A Blueprint for a safer Planet

A Blueprint for a Safer Planet is Nicholas Stern’s book that put forwards what Stern thinks should be done to combat Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW). Stern is an important figure in AGW economics because he was selected to write an economic case to justify the policies that the Blair / Brown government wished to follow. His Stern Review was similar to Australia’s Garnaut Review.

Stern, who only started to study AGW economics in 2005, made a number of contributions to climate change economics. Previous studies had put the alleged damage from AGW at a about of 5% of GDP. Stern managed to get it to start at 5% and go to a maximum of 20% damage to GDP. Other economists who had been studying climate change for up to a decade had also used discount rates that had been traditionally used for long term economic calculations of 2% to 10%. Stern instead constructed an innovative ’social discount rate’ that was only 0.01%. This was very innovative in that  he had a discount rate, if he had used zero his report would have been immediately questioned, but by using something that was effectively zero he could make abatement appear as a better option. Partha Disgupta has called Stern’s discount rate “patently absurd” as it would imply a savings rate of 97.5% compared to the observed rate of around 15%.

So the book was expected to attempt to justify some of Stern’s assumptions and to put forward the case as to why AGW should be addressed with huge sums of money.

Stern accepts all the IPCC figures and starts from there. He spends fairly little time on looking at the IPCC’s results. He does mention the ‘deniers’ but doesn’t look at any of their arguments. He doesn’t mention Lindzen, Spencer, Christy or any of the better known skeptics and states that the loudest skeptics are not scientists. This is contrast to Al Gore.

Stern uses a table of probability of parts per million against the likelihood of a particular rise in temperature as his base for various scenarios and goes on to attempt to price how much achieving these levels of C02 would cost. Stern goes on to look at what reductions in C02 emissions can be made and how much things are likely to cost. Here Stern is defending the cost estimates that he made in his report that others termed very optimistic. Stern is an advocate of all the possible technologies including nuclear and Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). This is a good thing. It is disappointing to see that countries that have large uranium reserves and whose current governments regard C02 emission reductions as crucial are excluding the technology that has already been used to reduce c02 emissions successfully while maintaining a high standard of living as demonstrated by France.

The book also has something of a response to Stern’s critics like Nordhaus and Richard Tol. Stern states that his discount rate is an ethical choice. He also pushes the argument that even if AGW has been exaggerated that doing something about is worthwhile just in case. He also frequently refers to his area of expertise that of attempting to reduce poverty in the developing world, in particular in Africa. He states that there is no choice involved in spending on money on either one of these goals and that instead both must be attempted. Stern does openly acknowledge that the largest emitters of greenhouse gases is China. Stern doesn’t mention Lomborg but is apparently away of Lomborg’s position and does state that spending money on dealing with the possible adverse consequences of AGW should also be attempted but that it is only a small part of a more costly solution.

Stern does mention the figures that he says will be needed to be spent. He talks about 1-2% of GDP instead of mentioning the direct amounts of money of 0.5 to 1 trillion dollars per year. He also tends to talk in terms of the percent of GDP when assessing possible future damages so this isn’t unreasonable and does mention direct figures of some factors of reduction cost directly.

Stern isn’t a bad writer and this isn’t a bad book. It addresses some of the criticisms made against the Stern review by economists who have specialise in studying the economics of AGW. Stern keeps the book fairly brief and to the point. It’s good to be able to read environmental forecasting books at this time. Reading books like The Population Bomb 40 years after their predictions have been shown to be wrong is one thing, reading the latest forecasts of environmental doom should also be done to see how the forecasts will fair in the future.

3/5

The Consolations of Philosophy

The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton is another of the erudite Swiss’s amusing books that addresses problems we all go through and uses de Botton’s knowledge of philosophy to address the problems and to give an introduction to a number of philosophers.

The book is divided into 6 sections, Unpopularity, Not Having Enough Money, Frustration, Inadequacy, A Broken Heart and Difficulties. In Unpopularity Socrates is looked at, in Not Having Enough money Epicurus is examined, Frustration has Seneca as it’s subject, Inadequacy is concerned with Montaigne, A Broken Heart outlines Schopenhauer and difficulties looks at Nietzsche.

