In the discussion with Timothy Burke following the post Flesh Wounds - and other places too, it was a somewhat peripatetic conversation - my view that politics is a distraction from and impediment to governance, that politicians are necessarily unethical, and that those who focus on politics fail to do useful analysis or make sensible choices puzzled Timothy. He says:

I'm really just puzzled by the degree to which you think that everyone else who is interested in "politics" in some way that you are not must be operating from hidden motives, bad-faith instrumentalisms, superficialities, rather than long-established, internally consistent and principled arguments with which you happen to seriously disagree. The latter wouldn't bother me for a minute. The former, as a fairly blanketing and generic assumption, bothers me intensely and seems deeply contradictory to the specificity and depth of many other postings.

This post isn't a response to Timothy's puzzlement (not that I accept his characterization), I'm still working on that, but it's related and may be referenced in the response when completed.

I got an email today from a fellow trolling for links. That's not unusual though it has always seemed bizarre, a gross violation of the spirit of ICT, spam in other words. The spammer, Calvin Jones in Scotland, says:

Dear Sir,
I have recently created a blog dedicated to climate change. It is called "Climate Change Action", and when you search for the tag climate at technorati it apears as the second most authoritative site ( # links to?). Your site, as you probably know comes up second under this search term. Please take a look at my site, and the sister sites climate change resources and climate change news. If you think any of them are worth linking to then please do. I would be more than happy to place recipricol links on any of the sites you link to.

Yours truly, Calvin Jones

http://climatechangeaction.blogspot.com

I looked at the blog and found that is says nothing at all about "Climate Change Action". It's about politics and nothing else. It seems to be a competent political site full of tips and advice from an active activist, but it has nothing to do with climate change, and the advocated actions are merely political organizing. The things advocated will make climate change worse. For example this post advising activists on the etiquette of grovelling before politicians advises:

Tips ? Don't ask them questions, or you will get a load of waffle for most of the meeting. Take the lead and use a presentation or notes to structure your input. Let them get involved in discussion and questions later in the meeting. Be informative, objective, honest, present science and possible future scenarios graphically. Try to quantify and give reliable estimates. "There is a massive potential for biodiesel in Scotland" does not add to a politician's understanding. "Using current set aside land and 10% of the arable crop area currently growing malting barley to grow rape seed for oil, could replace around 20% of Scotland's current domestic consumption of diesel." is more helpful, and may make the listener more able to consider other possibly more unfamiliar and unpalatable figures and analysis. Know your material, but be honest if you don't know something..say you will get back to them with an answer."

Decent advice on grovelling, but terrible advice on climate change action. The UK produces little more the half of its food and fiber needs now. The rest is imported. The energy, water and other resources used to produce those goods and transport them to the UK - which adds up to a significant climate impact in a variety of ways - are chargeable to the UK when doing green accounting and effective climate change thinking. The dumbest thing the UK can do is to increase those imports, yet that is precisely what converting food crops to biodiesel production will do.

This highlights the difference between politics and governance. Calvin is a political thinker who seeks to address a techno-social problem by inciting a group of people, none of whom have a clue about the issues, to band together and force society to do ... well, they don't really have a good handle on that but they have some ideas that may sell well, that are buzz word compliant.

Someone thinking of governance would gather a lot more information and seek to optimize the various needs of society, which are sometimes at cross purposes and always intricately related. The information would be partly technical but also social. No policy that is grossly harmful to a segment of society will succeed even if it does bring huge joy to another segment. Such policies create problems rather than solve them, though the consequences may not become dire for years.

When we look at the popular political sites that claim to have something to do with the environment, they are all like this. Their environmentalism is stunningly bad in the sense of being ineffective at best, counterproductive at worst, and all of their creative energies are channeled to political exercises.