At last the phoney war is over, the election will be called tomorrow, and now the main parties will have to reveal their true strategies for winning power. Policies will be set in stone, or at least written up in party manifestos and justified or discredited in the face of questions and criticism.
This thread is for discussion of any matters in the forthcoming campaign that specifically apply to ‘climate, the countryside and landscapes’. My feeling at the moment is that the main parties, with the possible exception of the Lib Dems, will avoid the subject of AGW like the plague. In fact it would surprise me if even the Greens make a big issue of it other than to make the preposterous claim that moving to a low carbon economy will be a panacea for the present fiscal meltdown.
I hope that I am wrong about this, as it is high time for this whole subject to be dragged into the open and take its rightful place at the centre of the public debated on who will lead the country into the coming decade. The electorate should have an opportunity to make their feelings known to those who will form the next government, whoever that may be.
So if you spot anything that seems relevant among the torrent of electoral verbiage that is about to descend on us, please put a comment and a link here, not on the NS thread where it will quickly become lost and forgotten. What the politicians – and others who can influence their policies – have to say over the next few weeks is likely to be the best guide we can find to how the recent convulsions in the climate debate are feeding through into changed attitudes to AGW among policy-makers.
If major controversies, or apparent changes in political thinking that are relevant to the subjects that Harmless Sky covers emerge during the campaign, then I will open other threads as and when appropriate. If you feel that a new thread covering a particular aspect of the campaign is needed, then please let me know.
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Related thread: Election fever
h/t Brute for link to image
Brute:
You can be a good Catholic without going to live in Vatican City. Cuba, North Korea and Venezuela are not the only examples of socialism. There have been numerous experiments with socialism in Europe.
Stalin, Franco and Tony Blair don’t have a lot in common, except they all put an end to different socialist experiments. No doubt there will be others.
I’ve no problem with capitalism, by the way, which is the only economic system which has been made to work efficiently in democracies. It’s not perfect, though, is it?
If you really want to understand this election, don’t worry about the labels. Britain and the USA may have totally different political systems, but they are almost unique in having democratically alternating governments by two century-old parties.
North Korea is more like a feudal than a socialist state. Instead of a King they have a “Great Leader” which seems to be a hereditary position.
The Marxist interpretation of history is that society moves through various stages. Tribalism giving way to Feudalism and the creation of the modern nation state. Feudalism in turn gives way to Capitalism which then leads to……
You could argue that the final stage hasn’t happened, but it depends on what you mean by Socialism. Socialism doesn’t necessarily mean the extermination of capitalism. But it does mean that it has to be kept under the democratic control of elected governments.
Geoff,
No, nothing is……..but it’s (Capitalism) the best thing going (My opinion).
Stalin, Franco, Adolf Hitler, Chavez, Lenin, Kim Jong Ill, Mao, Castro, et al………they all seem to end rather unsatisfactorily with millions of innocents dead and or persecuted……..and/or broke.
Brute,
Even in America you don’t have uncontrolled capitalism. If RTZ, or whoever, want to build a mine in some countries, then its just a matter of a quick bribe to a government official at the most. Then the mine is built.
Its not like that in Australia, or even the USA, I dare say. There’s a long process to go through with the community having the final say through the democratic process.
Capitalism is harnessed, like a horse! The profits don’t all flow to the capitalists. Instead they are diverted to fund schools, and even public hospitals. Yes, some is wasted on weapons systems but we are working on that!
It may not
Depends what you mean by Feudalism Pete…………I’d say that you are beholden to the State (the modern day feudal lord).
You’re essentially a slave/sharecropper in a Socialist society in many respects….having to acquire permission from your overlord in order to exist.
Brute,
If people vote for a Socialist government you’ll get Socialist policies like public health care and unemployment insurance.
If they voted for people of similar opinions to yourself they wouldn’t.
So, to answer your question, the difference between Feudalism and the sort of Western European Socialism, which you falsely equate with Stalinism, is in the democracy of the process.
