The Eco-Republican

An eco-Republican is about economy AND ecology, and about security AND citizenship.

Or more simply it defines someone who Cares about what is healthy in nature but also about Protection against trespassing. That's just how I think it can be defined, you may have your way. Note that what is healthy in nature is a consensus product and a moving point in focus and intensity. All in a field that is defined by those four poles: economy, ecology, security and citizenship.

When you look around, public servants frame their important messages so they can be moved around by how you interpret them in a smaller patch in that field. Note that that patch itself also moves around quite a bit for conservatives, moderates and liberals alike.

But to find the public servants who may qualify as eco-Republicans we need to know where to look for them. I would most probably position them somewhere between the Nationals, Greens and Liberals/Republicans in Australia. In the US they are probably the shifting shades of moderate Reps and centrist Dems. And in the UK they might have been the promise of what was called once the 'New Labour'.

At any rate, I believe what is good citizenship in democracy used to be quite well represented by Roosevelt's Republicans in the US and Menzies Liberals in Australia. These movements established a proud and pragmatic heritage. But until very recently, the citizenship pole in the field experienced a more or less steady decline in focus, intensity and gravity. The economy and security poles experienced a strong pull and the ecology pole was simply ignored.

However, more recently, a worldwide green movement with the added power of public concern about Global Warming and Irreversible Climate Change moves the above mentioned streams of conscious sense of purpose toward the political center where there is now heightened emphasis on citizen participation. In other words, the pull was ecology, but the field now once again extends toward another pull: citizenship.

However, there is only so much interest in the public field and some other poles pull got to give. The problem is, neither economy, nor security can be ignored or diminished in importance. No administration in their right mind would do that. They can only juggle between them. Some public servants, who realize just that pay lip service to citizenship, some others - to ecology.

They are pressured by public opinion to polarise their actions to reflect the integrity folks obviously expect of them. We need predictability in a politician to trust them.

The free will of the public has always demanded pragmatism. It is only when that will is distorted or suppressed that a few can feed them ideology. But ideology is nothing without a propaganda. One needs catechism and demagoguery to make it work. It needs to dumb down public mind and free will - hence dumb down natural public pragmatism and citizenship.

Today that pragmatism again dominates the policy agenda, but with two very important modern distinctions. First a hard-wired international monetary instinct makes economy trump ecology -- scarce money is overemphasized and not just for those who need to manage people as well as resources well. And second, defense security trumps climate security due to another hard-wired and legitimate survival instinct that naturally goes stronger in this time of perceived crisis.

On the first count, international monetary instruments experience a clear crisis in solving problems in a dominant way, let alone by themselves. On the second count, emergency and the associated desperate fire fighting effort that are due to climate change disasters and refugees are on rapid and possibly exponential increase compared to traditional defense security planning. And they both draw heavily on the military budget, which in turn can be a huge burden on the economy --- and presently is.

What is missing is the mutual understanding and policy interest to support that voters and representatives are part the Ecology first, before they are part of a (hopefully Peace and not War) Economy and only then part of a regions Security. I think an eco-Rep must have these priorities sorted out.

So how about Australia, our Nature's Republic? --- that would nicely wrap it in one neat package. The political will is shaping, or is it just a thought...?

Nature's Republic Research - The Trap of a 'Realist'

Echo and Narcissus
by John William Waterhouse

By "realist" in the title I mean elected pragmatic leaders. As nature has it the most successful ones are not just gentle bullies, but also closet narcissists.

Now, for all of you who think Nature's Republic is a neat idea, you know I am a Nature's Republican, here is an interesting adage.

Give a bunch of self-absorbed (or narcissist) folks a replenishable forest as their livelihood and the task to lop enough trees to make it both a living and a success. And they are all faced with the same dilemma:

Act selfishly and cause collective disaster - even your own livelihood will be finished. Or act altruistically and aid someone else who is acting selfishly. Either way, selfishness wins. And the very tangible result: the forest is erased in no time.

This tragic dilemma is called the "Hobson's choice" and the result is the "tragedy of the commons."

To paraphrase the social psychologist W. Keith Campbell talking about the 2008 US Presidential primary: the political system is biased toward the narcissist. This is to say that the more-selfish person has a higher probability of winning. I am convinced, most political systems are such - in this they are most certainly perfectable.

But Campbell also devised an ingenious way to spot the narcissist. Just ask this questions and see what the answer will be out of the two available ones:
Q: Which of the two statements describes you better? Think about it carefully.

• If I ruled the world, it would be a much better place.
• The thought of ruling the world frightens the hell out of me.

