George Monbiot speculates on reasons for the spread of climate change denial.
There is no point in denying it: we’re losing. Climate change denial is spreading like a contagious disease.
There are some obvious answers … But there might also be a less intuitive reason, which shines a light into a fascinating corner of human psychology ..
Guardian gagged from reporting UK parliament:
The Guardian has been prevented from reporting parliamentary proceedings on legal grounds which appear to call into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1688 Bill of Rights.
Update: Trafigura drops bid to gag Guardian over MP’s question.
Could be interesting. Jon Henley for The Guardian:
The Metropolitan police have announced a new strategy for next week’s Climate Camp – putting women officers in charge of the operation. Will this avoid the violence seen at the G20 protests?
Perhaps the most noted American researcher into gender differences in policing, Joseph Balkin, observed that “policemen tend to see police work as involving control through authority, while policewomen see it as public service”. In some respects at least, he concluded, “women are better suited for police work than men.”
Maybe this strategy should be transposed to international politics?
Andrew Clark writing for The Guardian: “Rupert Murdoch said quality journalism is not cheap and so he intends to charge for all his websites,” including the Times, The Sun and the News of the World.
Two comments.
“Blair in frame to become first EU president, says Glenys Kinnock.”
A war criminal as president of Europe? I think the accompanying comments tell the real story.
Costa Rica is the greenest and happiest country in the world, according to a new list that ranks nations by combining measures of their ecological footprint with the happiness of their citizens.1
And, surprise surprise, unlike places like Britain and the U.S. (which figure low on the index) Costa Rica is run by left-wingers not self-serving right-wingers, it has a strong welfare state, it uses proportional representation to elect its politician, not first past the post, and as opposed to sending its youth off to die in illegal wars for the benefit of a wealthy elite Costa Rica abolished its army back in 1948.
But you keep voting for right-wing war-mongering plonkers if that makes you feel better…2
HPI report on Costa Rica:
Notes:With the highest levels of reported life satisfaction, and the highest happy life years – Costa Rica stands out in the HPI even before considering its ecological footprint. It has the fifth-lowest human poverty index in the developing world, and the proportion of people living on less than $2-a-day is lower than in Romania – an EU member. What makes these results even more remarkable is that it achieves this with a quarter of the footprint of the USA. This is no matter of chance. Costa Rica, a haven of democracy and peace in turbulent Central America, has taken very deliberate steps to reduce its environmental impact. Unique in the world for having combined its ministries of energy and the environment back in the 1970s, a staggering 99 per cent of its energy comes from renewable sources. In 1997, a carbon tax was introduced on emissions – with the funds gained being used to pay indigenous communities to protect their surrounding forests. Deforestation has been reversed, and forests cover twice as much land as 20 years ago. In 2007, the Costa Rican Government declared that it intended to become carbon neutral by 2021. As a result of these huge steps, Costa Rica has risen up the ranks of Yale University’s Environmental Performance Indicator, from 15th in the world in 2006 to 5th in 2008, the highest position outside Europe. Professor Mariano Rojas, a Costa Rican economist at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences in Mexico, is unsurprised by his country’s performance and adds a few further explanations:
- The abolition of the country’s army in 1949, freeing up government money to spend on social programmes.
- Solid social networks of friends, families and neighbourhoods, allowed by a sensible work-life balance.
- Rich natural capital.
- Equal treatment of women.
- Strong political participation.
Costa Rica is not heaven. Its welfare state, one of the most developed outside Scandinavia, must deal with an economic system that produces high levels of inequality, and almost 10 per cent of the population live on under $2-a-day. Clean water and adult literacy are almost universal, but not quite. And, whilst we wait with bated breath to see if Costa Rica really does move towards being carbon neutral in forthcoming HPIs, its current ecological footprint is still eight per cent above the one-planet living threshold.
In a devastating interview with George Monbiot Hazel Blears pulls this lovely comment out of the bag, regarding the decision to invade Iraq:
Despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of people have died — and that is a tragedy — I still believe that it was the right thing to do.
If there was a hell Hazel Blears would surely burn in it.
The whole interview is worth watching. She’s a good example of the kind of spineless person who makes their way into the major political parties simply to be in power.
Her statement on Iraq reminds me of Madeleine Albright, who in 1996, then the U.S. Secretary of State, was asked by Leslie Stahl on 60 Minutes what she felt about the fact that half a million Iraqi children had died as a result of U.S.-led economic sanctions. Albright replied, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it.”
On 18 March 2009 Sean Hodgson walked free after his conviction was quashed, having spent 27 years in prison.
… when compensation is finally paid out, the government, unbelievably, docks room and board, or “saved living expenses” calculated on the basis of what a frugal person might have spent on their own upkeep if they were free. “As if you voluntarily popped into the local prison,” says Young, contemptuously. “Yes, it would have cost them something to live — but you’ve taken their liberty. If you can afford £50bn to bail out a bank you can afford to compensate someone for 27 years in prison.” McManus estimates that Hodgson will pay a minimum of £100,000 for the privilege. The appeal was paid for by legal aid, but it does not cover the process of applying for compensation. And so he will have to pay legal fees too.
“It’s like [the state is] projecting some of the responsibility back on to the individual,” says Turnbull. “As if he should have made a better job of proving his own innocence and not allowed the system to make the mistake it did. It’s like accusing a rape victim of being provocative, spreading the responsibility beyond those who should be taking it. He should have been set free immediately, compensated magnificently and put through a system to restore him to as near his normal self as possible, and yet none of things are happening.”
Marina Hyde on New Labour’s relationship with money:
It is difficult to think of a more perfect testament to New Labour’s intellectual shallows. On the eve of the most deadly serious budget in decades, Gordon Brown posts a YouTube video in which he announces he has scheduled some inquiry — pre-empting debate about MPs’ expenses. It might as well have been captioned “I can haz bathplug?”.
MPs’ expenses are a cross-party blight, of course. But when historians come to assess this edifying period for our democracy, they may well remark upon what a pity it was that certain members who were so fastidious about their personal outgoings were so profligate and laissez-faire with the public purse. Olympic overspends, a couple of wars – they waved through the lot while perusing the John Lewis electricals catalogue.
New Labour just looked like … well, small-time crooks is the expression … And in the end, it’s the smallness of these people that you can’t get away from.