I was keen to become enlightened. About now. So I headed off to Youtube and watched Steven Pinker give a talk at EarthOptimism on why we should be earth-optimistic about the state of the environment and the future of human well being in general. The talk is primarily to promote his new book, Enlightenment Now (he says this at the beginning of the talk). "Enlightenment Now is a bold, wonderfully expansive and occasionally irate defence of scientific rationality and liberal humanism," says The Guardian.
In his Earthoptimism talk, a taster for his new book, Pinker, conversely, gives us a peculiar faith based pseudo-science perspective on why we should be optimistic about the future and about how we are to, and will in some imaginary future, tackle climate change (though he never actually uses the term as far as I can hear). I say faith based because increasingly as the talk goes on his arguments become ever more irrational, he uses the verb 'hope' over and over and suggests fantastical new technologies that might make things better, he stumbles over ideas and concludes with a bemusing metaphor instead of summarizing any evidence he's offered (I think that's because his evidence is increasingly nonsensical). He also gives lots of cherry-picked data and ignores the most important issues completely (ocean warming, loss of sea ice, intensive farming, consumerism, fracking and the energy sector in general, well just about everything concerning climate change). It becomes increasingly like a religious speaker telling us that their religious text is about love and togetherness not about smiting infidels or sacrificing your children.
Here's a super digested read of his talk then a dreary and long exposition/critique.
The digested read is "Some things have got better. Economic growth is always good. We hope things will get even better. Smartphones are really great. We need to teach our children carpentry skills. Be optimistic. Look, here's some data that makes things sound like everything is going to be ok. I hope."
So Steven Pinker's opening gambit is: “Intellectuals hate progress” with a powerpointy slide to highlight this.
As so often in his work (see his book Blank Slate) he offers no evidence for his assertion. He simply uses his authorial voice to make it sound like this is an undisputed fact.
He then points out that said (imaginary?) intellectuals are hypocrites because they're perfectly happy to use the seeds of technology, like word processors over quills. Why don't we use quills anymore? They look so cool in movies. I would trust a man (or woman) who used a quill.
I wonder who these "intellectuals" are that he has such a bee in his bonnet about? Similarly, he suggests some conspiracy-lite in Blank Slate, where postmodernist intellectuals are taking over universities and teaching that we're tabula rasas, and generally spreading bad feminist messages.
At the beginning he just gives us a series of soundbites with absolutely no evidence to back them up: "It is the idea of progress that rankles the chattering class." What?
He then lists quotes about himself, I think, from others, he doesn't tell us where these quotes come from but they sound suspiciously twittery? For a psychologist he must recognize he has issues around this. So, variously he is described negatively as "a cheerleeder for vulgar American can do-ism," a "pollyanna" with a "boardroom ideology" "a pangloss," a "naive optimist."
And best of all: "You have a blind faith, a quasi religious belief in the outmoded superstition and false promise of the myth of the onward march of inevitable progress."
That sounds harsh. But, oddly, unless you swallow whole without any of your critical faculties switched to the on button during the talk, Pinker proves he is exactly that. As follows in a moment...
He quotes writer, Stewart Brand: “Pessimists sound like they're trying to help you. Optimists sound like they're trying to sell you something.” Pinker then with no deadpan irony in the very next sentence tells us: "In my...uh the book I argue that the general mindset we have adopted since the enlightenment, we can use reason and science to enhance the flourishing of humans and other living things."
Yep, optimists always selling you their latest book.
Next up, getting to the meaty carbon intensive dinner, Pinker asks: “Can we have an enlightened environmentalism? Can we take the positive message from the enlightenment and apply it to the planet?”
This is just weird. Is he suggesting environmentalists aren't rational, reasonable, enlightened? Is environmentalism not already enlightened? This is typical of his work where he tosses out ideas as if they were hardened facts. You do see why he might suggest this in a moment though when he discusses and criticizes the key, the most prominent and important environmentalist of our times. In a moment.
“There's a lot of earth pessimism. I think of this as 1970s greenism," he tells us, making up an imaginary movement that he then goes on to talk about as if it were real.
For someone who likes to quote data he oddly continually ignores the statistics on rising C02 levels (now over the 400 threshold), growth in car ownership (he does mention this later in relation to something else but puts a positive spin on it....yep), air travel, population (he talks about rates, below), meat and dairy consumption, plastic waste/overfishing, use of electricity and gas, fracking, consumerism, etc. But at least we get to the figurehead of the imaginary movement he's just made up.
"Perhaps the most famous recent exponent of pessimism or 1970s greenism is...."
Pinker went hunting around wheat fields for the strawiest straw man and found Pope Francis just standing about scaring crows with his scary Catholic certainty. Pope Francis represents environmentalism as much as he represents abortion, healthy relationships between adults and children and the love between two consenting males. This is just ridiculous nonsense. Just to point out, because the Pope speaks out on the environment in a weird Catholic way (you know, we should consume less condoms type of thing) he does not represent the environmental movement. There are actual real organizations who do this, The Green Party, Greenpeace, you know green things. Until it becomes the Greencatholic Church I'm not voting for him.
Pinker then suggests that his invented 70s greenism doesn't care about people. This is extrapolated to mean environmentalists per se, of course, having set up said man of straw. Which is nonsense as the two; human rights and environmentalism, are inextricably linked (alongside animal rights).
