debitage: part of the core tool and scraper tradition

debitage

19.8.06

Climate Change Incentives

Cass Sunstein writes that an important reason that there's been little progress in addressing climate change is that the US and China, the two largest contributers to the problem, don't stand to lose as much should warming come to pass. I agree that it's important to look at the incentives facing actors with respect to addressing climate change, but I don't think Sunstein's analysis is quite right.

I won't argue about whether Sunstein is right to say that the US and China stand to lose less from climate change than other countries -- it's at least plausible, so let's take it as given for the sake of argument. Sunstein still hasn't shown that the people or leaders of the US and China believe that their countries will face less harm from climate change. He merely assumes -- as economists are wont to do -- that because something is true, it is known to actors and affects their behavior. But his article is only interesting and new because we haven't been hearing the same argument from the mouths of leaders in those two countries. Proponents of inaction will tell you either that climate change isn't occurring, or that there's nothing (or at least nothing cost-effective) that we can do about it, or that it will benefit everyone (especially those famine-stricken third world countries that Sunstein says will be hardest hit).

The relevance of the comparative harms done by climate change is also limited. Whether climate change is costly enough to the US to prompt action has little to do with how costly it is to Bangladesh, especially in Sunstein's rational egoist model. If climate change hurts the US enough, it will take action, regardless of the impacts on other countries. At most, the comparatively greater harms done to other countries increase the injustice of the US's following its own internal cost-benefit analysis. Sunstein's implicit claim that the US and China see climate change as a net gain for themselves is a bit hard to swallow until you add in the time frame factor. A sufficiently strong shortsightedness will weight the immediate costs of action heavily enough that they overtop the later costs of inaction. This comparison between times is more significant in explaining the US's inaction than the comparison between countries in the severity of climate change impacts.

On a more conceptual level, Sunstein seems to have bought in to the environmentalist framing of the issue, and then imposed that framing on the actors he seeks to understand. So in calculating the costs and benefits that face the US, he defines costs and benefits in the same way an environmentalist does, placing high importance on the predicted effects of climate change and seeing action as entailing only a set of technical mitigation costs. But that's not how the powerful actors necessarily frame the issue. They hold a variety of other values and concerns that frame things differently, leading to decisions that may seem irrational within the environmentalist framing. We again need actual information as to how the powerful actors construct and work through the problem, rather than speculation about what would be a rational way to reach the conclusion that they reached.

Stentor Danielson, 01:28, |

17.8.06

Fire History In The Klamath

Felice Pace makes a rare argument in favor of the let-burn strategy for handling wildfires. His basic storyline is that local fire management was doing just fine until the 1970s, when centralized military-industrial fire control rose to prominence. This new type of fire control engaged in environmentally destructive and counterproductive suppression activities. What we need now is a return to let-burn policies for fires in wilderness areas, with targeted suppression efforts when fires cross into areas where people live.

There's much that's right about Pace's story -- particularly his emphasis on the need for local control and his warnings about the environmental impacts of suppression and post-suppression activities. But the picture needs to be complicated a bit. First off, a nit to pick: the centralized military-industrial fire suppression system in the US dates back at least to the 1930s, when the Civilian Conservation Corps was enlisted to eradicate wildfire, and recieved a big boost from military surplus equipment after World War II. The effects of that system weren't as apparent until many decades later, though, because at first the system was successful in preventing big fires. By the 70s and 80s, let-burning was actually on the rise as the "all fire is bad" ideology began to be seriously questioned. One change worthy of further examination -- which Pace only hints at -- is the shifting balance toward involvement of the private/corporate sector in fire control in the later 20th century. (For example, it's the involvement of the private sector, not the central vs local issue, that's at the heart of the salvage logging question.)

Pace's article implies that if the old locally-based fire management system had been left in place, everything would be OK. But the old system was not as great as Pace imagines, and changes in the landscape would have made it outdated. This is not to say that the new centralized system is any better -- what's needed is a new sort of fire management.

This report gives some additional background on Pace's home region of the Klamath. From the time of the first white settlement until the advent of centralized suppression, dangerous fires were common. The strategy of let-burn in the backcountry and focused suppression near homes was not a product of humble wisdom about the environment, but of a lack of resources and ability to carry out wider-scale suppression. The early suppression efforts were successful, giving the region a reprieve while allowing the centralized system to maintain a low profile, perhaps creating an illusion -- especially to those, like Pace, who arrived in the area during this time -- that the traditional system avoided fire danger.

But whatever its success, the traditional system couldn't last forever -- due, in part, to newcomers like Pace. One glaring omission in Pace's account is the growth of the urban-wildland interface. The late-20th-century boom in the number of people living scattered around fire-prone wildlands creates an increase in the fire danger by increasing the number of people at risk. More significantly for Pace's proposal, an expanding UWI means an expanding area where suppression is necessary, and a shrinking area of backcountry where a let-burn policy makes sense.

These newcomers also typically make different demands on the fire protection system. Oldtimers may be content to let a backcountry fire burn (secure in their ability to control it as it draws near, or resigned to uncontrollable acts of god). But newcomers are more likely to demand that at minimum an impressive show of trying to protect them from fire and smoke. Merely localizing control would leave power in the hands of such comfy exurbanites.

Stentor Danielson, 18:00, |

16.8.06

I've heard of Pluto, therefore it's a planet

Let me ease back into blogging with a brief comment on the brouhaha over creating an official definition of "planet" to solve the "is Pluto a planet?" debate.

It seems to me that "planet" is as much a value judgment as a statement of objective fact -- it means "an important object orbiting the sun." So trying to give the word a pureply objective definition will just create confusion, especially if it's promoted to the public as the definition (much like the confusion about the difference between the botanical and culinary definitions of "fruit" or the physics vs everyday meanings of "work").

The value judgment inherent in the term "planet" explains why so many people are so worked up about this issue. We've all heard of Pluto, whereas the other objects that would become planets under the expanded definition -- such as UB313 -- are unknown except to astronomy geeks. Our brains operate on the "availability heuristic" -- things that we can easily call to mind are more characteristic or more important than those we don't know about. The availability heuristic is an outgrowth of the mistaken assumption that our minds are basically passive and objective recievers of information from the outside world. We know about Pluto but not about UB313, so therefore it's obvious that Pluto is important enough to be a planet, and there's something fishy about a set of objective criteria that UB313 fits just as easily.

Then there's the circularity of all this. The reason we know about Pluto and consider it important is that it's included on the canonical list of 9 planets. Had astronomers never tagged it with that label, making Pluto a planet would sound just as ridiculous as including UB313. Thirty years from now, when everybody has been working under the 12 planet system for decades, we'll look back at old textbooks with their nine planets and think "how ridiculous! UB313 is obviously a planet, so how can those morons have left it out of the old books?"

Stentor Danielson, 20:29, |