Why Australia should end mandatory detention

Have you driven across the West Gate Bridge (in Melbourne) lately? You'll no doubt have noticed the suicide barriers that they've been building along both sides of it for the last few months now. These things have cost $20 million and are supposed to prevent people jumping off the bridge to commit suicide, and you know what? They'll no doubt work. Once they're finished we'll be able to say goodbye to the days when every three weeks someone was jumping off the bridge to their death. Mission accomplished yes?

Actually, no.

Some 2,500 suicides occur in Australia every year. So about one in a hundred of them occur on the West Gate Bridge. I can guarantee you that, while suicides off the bridge will stop, suicides off the Rialto, or along train lines, or in someone's garage with a gun or a piece of rope, will take up the slack (no pun intended). That $20 million would much more wisely have been spent on mental health programs or something else that might actually make a difference, and not just appear to be making a difference. You could go so far as to call it a flaw in our democratic system.

So, how's this tie into detention?

Mandatory detention as a deterrent to asylum seekers has historically failed and it wasn't until the Howard government started offshore processing and other even harsher measures that a serious drop in asylum seeker numbers seemed to occur (at the very least its controversial). But basically, if we reintroduced such policies, then that might stop the boats right? So mission accomplished yes?

Again, no.

There are more than 42 million displaced people worldwide. Including 16 million who've fled not only their homes but their home country and are recognised as legal refugees. About one in a thousand flee to Australia. I can guarantee you that building a giant concrete wall topped with automatic lazers, motion sensors and patrolled by man-eating sharks would keep out refugees just fine, but then some other country will inevitably be hosting the few thousand refugees that we've abandoned. The billions of dollars we spend deterring desperate refugees would much better be spent on foreign aid, charity and actually trying to solve the root of the problem, not just creating the illusion that 'stopping the boats' to Australia will actually acheive anything. We are a neighborhood of people lobbying to erect those barriers on the bridge above us, at a huge cost to ourselves, without thinking of the international implications, like what happens to the people living under the bridge the next suburb over.

This is why the UN originally wrote up the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. Its a global issue, and just like how individual countries putting tariffs on foreign goods disadvantages us all in the long run and how climate change can only be dealt with if everyone pulls their weight, individual countries having harsh policies on refugees just exacerbates the overall problem. Its a global issue, like how having a central authority to maintain order (the police) or respond to emergencies (fire department) is more efficient and effective in a community than individuals trying to deal with widespread disaster themselves. On an issue like this, we should aim to maximise, not minimise, cooperation, and we should condemn our government for pandering to the selfishness of the One Nation mob just to win elections. Unfortunately, hate sells better than cooperation. 'Stop the Boats' fits on a bumper sticker, while the entirety of the reasoning required to make any major decision doesn't. Asylum seekers in this country are indeed locked up for political reasons, not sensible ones.

But wait, what's that you say? If we open our borders, then people will stream in and take all our jobs, live off the dole (what both at once???) and marginalise our culture?
I basically agree, we need sensible immigration laws, but let us not forget we are talking about refugees. Just as no one wants to grow up to commit suicide, no one wants to grow up to be a refugee. If someone comes here by boat and is found to not be a refugee, than yes, kick them to the back of the line. But if they are, as 80-90% of boat people are found to be, then let them in after a short stay in detention (remember, there used to be a limit of 273 days when the policy was introduced in 1992, but Keating removed it in 1994) for medical checks, then house them in the community and give them the chance to live and work here, maybe even learn English, without being behind barbed wire while their status is verified. Even if they are found not to be refugees, if they behave themselves, then we should at least consider giving them the benefit of the doubt. Every other month we hear of suicides and riots in detention centres, we don't need to stand by and watch this happen.

Also, to put things even more into perspective, as of 2010 there are worldwide about 2,887,123 Afghan refugees alone. Surely a significant portion of them are currently lounging about on Christmas Island? Well if you don't count the 1.74 million currently in Pakistan, the 1 million in Iran, the 30,000 in Germany, the 24,000 in Britain, the 10,000 in Holland, the 8,000 in India and the 6,000 in Austria, then yes, a significant portion of desperate, persecuted Afghanis who've lived through 30 years of civil war are living in Australia, 5,654 to be precise.

But isn't it dangerous for boat people to come to Australia?

Is it particularly dangerous? To return to the West Gate Bridge analogy, do we live under a particularly low bridge from which many people will survive the fall and horribly maim themselves? (ok, so the analogy is starting to get a little flimsy) Surely even the perilous journey to Australia is less hazardous then living in a refugee camp in war-torn Pakistan or in a decrepit migrants camp in Malaysia? I remember Andrew Bolt's rant on MTR after the Christmas Island boat tragedy last December, in which at least 30 people died. According to him, the government had 'blood on its hands' for not going to greater efforts to turn back the boats. But again, this returns us to our earlier point. Nobody wants to be a refugee. This is the rough equivalent of someone running out under the bridge after someone has jumped and survived, and is now in horrible pain, and pointing at them and shouting out 'this wouldn't have happened if the barrier was up there!' Yeah of course it probably wouldn't have, but that would do nothing to solve the root problem. That dying person could just as likely have jumped off another bridge and survived, or shot themselves in the head in such a way that they didn't die. No way of seeking refuge in another country is going to be completely safe, and again this doesn't at all tackle the bigger problem.