“This is a philosophy that has an indifference to human suffering: starvation, disease, extreme poverty.” Thus Pinker makes the typical mistake of confusing Catholicism with environmentalism. Who among us hasn't done that at one time or another?
Pinker's other environmental target is the relatively obscure Paul Watson, who was primarily active in the 1980s carrying out direct action against seal killing. Watson suggested population should be scaled back to less than one billion and likens decimating population numbers to curing a cancer. I think Bill Hicks said humans are a virus with shoes around that time and Pinker hasn't had a go at him (yet).
They have a point. Pinker suggests that "when your rhetoric starts to sound like a Nazi it's time to rethink your messaging." This is the same Steven Pinker who defends The Bell Curve in his book Blank Slate and suggests that rape is genetically programmed in men to get sex and it has nothing to do with power (a feminist invention that has infected our consciousness, he claims). But he mitigates against anyone thinking that he's biologically programmed like that and dangerous to society by telling us that only "nobodies and losers" are rapists. My hands are in the air and I'm shaking my head at this most enlightened of thinking. He boils animals alive for pleasure too*
He suggests (in the video) this thinking (the Catholic stuff...no I mean the 70s greenism stuff, I'm confused myself now, see how this sleight of hand works) "encourages a kind of fatalism. We will all suffer an horrific apocalypse unless we immediately take extreme measures which we have no chance whatsoever of taking.”
Um, so isn't this a fact?
A fact backed up by The Paris Agreement, which was horribly watered down because no one believed it was possible and the Americans have since pulled out. The Agreement (see below) has three key points, the first of which is to try and keep warming levels below 1.5 degrees and not let it get over 2 degrees. How is this not fatalistic? Just pop in a search for 2 degree warming and you'll see reputable sites suggesting cities flooded, scarcity of food and water, huge sea level rises, severe droughts in Africa, temperatures going over human habitat levels in the middle East and Australia. Just keeping warming below 1.5 degrees because of factors like sea ice melting/warming oceans is probably impossible even if we cut all C02 emissions today. But, of course, emissions are rising year on year. We drive more, we fly more, the population is greater, we eat more meat and dairy, and use more natural resources and we just keep on buying stuff because our economies are built this way. Worse, as countries get richer, despite Pinker's optimistic view, all evidence suggests they use more resources. As the west rightly spreads wealth to Asia and Africa, once poor Asians and Africans will also want cars, to travel, to eat meat and dairy when they want to, etc. What is there not to be fatalistic about? Where is the evidence to suggest there could be other outcomes?
Pinker suggests there is something called: “Enlightened Environmentalism." Because, remember, (see above) all environmentalists want to go back to the golden age of 1163, when people didn't have smartphones, used quills (god, they looked cool though) and believed in the devil and hell as literal truths. Remembering that Pope Francis is our iconic environmentalist we're arguing against here. So, enlightened environmentalism. What's that then?
"1: Industrialization has brought many gifts.”
Pinker suggests that environmentalists can't see this. This is the laziest of false dichotomies. Pinker uses this ideologically over and over again, where he suggests by proxy that our current state of being could only have resulted from exactly the same conditions. And our current state of being is the best (of all possible worlds?) and thus to criticize it is to deny it's bestness. You could, of course, have industrialization without the levels of pollution and exploitation of humans and animals. I could have the wonders of my electric shower or this laptop without the exploitation of the environment at the current levels. But for Pinker you're either a 'rational industralization is good' kind of guy like himself or Pope Francis, environmentalist. And lover of the Medieval world.
He lists all the wonders that industrialization brings. It helped end slavery, helped emancipate women, help educate children. The counter argument to that is just as strong, of course. Industralization made slaves of us all, women and children. A truly enlightened view sees that industrialization doesn't have to enslave us.
The admittedly far from perfect (but it's all we have) Global Slavery Index suggests that in 2016 45.8 million people are in some form of modern slavery in 167 countries. Which is about four times the number of African slaves used in the 'heyday' of American slavery. In the UK it's estimated that between eleven and thousand thousand people are in slavery. None of this includes wage slavery, which most of us are institutionalised into. After all, the definition of slavery is infamously difficult to pin down.
“We can read at night, we can live where we want, we can stay warm in winter, we can see the world...”
We? This is a problem that many white middle/upper class chattering class intellectuals have. They live in a bubble with other white, middle/upper class intellectuals. What about the estimated 20% in the UK that who are considered energy poor, can't even afford to heat their homes? Guardian
In fact, homelessness has risen alarmingly in the UK. There's a housing crisis. And, of course, being able to see the world is part of the very environmental problem. Though, his point about reading at night is pretty good for us insomniacs. No wait, insomnia might be caused by unnatural environmental urban lighting. God, it's so complex.
“Some pollution is inevitable.”
Everyone would agree. It's impossible not to. But industrialization has polluted the Earth beyond any previous level. This is a silly argument Pitting the rational Pinker who sees some pollution is inevitable with an imaginary eco warrior who wants to take us back to the homosexual-free middle ages.
"Economic development is good."
In theory. But as I suggest above, the more developed countries become the more they emit. It's a double bind where you don't want to deny poorer nations wealth but equally if poorer nations consumed like Americans we would all be long gone.