The UK system of democracy isn’t that good- Australia’s is better – but if things don’t go the right way, its open to change. You may disagree with the concept of the British NHS but it must be fairly popular there because none of the political parties have suggested cutting it back.
Daniel Hannan, who is popular in the USA, would be an electoral disaster for the Tory party if he weren’t muzzled by party HQ. He isn’t even standing for Parliament this election as some had predicted he might.
Europe, the UK and Australia aren’t the same as America. We like some of what we see, but not all of it, and we don’t want to copy it.
Get over it.
Brute, going back to your question of each party’s position on environmental legislation, the irony is that whoever comes out on top in the UK (whether they be centre left, centre right, coalition etc and whether they call themselves socialists or conservatives) will have the task of enforcing the EU’s environmental legislation.
In that sense, it makes little difference – in a way, the UK Parliament is a bit like a layer of middle management. The EU Landfill Directive, for instance, comes down from on high, and management must find a way of complying with it and meeting their allotted targets.
I don’t have to live with it (yet)…..you do.
Geoff,
Yes, I’d forgotten about the UK losing it’s independence.
Geoff (26)
Oh, I don’t know. They all loved control…
The ultimate problem with capitalism (and I wish it wasn’t so) is that it relies on continuous growth in a finite world.
I have an interesting, if chilling, book by a zoologist called Dougal Dixon, titled ‘After Man’…
Slightly OT, but worrying, nonetheless…
http://www.debt-clock.org/
@James P
// The ultimate problem with capitalism
People were writing like that 100 years ago. And 200 years ago.
We did ‘NOW-ism’ a few months back. Here is one aspect of nowist thinking:
The problem is the non-sequitur in the middle – the jump from a distant future called infinity and where we are today.
AS we get richer then more and more products are added-value products – eg an Ipod nano is $1 worth of raw materials turned into a $100 product. The songs are weightless – but sell at $1 a pop. Or think of a steak: cost at the farm: $1 – cost at the butcher: $10 – cost at a posh restaurant: $70.
I once heard of an experiment run a few years ago in Europe between capitalism and socialism. A country was divided into 2 similar parts labelled “East” and “West”. Just wondered if anyone else has heard of this experiment and the results?
Point taken, Jack. I’m not rooting for socialism, although I’m in favour of certain aspects like our NHS, despite the bureaucracy that’s been heaped upon it.
It’s just that the distant future doesn’t look all that distant to me, and while I am unlikely to be affected directly, I worry about my children and grandchildren.
I also think that our political masters will go (and have gone) to almost any lengths to conceal the scale of the problem, hence my link to the ‘debt clock’ above. For example, Gordon Brown did a bit of creative accounting a few years ago to conceal the effects of the private finance initiative (PFI) used to mortgage large projects such as schools and hospitals, by fixing it so they didn’t appear on any Treasury balance sheets, so it is fair to assume that things are a lot worse than we are told.
Christopher Booker seems to agree:
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/04/painfully-empty-charade.html
This is Booker’s original piece (my link was to a summary by Richard North):
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/7575673/Dont-let-the-voters-know-we-face-bankruptcy.html
Yes govt debt and the size of the public sector are huge and related problems.
All 3 big parties are playing Santa Claus politics- describing just how lavish everything is going to be instead of having the guts to admit the problems.
Their ‘green’ policies are just one part of this – all 3 have this windmill fantasy instead of dealing with reality. A lot of this nonsense has come from the EU – but the big 3 all voted to give these powers to the EU.
And yes it’s a “chicken” topic where the first to break ranks will get dumped on by the others and by the BBC.
I’ve been too busy for the last few days with things completely unrelated to blogging to follow this thread. All of the last twenty or so comments have been blatantly OT. Please stick to the rules.
The Green Party manifesto came out today, and you can read it online at the Guardian here. Also here is a rather critical article by Miles Allen (again in the Guardian.) Allen comments that you have to wait to p33 to read about the environment, and although there are a few references to climate change, carbon footprints etc., you have to read as far as p35 to get to a subsection devoted to climate change.
