25
Aug
2021
Murphy Twin Spin
==> I critique the “climate plans” of the 4 major Canadian federal parties.
==> BMS ep 212: The Nixon Shock Was Only the Final Nail in the Coffin of the Gold Dollar.
==> I critique the “climate plans” of the 4 major Canadian federal parties.
==> BMS ep 212: The Nixon Shock Was Only the Final Nail in the Coffin of the Gold Dollar.
Bob Murphy wrote,
According to Worldometer, there are about 7.8 billion people on Earth right now. I think claiming to speak for all of them is a mistake.
According to historians, Xerxes of Persia made a similar mistake when invading Greece. (Not that I am saying that you are leading an army to invade a country… but anyway.) At least according to Herodotus (and many modern historians seem inclined to take Herodotus’ word), Xerxes thought it laughable to think that the Spartans were preparing to do or die against such overwhelming odds. (Xerxes had a very large army.) But it turns out that a lot of Spartans really were prepared to die defending Greece from Xerxes’ army, and many indeed did so. Note that I am not endorsing Spartan culture… the Spartans were in many ways awful, e.g. how they treated the helots. But they did have a way of thinking and acting that was outside of how Xerxes expected them to think and act (at least according to Herodotus). Xerxes argument (at least as described by Herodotus), if I understand it, was essentially that no human being would be willing to sacrifice their life to oppose his army. He was wrong. (Or else, Herodotus was wrong about Xerxes.)
I heard about the thing with Xerxes in “The Rise of Athens” by Anthony Everitt, (“heard” because I have the audiobook version), but there is similar information online here, in the section, “Persians Wait at Thermopylae, Expected the Greeks to Give Up”
https://factsanddetails.com/world/cat56/sub366/entry-6406.html#chapter-11
Throughout history, there have been various people willing to risk their lives to fight for causes they believed in. These people have used a wide variety of tactics, to fight for a wide variety of causes, but risking one’s life to fight for a cause than one believes in is a common theme that recurs throughout history. And, if history had produced many people willing to risk their lives to fight for causes they believed in, then there must have been an even greater number willing to risk their quality of life (at least, when defined in material terms) for causes they believed in. And, taking that into the present, I would assume there are some number of such people still alive today. Less than 7.8 billion, but greater than 0.
Another point is that not “everybody” on the planet is actually benefitting from the environmental destruction in question (even in material terms), and, therefore, not “everybody” would actually lose out (even in material terms) by stopping it. E.g. there are people in Nigeria testifying that their farms and land are being destroyed, people are getting sick, women miscarrying, etc, and it’s because of gas flaring by companies like Shell. These aren’t people who are benefitting from the environmental destruction, even in strictly material terms. These are people being harmed.
See:
topdocumentaryfilms [dot] com/poison-fire/
If you’re trying to argue in terms of what is “realistic”, then perhaps it would make more sense to talk about what the “people in power” (which includes a significant percentage of the population of “first world” countries such as Canada) would agree to, rather than what “everybody else on Earth” would agree to. E.g., I imagine the common people in Nigeria would agree to all kinds of things that would involve them being left alone, but people in power might not agree to leave them alone. Even then, moral revolutions can happen quite suddenly, so I still think it’s unwise to try to predict what people in power might agree to in the future — even if it means giving up a lot of that power and material quality of life.
For information about moral revolutions happening suddenly, see:
theguardian [dot] com/books/2010/oct/30/simon-blackburn-honor-code-review
(Or better yet, see the actual book; that’s only a link to the review.)
On second thought, I retract this sentence, and suggest instead that while it’s probably okay to try to predict what people in power might agree to in the future, such predictions should probably be disclaimed with words like, “probably”.
Because while people in power (at least speaking in statistical terms) generally suck, and are deserving of criticism, they can occasionally surprise you.
Also, perhaps even more to the point: maybe grassroots activists who feel strongly about things, shouldn’t limit themselves to only considering things that people in power are likely to agree to.
E.g. if if the Marcionites had been worried about what people in power were likely to agree to, and allowed this to limit their activism, this probably would have stopped them from helping to free ensl*ved people. But, apparently, they weren’t too concerned about what people in power were likely to agree to, and helped to free ensl*ved people anyway.
http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1015-87582016000200014
Alright, so to contextualize the quote I previously replied to, it was in the paragraph after Bob Murphy wrote,
And then in the next paragraph, Bob Murphy goes on,
So, focusing on this part,
Your argument would make more sense if we presumed that the NDP and Green Party were pure climate change activists, and didn’t actually care about any environmental or related human rights issues aside from climate change. Given the number of people who are presumably part of the NDP and Green Party, that’s an unlikely presumption. Even more unlikely given that the proposed plan evidently does involve not supporting nuclear.