“Richer countries can afford to pay for a cleaner environment” Except they do exactly the opposite. As countries get wealthier they adopt a western lifestyle based on consumption of meat and dairy, cars, stuff. See the US. So inordinately wealthy it is almost 100% green, like some demi-paradise.
There is then an astonishing assertion: “I think we have seen that if people are given the choice between having electricity at the cost of some air pollution and doing without electricity they'll opt for the electricity at the cost of pollution but if they can afford to spring for a little bit extra to have the electricity without the pollution they'll spring for that extra amount.” Gibberish! Nonsense! Where is the evidence for this? Why isn't the extraordinarily wealthy United States switched on to green energy instead of opting for fracking? In the UK over 50% of power is now from green energy news agencies have enthusiastically cried. Actually most of it is from nuclear power which is counted as a renewable energy. As is burning wood pellets. We still rely heavily on gas (fracking is here too) and coal. The feel good times are here in the UK with continuous economic growth so why isn't everyone switching to green energy?
"As we become richer we put a higher value on the environment." He neglects to mention that the richest societies are by far the biggest polluters. Isn't this cognitive dissonance in action? I'm no cognitive psychologist but...
3 technology advances:
Pinker suggests:
"We can create pollution control technologies.
Densification (intensifying land use). Urbanisation, precision farming, tree plantation.
Dematerialization."
Except this is all a fantasy. None of this has happened. In reality the opposite has occurred. Our technology is more polluting because it becomes redundant so quickly, TVs, computers, smartphones, etc.
Deforestation for palm oil and soya for animal feed continues almost unabated (see below).
Our economic growth is predicated on consumption of goods. These might be pleasant futuristic dreams but there is absolutely no evidence for them. In reality, the opposite is occurring despite the direst climate warnings. Perhaps they're just not fatalistic enough.
Pinker then (switch off your critical thinking) lists all the things we used to use before smartphones made them obsolete:
reams of paper
radios
cameras
landlines
alarm clocks
newspaper subscription
vcr
flashlight
and so on.
That's right, these things no longer exist. People just don't buy these things any more. Except of course that they do. Along with their smart phone. In fact most become retro novelties. Hey, look at that guy with his retro ream of paper.
More importantly, previous to our era of best of all possible wonder industrialized progress, no one updated their landline phone or radio or camera etc. each year with the new Samsung ultra slim landline, the Apple i-ream of paper 8. Yeah, no one buys blue rays, dvds, anymore, as they're standing in line at checkouts in supermarkets. Jesus even vinyl records have made a comeback. There is watches on this list! As a psychologist he should know why this is. We like stuff, solid stuff. Or rather, people in our industrialized world like stuff.
Even more importantly, what of the minerals that go into these products?
Oddly, pinker seems to suggest that smartphones have replaced every technology rather than point out that they've simply added to them.
Pinker suggests "slavery was ended by progress." Unless every history book I've ever read has it all wrong, the call to end slavery in the US was taken up by Lincoln midway through the Civil War to appease abolitionists and use African Americans in the Union army. Previous to that Lincoln was ambivalent about slavery. The Brits abolished slavery 50 years earlier as a trade weapon to dent the burgeoning American republic. Is that progress? If progress is merely something that occurred or didn't today that was in existence or not yesterday then yeah, I guess. But isn't that everything?
He argues that progress has done away with horrors and given us wonders. It ended slavery. That economic growth does not lead to pollution. That technology can do away with polluting redundant goods.
So, beneath the statistics lies stories. You buy your new Apple 8 iphone thing. This wonder does away with all the things of the past; watches, VCR, flashlights, clocks, etc. You no longer have any of these things on your person or in your home. You bought your iphone online from Amazon.
The phone is primarily non-biodegradable plastic. The core minerals are mined in the Congo.
The phone is delivered via one of the new breed of delivery companies like Hermes.
Pinker then makes yet another astonishing claim: “Can it work? I've just given you some reasons to think that we can bend the curve and achieve human well being at a smaller cost to the environment.”
He's done no such thing. That's like a weird conjuring trick. Economic growth, industrialization, the proliferation of smart phones have not lessened our environmental impact. Of course, they've done the opposite.
But alongside smartphones saving us all he lists other environmental success stories.
Number one: “Urban waterways in every developed country have improved drastically over the last few decades.”
No data for this. In fact there's a major problem with waterways in the UK due to intensive hill farming which has lead to several years of the worst flooding since records began. He's actually talking about major rivers in the largest cities. He cites Boston Harbour and The Thames in London.
He backs up his argument by showing a picture of where he lives. It looks very pleasant.
Astonishingly, that's his evidence. That's it for environmental success stories. We're saved. Pinker is right. There's so much to be optimistic about. Fresh lobster. Yum.
Then it's on to population and the old "the population growth rate is actually going down" trick.
Of course, world population isn't decreasing. It's markedly increasing. But the rate is decreasing. He doesn't explain the fairly simple arithmetic. If the population was 2 last week and it went up by 100% that would make four people, if we added two people this week growth oddly had only gone up 50%. So the growth rate has markedly decreased yet the population increased by the same number. So on a planet of 7 billion to continue population growth at the same rate would take same mammoth Catholic condom-free copulation effort all round. It's a bit misleading. There are more people, there will be more people in the future. Is that an issue? Yes. Is it THE issue? No. Consumption is. On this, the great environmentalist of our age, Pope Francis, is right.