Edella Schlager, political scientist from the University of Arizona puts the dilemma in another way:

"Rational individuals are trapped. To act rationally, to pursue one's self-interest, leads to collective ruin. To act irrationally, to place the collective interest above one's self-interest, exposes one to exploitation."

According to Schlager, their is a natural way of reasoned regulation:

Lorenz Strange Attractors.
Courtesy: Wikipedia

"The way to prevent tragedies of the commons is to set up structures in advance that reward long-term thinking and punish short-term selfishness. This happens mostly among competitors who share long-term interests and have social relationships of trust: If you and I are Maine lobstermen, we are likely to agree to set up limits on the overall catch each year because we see our future, and our children's future, inextricably linked. In the absence of trust and long-term relationships, the only way to prevent these tragedies is to have an outside regulatory agency step in to establish - and enforce - limits."

Now, I am not much of an enforcer - too bad. In fact, I am convinced that politics is managing complex systems of people and resources. So what I believe in is setting up a transformational framework that sets the basin and the attractors. Those are dynamic limits towards which the system will then naturally converge.

----------As an aside
An example I found for a complex system applied to people realm: - The notion of media enforced public relation reputation could be viewed as a non-linear complex system where attractor basins are the "adjacent realms that contain both distinct and separate topics as well as those that mutually influence one another." I'd be barking mad if I understood exactly what this meant, but if you are a mathematician with this kind on knowledge I respectfully agree that you probably do.
Update on this:
I am still not much wiser, but it could be close to George Lakoff's framing problem. The impossible terms "liberal elite" or "tax relief" might just be such starge attractors.
----------

In Australia this would certainly involve a Constitutional reform and an infant Republic. In the US it would require more than a few amendments on the Constitution. These new instruments would then become the necessary social wherewithal to stock bipartisan policies for the long term. -- Emanate and reinforce a transformational change toward Nature's Republic acceptable to both major parties would likely have the support by the public as well as replenish the forests that be. The first question then: what kinds of amendments, what kinds of transformational reforms on the Constitution. The second: what kinds of policies?

But in the very first instance: we need to imagine it possible.

Resources:

Clinton, Obama and the Narcissist's Tale
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/../2008/04/27/ST2008042701712.html

McRae, James J., 1978.
Optimal and competitive use of replenishable natural resources by open economies, Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 29-54, February.
Note: this publication is available to subscribers only.

George Lakoff's Rockridge Insitute: An introduction to framing and its uses in politics

What is an attractor?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractor

Attractors Everywhere
Order from Chaos: http://www.calresco.org/attract.htm

Nature's Republic

The thing that a caring state concept such as Nature's Republic may show is that either each of us benefits, or very few (if any) of us will. This profound climate change on an epochal time scale leaves no other choice.

We should be able to take care of ourselves as independent adults, and state help can increase unwelcome dependence. But we are not just dependent on the eco-system. We are a part of it! And we simply cannot legislate for the trees to take care of themselves - they have no will. We can only legislate that they should be taken care of by us. That is, if we are convinced that that activity is PART OF TAKING CARE OF OURSELVES.

I don't think I am an idealist. Radicals, dictators and mad mans will still occasionally grab hold of power. But the resounding demand over other tribulations should simply be looking after Nature's needs first.

Human nature in all it's shades and glories included. And that's cold hard reality and there's nothing new in that if you look at it that way.

So if anything, I am a Nature's Republican. And that power base - some kind of Green-Republican. Coalition that is both pragmatic and forward looking - may be a positive outcome of all these current birth pains.

Footnote:
Roosevelt's 'Republicans' in the US were largely the same progressive base as Menzie's 'Liberals' became in Australia.

About Climate Change and the Law of the Land

Let's start by asking.

Can we exclude anyone from the changes we bring about that effect Global consequences?

The unwanted bi-product of progress and industrialization coupled with Solar Warming - energy changes in our entire solar system - is threatening to feed back on each other bringing about drastic and abrupt climate change that is collectively called Global Warming.

Something most of us fear of.

Suppose we could, could we then say: "oh but we only change back climate for this nation, this country or this race?" Yes we could. We could say that. But the point is, we can't really do that.

And that's one good thing in my book about trying to change climate back.

Now, can we abandon the task by saying: "Hey, we don't want to help some ignorant bastard who lives miles away and by the way, we don't even know him / or her. For all we know he or she could be ignorant by nature." Yes, that's true. We could say that. But would it make sense?

We would have to be kind to someone who may not deserve this. And that makes us uncomfortable.