So that's my reasoning, that's why refugees should be welcomed with open arms. We are helping desperate people, not dole-bludgers. This really ties back to an old cleche that still rings true. 'Is it theft if a man steals a loaf of bread to feed his starving family?' Answer: no (for all reasonable intents and purposes).

Scapegoating asylum seekers by arguing they are somehow ripping us off is politically advantageous to some, just as blaming witches for the plague or a famine sometimes helped people consolidate their power centuries ago (or today in the Central African Republic). Don't forgot that shock jocks are fine with lying and exaggerating if if improves their ratings and garners them fame and fortune. Ask yourself this question, why is Andrew Bolt one of the most famous journalists in Australia? Is he a genius? Is he a brilliant writer or a bold reporter? Not really, he's just more willing to lie than most journalists. Same with Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, Alex Jones, L. Ron Hubbard, Richard Nixon, Tiger Woods and Pinocchio. Although in the lattermost's case I'd say he was in fact one of those 'starving people' and so had something of a right to lie.

You can't suicide proof a city and you can't refugee proof the world, attacking the root problems in both cases is all you can hope to do. For let us not forget we are, afterall, all citizens of the world.

Things that are causing the stagnation of America

INTRODUCTION

I spent a few nights researching and writing up my thoughts on the subject of the apparent and ongoing decline of the US. I've been looking at quite a few facts and figures and I've gotta say, its difficult to say how the Americans aren't stuffed. They haven't got a hope in hell of paying off their astronomical national debt in the forseeable future, and meanwhile a whole lot of other things are just going from bad to worse for them.

So - enjoy!

P.S. This is by no means an exhaustive list, and some of the things on it overlap a little, but I'd love to hear any serious critiques of it.

The 11 things I've listed here are in rough order of significance. Also, i expect number 9 with receive the most serious criticism, I'll agree that that one in particular is debatable.

1. Fighting the ‘War on Terror’

Since 2001, 2463 coalition soldiers have died fighting in Afghanistan (1582 of them Americans) and since 2003, 4770 (4452 of them Americans) have died fighting in Iraq. Tens of thousands of US servicemen have also been wounded, many with blown off limbs and other grievous, permanent injuries. Hundreds of contractors and other personnel have also been killed. Total Iraqi fatalities have been estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands and Afghani fatalities in the tens of thousands. The financial cost of the two wars is estimated at about $1.15 trillion as of July 2010, or 1% of the USA’s annual GDP for most of the past decade (or about 4% of its government budget). Take into account future costs like veteran's pensions and medical costs stemming for war injuries, funds required to replace worn out equipment and other costs then the final bill might be as high as $3 trillion dollars.

Currently US fatalities in Iraq are down to a handful a month as most of its military has already withdrawn from the country. In Afghanistan the story is very different, with coalition deaths on course to reach 700-800 for 2011, about the same as 2010, and no end to the escalating conflict in sight. By 2015, when American forces might have largely left the country, several thousand more fatalities and hundreds of billions of dollars will probably have been spent.

As well as the physical and financial costs of fighting the ‘War on Terror’ there has been a serious decline in America’s international standing, both amongst our allies (particularly in Europe) and our enemies (the Muslim world hates us more than ever). When America is looking for future co-operation and favors, European countries and nations like Turkey, China and Russia are now far less likely to trust it and accommodate its demands. At the same time the number of ‘terrorists’ emerging in the Middle East and elsewhere from George Bush’s actions has almost certainly made us far less safe. To call launching and continuing the war a mistake is an understatement, to say that it has exhausted, shaken and divided the nation to the core is not.

2. Spiraling costs of Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid/other welfare programs

The combined costs of social security, Medicare, Medicaid and similar government programs now exceed $1.5 trillion a year. While these programs provide enormous benefits to millions of people (half the elderly population no longer dies in poverty, as it did before social security) their costs are growing far quicker than the nation’s economy as the population ages, grows fatter and finds it increasingly hard to bother finding work in an increasingly bad jobs market.

Many proposals to ‘fix’ social security and these other programs have been proposed such as privatization or raising the retirement age. These efforts have often been stalled for the simple reason that no one wants to hear the logic behind them. Talk about changing social security has long been a ‘third wire’ in American politics where neither party dares to tread. Another way of putting it is that most US politicians understand the reasoning that by trying to change these programs they'll be upsetting so many people that it would greatly shorten their term in office. The passage of 'Obamacare' in 2010 goes a long way to introducing universal healthcare and bringing down healthcare costs, but it still largely leaves in place a badly broken system.

Whatever happens, something substantial will have to be done about these programs or before long they’ll be costing the same amount of money as all the taxpayer revenue the government collects alone, leading to even larger annual deficits in their federal government's budget.