“It's possible that resource use might peak because of densification, dematerialization...”
This is just sheer faith based nonsense. It's possible that I might become Pope.
“We've reached peak farmland, peak paper [I thought smartphones had done away with that?], peak car, peak stuff...”
This is just nonsense. All evidence to the complete opposite. This very day on the 21st February 2018 the newspapers are full of a story of BP suggesting oil demand to peak by late 2030s. Car sales did go down in the UK this year but for the last five years it's been growing at around 5%. There is a limit to how many cars one can drive. But only in the moment.
“In the UK the typical person used 12 tonnes of resources in the year 2000 today it's down to 9 tonnes.”
I'm not sure where he gets this figure. The government website shows household waste went up last year. On a google search all data suggests it's stayed about the same since 2000. It would depend on what you count as waste. And then, of course you have to factor in how we deal with it. Incineration, landfill and shipping it off to China has been the preferred method but the latter is no longer an option.
Then onto The Environmental Performance Index:
"There have been improvements in 178 of the 180 countries."
This is a simplistic reading of the data. Thus, China might have improved on C02 emmisions but they might have regressed on air quality. The UK is a prime example of cutting C02 from cars by promoting diesel. Which in turn pollutes through nitrogen dioxide. Most environmental agencies also rely on industry figures. See the VW scandal for how much these can be trusted.
None of this matters, call me a 70s greenist, if the levels of C02 is rising. Which it is. The Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii issues the most reliable figure of C02 parts per million and that's a continuing trend upwards (407.98 ppm January 2018 from 406.13 ppm January 2017).
It's important to note that this can't factor in melting sea ice or the ocean warming effect. Oddly Pinker mentions none of this. One can bandy around figures all day but the PPM figure is really all that counts.
“Crucially, the wealthier the country the cleaner the environment.”
This is primarily because manufacturing has been exported to large polluters, China, India, Bangladesh. The UK is sixth. We have good water and sanitation but air quality is increasingly problematic, we've outsourced nearly all industry to China and the Indian subcontinent and our growth relies almost completely on consumption (retail sales, see below) and financial services.
Within the bottom three countries Bangladesh, the garment manufacturing centre of the world and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where all the minerals are mined for our smartphones.
He uses a graph to suggest that environmentalists believe “to stop pollution we must stop economic growth” but look you can cut pollution and still have growth, he argues...
This is rubbish. Great, Nox, S02, etc. pollution is down but he even says it himself, C02 emmissions have gone up in a period where most manufacturing has been exported to the developing world. By far the greatest threat is C02 levels. The graph actually shows that despite the direst warnings Americans have blithely continued to escalate C02 emissions.
Pinker carries out another false dichotomy, suggesting environmentalists are essentially “agreeing with Donald Trump, helping the environment or economic growth, it's one or the other.” Which is nonsense. Most argue for change in the way the economy works. For moving into green economies rather than believing you can carry on consuming at 3% growth and cut emissions at the same time.
To reiterate, economic growth is based primarily on consumption. In the UK, for instance, the service industry is by far the biggest sector (around 80%), with retail its biggest sector along with financial services, which is a kind of wealth laundering service.
"This graph shows that GDP can increase at the same time the pollution can decrease.”
That's a gross manipulation of that data. Some pollution. But as we've seen in the UK, instead of pursuing a less car mileage economy, we've simply offset one gas with another.
The US contributes nearly 15% of all C02 emissions yet has just over 4% of the world's population. Electricity and transport outweighs emissions from industry in the US (29%, 27%, 21%).
“It's not true that economic growth causes pollution.”
Actually it is true. At present. Economic growth in the US is predicated on consumer spending, financial and information services as much as industry (durable goods) so...
Pinker turns to deforestation. And shows a graph from 1700 to 2010 and shows a large drop since the 1970s in tropical deforestation.
Or rather, it shows a drop in the rate of tropical deforestation. The graph works in the same way as population. But in reverse. That is, since WWII around 50% of the world's rainforests have been cut down, the land they covered have decreased from around 14% to 6%. From 1947 to the mid 1990s we lost 50% of the rainforests, if that trend had continued we would have been facing the complete loss within a few years. While Brazil have carried out extensive work to cut back on deforestation the trend is still towards a loss. It's just that the trend is slowing. Again, simple maths, you have ten trees, you cut down 5 last week, that's a 50% loss, you continue this week with a 50% loss and that's 2.5 trees. Obviously as the wood becomes scarcer the trend will be a statistical fall. Isn't this just percentage graph bamboozling?
Pinker has already told us that the US citizens are driving more miles and that trend can be exported to all developed countries. So instead of dealing with our continued reliance on oil he gives us a graph on oil spills. They've gone down from 1970 by a lot. Great, lots more oil for us to burn. I'm guessing (I am not a scientist, but then nor is Pinker) that burning the oil has a worse environmental effect than spilling it in the ocean? C02, ocean warming, sea ice loss, etc. Again this is just sleight of hand, show some data involving oil that has gone down, audience cognitively take on board the positive message despite our oil use happily continuing as ever.
