Ideology & the Environment in the Bahamas

by Larry Smith

“If everything isn't black and white, I say, 'why the hell not?'" --John Wayne

Why can't Tough Call have it both ways?

The response of Laura Huggins to my review of her recent presentation for the Nassau Institute reminds me of a criticism levelled against me a few years ago: "First he says yes, then he says no, then he says yes again," my exasperated critic said at the time. "Why can't he make up his flipping mind?"

Well, for two main reasons. First, I explore and try to contextualise the issues for a local audience. And although I may offer my own reasonable analysis based on research and experience, that is rather different (if I may say so) from talking off the top of my head and doling out a hefty portion of personal opinion and spite every week.

Second, I happen to be of the view that we do not live in a black and white world. And unlike John Wayne I don't believe we can, or should, try to force it to be that way. When I was younger I had a different view, but these days I am more drawn to the lyrics from that 1993 Billy Joel song: "Black and white is how it should be, but shades of grey are the colours I see.”

Unfortunately, it's easier for most of us to adhere to one ideology, or belief system, or propaganda line over another. As the French writer Louis Aragon put it "Light is meaningful only in relation to darkness, and truth presupposes error...We only exist in this conflict, in the zone where black and white clash."

Aragon was a communist, who incidentally died a few years before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. But his characterisation can apply equally to the views of ideologues on the left or right, to fundamentalists of any religion, and to political propagandists of any stripe. It is their task to reduce complex, multi-faceted issues to rigid black and white doctrine.

The constant feuding between Bahamian political parties is a case in point. If you accept the stuff that spews from the mouths of Bradley Roberts and Carl Bethel, you will have a pretty stark view of our political continuum. It's a wonder that Perry Christie ever gets out of bed to do anything, and it's even more amazing that Hubert Ingraham hasn't eaten all of his cabinet ministers yet.

During her presentation last week, Huggins (of the Montana-based Property & Environment Research Centre) spoke about the US legislation that flowed from the first Earth Day in 1970. She does not believe in planetary environment threats, and is convinced that the only way to address whatever hazards we do face is to eliminate all environmental laws and regulations and rely solely on "the powerful tools of the market."

"You may ask what's so wrong with regulation if our water and air quality are getting better?" she told the Nassau Institute audience last week. "Well, we have to ask at what cost and with what constraints? Some economists argue that the US could have achieved its present level (of environmental quality) at a quarter of the cost."

In her response to my article reviewing that presentation, Huggins asked: "Is your government so big that you can't see beyond an old-school regulatory approach? it is time to move fisheries management (and energy, forestry, waste, etc) in the Bahamas into the 21st century. With government trying to clumsily outperform these tasks at the taxpayers expense, enviropreneurs get crowded out."

Well, I have no problem at all with arguing for less government spending and fewer regulations - I frequently do so in my columns. It's certainly true that government can be inefficient and wasteful, not to mention corrupt. But that does not mean that environmental laws and regulations are necessarily bad, or that other approaches require excommunication. And neither does it mean that the existential environmental threats we face are all myths.

The point is that Huggins takes a black and white approach based on her ideology. And I object to the promotion of a political ideology by the manufacturing of doubt over the role of science in public policy - and there is a whole cottage industry out there doing just that. In fact, free market ideologues like to paint global warming as the biggest environmental myth of all.

Coincidentally, I attended a workshop on climate change earlier this week staged by the BEST Commission. Participants included representatives from government agencies and the Bahamas National Trust. It was part of a United Nations effort to come to grips with the realities of climate change around the world through a process known as vulnerability and adaptation analysis.

The Ministry of the Environment has earmarked half a million dollars for the BEST Commission to come up with a strategy "for effective response measures to climate change." And the biggest component of that strategy will be the computer modelling of climate change impacts on seven islands - New Providence, Abaco, Grand Bahama, Exuma, Eleuthera, Andros and Inagua.

"The government is on record as accepting that climate change is a reality, and that it is a threat to our economic and social viability," BEST Commission Chairman Phil Weech told the workshop. "We will have to invest significant resources to respond and adapt, and this meeting will give you the tools to better inform your decision-making."

Weech clearly hasn't got the message that Huggins et al are trying to send out. He is part of another cottage industry of NGOs and international agencies that are working out ways for countries to respond to the impending impacts of climate change in support of sustainable development.

Observations show that average global temperatures have been rising since 1850. And March was the warmest month ever recorded. In fact, 11 of the last 12 years are the warmest on record. The world scientific conclusion is that warming is unequivocal, due to an increase in human-produced greenhouse gases.

As a result, we can expect stronger hurricanes, bigger storm surges, less rainfall, the death of coral reefs, more coastal erosion, flooding, disease and pests. The effect of sea level rise on settlements and infrastructure along our coasts will be significant.

Workshop participants are being trained all week in a special computer programme that factors local weather and tide data into regional climate change scenarios to produce impact models designed to help planners and policymakers better understand the potential risks.

The good news is that arguments over climate change now focus on policy measures rather than basic science. Most agree that further warming is now unavoidable, the big questions are how much and how should we adapt to it?

The bad news is that what many scientists once imagined would be a long, gradual warming over centuries is turning into a runaway process that will affect our daily lives much sooner than we thought - and could lead to a disastrous tipping point.

Should we seek to present a balanced debate between a scientific view representing 95 per cent of scientific opinion against the remaining 5 per cent funded by the oil and coal industries? Or, like John Wayne said, is this be a black and white issue?

Comments

[Rick Lowe]

Very well written as usual Larry.
I hasten to add though that Laura Huggins and PERC rely on research as well.
That aside, very few minutes of her presentation was about Global Warming/Climate Change and your readers can watch it at You Tube at this link: http://bit.ly/cBXrAX
I think she did agree that earth is warming and has warmed 1 degree over the last one hundred years and that human carbon emissions is the smallest quantity of those emissions creating this warming effect.
She also recommended we adapt (is this where the two pints of view converge?) and referred us to read Cool It by Bjorn Lomborg. Info can be found here: http://bit.ly/16TKU

[larry smith]

Dr. Frank Ackerman of Tufts University wrote a detailed analysis for the peer-reviewed journal Climatic Change, outlining the many errors and biases in Lomborg's book.

http://www.ase.tufts.edu/gdae/Pubs

Tom Burke, a visiting professor at Imperial and University Colleges, London, reviewed Lomborg's Copenhagen Consensus in the (Manchester) Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2004/oct/23/environment.science

Here's an excerpt:

"The faith-based politics of the new right consistently claims the authority of science or economics whilst ignoring any evidence that does not conform to its pre-judgments."