December 3, 2009

Copenhagen: An introduction to philosophical paradox and why you’re all going to die

Posted in America, China, Economics, Global Climate Catastrophe, Other blogs, Philosophy, Politics at 11:40 pm by Paul Sagar

Sunny Hundal today put up a 6-point plan for how to get realistic about climate change campaigning. It’s a good list. I applaud it – in principle. You see, I’ve no doubt that man-made climate change is happening. I just think the odds are overwhelmingly against us stopping it. To see why, let me take you on a little philosophical tour.

We start in Greece, roughly 2,400 years ago. Meet Eubulides. He’s a philosopher, who put forward what was known to Greeks as “The Heap” problem. (FYI “heap” in Ancient Greek = sôritês, so modern philosophers call this a sorites problem, or paradox)

It goes like this.

If you have one grain of wheat, is that a heap? Manifestly not! What about two grains? Don’t be ridiculous! Three? Pah!…and so on. Seems fairly obvious that so few grains can’t make a heap. Except: if we keep adding one grain at a time, at some point then we’re going to get a heap. The problem – or paradox, if you like – emerges when you lay things out a bit more formally, as the nice Stanford Enyclopedia people have done:

1 grain of wheat does not make a heap.
If 1 grain of wheat does not make a heap then 2 grains of wheat do not.
If 2 grains of wheat do not make a heap then 3 grains do not.
…
If 9,999 grains of wheat do not make a heap then 10,000 do not.
——————————————————————–
10,000 grains of wheat do not make a heap.

…except, for course, we all want to say 10,000 grains certainly does make a heap. Something has gone wrong. Our impeccable reasoning leads to untenable and obviously false conclusions. But that’s not what I want to talk about here.

Instead, let’s focus upon something the sorites problem brings out: the way individual contributions can, when taken alone, fail to make any significant difference, but if enough similar contributions occur then a difference definitely is made. One grain of wheat added to the pile doesn’t make the difference between “pile” and “not-a-pile”. But it’s manifestly the case that enough grains will end up constituting a pile. One grain is irrelevant, but lots of grains makes vital the difference.

Let’s fast forward 2,400 years to Denmark where the climate talks are about to get underway. The world’s leaders are round the big tables. Let’s imagine some brave head of state (probs not the Candian PM) gets up and makes an impassioned speech about the need for dramatic carbon-reduction targets. This has to be done now, and all members have to sign up and stick to the agreements for it to work. If members stick, then climate change can be halted.

Now imagine the thought processes that goes through leaders’ heads. They all know that meeting carbon reduction has the potential to play very badly with home electorates (so here thinking mostly about democracies, which except for China covers all the big polluters anyway so that works well in my little sketch, as you shall see). Opposition parties will crucify governments that retard domestic industry by forcing reductions, and self-interested voters are likely to resent the taxes and inconveniencies of genuinely meaningful carbon reductions. So signing-up to effective climate deals is a very difficult thing for democratic governments to do in particular.

And it gets worse. What is the point of signing up to hard-hitting targets, if you’re the only one that bothers? Here we meet a phenomenon familiar to economists: the problem of non-compliance by other parties. For example, imagine Britain pledges to make big carbon cuts, sticks to those cuts – but then every other nation doesn’t. Britain’s cuts will have been effectively pointless, we are stuck in a sorites problem. Britain’s carbon emissions alone won’t make the difference to global climate catastrophe: if Britain were the only country to go carbon-zero, climate catastrophe would still happen. But now flip it around. If Britain were the only country not to go carbon-zero, then climate catastrophe would not happen, because Britain’s contribution alone would be insufficient to send the world over the brink.

All countries in the world (with one possible exception, which we’ll get to in a moment) are stuck in the sorites paradox. Be the one country to make the necessary cuts, and all that happens is your nation suffers economically, your party becomes unpopular and is kicked out, and climate catastrophe happens anyway. Be the only country not to make the necessary cuts, and climate disaster is regardless and your nation gets to stay productive with your party remaining in power. The world’s leaders all know these things. They also know every other nation has the same huge incentives to deviate from big pledges (due to domestic pressures) as they do, but also because each nation knows that individually they don’t make the crucial difference (with one possible big exception).

And the leaders all know something else: that it’s very embarrassing to sign up to a big treaty, and then totally miss the set targets. Result? Watered-down proposals with meaninglessly low targets that even if they were met (which they probably won’t be, because after all why bother?) wouldn’t be enough anyway. This way the world’s leaders have their “deal”, so they save face and are not plunged into the sorites paradox of cut-don’tcut

You may at this point be thinking: “But there is a potential game changer: the USA. If America meaningfully reduces its carbon output, then that makes a sufficiently significant difference to stop global climate catastrophe.”

Perhaps. If so, then it’s all down to Barack. Yet who thinks he’s really got what it takes to put America behind its industrial rivals, at a time of tentative economic recovery, when his poll ratings are down and climate denialism in the USA is on the up? Not me. (Further reading on the Disapointment President).

And anyway, how can we be sure that the USA alone is big enough to be a game-changer? Let’s assume that it’s not: that if every other country in the world keeps polluting, then even if America went carbon-zero climate catastrophe would still happen. Back to sorites. If all nations act together, climate catastrophe is averted. But if only individual nations do, then all that happens is that they lose, and the planet burns anyway. Given the domestic pressures for leaders to deviate, as well as knowledge of other nations’ likelihood of deviating, and the knowledge that their specific country’s emissions don’t make the difference either way – what possible mechanism is there for achieving meaningful carbon reductions?

The only answer I can think of is world dictatorship, extracting compliance from each economy.

Ouch.

It’s the devil and the deep blue sea. Cooked alive or under a world-sized jackboot. Either way, I’m not paying attention to Copenhagen. I’m stocking tinned food for the ark that’ll take me to whichever godforsaken corner of the earth is still inhabitable when it all goes tits-up.

And I’ll be taking a shotgun. See you there. But stay away from my tins.

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