“Few people realize that as the amount of oil transported by sea has continued to increase the number of oil spills has plummeted. Again showing that economic activity and environmental protection do not have to be at cross purposes.”
Does he actually read this stuff back to himself and not think, hang on...amount of oil increasing...environmental protection...
We then move on to cereal yields per hectare from 1965 to 2014. We can now produce more cereal from less ground. Oddly, Pinker was extolling the cutting of pollutants in the US not moments before but here salutes the industry with perhaps the worst record of polluting the environment with excess nitrogen, ammonia, etc. from fertiliser. You can't magically grow more crops. There is, of course, GM to factor in too.
“Still extraordinarily worrying but still glimmers of hope the amount of C02 emitted per dollar of economic activity has been in decline all over the world.”
If that isn't faith based then what is?
Another graph showing C02 emissions 1960 to 2015. EU and the US have increased but plateaued in the 1990s. Why could that be? Oh look at the emissions of China and India suddenly hugely exanding about the same time.
“There's a bit of hope in this deceleration here.”
He just gets more desperate to cling to the word hope.
“As you know there are plans for decarbonisation (he stumbles a lot here)...how it might be uh possible to taper off our use of C02 with the goal of bringing it to zero.”
What plans?
Where?
Who?
The Paris Agreement:
"(a) Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change;
(b) Increasing the ability to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change and foster climate resilience and low greenhouse gas emissions development, in a manner that does not threaten food production;
(c) Making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development.
There's nothing about zero. In fact it quite boldly talks about limiting impact, pursuing rather than definitely agreeing to limit levels and looking at ways to build metaphorical bomb shelters when it goes off by adapting society to inevitable impacts. We're screwed but we endeavour to be screwed slower.
And the US aren't even willing to screw slowly. Or at all.
“Even if the US pull away there are threats of sanctions against the United States, carbon tariffs on American products.”
This is pure pie in the sky nonsense. How is anyone going to enforce that? Who? The UN? Oh yeah, the US will take notice of that one.
“So even there all hope is not lost.”
“So, now, when people hear about these improvements they say, oh you're saying the environment improved all by itself, we don't have to do anything.”
It hasn't improved. What improvements? This is quite simply wrong. C02 emissions have increased, the world is getting warmer.
So is there cause for optimism, Pinker asks, after proving we're on the right track and poo pooing the doubters like Pope Francis. Should we be optimistic?
Well, that's the point of this talk. This data cherrypicking, this hope in the face of actual facts, this great sleight of hand. Optimism.
He concludes that there's a difference between “complacent optimism” and “conditional optimism.” And he explains this thoroughly.
“Complacent optimism is a child on Christmas eve waiting to get the presents the next morning.”
Ok.
"Conditional optimism is the child who gets a hammer and some wood and gets together with some other kids in the hope of building a tree house.”
Well, that cleared that up. We need to make our children take up carpentry (oddly Pope Francis would agree, what with the son of God liking that kind of thing as a kid) and break the news there's no presents, kids, you have to make your own. Which, unless I'm missing something goes against his whole argument, as the Christmas present is good for economic growth but if we didn't buy the presents and just made our own then the current economic system would collapse. But we'd get a neat tree house. Assuming we're wealthy enough to have a suburban garden house.
He clears up any confusion by concluding:
“I don't think we can be complacently optimistic but I do think we can be conditionally optimistic. The best way to explain it is to quote the engineer, Arthur Kantrowitz: My job is to explain two things to you. Pessimism is a self fulfilling prophecy. Optimism is a self fulfilling prophecy.”
There you have Pinker's position explained. Absolutely nothing concrete wrapped inside a Christmas present you don't receive on Christmas morning because he believes you should be making a tree house. Or something. The conclusion is clearly gibberish because he hasn't backed up any of his argument at all.
But it sounds authoritative. And it's the message we all want to hear. You don't have to do anything about your lifestyle because your lifestyle is great for the planet just don't be passive, be conditional. Whatever that means in concrete terms. Enlightenment. Rationality. Reason.
In his Earthoptimism talk, a taster for his new book, Pinker, conversely, gives us a peculiar faith based pseudo-science perspective on why we should be optimistic about the future and about how we are to, and will in some imaginary future, tackle climate change (though he never actually uses the term as far as I can hear). I say faith based because increasingly as the talk goes on his arguments become ever more irrational, he uses the verb 'hope' over and over and suggests fantastical new technologies that might make things better, he stumbles over ideas and concludes with a bemusing metaphor instead of summarizing any evidence he's offered (I think that's because his evidence is increasingly nonsensical). He also gives lots of cherry-picked data and ignores the most important issues completely (ocean warming, loss of sea ice, intensive farming, consumerism, fracking and the energy sector in general, well just about everything concerning climate change). It becomes increasingly like a religious speaker telling us that their religious text is about love and togetherness not about smiting infidels or sacrificing your children.
Here's a super digested read of his talk then a dreary and long exposition/critique.
The digested read is "Some things have got better. Economic growth is always good. We hope things will get even better. Smartphones are really great. We need to teach our children carpentry skills. Be optimistic. Look, here's some data that makes things sound like everything is going to be ok. I hope."
So Steven Pinker's opening gambit is: “Intellectuals hate progress” with a powerpointy slide to highlight this.
