Tag Archives: politics

Environmental Research, Politics in Canada

The Place of Intrinsic Value in Environmental Politics

The news this year on the climate front continued to be alarming, especially the record low extent of summer sea ice in the Arctic.  The anthropocentric case for doing more to combat climate change seems self-evident.  A changing climate is very likely to be less hospitable to human needs than a stable one.  Arguments solely from self-interest therefore appear fairly quickly in the discussion of what to do.

But what of arguments not based on self-interest?  What place is there in the environmental discussion for a non-self-serving ethic, based on the idea that the natural world has intrinsic value, independent of human needs or human culture?  In fact, these ideas have been elaborated since the early days of the Does nature have its own intrinsic value?movement by Arne Naess and many others.  The notion of intrinsic value has seen its most prominent political expression in the discourses around parks and protected areas.  Groups like the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society continue to be  influential in establishing that ecological integrity should be a guiding principle of parks governance.  Protected areas symbolize many things, but one of the impetuses for protection is the awareness and recognition of a natural world with its own logic, its own measures, and its own ethical integrity, independent of the human.

Arguments that go beyond human self-interest, however, have not made a huge impact in the climate debate.  One problem is that an ecocentric ethic has been too closely associated with wilderness preservation.  Wilderness preservation is a legitimate basis for political action, however, wildernesses today are too physically remote, too closely managed, and too narrowly defined to be a solid basis for elaborating a larger argument about intrinsic value.  Biodiversity holds more promise, since natural biodiversity can be understood to operate from non-human principles.

Searching for intrinsic value.But what if the biosphere changes radically in response to climate change, what then becomes of an ethic of static preservation and intrinsic value?

In fact, I would argue that the best way and most effective way to integrate an ethic of intrinsic value in political decision making is to use an expansive and embedded approach. Such an approach would first of all recognize that intrinsic value and use value are not mutually exclusive ideas, and that something can be valued both for its usefulness to humans, and for itself.  Aristotle used the example of eyesight.  We value our eyesight both for its usefulness (we can see things and interact with the world more effectively with sight) and for its intrinsic value (we can appreciate sunsets and see the faces of loved ones).   The key test is not whether it would benefit humans to protect it, but would we miss it if it were suddenly taken away?  We can all imagine the sense of loss we would feel if our eyesight were suddenly removed, and we can all imagine the sense of loss as species disappear from the tree of life and the biosphere becomes irrevocably changed and even degraded.

This is a basis for building political action because of its universality.   Cultures may not agree on the value of any individual species but they can agree on the big picture of loss.  Practically speaking, the notion of intrinsic value for Canadians can be easily compared to the language of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Just as rights require entrenchment and defence by government and ordinary citizens, so, too, does nature.

Let’s not be afraid of the language of intrinsic value.  It is already all around us in political discourse.  Arguing that nature should be protected for its own sake makes a more robust position in favour of protection possible.  For example, it puts the onus on oil pipeline companies and developers to prove the worth of their activities, rather than on nature to prove its worth in human terms.

Global Political Economy, US Politics

Entanglement: The Enmeshment of the Economy and the Government

In quantum physics, there is the idea that a single particle can have an effect on a different particle many light years away.  Einstein called this ‘spooky action at a distance’.  In today’chicken_or_egg_400_clr_10064s globalized world, economic activity shows similar ‘spooky’ characteristics, indeed, it is virtually a truism to say that what happens in one industry or segment of an economy will inevitably affect others at great distances.   What is often overlooked in ideological debates between the right and the left, however, is the entanglement of the free market economy with the activities of government.  They are separate, just like particles separated by great distances, but they are so closely entangled. Action in one sphere will unavoidably affect the other. arrow_halves_join_400_clr_9621

Take, for example, the encroaching effects of the ‘fiscal cliff’.  An increase in taxes coupled with spending cuts, could potentially cause a drop of as much as 1% of GDP growth in the US.  The resulting reduction in economic activity would then impact government revenues, cutting into revenues just as measures to reduce the deficit kick in.  This makes these measures, therefore, essentially self-defeating.  Even a more measured response to deficit reduction that allows for some spending increase could potentially trigger inflation, since it will unavoidably give the impression that the government will just keep printing money to pay its debt. Inflation could also reduce economic activity and jeopardize growth, although it seems unlikely in the short term, by undermining investor confidence and leading to capital flight.  The result, as with the fiscal cliff, is the same: a hit to government revenues and a self-defeating policy.

