Plusgood post, comrade! You are a fullwise goodthinker. On reflection I find your words goodthinkwise to be more than duckspeak; they are true goodwise blackwhite, plusgood bellyfeel.

I guess I am just an ungood oldthinker, trolling stupidwise, hanging cultwise onto plusungood ownlife ideals. The thought police should send me speedwise to Room 101!

Doubleplusgood New Year!

But this right to property is not as absolute as ideologists on this site would like you to think. Property rights are cultural conventions, codified in laws that change over time to reflect changes in the culture. There is no way to pussyfoot around the notion that the libertarians here are saying that new laws the regulate markets do subtly or not so subtly change the rights that people have to use their property. I’m just saying that this is not the end of property rights or the world, unlike these libertarian chicken littles who shriek bloody murder if you suggest a new law or tax. You need to acknowledge that this is the case but it is not nearly the big deal that those who claim that it is the end…just explain to them in “property rights” terms what the change will entail.

There is general mistrust of government officials speaking in these terms because people are afraid of an absolutist government that will mistreat them and their property. People need to be vigilant about government abuse but I think we have gone too far in our country, given too much regard for property absolutists who have had the ear of the most powerful people in the US for around 25 years.

These absolutists have provided ideological cover for backwards-looking industries and moneyed interests who have used these objections to strike fear in ordinary people about what are really moderate or pragmatic uses of government to better the general welfare. You hear the libertarian folks here scoff about how impure Bush etc. are, but their ideology has been one of the covers for the ongoing corruption of the government and its alliance with among others the extractive industries. What I called in another post “the cult of liberty” is part of a set of political incantations that need to be thoroughly set in a new light: they have functioned as a cover for greed and un-freedom of most people who are left with fewer choices in a fragmented country in a more debt-ridden economy, wedded to the past.

Somehow we need to de-fragment but these fellows who sing the praises of unregulated markets and libertarianism contribute further to that fragmentation. The government can help us do that, though it certainly is not the only venue within which that can happen.

Anything we want to do should include as much freedom to make the individual choices as possible. Somehow if we are to make progress on dealing with the carbon dioxide problem, we have to make sure that it isn’t about changing peoples lives other than to fix the problem.

The problem we are currently facing in our society is that the human capability to plan for the future as a group is denied us by the political strength (but moral and intellectual bankruptcy) of this ideology. Corporations and individuals should continue to have the ability to plan the disposition of their own private properties but what happens to those aspects of life that exceed the bounds of anyone’s private property? Can we still have the ability to “plan”, to use our ability to observe the world, draw conclusions and strategize accordingly as a group of people? Or is this forbidden to us by the “laws of the market” that require planning to end at the boundaries of our respective properties?

It would be great if people could get together a form a non-governmental cooperative that would be able to project common interests and needs that go beyond each of our parochial interests. But that would be re-inventing the political wheel at a point in time when it appears as though, for some purposes, the government is adequate enough, if people get behind it and hold it accountable for the changes they want to happen.

S&N are trying to sidestep the political questions by saying that technology innovation will fix it all. There is a chance that this may happen but this is not likely. They are accommodating themselves to the Reagan-Bush political tradition that has proscribed government action as ipso facto ineffective.

We do need to express joint purpose that goes beyond individual interests (though may not contradict those interests and for many will support and enrich those interests) whether through government policy or some other means. Right now, the US political scene doesn’t allow for that kind of expression of joint interests: people accuse you of being anti-market or anti-business in often slanderous ways. In other countries, they have less of a problem with the government doing things. We need to recover some of this unproblematic acceptance that government is a necessary evil that may actually do some good. Otherwise we are up sh*t’s creek without the proverbial paddle.

You’re right that it doesn’t describe the people, but that is what representative government is suppose to take care of. We’ve got no chance without sometime in the future we elect representatives who can sell us on a way out of the global warming mess. Governments determine the rules to the economic game and without favorable rules to limit carbon fossil fuel energies and replace that with non carbon energy, we may not get anywhere.
None of what I wrote meant we should remove any of the freedoms already in the political system, only that we do what should be done and slow the amount of carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere.

One explanation I have read is that a role of government is to steer, while the role of industry is to row. Government can give a direction that we should move towards and it’s up to industry to do the work that needs to be done.

Can moving to reduced carbon energy sources be done without some regulation and/or incentives? Probably not, probably not until those sources are greatly exhausted and the cost increases because of that exhaustion. By that time we will have changed the climate to the hotter climate. Just like it requires regulations to force companies and individuals to not pollute rivers, lakes and the air, to not add the carbon dioxide to the atmosphere for the avoid the hotter planet, some government action is required. And that’s for governments around the world to do the same thing.

We need the governments to steer in the right direction of reduced use of carbon energy sources. Given regulations and incentives to do go in the right direction, industry can do the rowing of changing the energy we use to clean non carbon sources.

Is government inherently bad? Some argue that it is. But it is just like any tool. It can be good and it can be bad. Examples of a tool being at different times being good and bad are numerous. A person can us a Gun to hunt for recreation or to feed a family, or to kill without just cause. A jail can be used to lock up someone who is a threat to society or to lock up someone who is completely innocent of a crime, but the justice system made a tragic mistake in a guilty verdict.

A government can be good if it protects us from bad. A climate that is much hotter than the one we have now, which changes where we have farmland into desserts and rivers and lakes into dry gulches is bad and it is something we should try to avoid. For that we need some government.