Fact
He then points out that said (imaginary?) intellectuals are hypocrites because they're perfectly happy to use the seeds of technology, like word processors over quills. Why don't we use quills anymore? They look so cool in movies. I would trust a man (or woman) who used a quill.
I wonder who these "intellectuals" are that he has such a bee in his bonnet about? Similarly, he suggests some conspiracy-lite in Blank Slate, where postmodernist intellectuals are taking over universities and teaching that we're tabula rasas, and generally spreading bad feminist messages.
At the beginning he just gives us a series of soundbites with absolutely no evidence to back them up: "It is the idea of progress that rankles the chattering class." What?
He then lists quotes about himself, I think, from others, he doesn't tell us where these quotes come from but they sound suspiciously twittery? For a psychologist he must recognize he has issues around this. So, variously he is described negatively as "a cheerleeder for vulgar American can do-ism," a "pollyanna" with a "boardroom ideology" "a pangloss," a "naive optimist."
And best of all: "You have a blind faith, a quasi religious belief in the outmoded superstition and false promise of the myth of the onward march of inevitable progress."
That sounds harsh. But, oddly, unless you swallow whole without any of your critical faculties switched to the on button during the talk, Pinker proves he is exactly that. As follows in a moment...
He quotes writer, Stewart Brand: “Pessimists sound like they're trying to help you. Optimists sound like they're trying to sell you something.” Pinker then with no deadpan irony in the very next sentence tells us: "In my...uh the book I argue that the general mindset we have adopted since the enlightenment, we can use reason and science to enhance the flourishing of humans and other living things."
Yep, optimists always selling you their latest book.
Or indeed the back catalogue
This is just weird. Is he suggesting environmentalists aren't rational, reasonable, enlightened? Is environmentalism not already enlightened? This is typical of his work where he tosses out ideas as if they were hardened facts. You do see why he might suggest this in a moment though when he discusses and criticizes the key, the most prominent and important environmentalist of our times. In a moment.
“There's a lot of earth pessimism. I think of this as 1970s greenism," he tells us, making up an imaginary movement that he then goes on to talk about as if it were real.
For someone who likes to quote data he oddly continually ignores the statistics on rising C02 levels (now over the 400 threshold), growth in car ownership (he does mention this later in relation to something else but puts a positive spin on it....yep), air travel, population (he talks about rates, below), meat and dairy consumption, plastic waste/overfishing, use of electricity and gas, fracking, consumerism, etc. But at least we get to the figurehead of the imaginary movement he's just made up.
"Perhaps the most famous recent exponent of pessimism or 1970s greenism is...."
Is it George Monbiot? Nope.
Maybe Jonathon Porritt? 'Fraid not.
The wonderful Jim Hansen? Uh uh. Who could be the leader of this imaginary reactionary unenlightened organization?
Of course. It's Jorge Bergoglio...Him in the car, ironically...who?
The 266th Pope, Frankie.
Pinker went hunting around wheat fields for the strawiest straw man and found Pope Francis just standing about scaring crows with his scary Catholic certainty. Pope Francis represents environmentalism as much as he represents abortion, healthy relationships between adults and children and the love between two consenting males. This is just ridiculous nonsense. Just to point out, because the Pope speaks out on the environment in a weird Catholic way (you know, we should consume less condoms type of thing) he does not represent the environmental movement. There are actual real organizations who do this, The Green Party, Greenpeace, you know green things. Until it becomes the Greencatholic Church I'm not voting for him.
Pinker then suggests that his invented 70s greenism doesn't care about people. This is extrapolated to mean environmentalists per se, of course, having set up said man of straw. Which is nonsense as the two; human rights and environmentalism, are inextricably linked (alongside animal rights).
“This is a philosophy that has an indifference to human suffering: starvation, disease, extreme poverty.” Thus Pinker makes the typical mistake of confusing Catholicism with environmentalism. Who among us hasn't done that at one time or another?
Pinker's other environmental target is the relatively obscure Paul Watson, who was primarily active in the 1980s carrying out direct action against seal killing. Watson suggested population should be scaled back to less than one billion and likens decimating population numbers to curing a cancer. I think Bill Hicks said humans are a virus with shoes around that time and Pinker hasn't had a go at him (yet).
They have a point. Pinker suggests that "when your rhetoric starts to sound like a Nazi it's time to rethink your messaging." This is the same Steven Pinker who defends The Bell Curve in his book Blank Slate and suggests that rape is genetically programmed in men to get sex and it has nothing to do with power (a feminist invention that has infected our consciousness, he claims). But he mitigates against anyone thinking that he's biologically programmed like that and dangerous to society by telling us that only "nobodies and losers" are rapists. My hands are in the air and I'm shaking my head at this most enlightened of thinking. He boils animals alive for pleasure too*
He suggests (in the video) this thinking (the Catholic stuff...no I mean the 70s greenism stuff, I'm confused myself now, see how this sleight of hand works) "encourages a kind of fatalism. We will all suffer an horrific apocalypse unless we immediately take extreme measures which we have no chance whatsoever of taking.”
Um, so isn't this a fact?
While those surveyed might end up believing unpleasant Randian self interest is the way forward, at least their thinking is based on stuff like evidence and facts rather than hope or data manipulation.