Each problem is briefly examined and then the philosopher’s thought and life are outlined. The chapters are also neatly connected to show how the preceding philosopher influenced the subject of the current one.

The book has been praised and criticised for being Philosophy for Dummies. The second accusation is true, but it is not a bad thing. Most of us do not read philosophy but do like to get an overview of what different philosophers have thought and why they thought what they thought. But we’re not all prepared to invest huge amounts of time to read Kant, Hume and the rest of the cannon in great detail.

Books that provide an overview are very useful and can also be enjoyable. de Botton’s skill is shown at it’s best here. He really knows his subjects and also uses them to show that philosophy is relevant. Many people, including myself, do philosophy at University because it is seen externally as well thought out answers to life’s problems. But much of the philosophy encountered is dry debates about language, definitions and has little to say about how highly intelligent people have thought that we should live our lives. de Botton shows how and why a number of great thinkers are relevant and important today.The book does not provide an in depth account of these philosophers, but just whets our appetites to go and find out more about the ones we are interested in.

It is also pleasantly short and concise. It doesn’t stretch itself to cover too much ground or bother with provide some strange plot to hang the story together like Sophie’s World did. Indeed, the comparison is worth making. de Botton knows his subject better and limited the scope, both of which make The Consolations of Philosophy a better book.

4/5

The Architecture of Happiness

The Architecture of Happiness by Alain de Botton is another exploration of a facet of life by the capable and successful de Botton. This book is different from Botton’s other books because he is writing about a subject that many other people have written about and one that is outside his professional expertise in philosophy. In Status Anxiety and The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work de Botton writes about general themes that he is pretty much as equipped as anyone else to write about. Here is on other people’s turf.

The book is divided into 6 parts. The Significance of Architecture that meanders around how important architecture is, In What Style Shall we build that discusses changing styles and various revivals, talking buildings the discusses modernism and design, ideals of home that talks about churches, design and has a brief study of Le Corbusier’s failed small housing projects and a brief discussion of actual homes, The Virtues of Buildings that describes various buildings that appealed to de Botton as he travelled about and finally The Promise of a Field that reasserts the importance of architecture and attempts to give a focus the meandering chapters that have come before it.

The wikipedia page on the book, the first link in this review, has some scorn full reviews. They have more than a grain of truth. de Botton has managed to make a career out of writing well, being clever and writing books on general subjects that appeal to people. Here he has made the mistake of taking on a subject that other people have explicitly thought about. Architecture has a long history and it would surely be worth addressing more of it and at least making it clear that he went over the subject before writing his own thesis. If he wanted the book to follow its title then he should surely have given more consideration to what people build for themselves. He gives a serve to the common way that most people build new homes in some knock of style. He doesn’t ask if this does actually make people happy. Who knows, perhaps people have hit on things that work for them.If he is writing about the restraints that finite resources place on what people can build to make themselves happy why not more than a cursory glance at failed works of le Corbusier? Why does he not mention Frank Lloyd Wright one of the most famous and influential architects of the 20th century.

The book isn’t terrible, but it is more or less a clever mans stitched together thoughts on a subject that most of us have opinions about but haven’t really thought through. de Botton has thought them through more than most of us and is amusing an clever writer, but this book is similar to what would happen if Prince Charles decided that he had to write something about architecture.

2.5 / 5

Boomsday

Boomsday by Christopher Buckley is a fun, light hearted satire by the man who wrote Thank You for Smoking and Little Green Men.

It’s the story of Cassandra Devine, a twenty something blogger who starts blogging about how US finances are collapsing because of the cost of pensions and entitlements for retirees. She suggests that older folks be given government incentives to end their lives before the financial burden becomes too great. Cassandra’s tale is wound up with Gideon Payne, an organiser for Southern Evangelism, the opportunistic President Bill Peacham, her boss Terry Tucker and the Senator and presidential candidate Randolph Jepperson.

The book is full of clever acronyms and quick wit. Buckley aims to combine Noel Coward like wit with sharp observance of the strange farce that is modern politics. In Thank you for Smoking and Little Green Men this works very well, in The White House Mess it also comes off well. In Boomsday it doesn’t quite. But it’s a good try and a fun, quick read.