Yet we would be acting on legal, not just moral grounds here. It is not about forgiving, because we don't even know those sins and whether or not they exist for those we are necessarily ignorant of. It is not about a spiritual strategy of moral preemptiveness of redeeming someone else to a cause by certain deeds either -- precisely for the same reason. It is about a legal foundation of believing in the common good. That we collectively have a purpose. And being a good shepherd - a responsible and independent carer of our resources - is part of it.

But we can only be independent of the wrath of nature if we allow ourselves to depend on it being our friend, not our enemy. Not something to be master of. But something to live in Alliance with.

Not to enslave nature but to cohabit with it. Do you think it possible?

CCB = NR x C2
Where Climate Change Back equals Nature's Republic multiplied by Care square.

In mathematics, a multiplying function such as this denotes homogeneity. And it IS tricky, because it would have to applied to a non-homogeneous system that is weather and other related biological patterns.

Perhaps a new tool set of legislature would have to integrate non-linear mathematics and systems science, and not just the occasional interrogation of scientists about this or that statistical deviation.

It will not be easy while a conventional jurisdictional discipline dominates the legislative process and science is just a side show clown.

There is a profound belief that science is value-neutral, and we can interrogate it for the benefit of an objective legislative process. Yet no legislative process is objective and science itself may prove less and less value-neutral to stay relevant to climate change priorities.

The task is, then, to integrate science in the law of the land while carefully avoiding to shake the belief system that science is the objective rock upon which one can build solid environmental legislation.

Perhaps, in this respect, the letter of the law itself may need some shake up.

Here, Australia occupies a unique place. We don't have a Bill of Rights, but we have a solid Constitution. This may be a blessing in disguise, if we talk about not certain inalienable and arguably disputable rights of individuals over communities and vice versa - such as happiness, freedom and self-expression, -- but of a community itself being inclusive of the Nature it is of, by and for.

Here come in the rights and values related to and subject of ownership, spiritual beliefs and common consensus. Land of old inherently holds spiritual values and these rights emanate from it being God given. Yet ownership rights and values of new frequently and arbitrarily override this it being subject to changes in common consensus.

Thus a scenario ensues that the legal owner of a land can force someone else to respect and maintain it's Natural Content. Should we keep defining that Natural Content in its renewable value measured in products or in some kind of world standard such as resource neutrality in respect to one or many limited resources -- coal, crude oil, gas etc, whatever the case of a world consensus may be?

If they were to be established, what would happen to such standards when significant new resources were discovered, or the Solar system passed back to its usual energy level - if it ever will? What body or institution would administer those standards and on what consensus still -- voluntarily accepted or partly forced?

Would there have to be one ultimate legal sovereign - an individual or a constituency such as a State or a Federation of States - for it to be successful in this respect?

And what is our collective overriding purpose? Perpetuating the life and well-being of a certain Constituency according to it's linear cause-effect-precedence hierarchy of structured Law of Order, -- or that of a large, highly complex, non-linear and unpredictable Chaotic System such as the Planetary weather or the biosphere the Ecological system are?

Are these good questions to ask? Well, what do you think?

Atlantic Carbon Uptake Halved!

Breaking news today: Now this is worrisome to say the least. In the narrow time space of the past 10 years the carbon uptake of the Atlantic ocean has shrunk dramatically. We need to watch this trend very closely. It could signal Purgatory time.

The combined data of some 90 thousand measuring time-points (that is a staggering set of almost 100 thousand separate measurement) shows a disturbing trend. In the past ten years since the 1990s the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) that the ENTIRE Atlantic ocean can mop up from the atmosphere has been cut i.

Why is it important? For two reasons at least.

One, the oceans are thought to be the real deal compared to old growth rain forest when it comes to cleaning up the atmosphere. And two, it is not just surface absorption by the huge body of water that helps. It is just as much important that the tiny crustacean organisms living there breath in CO2 and build it in the carbon of their tiny shells. When they die, they sink to the bottom, removing that carbon pretty much forever. And they live by the zillions, so this is a huge amount of carbon we are talking about.

The current measurement is alarming because it shows that a tremendous stress on those organisms could be taking its toll already. Their capacity to breath in CO2 may not have changed, but because of the salinity of the oceans that has increased due to the enormous amount of carbon it now absorbs, the size of shells those tiny creatures can grow is greatly eroded. Saline waters thin those shells. So when they sink in the end, they remove that much less carbon.

The halving of the overall carbon uptake in 10 short years is not a good trend. If it stays just linear then by the end of the next 20 years the uptake will be as little as 12.5% of what would be needed. However, because less uptake means more salinity which then means yet thinner shells, the trend is expected to feed back on itself. Further, yet thinner shells may no longer sink, only drift away and finally wash up. When those shells erode, the carbon is washed back into the waterways, soil and oceans increasing the salinity of all that.