Pinker suggests there is something called: “Enlightened Environmentalism." Because, remember, (see above) all environmentalists want to go back to the golden age of 1163, when people didn't have smartphones, used quills (god, they looked cool though) and believed in the devil and hell as literal truths. Remembering that Pope Francis is our iconic environmentalist we're arguing against here. So, enlightened environmentalism. What's that then?
"1: Industrialization has brought many gifts.”
Pinker suggests that environmentalists can't see this. This is the laziest of false dichotomies. Pinker uses this ideologically over and over again, where he suggests by proxy that our current state of being could only have resulted from exactly the same conditions. And our current state of being is the best (of all possible worlds?) and thus to criticize it is to deny it's bestness. You could, of course, have industrialization without the levels of pollution and exploitation of humans and animals. I could have the wonders of my electric shower or this laptop without the exploitation of the environment at the current levels. But for Pinker you're either a 'rational industralization is good' kind of guy like himself or Pope Francis, environmentalist. And lover of the Medieval world.
He lists all the wonders that industrialization brings. It helped end slavery, helped emancipate women, help educate children. The counter argument to that is just as strong, of course. Industralization made slaves of us all, women and children. A truly enlightened view sees that industrialization doesn't have to enslave us.
The admittedly far from perfect (but it's all we have) Global Slavery Index suggests that in 2016 45.8 million people are in some form of modern slavery in 167 countries. Which is about four times the number of African slaves used in the 'heyday' of American slavery. In the UK it's estimated that between eleven and thousand thousand people are in slavery. None of this includes wage slavery, which most of us are institutionalised into. After all, the definition of slavery is infamously difficult to pin down.
“We can read at night, we can live where we want, we can stay warm in winter, we can see the world...”
We? This is a problem that many white middle/upper class chattering class intellectuals have. They live in a bubble with other white, middle/upper class intellectuals. What about the estimated 20% in the UK that who are considered energy poor, can't even afford to heat their homes? Guardian
In fact, homelessness has risen alarmingly in the UK. There's a housing crisis. And, of course, being able to see the world is part of the very environmental problem. Though, his point about reading at night is pretty good for us insomniacs. No wait, insomnia might be caused by unnatural environmental urban lighting. God, it's so complex.
“Some pollution is inevitable.”
Everyone would agree. It's impossible not to. But industrialization has polluted the Earth beyond any previous level. This is a silly argument Pitting the rational Pinker who sees some pollution is inevitable with an imaginary eco warrior who wants to take us back to the homosexual-free middle ages.
"Economic development is good."
In theory. But as I suggest above, the more developed countries become the more they emit. It's a double bind where you don't want to deny poorer nations wealth but equally if poorer nations consumed like Americans we would all be long gone.
“Richer countries can afford to pay for a cleaner environment” Except they do exactly the opposite. As countries get wealthier they adopt a western lifestyle based on consumption of meat and dairy, cars, stuff. See the US. So inordinately wealthy it is almost 100% green, like some demi-paradise.
There is then an astonishing assertion: “I think we have seen that if people are given the choice between having electricity at the cost of some air pollution and doing without electricity they'll opt for the electricity at the cost of pollution but if they can afford to spring for a little bit extra to have the electricity without the pollution they'll spring for that extra amount.” Gibberish! Nonsense! Where is the evidence for this? Why isn't the extraordinarily wealthy United States switched on to green energy instead of opting for fracking? In the UK over 50% of power is now from green energy news agencies have enthusiastically cried. Actually most of it is from nuclear power which is counted as a renewable energy. As is burning wood pellets. We still rely heavily on gas (fracking is here too) and coal. The feel good times are here in the UK with continuous economic growth so why isn't everyone switching to green energy?
"As we become richer we put a higher value on the environment." He neglects to mention that the richest societies are by far the biggest polluters. Isn't this cognitive dissonance in action? I'm no cognitive psychologist but...
3 technology advances:
Pinker suggests:
"We can create pollution control technologies.
Densification (intensifying land use). Urbanisation, precision farming, tree plantation.
Dematerialization."
Except this is all a fantasy. None of this has happened. In reality the opposite has occurred. Our technology is more polluting because it becomes redundant so quickly, TVs, computers, smartphones, etc.
Deforestation for palm oil and soya for animal feed continues almost unabated (see below).
Our economic growth is predicated on consumption of goods. These might be pleasant futuristic dreams but there is absolutely no evidence for them. In reality, the opposite is occurring despite the direst climate warnings. Perhaps they're just not fatalistic enough.
Pinker then (switch off your critical thinking) lists all the things we used to use before smartphones made them obsolete:
reams of paper
radios
cameras
landlines
alarm clocks
newspaper subscription
vcr
flashlight
and so on.
That's right, these things no longer exist. People just don't buy these things any more. Except of course that they do. Along with their smart phone. In fact most become retro novelties. Hey, look at that guy with his retro ream of paper.
More importantly, previous to our era of best of all possible wonder industrialized progress, no one updated their landline phone or radio or camera etc. each year with the new Samsung ultra slim landline, the Apple i-ream of paper 8. Yeah, no one buys blue rays, dvds, anymore, as they're standing in line at checkouts in supermarkets. Jesus even vinyl records have made a comeback. There is watches on this list! As a psychologist he should know why this is. We like stuff, solid stuff. Or rather, people in our industrialized world like stuff.