3/5

Status Anxiety

Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton is another of the author’s thoughtful examinations of a subject by writing around it in an elliptical manner. The author, who is a non-fiction virtuoso, writes about how much of human activity is about status and how we react to a great need to feel status in society.

The book is divided into two parts, the first describes causes, the second solutions. In causes there are sections on Lovelessness, Snobbery, Expectation, Meritocracy and Dependence. In Solutions we have sections on Philosophy, Art, Politics, Christianity and Bohemia.

de Botton quickly describes how we have a need to love or respect, not just from those near to us but from the society in which we live. There is undoubtedly truth to this. In Snobbery de Botton describes how people make up largely fictitious groups in order to somehow put themselves above others. In Expectation de Botton describes how we live to expect greater material progress and to have at least as much as our peers. In Meritocracy he writes about how in a society where how well people do is more a product of their talents the fate of people is linked, in a way, to their ‘worth’. In Dependence he points out that most people have become dependent on their employers, countries and whatnot to retain their status.

In the Solutions section de Botton describes how we can avoid status anxiety and how people console themselves. He looks as how philosophy is used to point out that material success is not ‘higher’ success and how understanding can console us. In the Art section we are given a view of how art can console us by providing a view of beauty. In the Politics section political solutions to the problem are examined. In Christianity the role of religion is making us see we are part of a larger whole is described and finally in Bohemia the rise of ‘alternative values’ is outlined.

The book is enjoyable and thoughtful, as are most of de Botton’s works. However, I didn’t find the book nearly as interesting or entertaining as de Botton’s Pleasures and Sorrows of Work . Status Anxiety is undoubtedly a real problem and some people do get hung up on it but it is not that central to most people most of the time. We want things that make our lives more comfortable and more amusing. We also want to propagate ourselves, which is particularly tied to status with males. But if we have those things we worry less or not much about status. I have to say this myself, if I had the material things I wanted I’d be largely unworried by status. Human relations matter more and are affected by status, but it is the human relations we seek, not the status. Even with our vast riches compared to earlier ages we still live in a age of scarcity. Most of us still need to work for most of our lives.

The book takes something that is worth an essay and stretches it too far. Alternative status structures are also left unexamined which is disappointing. In particular the chapter on Bohemia misses the amusing alternative status ideas that people erect after rejecting conventional ones. Being more green, more pious, more organic, more politically correct and more authentic are examples of people rejecting a status hierarchy only to construct their own one rapidly. Some of these are touched on, but not enough.

We are social animals, we care about status and it does make us do silly things. But it can also be overstated and over emphasized as well and trying to tie too much to it doesn’t work.

3.5/5

Dead Aid

Dead Aid (2009) by Dambiso Moyo is a thought provoking book that has caused a fair degree of controversy. In the book Dr Moyo says that aid to Africa has not only failed, but that it has actually made Africa worse off. The first claim is very strongly demonstrated, the second is less substantially argued, but is put forth sufficiently well that the argument cannot be written off. The book goes one step further than The Trouble with Africa in advocating radical change to policy toward Africa.

Moyo has a very impressive CV. She was born in Zambia and grew up their. Her parents were some of the first graduates of the University of Lukasa. They went overseas to further their education but returned to Zambia. Moyo was educated at Harvard and has a PhD from Oxford. She then worked at Goldman Sachs and then the World Bank. She is ideally placed to have extremely well informed views on Africa and she is also able to speak courageously against the pop stars and others who currently dominate the debate on Africa but whose policies have had such a poor record.

The book is split into two parts, the first is about the rise of aid and its effects and the second is Moyo’s view of what should be done and what is changing in Africa. The first part starts by pointing out that Africa is the great failure in the modern world. While the rest of the world is clearly on the way to greatly increased wealth and well being Africa has become worse off in both absolute and relative terms over the past 30-40 years. Moyo goes on to describe the history of post WWII aid. Moyo outlines how aid started being aid to Europe that was short term and aimed at getting money in to restart the war shattered European economies. This worked. Then in the 1960s aid became directed toward the developing world in order to increase development and to secure influence in the post colonial Cold War world. Instead of using aid as a short term bridge to repair institutions and countries it was re-badged as a way to start development. Here it has failed. Dismally. Moyo goes on to suggest that aid actually hindered growth. Moyo suggests that this was the case because those in government were so corrupt that government was seen as the way to make money and that as that money came mostly from aid rather than tax the governments lost interest in trying to make local industry better. Moyo also points out that Africa’s exports of agricultural goods were not allowed into the developed world because of the developed world’s tariffs.

