society – The Idea String

Why Bristol’s Red mayor is anything but Green

(reading time: 4 mins)

I voted for Marvin Rees in 2016 and consider myself a Labour voter by default, who sometimes votes Green or LibDem. I have never voted Tory and never will. But with bookies suggesting Bristol’s city mayor contest is a two horse race between Labour and the Greens, I will be voting for Green candidate Sandy Hore-Ruthven, not Bristol’s current mayor on May 6th.

Labour voters assume Greens can’t get elected and that Labour will always be more Green than the Tories anyway. But I would argue Marvin Rees’ environmental record is worse than a Tory mayor would have been. Here are three key issues.

Firstly Rees has supported more road building at Western Harbour, and supports turning the abandoned railway line at Callington Road in Brislington into a relief road for the A4. Strangely Labour have even argued this extra road will reduce pollution. For some reason they don’t understand the basics of road building – extra roads always fill up with more traffic, traffic jams and pollution follow. More roads only aggravate this problem.

Secondly Bristol Labour now sides with the fossil fuel companies. Yes seriously! In July 2019 there was a Green and LibDem motion before the council to have the Avon Pension Fund divest of its fossil fuel company investments. Labour diluted that motion and voted with the Tories for ‘active engagement’ with fossil fuel companies instead. ‘Active engagement’ is not a serious policy, it’s a lobbyist’s dream. Bristol Labour are staggeringly naive if they believe a local council might actually have some influence on multi-national oil companies – taking pension money out of oil and gas is the only way to exert influence. Even as a purely financial decision, fossil fuels will become increasingly risky for a pension fund, because fossil fuels have no long term future. In the next decade or two fossil fuel investments will lose value rapidly once renewable technologies reach a certain threshold (renewable power generation is already cheaper than fossil fuels). It’s the most bizarre decision from Labour, and the opposite of what I thought Labour were supposed to be about – opposing the predatory self-interests of the wealthiest.

Third was Rees’ response to the cancellation of a second runway at Bristol Airport by North Somerset council, in the week that Greta Thunberg visited the city in Feb 2020. This is how the interview went with Matt Frei of Channel 4 news;

Frei:	But you were in favour of it last year, on the record.
Rees:	Well it’s not my decision, and as a political….. [inaudible]
Frei:	But you were in favour of it.
Rees:	Well no, because there’s a context. I’m not in favour of airport expansion. There is a question, the real aim is to get the number of people flying to reduce. And I think that’s where people are missing the point. We are in favour of reducing the number of people flying. And that’s the campaign I’m part of.

Surely the only reason for a second runway was to increase the number of flights and the number of people flying? I’m not aware of Rees expressing any public opposition to a second runway, until the decision had been made and Greta Thunberg came to town. If he believed the economic benefits outweighed the environmental risks, he should have stuck with that position. But his response in that interview was clearly a politician suddenly hoping to distance himself from a controversial issue.

I will say during last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests Marvin Rees did strike the right tone after Colston’s statue was (rightly in my view) finally pulled down. Other than that I’m struggling to think of much that’s positive from his five years in office. I didn’t vote for George Ferguson in 2012, but at least Ferguson had some clear policies associated with his tenure – parking zones, 20mph limits in residential areas, and pushing for a Bristol Arena in the middle of the city, which is the natural place for it. With Rees though, there are no signature policies.

There is also the question of why Bristol City Council kept wasting council tax payers’ money to prop up failing Bristol Energy www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol… and concerns about the political culture inside Bristol Labour www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/bristol-councillor-joins-greens…

I don’t see much leadership from Marvin Rees. As far as the environment goes, the leadership he has shown has been heading in the wrong direction. Labour voters who care about environmental issues should not make the mistake of assuming Bristol Labour are somehow ‘Green-Lite’.

Disclosure: This is my personal view written in my own time. I am a Bristol City Council employee in a non politically restricted post, and as such a member of the Avon Pension fund.