Although I can’t know exactly what is going through the heads of all of these people, opposing nuclear power makes sense from a human rights perspective. Uranium mining has been a major human rights issue since even before the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The majority of the uranium that was used to make the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki came from a sl*ve labor mine in Shinkolobwe
in the Belgian Congo. You can confirm this by reading Chapter 1 of Tom Zoellner’s “Uranium: War, Energy, and the Rock That Shaped the World”. Tom Zoellner cites an OSS Pouch letter. The OSS was a precursor to the CIA. So, apparently this pre-CIA US governmental agency was aware of the atrocity being committed, and still accepted the uranium. The corporation responsible was Union Minière du Haut-Katanga.
Tom Zoellner does not go into much detail about the sl*ve labor system of Union Minière du Haut-Katanga or in the Belgian Congo more generally, but Jules Marchal does, in “Forced Labor In The Gold & Copper Mines: A History Of Congo Under Belgian Rule, 1910-1945, Volume I”. Jules Marchal does not mention the uranium mine; however, I believe that information was heavily classified until fairly recently, so he probably just didn’t know about that detail. In any case, Jules Marchal provides compelling evidence that Union Minière du Haut-Katanga committed crimes against humanity in the course of their mining operations, which also included copper mining. As for the system of sl*ve labor, suffice it so say that although it was a very different type of sl*very from what happened during the transatlantic sl*ve trade, it still fell under the international legal definition of sl*very, and resulted in the deaths of many of the laborers.
The uranium mining that happened in the United States also had serious human rights problems. Although I do not believe the Navajo uranium miners would be classified as sl*ves under the international legal definition of sl*very, what happened with them wasn’t informed consent either. They weren’t told about the danger the uranium posed to them. And considering the history of how the United States has treated native peoples, it very likely happened under duress, i.e. after much of their land had been stolen. In fact, historically, Navajos were ensl*ved by others in New Mexico, even before New Mexico became part of the United States. (I believe this was against Mexican law, but happened in spite of the law.) The failure to pay reparations for that, thus leaving the descendants of the ensl*ved people in economic distress, is a type of duress.
Anyway, see:
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/230916/summary
for a brief discussion of the human rights issues involved with the Navajo uranium mining.
Nuclear “accidents” and nuclear waste disposal also pose significant human rights issues. The Chernobyl disaster is famous, of course… but there have been quite a number of them.
theguardian [dot] com/news/datablog/2011/mar/14/nuclear-power-plant-accidents-list-rank
And dumping nuclear waste into the ocean, as Japan is apparently doing, poses serious human rights concerns for people who live by the ocean and/or earn a living fishing or doing other things in the ocean.
stripes [dot] com/theaters/asia_pacific/2021-08-28/why-japan-dumping-water-fukushima-into-sea-2697492.html
Japan isn’t the only place where unsafe nuclear waste dumping practices have been noted. In Russia, nuclear waste has been dumped into a river, causing serious human rights issues.
concordmonitor [dot] com/Russia-s-nuclear-nightmare-flows-down-radioactive-river-1834751
Poisoning people with nuclear waste is assault-and-battery by poison. (And murder, if it can be proven to have caused deaths.)
If I believe that assault and battery is immoral, and I understand these things, then, by extension, I should also consider nuclear power to be immoral.
Furthermore, this is the same sort of moral reasoning I use when I argue that oil and natural gas are immoral. Oil and gas are acquired by means of assault and battery against people around the world, including Nigeria. To the extent that this sometimes results in death, we should understand that oil and gas are sometimes acquired by means of murder.
I realize, of course, that in a culture where assault and battery, and murder, have become normalized, that it can be very hard to disentangle oneself from these moral issues. That it’s effectively impossible to lead a moral life while living someplace like the United States or Canada. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.
According to Socrates, as quoted by Plato, and translated by someone else, “To talk daily about what makes us good, and to question myself and others, is the greatest thing man can do. For the unexamined life is not worth living.” Although it is difficult to be sure exactly what someone who lived over 2000 years ago meant, my interpretation of this is that although none of us has achieved perfect enlightenment, and are thus incapable of leading perfect lives, we should still strive every day to become better and more enlightened.
I think this is relevant, in so far as, even though most US residents, and Canadian residents too, I presume, have forgotten how to live without fossil fuels and nuclear energy, and the assault and battery that goes with them, we still ought to try.