In Part II Moyo puts forward her prescription of what can be done and what is happening and what will happen. She posits a hypothetical country called Dongo and puts forward how it is now and what can be done. She suggests that governments in Africa should go to the bond market rather than aid donors. She suggests that this will force them to become more transparent and to actually try to get a return on the money they can get. She also describes what China is doing in Africa as beneficial. As Moyo sees it China is investing in Africa like a business. China wants the raw materials and produce that Africa is or can produce. Instead of giving aid without wanting anything from it the Chinese are building roads and other infrastructure in Africa to help themselves. Moyo also wants Africa to trade more with itself, she says that Africa has huge internal barriers to trade, with up to 30% tariffs between countries that should be removed to kick start Africa. She writes about how micro credit is taking off in Africa and improving the situation. She is also very positive about remittances that are helping Africa develop. She mentions Hernando De Soto also with his point about how good title for land and easy business registration is vital for unlocking the capital that Africa already has that is locked up because of a lack of trust and institutions.

Moyo is really quite positive about the situation. She sees micro credit and better regulation starting to appear in Africa and aid declining which is actually improving the situation. It is very interesting to see such a positive take on China’s African involvement as opposed to the usual negative Western view of the situation.

The book is thoughtful, well written and impressively short. Indeed it is one of the few books that I’ve read in years that could actually have been longer.  There are some things such as the treatment of AIDs, whether direct short term food aid should be maintained, whether groups like MSF should continue to work and if there is going to be aid how it could be better used that are either not discussed or about which little is written. But the book is a short, sharp almost pamphlet like book that is very well worth reading.

4/5

South of the Border West of the Sun

South of the Border, West of the Sun (1992) by Haruki Murakami is a sad, short, sweet book about love and the way lives go. The book is reminiscent of Murakami’s best known work Norwegian Wood.

In the book the protagonist, Hajime, as a child has an intense relationship with Shimamoto. The two part ways and we follow Hajime as he quickly grows up, gets a job, gets married and has children. Then he meets Shimamoto again and their bond causes tension in Hajime’s life.

The book echoes Norwegian Wood in that the protagonist has an intense relationship and other relationships that are not as intense. In some ways the book can be seen to be slightly misogynistic and uncaring about women. Norwegian Wood seems like one take on the situation with a different ending while South of the Border, West of the Sun is another.

Norwegian Wood is the better book, but South of the Border, West of the Sun is worth reading. Murakami’s other books that deal with very different situations, such as the highly amusing Kafka on the Shore are probably better reads.

3/5

The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work

The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (2009) by Alain de Botton is a fine remonstration on the world of work and employment. There are 10 chapters in which the working lives of a number of people and companies that ship cargo, fish, make biscuits, counsel people on careers, launch satellites, paint, provide electrical power, do accountancy, start small companies and operate and manufacture aircraft.

Alain de Botton is a fortunate individual. He is brilliant, he has a Master’s in Philosophy from King’s College London and began a PhD at Harvard but gave it up to write his philosophical books which have done very, very well. He’s a very good writer. He also has a trust fund of 200 M GBP which he doesn’t even have to dip into because of the success of his books. This is relevant because it gives de Botton a different view to most of us of the world of work.

The book is admirable in that looks at the way in which it looks at the myriad of occupations and activities that people perform to allow us to live in the modern world. In the chapter on Logistics de Botton looks at just how it is that a fish is caught in the Indian Ocean and winds up within 52 hours being eaten by people in the UK. He gives a matter a fact description to the process that allows you to reflect on just how amazing the modern world is. How it is that actions of people all over the world are coordinated without a master plan to provide such remarkable service to regular folk.

de Botton is a fine writer. His writer is crisp, clear and clever. He writes like Julian Barnes or Evelyn Waugh but instead of writing fiction chooses to write entertaining books about the world that we live in. This is the first of his books that I’ve read but it won’t be the last. In the book he doesn’t give great recommendations for how we should live our lives. Instead he gives us a view of how people do live theirs that makes us reflect on the world and what people do in it. He respects what people do but also jests with the reader.