The clue is in the manifesto name, I think. “Fair is worth fighting for” (compare with Labour: “A future fair for all” and the LibDems’ “Change that works for you. Building a fairer Britain'”). In the forward by Caroline Lucas, there’s nothing about climate change; it ends in “So I urge you to vote Green on May 6th for a fairer world.” The following introduction mentions climate change briefly, but it is not prominent.
Basically, fairness is perceived as a vote-winner, not climate change, even by the Greens.
Looks like Cameron may have blown his chance?
http://blogs.wsj.com/iainmartin/2010/04/17/cameron-stuck-in-a-maze-of-his-own-making/
What’s happening over there?
PeterM:
What’s happening over here is fascinating but, as TonyN observed, “blatantly OT”.
I think the relative quietness of this thread at the moment bears witness to the fact that there’s precious little about the environment or climate change being discussed in this election campaign.
Didn’t watch the televised Brown/Cameron/Clegg debate, but nothing since has indicated that climate matters came up during it (please correct me if you know differently) – what I did watch was Newsnight a few days later, again about the election, again all about other issues entirely.
Today a campaign leaflet came through the letter box from John Hunt, who is the local Green candidate. It mentions climate change only briefly to say that the Greens have been ahead of the other parties in formulating a policy about it. The main emphasis, though, is on “A ‘Living Wage'”, “A million new jobs” and “Protect our NHS.” Again, as per my #42, it’s all about “fairness” (as applied to the gap between rich and poor, unemployment and public services.)
Listed in the issues, though, that Dr Hunt is campaigning for is: “Environment – Our air quality already contravenes European standards; our wildlife is fast disappearing; and the bees that pollinate many of our crops are in severe decline.”
Maybe Tony N would lighten up on his interpretation of OT?
I noticed that guy, Doug Keenan, who was too lazy to collect his own tree samples but instead won the right to use the raw Data of Queen’s Uni was described as a City Wanker, sorry City Banker, in the press.
I’m just wondering if he fits into my theory that climate change denial is to right wing politics as creationism is to fundamentalist religious convictions?
[If you want to make puerile ad hominem attacks then choose a blog where such behaviour is considered to be a useful and intelligent contribution to the climate debate. Deltoid, Joe Romm, RealClimate and The Guardian come to mind. TonyN]
Nick Clegg mentioned ‘climate change’ last night – he was doing quite well up to that point, I thought. Nobody picked him up on it, of course, but it was a useful reminder of his party’s leanings, which is a shame, as I have often voted Liberal in the past. Sorry to upset your hypothesis, PeterM (like AGW, I don’t think it qualifies as a theory, yet).
BTW, Peter, Douglas Keenan stopped working for a bank in 1995, where I believe he was employed as a mathematician.
James P:
Yes, it was revealing that Clegg thought he was scoring when he attacked Cameron for allying with “people who deny climate change”. Er – poll after poll show that the British public doesn’t think mankind is responsible for climate change. So criticising them wouldn’t seem to be a particularly good tactic for a politician seeking support. It’s a strange phenomenon: politicians and their groupies really believe in dangerous AGW and don’t yet realise that theirs is the minority position.
Mind you, I don’t suppose many people noticed.
I note that although the BBC is very proud of its ‘worm’ audience reaction graphics, they didn’t show what happened when the CC question was being discussed. It really would be interesting to know.
Tony, James, according to Andrew Sparrow at the Guardian’s live blog , ITV was running a worm and here are a couple of its reactions:
8.17pm. “Clegg says the Tories are in alliance with “nutters”. The worm is unhappy, heading down.”
8.38pm: Q: What would you do about the environment? “Clegg says you need to work with people in Europe who believe in climate change. I thought that was an effective barb, but the ITV worm did not budge.”
Hopefully in a few days’ time the second debate will be uploaded in its entirety (on ITV? YouTube?), so we will be able to see for ourselves.