3. The cost and influence of the military-industrial complex

Ever since Eisenhower warned us of this hidden boogeyman of Washington politics in his parting address to the nation in 1960, it has been debated by all sides of politics how influential and destructive it may be. It is fair to say that under the Bush administration it probably grew in power considerably and may have been a major factor in Bush’s decisions to invade Afghanistan and Iraq.

The US is responsible for almost two-fifths of the global arms trade, exporting some $6-8 billion worth of arms annually, and spends far more than that on domestic arms production and more on arms development ($70 billion+) than nearly the rest of the world combined. From 2000-2009 US defense spending increased hugely from $300 to $700 billion a year, with per capita expenditures almost doubling from a historical low of $2000 up to cold war levels of $3500. Including defense related spending in the departments of State, Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security and Energy as well as NASA and Federal Law-enforcement and defense-related payments of debt, the US spends a whopping 19% of its budget on defense.

American troop deployments overseas (excluding 200,000 personnel fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan) include an additional 10,000 in Kuwait, more than 80,000 in Europe (just in case the Russians invade) 60,000 in East Asia and several thousand more in places like Australia, Egypt and Columbia. The deployments in Europe especially defy logic, for all they do is subsidize how much Europe has to spend on defense (with most European countries spending less than half as much on their militaries per capita as the U.S.) while costing the American taxpayer tens of billions of dollars a year. Bringing most of these troops home immediately would do much to alleviate America’s spiraling debt and bring down its military expenditures, for maintaining this expensive ‘empire’ is something America will clearly not be able to do forever.

4. Foreign trade deficits

If you’re an American, looking at a graph of the US trade deficit is truly frightening. The US last had a trade surplus in 1975, but by 1997 it was running a $100 billion deficit that has grown exponentially since as its exports continue to decline in the face of cheaper foreign goods and services (plus the Chinese keeping their currency, the Yuan, deliberately undervalued to drive their exports), causing it to pass $800 billion in 2006. $200 billion of this was with China, $120 billion with Europe and a solid $80 billion with Japan.

Some hope, surprisingly, comes in the form of recessions, which tend to see a large if temporary reduction in the US trade deficit, with it declining to $376 billion in 2009. However once the current global financial crisis is over the deficit is predicted to soar back up and possibly reach more than a trillion dollars annually within the next few years.

A major aspect of the trade deficit includes the trading of oil, with the US currently importing two thirds of its oil at a cost of several hundred billion dollars a year, with that amount subject to sudden price swings (a return of crude oil to US$100 would see that amount rise to almost $500 billion a year). Aside from imposing enormous tariffs on imported goods and other possible policies aimed at stopping the somewhat inevitable trend to globalization, there isn’t much anyone can really do to solve these huge deficits.

5. The overgrown prison-industrial complex

Before 1980 there were less than half a million Americans in prison, but that number has since risen sharply and continues to skyrocket, with it passing 2,500,000 in 2010. According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics - “in 2008, over 7.3 million people were on probation, in jail or prison, or on parole at year-end — 3.2% of all U.S. adult residents or 1 in every 31 adults,” subsequently the US has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. It is 12 times that of Japan and 8 times that of Europe.

The sudden quadrupling of the prison population was not due to violent crime (rates of which have generally declined since the 1990s), but due mainly to public policy decisions such as the issuing of more prison sentences, ‘three strikes’ laws and reductions in the availability of parole or early release. These policies were championed as protecting the public from violent offenders, but instead have increased the proportion of non-violent offenders in prisons to about 50% today. As well as that, more than 20% of those sent to prison are convicted on drug charges, with this result of the ‘war on drugs’ probably being the greatest single force behind the boom in the prison population. The cost of this massive prison system has risen by about 600% since 1980, with it costing about $23,000 a year to hold someone in jail a total of $68 billion was spent on corrections nationwide in 2006. Funding for police and judicial services, including the holding of hundreds of thousands of people awaiting trial at any given time, have also increased 4 or 5 fold over the same period and totals a further $140 billion.

There is no real sign of the escalation of the prison population reversing any time soon, although proposals such as an end to the ‘three strikes’ rule, the privatization of prisons (a process gradually occuring today), the legalization of marijuana or a greater focus on rehabilitation rather than punishment in sentencing are in some places being considered.

6. Paying off the national debt

Although the USA’s skyrocketing debt is caused by many things (the largest of which are among those other things listed here) paying off the interest on the debt alone cost $261 billion in 2008. The United States national debt is expected to pass 100% of GDP in mid-2011, a level it is projected to remain at for the foreseeable future. There is much debate among economists whether high debt levels result in slow economic growth or whether the relationship is primarily the other way around, but regardless such a financial burden being placed on an already shaky economy can’t be good.