The chapter on the launch of Arianne Rocket looks at how amazing technology and amazing power is controlled by extremely calm and professional engineers. de Botton states how anonymous the business of performing such amazing works is. How the people involved are selfless to quite a degree. He also points out the strangeness of the exercise where such resources are dedicated to such a feat whose final goal is to launch a TV satellite to provide the citizens of Japan with frivolous entertainment.

de Botton rounds the book out with chapters on Accountancy, Entrepreneurship and Aviation. The accountancy chapter looks at a large firm in London. You can see that de Botton has taken a certain view of accountants. He knows that a lot of them are fairly bright but rarely brilliant and that the successful ones are very hard working. He looks at them as disregarding the ‘higher’ things in life such as reflecting on life’s purpose which is a little unfair. He doesn’t sit down and talk to any of them to see how they really view their occupations in the vast scheme of things. As someone who has made it doing something very, very few of us could he looks at offices as strange places.

The chapter on aviation looks at the Paris air show and the goings on there, the minutiae of the salesmen selling tubes for aircraft and small items that are, again combined to create such amazing beasts. It concludes by looking at an aircraft graveyard that provides a place for de Botton to reflect on the path from creation to destruction of the things that we create. Here he provides a brief summation of the book and of his views of how we use work to fill our days and stop endless reflection of how death is coming and how finite our lives are. But at the same time he is cleverly giving us pause to think about exactly those issues.

A fine read.

4.5/5

The Spirit Level

The Spirit Level – Why more equal societies almost always do better (2009) by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett is an interesting book.  The book looks at the link between inequality and various social measures across countries and between individual US states. The authors go through their data and then present a prescription for how they think the problems should be tackled.

The start by pointing out that as income rises from very low levels life expectancy shoots up and then plateaus at around the 20-30 thousand dollar per person per year mark. They then construct a measure for inequality, the ratio of the bottom quintiles earnings compared to the top quintile. The also construct a synthetic benchmark to construct an index of health and social problems that includes level of trust, mental illness, life expectancy, obesity, children’s educational performance, teenage births, homicides, imprisonment rates and social mobility that are all equally weighted. Japan does best overall on the index. When the two are compared it becomes apparent that income inequality correlates very well to their combined score. The present a graph that shows the relationship. It, and other graphs for social mobility do not come with labels on the axes, which is disconcerting. The graph also does not present the correlation between inequality and the index. For the first graph presented this does not present a big problem, but for later graphs that do not appear to correlate nearly as well it does. For a book that hinges on the relationship presented it would be really good to go into more detail about how strong the relationships are. Some are clearly very strong, others look fairly weak. Also the income inequality measure used for the US state comparison is the GINI coefficient.

There are also some interesting implications in comparing countries. The US is about 100 times larger than Ireland and is about 30 times larger than the largest Scandinavian country.

Income inequality is then compared to many social ills. The parts of the bench mark are compared to income inequality and the relationship from the original graph is, as it were, shown in piece. The correlation doesn’t appear to be as good, but when all the indices are added together becomes clearer. The authors give explanations as to why they believe income inequality causes each of the problems.

The growth of inequality in the US and the UK is looked at, which is worth doing because the US and UK have seen inequality rise substantially since the mid 1970s while the other countries compared have seen it stay at similar levels. It would have been good to see a historical comparison with the other countries. There is surprisingly little exploration about why inequality in the US and UK should have increased so substantially while in many others it has hardly changed. It would also surely be worth looking at how reducing the vast US prison population or improving US health outcomes would have on inequality.

The authors then go on to present their idea of policies to change things. They also present very silly comparisons of companies against states. They quote UN Conference on Trade and Development as saying: “Exxon is biggest in terms of value added 63Bn making it comparable to Chile or Pakistan.” This is interesting, Chile’s value add, or GDP is 169Bn and is ranked 41st in the world and Pakistan’s is 167Bn and is ranked 45th. The go on further to say that by other measures half the world’s largest economies are companies and how Daimler Chrysler ( now Daimler AG ) with an operating income of 2.3Bn Euros is comparable to Poland with a GDP of 525Bn.

