cspawn

[This is a cross-post from Adapt Already]

Under the amusing headline, “Politics Ruins Everything,” Andrew Sullivan has posted two quotations that form an interesting dialog about the political viability of cap and trade policies vs. a carbon tax.

Yglesias makes a fair point:

Their basic point, that the kind of carbon tax proposal that policy wonks would dream up would be superior policy to the kind of cap-and-trade plan that would result from the compromises necessary to get 60 votes in the Senate, is very true. But by the same token, the kind of cap-and-trade proposal that policy wonks would dream up would be superior policy to the kind of carbon tax plan that would result from the compromises necessary to get 60 votes in the Senate.

Drum interjects:

In the near term, no serious carbon tax will ever pass the U.S. Senate.  Period.  If you believe otherwise, you’re just not paying attention to things.  A big part of the surge in interest in a carbon tax is purely cynical, coming from special interests who are afraid a carbon cap might actually pass and want to muddy the waters with pseudo-liberal arguments in order to build an anti-C&T alliance and keep anything at all from passing.  There are plenty of carbon tax advocates who are perfectly sincere, but I gotta tell them: you’re being played by people who are the farthest thing imaginable from sincere.  If you win, we’re not going to get a carbon tax.  We’re going to get nothing.

I imagine the same dynamics exist here in Australia (correct me if I’m wrong!). The Opposition is now hinting at all sorts of alternatives (e.g. nuclear, green tax credits, and “biosequestration”) to Rudd’s ETS, and it is hard to tell whether these proposals are sincere, or simply meant to (further) weaken the Labour policy (the ETS).

The dialog above is flawed in that it constrains our choices. The types of targets and carbon trading schemes recently proposed in the US, UK, and Australia are toothless, unrealistic, or both. If we’re choosing between nothing and these policies, then our choice is really between “nothing” and a more complex and expensive “nothing.”

Sullivan concludes that “when nothing is revealed as insufficient, maybe a better solution will emerge.” But there are already other choices which involve adopting a different perspective. For example, the Breakthrough Institute argues that we need to do away with these complex attempts at reaching abstract targets, and focus on direct investment in the kinds of technology that will actually help with the problem:

Transhumanists have nice legs. Don’t believe me? See for yourself. I stumbled upon this video after attending a CNS occasional talk by Joel Garreau. Garreau has written about the future of cities, in Edge Cities, and the future of technology, in Radical Evolution (what he calls the GRIN technologies — genomics, robotics, IT, nano). His talk yesterday combined these two topics in a very interesting discussion on, well, technology and the future of cities. He’s asking not just how technology will (and is) transforming the form of cities but also how it is changing and interacting with our culture and values. I’m not going to sum up his talk in any details here, but essentially the upshot of his argument is that once we have managed to digitize everything we can, the only things that will remain, and the only reason cities will remain important, is for face-to-face human social interaction (something he argues that technology cannot fully replace). His thesis of course set off an intense discussion among the crowd and one that almost immediately became polarized much to my dissappointment. In hopes of overcoming my frustration over what could have been an interesting discussion after the talk yesterday, I thought I’d post some of my thoughts here (please discuss!).

I think many people in the audience last night might have to scratch their heads a bit after viewing the video I mentioned above.  Those who initial reaction to certain potential impacts of the GRIN technologies might be “no, you can’t do that, you can’t change what it means to be human.”  But what if innovation and adaptivity is also human (which, no doubt it is). It seems like the “humanistic” side (for lack of a better word at the moment as Luddite is also a mischaracterization) is arguing that you can’t change what it is to be human, while also missing that innovation/adaptability and progress (however defined at the time) is also human; while the “technocrats” (also for lack of a better word) can fall into viewing technology as a wave that will just wash over us all which is also missing human adaptability, but this time how humans adapt their environments (including technology) in ways no one can ever foresee and in ways that often accentuate the humanity in us (as is the case in Aimee Mullins’ legs).

Another point that I’m wondering about (and wondering if anyone is exploring) are some of the justice/power issues related to GRIN technologies. Garreau made the point that Moore’s law also dictates that technology that is, for example, $1 million today can be had in 10 or 15 years for $100. But what about the people (or nations) that can afford the technology at $10,000 or $1,000 (which will be a very small percentage of humanity). Not only will they have an advantage (which already happens with past/existing technology), but I have the feeling that much of the potential future technology will be of the character such that those who get it early will have an incentive to hoard it rather than share it and thereby both have an advantage and put others to a further disadvantage.  This is different from much of IT technology as it seems to make sense to share it for better communication, to make more money, etc. — i.e., you can actually gain more power by having the internet spread… having privliged access and closed off doesn’t give you more power (I think). It was the same with railroads. Ownership the rails and the railroad companies was concentrated. But the technology itself and it’s benefits were disperse (both geographically and in terms of farmers being able to bring their goods to market, etc). [I'm of course glossing over a lot of complex dynamics here.]  But what happens when you can gain more power and make more money by not sharing/spreading the technology…