There is a chance that the astronomical debt levels will de-stabilize the US dollar in years to come to the point where it no longer remains the world’s reserve currency, and someday not too far off there is also a small chance that oil-producing countries (particularly ones that don’t like the US) like Russia, Venezuela, Iran, Norway, etc might decide to stop trading oil exclusively in US dollars and decide to trade with a currency like the Euro as well. Such a move, if it occurred, could de-value the greenback by 10-20% and severely damage the US economy. Another possibility is that America could lose its triple-AAA credit rating (like Japan did in the 1990s when its debt shot up past 100% of its GDP), something which would also cause enormous harm on US economic interests. A combination of almost draconian austerity measures and the introduction of policies to curb other spiraling US expenditures (many of which are on this list), such as an end to the ‘War on Terror’ would be the most effective, but in many cases politically suicidal, ways to rein in US debt.

7. The obesity crisis

It is predicted that by 2015 75% of all adults in the US will be overweight and 40% obese, a higher rate than any other country in the world (although most developed countries are suffering from an obesity crisis to different extents). Already the extra medical costs of obesity are estimated to be between $75 and $150 billion in the US annually and it has been cited as a contributing factor to approximately 100,000–400,000 deaths in the United States per year (4-16% of all deaths).

The main reasons for this are the sedentary lifestyles of much of its population and the widespread consumption of cheap and unhealthy fast foods. In the last thirty years alone the prevalence of obesity in teenagers has increased from 5% to 19% with similar increases among other age groups, and in the military obesity is currently the largest single cause for the discharge of uniformed personnel. Obesity related medical problems include type II diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease and an increased probability of complications arising in babies born to obese women. The costs of obesity have surpassed those caused by smoking or problem drinking and worldwide it is coming to be seen as a problem as serious in some countries as malnutrition is in others.

8. Outsourcing of jobs overseas

It has been said that America’s middle class has become globalization’s losers. So here's a little history lesson for ya. Initially free market capitalization brought enormous wealth to America, with things going swimmingly up until the end of the 1970s. During the first three decades after WW2 American incomes more than doubled, with the bottom 20% of society increasing their wealth by 120% and the top 20% by 94%, with every other group in between. It was as if the American dream had manifested itself in statistics. But then the trend reversed, Europe and Japan had recovered from the devastation of the World Wars and China was soon to open up its borders to trade. Global commerce shifted directions and businessmen left their home turf seeking new places to invest in. The United States, who’s banks had made it the world’s greatest creditor and its factories the world’s greatest exporter for four decades, shifted so much of their investments and centers of production overseas it gradually became its greatest debtor nation and net importer.

In the span of only a few decades US industry has shrunken to only half of what it once was, today it makes up only 22% of its GDP, compared to 25% in Brazil, 28% in Europe and India, 32% in Russia and 47% in China. That decline means an average of 750,000 American manufacturing jobs have gone overseas every year for the last 30 years, explaining why the US unemployment rate, even in the 1990s-2007~ boom before the current global financial crisis, was the highest inbetween recessions in the country's history. Like its massive foreign trade deficit, this is a trend that even the US government can't really solve and one that will continue for the forseeable future.

9. Christian fundamentalism

The percentage of Americans who believe in evolution is estimated to be around 40%, compared to around 60% of Europeans and researchers have noted with some alarm that the portion unsure if it is true or not has increased significantly in recent years. The portion of the US population that has no religion is also much lower than other developed countries at around 15% compared to around 15-50% in European countries and 20-30% of Canadians. A 2007 Gallup poll indicated only 45% of Americans would be prepared to vote for an atheist president, compared to 55% for a gay candidate, 88% for a women and 94% for a black president.

Over the last fifty years the influence of the ‘Christian Right’ in American politics has grown considerably, voicing their opposition to secular education, the teaching of evolution and other scientific theories (also including global warming) as fact, premarital sex, abortion, government funding for scientific fields that might contradict the bible, stem cell research and human cloning, the separation of church and state, the concept that America is not a ‘Christian nation’, the acceptance of homosexuality, gay marriage and the adoption of children by gay couples, pornography, prostitution, the use of contraceptives, planned parenthood, international co-operation and arguably anything they perceive as having a ‘liberal bias.’

The general reason for this resurgence is mainly due to the recent increase in the number of Americans and people around the world who consider themselves to have no religion (although the number of atheists is still small). A similar reaction to the perceived threat of the officially atheist Soviet Union during the cold war led to the adding of the words ‘under God’ to the pledge of allegiance in 1954, with the words ‘in God we trust’ printed on US currency for the first time four years later. It is hard to estimate how much damage Christian fundamentalists have done to the US and its international standing (they would have to be one of the most laughed at groups in the entire world) in the last half century, but their reign of 18th century style beliefs has no immediate end in sight.

10. Fighting the ‘War on Drugs’

Launched initially by Richard Nixon in the early 1970s, Reagan and Clinton subsequently escalated what could be called America’s longest running conflict. Tying in with the exploding prison population of the US, some 1.5 million Americans were arrested for drug offenses in 2008, with 500,000 imprisoned.