The book goes on to state that economic growth should not be such a big goal and that reducing inequality should be a major goal. They also want to enshrine this in ways that are not changeable by a change of parties. These are curious ideas. Given that by their own statistics economic growth and wealth does not correlate with inequality which they then correlate with a range of social ills it should be possible to have more wealth and more equality.

The book is very interesting, it reminded me of Gross National Happiness, a book from the right that had different conclusions to this one. Both books combine what are appear, at least to a layman, as fairly solid results and then go on to make far less solid prescriptions for society based on the author’s beliefs. The Spirit Level could have been a better book if it had some more exposition on some of the graphs and more labeling and more exploration of why some countries have become more unequal than others. But it is nonetheless an interesting view of statistics across countries.

3.5/5

Wired for War

Wired for War 2009 by Peter Singer is an uneven book about the rapid introduction of robots into the military. It’s interesting that the book is called Wired for War, it could be called Wired on War as the book is like a long Wired article. Wired magazine, which is like Vogue for nerds, is an occasionally amusing read that is also uneven in quality. Singer has hit on a topic of considerable importance and this is the first mass audience book on the subject. Singer makes a lot of references to popular culture and other successful mass market non-fiction books. There is a tipping point to how many outliers you can have on the flat world before you blink.

The book is divided into two sections, the first is the change we are creating and the second is what change is creating for us. The books chapters jump all over the place. The past, the present and the future are all considered. The book starts with a look at the Packbot and TALON UGVs. The next chapter is a short history of robotics which rapidly flips into how the user interfaces on robots are built. This is typical of the way the book jumps around. The book rapidly gets to how science fiction has influenced robotics and Singer starts furiously dropping references to science fiction. The three laws of robotics are repeatedly mentioned, Star Trek, Star Wars, The Terminator get regular mentions. In a book on robots in war there is even a comparison of Star Trek and Doctor Who and how they reflect US and British culture.

The book does not look at the way in which control systems developed that has led to UAVs. There is a brief mention of the V1 and cruise missiles, but absent is discussion of the missiles used in jet aircraft which are really the first robotic vehicles, albeit kamikaze ones. The book has more mentions of Star Trek than the AMRAAM or Sidewinder. The book doesn’t look at in enough detail when near term UAVs are likely to replace other aircraft and which other aircraft are to be replaced. The Predator is discussed a lot, but no comparisons of the Predators record and cost against the A10 or Apache are made.

The book has some interesting points to make. On p253 Singer says that

“Many believe that the air force cancelled its combat drone, Boeing’s X-45, before if could even be tested, in order to keep it from competing with its manned fighter jet of the future, the JSF ….. One designer recalls, “The reason that was given was that we were expected to be simply too good in key areas and that we would have caused a massive disruption to the efforts to ‘keep..JSF sold’ . If we had flown and things like survivability been even assessed on a small scale and Congress had gotten hold of the data, JSF would have been in serious trouble”.

This is relevant for many countries around the world. Australia is currently looking into the JSF. If statements about the superiority of the X-45 are correct then Australia is about to waste billions of dollars on an aircraft that will be obsolete and replaceable with a cheaper, superior vehicle within years of its introduction.

The book starts about being about robots and then becomes a mishmash of grand strategy and speculation. It doesn’t do this well. Singer does not question whether the US must fight potentially bankrupting wars across the globe against guerrillas. The book also does not discuss the fact that despite have superior weapons and robots the US won the 1990 Gulf War but has found the Afghan and Iraq Wars far more difficult propositions. There is no mention of the fact that the Predators are alleged by some to have killed many more civilians that guerrillas. According to Brian Cloughley writing in Informed Comment the Predator between Jan 14 2006 and April 8 2009 14 al-Queda leaders were killed but so were 537 civilians.

The book is still amusing and interesting in large parts. But it is too long and the scope too wide and too haphazardly put together to be a really good book. Robotic vehicles are probably the future of much of war and the subject is an interesting one, but Singer doesn’t do a good job of investigating the issue carefully and thoughtfully, instead choosing to throw in references to sci-fi and come up with chapter headings referencing Coen Brother’s films.

3/5