the disaster in the gulf of Mexico last year focused heavily on the devastation of the massive oil spill, on which sub-contractor was responsible for cutting corners, on who was going to pay for clean-up and how, but almost no one in the mainstream media asked why they were drilling in such technically challenging conditions in the first place. That might have brought to light the problem that the big, easy oil fields have pretty much all been used up, that almost every major source of oil production is in decline and the only oil left is virtually inaccessible. That, in turn, might have shed an uncomfortable light on the improbability of economic policies that presuppose -- in fact require -- expansion in use of energy and resources ("growth") facing necessary contraction due to depletion ("negative growth"). Only unlike all previous recessions, this one might be permanent, since we have used up all the easy stuff. They have no answer, no explanation, and no way to face the anger of three generations that have been raised to expect that they were entitled to have more.

Hence the focus on whether Guergis was rude in an airport, on whether world-traveller Ignatieff caused Stay-at-home Harper to lose face at the international U.N., on whether the census should be mandatory, on whether Harper is fudging on the commitment to leave Afghanistan this year, on the need for an inquiry over the G20 fiasco. As important as these things are -- and they are important -- they are not going to change our world the way ecological devastation and resource depletion will.

Thus I believe the strain the inability to face those twin predicaments places on our psyche will be reflected in harsher behaviour in Parliament, and probably across the rest of the political spectrum as well.

So, have a happy new year 2011. I hope.

Bruce Hearns -- Cuiusuis hominis est errare; nullius nisi insipientis in errore perseuerare (Any man can make a mistake; only a fool keeps making the same one.)