The limits of Extinction Rebellion

Extinction Rebellion flags in Bristol July 2019

(reading time: 4 mins)

Why was I absent from Bristol’s Extinction Rebellion protests last week? I’m a left leaning voter who accepts time is running out for climate change action. Last winter I spent eight days upgrading my loft insulation to reduce my gas consumption by about 10% – which is one of many actions I’ve taken to reduce my carbon output. So why did I cycle past the protest each day instead of joining in?

Although XR are doing an important job of keeping climate change in the news cycle, I believe there’s a limit to what XR’s protests will achieve.

When is a tax not a tax? When it’s a carbon dividend

Oil extraction

(reading time: 8 mins)

Scientists and economists have long advocated carbon taxes as the most effective way to remove carbon from the world economy. The carbon dividend is one of the few ways to make carbon taxes politically acceptable.

But while taxing carbon may be vital, people rarely vote for new taxes. While left of centre Europeans like me want increased funding for public services, history shows it’s an uphill task selling voters the tax increases needed to pay for them. It’s too easy for voters and politicians to think short-term and let future generations pay, with the cost of inaction rising all the time.

However the strength of the carbon dividend may be its cross party appeal. In different forms, the carbon dividend has long been popular with environmentalists (it is UK Green party policy), but is also gaining traction with Republicans and Libertarians. Continue reading…

Cancer is a lottery, not a judgement

dice_pink_background

(reading time: 3 mins)

Cancer is a dreadful illness. The conventional treatments can be harsh and unpleasant to endure, and perhaps there should be a better way. Many people have claimed the power of thought prevents and even cures Cancer, some of whom have themselves survived Cancer against the odds. But before anyone puts their faith in such claims I think there is a statistical point to consider.

According to Cancer Research UK, worldwide there were 14.2 million new cases of Cancer diagnosed in 2012. If all those 14.2 million people had been given the very worst prognosis by their doctors of only a 1 in 100 chance, that still means 142,000 of them would likely have survived, and half a million would have seemingly done the impossible by 2016. Fortunately the actual odds of surviving all types of Cancer averages out around 50/50 over 10 years.

So for every person who can testify to their thoughts beating the disease, there will be many more making no such claims, and many more who sadly will not make it. It’s an obvious point maybe, but only those fortunate enough to live through Cancer are then around to write an inspiring book, make a video, or charge for a ticket to their seminar on how they believe they did it. Continue reading…

The Human Animal – a breed apart?

chick with blackboard

(reading time: 19 mins)

For the majority of western history the only mind considered worthy of examination was the human mind. This is in part because we lacked the tools to examine how other animals experienced the world. However western science also developed within a Judeo-Christian cultural heritage – religious traditions which taught that God has taken us, and only us, over that threshold of animal awareness into the realm of moral beings, because we were the only animals with souls.

Although science has largely overtaken religion as a way of explaining human existence, like religion it has historically emphasised differences between humans and other animals, rather than common ground. In recent years more detailed experiments into animal cognition show much of what has been regarded as solely human characteristics, such as the potential for language, ability for abstract thought, the capacity for emotions, jealousy and cruelty even, can be found in other species to some extent. Here I want to consider some of that evidence with some observations on how this might be interpreted.

Taking a philosophical approach to scientific research might be seen as anthropomorphizing other species. Continue reading…

Free will, Determinism and Frogger

frogscene2-600

(reading time: 7 mins)

Is free will an illusion? Some recent neurological experiments have hit the headlines with that conclusion. The studies reveal that the conscious mind is sometimes slow to recognize a course of action the subconscious has already set in motion. Absence of free will is a possible explanation. Certainly most people don’t realise how much they invent reality to suit the events. Memory is highly subjective, and most of us occasionally use reason to justify decisions which are primarily motivated by our emotions.

Understandably scientists feel religion has got it wrong and science has got it right (generally true). Do some scientists further have a desire to liberate us from the burden of free will, apparently the remnant of an outdated belief system? Perhaps. Whether or not there is such a mission, there are significant problems with the assumptions behind these experiments, which mean going from free will may be an illusion to this proves free will is an illusion or even probably an illusion is quite a stretch.

You cannot be serious!

The cognitive studies involve simple motor tasks. For example, with brain activity being monitored, the subject presses a button Continue reading…