The first step to breaking the cycle is to recognize that the favoured solutions of both the right and the left are both inappropriate in the present context.  Reducing taxes to stimulate the economy without accompanying measures to induce spending and investment just doesn’t work, there is no evidence of it ever having worked, and it does severe damage to the government’s ability to raise revenue.  At the same time, government spending does not have the growth-inducing impact as in the past because thuncle_sam_holding_money_pc_400_clr_1727e implied willingness to spend and borrow undermines investor confidence.

The solution lies in the awareness that government is both an economic actor and an economic hedge.  Contrary to the arguments on the right, government cannot just ‘get out of the way’ and let the market grow.  For one thing, it might grow somewhere else.  For another thing, markets need government to backstop their activities and stop them from imploding on themselves.  The sooner that people stop thinking of governments as part of the problem, and realize that free markets require governments to make decisions for the common good, the better off both the economy and the government will be.  Governments and markets are not the same thing, their purposes are different and their instruments are different, but they are irrevocably enmeshed together. 

Environmental Research, Global Political Economy, Politics in Canada, US Politics

A Leaner, Meaner Politics in the US: What About Canada?

In his book The Age of Austerity: How Scarcity will Remake American Politics Thomas Byrne Edsall argues that shrinking public and private resources will make politics leaner, meaner and less civil.  It’s not just that right and left disagree on how to distribute resources, it is a fundamental rift in the understanding of the purpose of the state itself.   It’s also not just a fight over ideas:  it is a battle for survival.  The supporters of the right, to pearth_tighten_belt_800_clr_7668araphrase Edsall, are ageing, embattled, middle to upper class whites living in decimated and depopulated suburbs who are increasingly bitter about the direction of the redistributive state.  In the past, the right’s call to arms was a kind of negative freedom (‘Don’t Tread on Me’) which fought to preserve the individual’s ability to choose their own forms of happiness unimpeded by state regulations.  The premise of this, we know now, was the expectation that everyone could gain from a growing pie.  No more.  Programs for which supporters of the right are the primary recipients (including Medicare and social security) are considered sacrosanct.  Programs from which others benefit (read black, immigrants, poor or public sector workers) like Medicaid, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or income supports, are untenable ‘entitlements’.  On the left, there is a counter-move to protect the public sphere from erosion while simultaneously trying to remain coherent in the face of a fiscal crisis and an unrelenting personal attack on Obama during an election year.  The left is increasingly turning to middle class minorities, immigrant and young voters who are far less steady in their support and are on the whole less well-established and more vulnerable both economically and politically.