Several wars have also been fought partly or wholly because of the drug trade. The 1989 US invasion of Panama, which killed several thousand civilians and left 20,000 homeless, was fought partly to indict the country’s dictator Manuel Noriega, a long time US ally, on drug and money laundering charges. 'Plan Columbia', the US program of providing military and economic aid to Columbia to fight drug-dealers and far left-wing rebels, costs almost $1 billion year and has been going on since 2000. Spraying herbicides on cocaine crops with aircraft, another strategy to fight production of the drug that has gone on since the 1970s, has often backfired with local farmers complaining of health problems and damage to their crops. In addition violence fueled by drug cartels has also escalated in northern Mexico, where more than 20,000 people have died since 2006.

Overall American aid to governments in Latin America and money spent on drug law enforcement totals $44 billion every year, with that amount steadily increasing. It is estimated that legalizing marijuana and taxing it would provide $7 billion in revenues annually, while legalizing other (more harmful) drugs such as cocaine and heroin would provide an additional $26 billion. However, it is possible that legalizing such drugs could cost the US healthcare system more than their taxation revenue, making continuing or ending the war on drugs something of a lose-lose situation.

11. Probably the early affects of global warming

Although it is a hopeless exaggeration to point to any particular unusual weather occurrence as caused by anthropogenic climate change. It is equally naïve to say none have yet occurred and impacted the United States. Weather related insurance losses have increased from only a few billion to tens of billions of dollars a year since the 1980s (by comparison, 9/11 cost $20 billion), disruptions in energy supply due to extreme weather events have increased tenfold since the early 1990s (while other causes have shown little increase), heat related deaths are predicted to increase two-fivefold from around 10,000 a year today and notably the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season (the one with Katrina) was the most active on record, causing almost 4,000 deaths and costing some $130 billion. Many of the worst hurricane seasons on record have occurred since the mid ‘90s with conditions expected to worsen further. These are just some of the examples which indicate the United States is likely already paying a steep price in lives and money for its past greenhouse gas emissions.

Andrew Bolt's 2010 M.H.S. Experience

Andrew Bolt is invited to come to Melbourne High School every year by its Political Interest Group (PIG), and this year's event was my favorite out of the last 3 by far. Here is my account of his visit this year (august 2010).

As the M.H.S. Political Interest Group Chief of staff, I alongside its president James Wong made up the reception committee for Andrew Bolt for his visit this year. After the PIG 'inner sanctum' consisting of its four executives, Mr. Pask and a dozen close associates had gathered in the Middleton conference room at ten past twelve, James and I went down to the front steps to wait.

After he'd arrived and we'd greeted him the three of us walked up the three flights of stairs to the conference room where Mr. Pask shook hands with him vigorously, as he was no doubt a veteran of many an Andrew Bolt visit, and we all sat down around the table. Being Chief of Staff, I had a good spot opposite and one seat over from Bolt. After pleasentries had been exchaned and we'd all began to tuck into the sandwiches and fruit catered from the canteen the first topic of conversation was started when Mr. Pask commented that the talk up here in the conference room 'was usually better than the one downstairs, because up here Andrew you're ready and waiting to go.' Bolt agreed and pointed out that looking around all of us looked ready ot start as well, and he pointed to one student who was clutching a newspaper, inviting him to speak first.

"It seems you disagree with the green's policies" the student began, referring to the article we'd been looking over earlier in the Herald Sun he was clutching, where there was a long article by Andrew Bolt telling of the costs to Australia the Greens would cause if elected. He pointed out an error which Bolt conceded was a typo (it said stopping uranium mining would cost our economy $900 billion a year, it was actually $900 million) and stated that it didn't change his overall argument. We discussed the greens for a while and then the conversation went on to climate change, where it remained for a full 20 minutes.

There were a few skeptics sitting around the table (aside from Bolt of course) and the two students which spent this period doing the most talking were myself and a year 10 boy sitting beside me. The debate was quite fast and intelligent overall with quite a few noticable parts. At one point Bolt was describing a survey undertaken a few years ago which found that people who campaigned for global warming strongest (he jokingly described the categories as being from ultra-green, to dark green to...Andrew Bolt) actually lived more eco-unfriendly lifestyles. He even described himself as being 'more green than most people in my street.' I took him up on this overall point and at one stage he talked for a minute or two about Al Gore, Tim Flannery and several other prominent climate change activitsts falling into the polluting ultra-green category, at which point I interjected by saying "I don't know if you know this, but Tim Flannery's actually got solar panels on the roof of his house." A factual point which briefly brought about silence in the room and then a few titters of laughter. Bolt paused and then pointed out that Flannery had himself said his book 'The Weather Makers' had been entirely written when Flannery was travelling on airliners.

As my oppurtunity to start new debate topic opened up at this point, I mentioned a previous example of a successful international agreement that had solved an environmental problem in the Montreal protocol, signed in 1987. Bolt and I each made a few points back and forth. To sum up, I said that that protocol had led to several consequent agreements that together had stopped the production of harmful chlorofluorocarbons in developed countries and that even developing ones had phased it out over the last few years, that the cost of it hadn't turned out to be as much as expected becuase the industries concerned had adapted and found alternative products to use, that it had already halted the decline in the ozone layer and it had begun to recover. I asked why global warming couldn't be solved in the same way.
Bolt made two essential points, one valid and one I thought was nonsense. He pointed out that phasing out chlorofluorocarbons wouldn't have been that expensive and wouldn't have effected that many industries compared to reversing global warming (a valid point) and he also said that the hole in the ozone layer had never been that serious anyway, something I began to point out was dead wrong (ozone had been reduced by 80% over Antarctica in just a few decades, even making scientists measuring it think their equipment was faulty for several years) but someone else asked a question and the conversation moved onto a different topic.