So in case the trend is NOT linear, in just 20 years the uptake could reduce to just 3.125% of its original size. There in that period may actually come a point where shells could become so thin that they no longer sink at all. They would start drifting instead as it is not just the density of shells that matter but also the buoyancy of the water that would now keep them from sinking. Increasing storms would ensure huge braking waves and tornadoes sucking up then spitting the leftover CO2 into the lower atmosphere.

Notice that by this point, OCEANS COULD BE CO2 (or carbon dioxide) contributors. That level of salinity might start locally rotting a lot of surface plants such as sea weeds and such. And so OCEANS COULD BECOME CH4 (or methane) contributors. And that would be a big bad news as methane is much more potent greenhouse gas then carbon dioxide. Saline surface waters would also erode the thin shells now drifting and floating aimlessly there.

Weaker and weaker thermohaline circulation in the Atlantic could further exacerbate the trend as heavy and salty cold waters would not be available by then to still help with the sinking of critically thin shells.

By then oceans would no longer be refusing to mop up, but they would be net emitters of massive quantities of CO2 and possibly methane. We need to watch this disturbing trend VERY CLOSELY.

And regardless of what alarming data scientists measure, drastically reduce your personal carbon emission. If but one of us does not do it, the effort of all the rest of us becomes disrespected and soiled. Also mop up carbon individually as much as possible. The picture in 30-40 years is ain't pretty any way you cut it.

But if you don't stop engine when idle, don't walk or bike instead of any form of transport, cremate instead of burials and the list goes on, the picture is not likely to clear up after the PURGATORY of the next decades.

Do we really want to burn alive? Why bring Hell on Earth when it could be the stepping stone to Heaven.

The good thing about changing climate back is that path is now OPEN to ALL OF US. By the People, Of the People, for Mother Earth - All the Peoples Included.

Obama Stumbles - and Stays in Limbo

Presidential candidate and current Illinois senator Barack Obama has to be in two minds about dirty coal. He wants to get rid of it but he also wants to keep it. So now he is in limbo. With a little Bushism, Obama wants to "cleanify" the tainted coal. Via http://www.washingtonpost.com/../AR2007050701771.html

To do justice to the man, he is senator of the state that is already among the biggest dirty coal producers in the US. Not to mention that her yet unmined reserves would offer untold riches in energy production for Illinois. So how could Obama not support the good people of the State that gave Lincoln to the US. Would be unfair, wouldn't it.

The name of the game of course is clean coal, just so long as coal is still part of the plan. So Obama promptly proposes this course of actioan - he and others want call it coal-to-liquids - just as any sensible man in his place would do. He proposes a legislation in the senate to promote turning coal into liquid fuel for vehicles. He figures it is a win-win and who wouldn't.

"Obama wants to cleanify
tainted coal...?"

The problem it seems lay not with the assumption, but with the calculation. You see what it would do is keep dirty coal mining alive and well. And on the top of that a little other thing. That is the reminder of the process, the actual turning coal into liquids and then burning it to get from A to B would produce much more CO2 than the current processes for petroleum based fuel.

Why liquid coal is not the answer: http://www.nrdc.org/globalWarming/coal/liquids.pdf

Though the proposed amendment has been defeated once in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Obama still has the chance to introduce it again in the Senate. The proposed Act is called the Coal-to-Liquid Fuel Promotion Act of 2007. And to be true to its intention it would give federal loans for the planning and permitting of such processing plants, federal guarantees for construction loans, and tax credits.

The intention is novel. The problem is once again, a key lawmaker lacking the acumen and discipline of a scientist. Not his fault though.

We now live the time of Governing Certainties. See the consequences of it and the premises here and here. Politicians in government and aspiring for government are Lawmakers or at the very least folks trained in handling adversary, which is what the human nature.

Problem is, Nature is NOT adversarial, it is simply uncertain. It always has been. And very few scientists are actually trained in listening to the rapidly evolving uncertainties of today. I stress uncertainties, not facts or statistics. Even less from the current breed of lawmakers can handle the advice of such scientists in a truly constructive manner.

The Path to Changing Climate Back is Nature's Republic.

Obama still has the chance to do something remotely like that. And if he wants to give a bigger role in solving environmental problems and possible downpours of fortune to his home State - So be it, right ... ? Only it seems if the report by the Natural Resources Defense Council is anything to go by, transport and coal has to be separated, not linked.

So to sum up ...

Obama doesn't run away from responsibility. He just running in the wrong direction.