These kinds of politics reveal rifts that have historically deep-soil_money_canada_pc_800_clr_2385eated roots but which linger below the surface until austerity and crisis reveal them.  What rifts lie below the surface of Canadian society that have been eroding the social consensus gradually and unrelentingly?  Could Canada go down a similar route?  Recent battles paint a picture of the possibilities.  With vitriolic flourishes the Harper government and environmentalists are fighting an increasingly pitched battle over oil resources.   The push for a pipeline to expand foreign markets for oil, whether through a Northern route or Keystone, has as its root a long-standing fear that overproduction of oil will drive the price down and shrink profits.  This is a real fear, since the flattening of oil prices will make the billions of dollars already invested uneconomic, and capital will flee.  On the one hand, it seems more like an embarrassment of riches than a problem of austerity: oil consumption is maintaining a steady stiff pace overseas and is set to grow, along with its negative climate impacts.  On the other hand, it has all of the set piece features of a zero-sum fight over a shrinking resource.  As anti-fossil fuel efforts grow, and as more bitumen-type oil production facilities are being developed in Latin America and more unconventional oil is prospected in the Arctic and other areas, the chances of oil revenues becoming restricted in the future is higher and higher.  If this happens, look for politics here to follow a similar path to those in the US, with the centre of the storm being the role of shattered_dollar_coin_800_clr_8730the state as a (re)distributor of resources.  With potentially shrinking state revenues due to tax reductions and few other signs of growth outside the resource sector, the temptation to retrench at the expense of the poor, immigrants, the disabled and other marginalized groups may well be irresistible.  On the other hand, another fight between regions in true Canadian fashion may be brewing.  I want to end on a positive note here.  Everything I’ve learned in teaching young people about politics in the last 15 years has taught me that if anything, youth are more accepting, welcoming, compromising and diverse than ever.  I can only hope that these qualities will enable the cultivation of a middle ground in the future in Canada that seems increasingly elusive in the divisive and paralyzing politics down south in the US.  If we are to believe Edsall, however, austerity could bring out the worst in all of us.

Popular Culture

An American Game of Thrones

As a graduate student, my academic advisor once told me that despite its hype, the American Revolution did not so much create a new system of government as replace one king with another.  The President has king-like symbolic power over the nation’s direction.  For this reason, and because of the diminished stature of the US in the world context, the US ‘throne’ is now a shrinking resource which will see fights the likes of no other in US history.  The polar opposite visions of the country will shrink the middle ground and with it the scope for any real action to be taken.  As the real power to influence events wanes, the symbolic power of the Presidency takes on ever more vitality.  Just look at the way that the President is personally blamed or celebrated (depending on the jobs numbers) for economic turns of events over which they have virtually no control.  Electing a new ‘monarch’ has all of the trappings of a winner-take-all fight in which, to paraphrase Cersei Lannister of Game of Thrones fame, ‘you win or you die’.  In this battle, the rules of engagement are murky.   The US ‘throne’ is now a

Ultimately, the game of thrones, whether in American politics or in the popular HBO series to which I have become hopelessly addicted, is about leadership.   The abiding moral paradox is that to earn the throne one must be ruthlessly focused on its attainment, but to keep it requires wiser, more subtle finessing and the ability to keep that ruthlessness in check when necessary.  This is the central distinction that Machiavelli made 500 years ago, encapsulated in the term ‘prudence’.   Warriors like Robert Baratheon (or George W. Bush)  fail as leaders because they lack the necessary diplomatic skill to inspire and activate their symbolic power.   Masters of finesse like Barack Obama (read Ned Stark) must constantly balance their leadership with the necessary hard edge needed to deter challengers, both domestic and abroad.  Such leaders do not necessarily relish or celebrate the violence they must commit.  But, taking the moral high ground can be hazardous to their health.

And what of the Lannisters (er, Mitt Romneys) of the world?  Wealth doesn’t automatically bring wisdom or the prudence necessary to rule.  The wealthy often prefer to manipulate things from the background rather than step forward to and take the power commensurate with their wealth.  In fact, the corruption that wealth brings erodes the necessary respect for power that is a requirement of prudence (Joffrey the false heir apparent, is a clear result of this corruption).  Romney, like Tywin, must constantly keep the ‘lower’ urges of his ‘clan’ from damaging his image.    Ned Stark

In this new age of symbolic power, appearance matters far more than reality, because to focus otherwise risks revealing the appalling truth: the President has little actual power to affect the economy, world affairs, or domestic governance.   The real decisions made in boardrooms, central bank meetings, and war rooms will go ahead with little reference to political affairs.  Collaboration will occur increasingly in secret, while the public sphere will be characterized by unending conflict.  To twist an old adage, in order to get anything done, it must not be seen to be done.