The issue of developing nations such as India and China (which Bolt correctly pointed out was now the world's biggest CO2 emitter) came up. Mr. Pask actually spoke at this point and said that while China's rural poor would certainly have economic growth higher on their priorities list than halting climate change, that many academics in Beijing, who would actually be making decisions on China's future energy policy, saw it as a genuine threat and would push for their nation to take action against it as long as its effect on short-term economic growth was small. Bolt countered by saying that the Chinese government (it being a dictatorship) would be more concerned with its own survival and that that relied on China's continued rapid economic growth. He pointed out that if that slowed then 'tensions between the rural poor and wealthy urban populations of China could cause massive instability' and cited events such as the Taiping rebellion and Communist revolution as examples of previous Chinese regimes falling in such a way. Personally I think both of them made very valid arguments.

The climax of the debate perhaps came when Bolt stated what I came to realise was his main argument. That the merits of taking action on climate change should be judged based purely on a cost/benefit analysis rather than 'as a matter of faith.' He said he thought global warming resembled something like a religion and that 'people seem to need some sort of God in their lives.' His main criticism was that when climate change was thought of as a moral question people would often go slightly mad and declare action had to be taken against it 'no matter what the cost.' Something he said was ridiculous. He mentioned again some of the more unrealistic Greens policies like closing down a coal power plant in Eastern Victoria which provides 20% of the state's electricity straight away and asked the question 'has this been thought through?' Repeatedly he returned to the point that it 'costs jobs, for no real reduction in warming.'
At this point I decided to mention a rather extreme counter-argument to this. 'I heard an example, that while climate change hurts industries that do provide jobs, that so does the kiddie porn industry. Some industries are harmful, doing more harm than good.'
Bolt's argument to that was that kiddie porn 'provides very few jobs, and that by stopping it you're actually saving people.' The debate slowed for a bit and I re-affirmed my position that it was along the same lines as potentially harmful fossil fuel industries while Bolt maintained it wasn't a good example.

From several students further down the table immigration came up as a topic. Andrew's main thoughts on it was that it was being very poorly handled (agreed), that most boat people weren't true refugrees and also that he didn't think much of international treaties dictating how refugees should be processed. He mentioned his own proposal which he claimed had been rejected more for idealogical than logical reasons that 'for every boat person who enters the country, we should send them back to a refugee camp overseas, and take two genuine refugees who have waited for asylum for some time from that camp. I guarantee you that the people smuggling trade would dry up instantly.' It seemed no one had a good counter-argument to this (though I'd love to see a discussion on it, it actually sounds pretty hard to refute, maybe we should try it) so the debate moved on. (Later on I learned that 90% of the boat people the Howard government locked up on Nauru were in fact found to be genuine refugees, neutralising half of Bolt's argument).

At one point, and this was without doubt my favorite part of the whole event. Was when a student at the end of the table changed the vein of topics completely by asking Bolt 'what do you think of the national broadband network?' Andrew slowly replied 'Well I'm no expert on infrastructure matters like this' and was about to continue when I made a sharp interjection.

'So you're a climatologist them?' I asked loudly.

There was complete silence in the room for a full two seconds. 'Oh Shit, Oh Shit' I thought to myself, and then the entire room burst out laughing. Even Andrew Bolt looked slightly shocked, but the laughter told me that what might simply have been seen as a rude and jeering interruption was actually a valid pointing out of irony. Bolt looked around and then said to me something along the lines of 'no, but I can still make intelligent decisions on things I know' and continued with his answer to the student's question. I suppose he had a fair point, though he looked a little flustered for the rest of the time we were in the conference room after that.

At 1 o'clock the bell for lunch ran and we made our way down to T-29 for the larger lecture to take place. James Wong introduced him to the 100+ assembled students as 'Australia's favorite columnist' which sent a ripple of laughter through the room, and Andrew spent some 15 minutes on his opening address.

He talked about an example which in my mind at least, the jury's still out on, where he told us how in Cambodia when he was our age the Khmer Rouge came to power 'based on good intentions, not real action.' He detailed how the leaders of that movement had destroyed Cambodian society and killed a quarter of the country's population through an almost religiously held idea that the intellectuals in the country were holding back its 'progress' and that they, identified often by them simply wearing glasses, had to be removed from Cambodia (i.e. killed) for the good of the country. Bolt compared the misguided and terrible fanaticism by the Khmer Rouge (though as an extreme example he stressed) as being rooted in very poorly thought out policies which were all 'good intentions' and no 'practical action.' He compared the Khmer's style of leadership to some proposals to reverse climate change which he said were also full of good intensions but were impractical, harmful and would be ineffective in reversing climate change at best. (I should stress here that he was not at all comparing Tim Flannery to Pol Pot or anything like that, but simply saying that badly thought-out policies concerning climate change could negatively affect society for no real gain, like the Khmer rouge did).

After his address there was actually little discussion about climate change. The stolen generations was a hot topic for the first half a dozen quesions, especially when one student asked him what he thought about the film 'Rabbit Proof Fence' being taught as factual history in schools. Bolt spent several minutes describing the inaccuracies in the film and took a quick poll of us to see how many of us had actually researched the film to see if it was true. Only four people put their hands up and Bolt said that normally when he asked that question of a group of people absolutely no one did. His criticism of the film, which was often specific and sounded quite reasonable, I'd give high marks for for accuracy, though the whole debate over the existence of the stolen generations in not something I've ever researched much. I was waiting for the conversation in the room to return to climate change, my topic of choice.

The population debate came up briefly, and Andrew stated his position that 'if you're going to increase the population, you've got to prepare for it' and criticized government policies that refused to, for example, build new dams or coal power plants to power our growing cities because of environmental concerns. I'm also of the impression that spending on infrastructure is something state governments around Australia having been neglecting in recent years, though I am basically against building more coal power plants. I'd consider wind, solar, geothermal and perhaps nuclear and natural gas to be far cleaner but not prohibitively expensive options.

With about 20 minutes to go the area of debate changed to something I hadn't thought would ever come up today. Some student asked about Bolt's position on gay marriage, and we didn't get off the topic for about half an hour. Bolt cautiously said that he was against it, though not for religious reasons but because he thought 'we'd pay the price if we weakened the institution of marriage.' He pointed out that 'any teacher will tell you that the most troubled kids in a class are those which haven't grown up in loving families.' This seemed to surprise most of the students in the room, and kids were asking him questions about his position until well after the bell for period 6 rang.

At the end of lunch James stopped the procedings and we gave Andrew the usual guest speaker's gift (I must admit, I still don't know what's in those wrapped up yellow boxes) and I thought things were about to wrap up. I was wrong. Instead Andrew quickly found himself surrounded by a knot of particularly belligerent students who spent the next half hour arguing with him. After a while a class came into T-29 so the knot of 20 or so of us and Andrew migrated up the stairs of T-29 and out into the corridor. There the conversation finally turned back to climate change. Two or three boys who I didn't know were very confrontational (before long I thought quite impolitely so ) and had soon talked themselves into a bit of trouble, with Bolt exploiting several holes in their more poorly spoken statements and arguments.
Believe it or not but after a while I was actually defending some of the things Bolt was saying, and correcting some of the more innacurate things they were saying (you may be wondering why Bolt couldn't just do that himself, but I found they weren't always listening to his explanations reasonably).

Finally at about 2:30 we excited the school and walked down the steps, some students still trying to talk to Bolt. James insisted the photo should be taken now but before we could do so I had an interruption of my own to make. I'd brought along a copy of Tm Flannery's 'The Weather Makers' which had actually been signed by Flannery a few months earlier, and, feeling mischievous, asked Andrew Bolt if he'd make it unique by signing it as well. He laughed and promptly did so, writing in it

'Daniel
Don't believe everything you read
Andrew Bolt'

(My Dad later commented that this was almost he climate change equivalent of getting God and the Devil to both sign the Bible)

The photos were then taken (with the dozen or so random students who remained gatecrashing it, one retarded kid making funny faces right behind Andrew Bolt's head in both of them) and with a few final questions, Mr. Bolt departed, and the rest of us went off to explain to our teachers why we were 40 minutes late to our period 6 classes.

Life, the Universe and Everything

Imagine you're floating in a void. A completely empty, endless, featureless void. There's nothing to see or hear, nothing to hold on to, nowhere to travel to, there's no aims or dangers, no past or future, there's absolutely no sensory input whatsoever.

Pretty soon, I guarantee you, you'll start to hallucinate. Its the ultimate nightmare we simply can't deal with.

You might imagine a floor, because somewhere has to be up. You might imagine a hand rail or an escalator or some other object to manipulate to move around. You'll eventually dream up other characters to talk to, to love and hate. Entire stories will begin to take shape in your mind. You'll make up memories, myths and mysteries. All because, in the words of T.S. Eliot, "Humankind cannot bear very much reality".

Do you disagree? Do you think loneliness wouldn't eventually send you mad?
But what loneliness? Isn't the Earth teeming with billions of creative, interesting people? Aren't there numerous natural wonders on and above our planet? Surely we're pre-occupied enough to have no need for imaginary friends? Perhaps that's dead wrong. Sure we're distracted, but at the highest levels of thought, in the deepest depths of our imagination (cue: creepy 2001 music http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWnmCu3U09w ) we sense we're floating in a moral void.

Beyond the soap operas, COD games and reality TV shows. Beyond even sayings of the Lord's Prayer and admiring Leonardo Da Vinci's artwork we can see that morally nothing is inherently solid. Nothing is fundamentally set in stone and it appears that no meaning is inherent in our existence. We don't see 'It is bad to kill others' or 'individual self-interest is inherently good' written in the stars. The answer to the ultimate question, what is the meaning of Life, the Universe and Everything would seem to be 'nothing, so whatever you damn well please'.

So should we feel free to take a blank slate and set our imaginations to work? Are we forced to judge philosophy and create our religions based merely on style because substance is impossible? Is there any alternative?

Lets go back to the original analogy. Maybe reality isn't completely featureless. In fact, there's a lot of cool stuff out there. Do you know what a magnetar is, or understand how dark energy works? No, neither do I, maybe we could devote some of our time to finding out?

Lets re-examine the 'void'. There would seem to be some inherent things written out there for us to discover. The speed of light, absolute zero temperature, general relativity and gravity seem to be set in stone. Maybe reality isn't featureless, but rather its the next worse thing, we fear its 'understandable'. You know how you eventually get bored with things? The universe would seem to be like that. If a void is completely featureless except its coloured purple, then once you understand that, the level of interest it holds goes straight back to it being a complete void. We hunger for another mystery, something we don't yet understand. We go mad without it.

So sure, it seems that science will eventually reach a dead end. Once we master physics, biology, chemistry, psychology and every other field of science covering the physical world. We'll become gods of the universe, understanding how every aspect of it works, and then it will truly become a void. Utterly devoid of mystery, what the hell do we do then?

This is the nightmare ending that philosophers  have forseen. This quote here, that I heard ages ago but didn't really understand at the time sums that conclusion up-

"For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries." - Robert Jastrow

In a way this is amazing foresight. It sums up the idea that we should reject rigorous scientific thought in favor of coming up with our own self-comforting faith. But in the end I have to disagree. I don't think those theologians have scaled the peak at all, they've merely foreseen what it will look like. They're like a kid who's gotten a new PC game and reasons, 'why should I bother playing? Once I have, I'll have nothing to do anyway.'

Yeah kid, but you still play the game.

Climate Change - Why Australia should do its part

Here's my take on the specific issue of whether Australia should take action on climate change, though this doesn't cover the wider validity of climate change science (which I believe is very likely true) and the specifics of such action. I am an advocate of Australia adopting an emissions trading scheme/carbon tax, here's my reasoning why.

I wholeheartedly support Australia introducing an emissions trading scheme, although I am concerned that the government may have trouble being competent enough to run it effectively. The main issue with introducing such policies in Australia is that we only contribute 1.3% of global greenhouse gas emissions, so why should we introduce a policy that will cost our economy billions with uncertain benefits (the billions we might make back by investing in green energy for example, and then the avoidance of the damage to our economy that hopefully will occur if we avert climate change) when it will have a very small effect on global temperature?

I can tell you exactly why, allow me to use the analogy of the war in Afghanistan. There are currently (as of May 2011) 140,000 coalition soldiers fighting in Afghanistan, discounting generals and political leaders, not one of those front-line foot soldiers is ever going to change the outcome of the war by themselves are they?. So if their individual efforts contribute nothing to the eventual outcome of the war, by libertarian thinking they have no incentive whatsoever to fight yes?
But they still do.

That’s because the war in Afghanistan is a communal effort, if all 140,000 soldiers don’t fight, then all of them lose the war, but if most of them fight, they might win the war. That’s why we need to do our part. Even the largest single contributor to climate change, China, emits only 16% of global emissions; everyone’s facing the same dilemma.

Let’s take the analogy still further, how hard does each individual soldier have to fight? All need to fight to an extent, but even then surely, by libertarian thinking, none are going to risk their lives more than they have to and end up receiving a special award for gallantry right?
BUT THEY STILL DO.

Why? They’re already doing their part, in climate change terms they’re not just cutting emissions gradually but drastically, how does this make sense?

It’s because individual heroes are the only individuals that can have a wider effect, hearing of VC winners in Afghanistan and reading about their exploits inspires and puts pressure on other soldiers to do their best as well. Sure no soldiers fights for a piece of coloured ribbon, but when another member of your platoon runs into gunfire to rescue a wounded comrade or destroy an enemy machine gun nest, something about it can give you the confidence to do the same when you find yourself in those circumstances someday.

That’s why Australia has to introduce major emissions cuts, we’re the most educated, fittest and best-dressed soldier in the platoon, there’s no one else in a better position than us to run into that gunfire, which I would unabashedly admit we are doing, except that we're not. Most of Europe, New Zealand and several other countries have already introduced or are proposing legislation to greatly restrict greenhouse emissions. We face a mammoth task, the 2007 IPCC report predicted warming of 2-6 degrees Celsius this century if we take no action. By comparision, at the height of the last ice age, when there were ice sheets extending southwards to Spain, global temperatures were a mere 8 degrees cooler. So we're facing a pretty disastrous situation a century or so from now.

So the next time Andrew Bolt or Laurie Oaks use the illogical argument that the emissions trading scheme is pointless because it alone will not greatly affect global temperature, please just explain all this to them.