Even more importantly, what of the minerals that go into these products?
Oddly, pinker seems to suggest that smartphones have replaced every technology rather than point out that they've simply added to them.
Pinker suggests "slavery was ended by progress." Unless every history book I've ever read has it all wrong, the call to end slavery in the US was taken up by Lincoln midway through the Civil War to appease abolitionists and use African Americans in the Union army. Previous to that Lincoln was ambivalent about slavery. The Brits abolished slavery 50 years earlier as a trade weapon to dent the burgeoning American republic. Is that progress? If progress is merely something that occurred or didn't today that was in existence or not yesterday then yeah, I guess. But isn't that everything?
He argues that progress has done away with horrors and given us wonders. It ended slavery. That economic growth does not lead to pollution. That technology can do away with polluting redundant goods.
So, beneath the statistics lies stories. You buy your new Apple 8 iphone thing. This wonder does away with all the things of the past; watches, VCR, flashlights, clocks, etc. You no longer have any of these things on your person or in your home. You bought your iphone online from Amazon.
The phone is primarily non-biodegradable plastic. The core minerals are mined in the Congo.
Amnesty suggests child slave labour is endemic in the process.
The phone is assembled in China by workers in humane conditions.
Whoops
An Apple factory.
The phone is transported across the world. At an Amazon warehouse the phone is packaged for delivery.
An Amazon warehouse
Apart from the dehamunization of the global system, Amazon actively avoids paying any tax anywhere. It's CEO has a net worth of over $120 billion. That's four times the whole GDP of The Democratic Republic of Congo with a population of 78 million people.
Drivers are paid per delivery and use their own vehicle and fuel and the company gain most profit with absolutely no outlay beyond a website.
You unpack your iphone and in the UK there's a roughly 50/50 chance the packaging will be recycled or thrown in the waste.
GDP and waste in Europe. Remembering Europe lead the world in waste management.
You then take your old phone and dump it. Or put it with all the others in the designated phone drawer. Or sell it on perhaps but who the hell wants last year's must have? You may recycle it, which in turn, of course, uses energy.
But, crucially, the near £1000 you paid for the product counts towards the UK GDP figure. Despite it not touching British earth in production. And, of course, all the pollution that the production emits goes on to the levels of the producer countries, primarily China. So in a neat conjuring trick, British growth is up and our emissions are down.
Earlier, Pinker claimed that environmentalism with a pessimistic bent leads to:“a philosophy that has an indifference to human suffering: starvation, disease, extreme poverty.” I would counter that by suggesting that the philosophy he is upholding, of progress, of infinite economic growth, and stability of our present economic and political system is actually that very philosophy.
He's done no such thing. That's like a weird conjuring trick. Economic growth, industrialization, the proliferation of smart phones have not lessened our environmental impact. Of course, they've done the opposite.
But alongside smartphones saving us all he lists other environmental success stories.
Number one: “Urban waterways in every developed country have improved drastically over the last few decades.”
No data for this. In fact there's a major problem with waterways in the UK due to intensive hill farming which has lead to several years of the worst flooding since records began. He's actually talking about major rivers in the largest cities. He cites Boston Harbour and The Thames in London.
He backs up his argument by showing a picture of where he lives. It looks very pleasant.
*This is where he mentions that he can now get fresh lobsters from Boston Harbour...the animal boiling fiend
Then it's on to population and the old "the population growth rate is actually going down" trick.
Of course, world population isn't decreasing. It's markedly increasing. But the rate is decreasing. He doesn't explain the fairly simple arithmetic. If the population was 2 last week and it went up by 100% that would make four people, if we added two people this week growth oddly had only gone up 50%. So the growth rate has markedly decreased yet the population increased by the same number. So on a planet of 7 billion to continue population growth at the same rate would take same mammoth Catholic condom-free copulation effort all round. It's a bit misleading. There are more people, there will be more people in the future. Is that an issue? Yes. Is it THE issue? No. Consumption is. On this, the great environmentalist of our age, Pope Francis, is right.
“It's possible that resource use might peak because of densification, dematerialization...”
This is just sheer faith based nonsense. It's possible that I might become Pope.
“We've reached peak farmland, peak paper [I thought smartphones had done away with that?], peak car, peak stuff...”
This is just nonsense. All evidence to the complete opposite. This very day on the 21st February 2018 the newspapers are full of a story of BP suggesting oil demand to peak by late 2030s. Car sales did go down in the UK this year but for the last five years it's been growing at around 5%. There is a limit to how many cars one can drive. But only in the moment.
“In the UK the typical person used 12 tonnes of resources in the year 2000 today it's down to 9 tonnes.”
I'm not sure where he gets this figure. The government website shows household waste went up last year. On a google search all data suggests it's stayed about the same since 2000. It would depend on what you count as waste. And then, of course you have to factor in how we deal with it. Incineration, landfill and shipping it off to China has been the preferred method but the latter is no longer an option.
Then onto The Environmental Performance Index:
"There have been improvements in 178 of the 180 countries."
This is a simplistic reading of the data. Thus, China might have improved on C02 emmisions but they might have regressed on air quality. The UK is a prime example of cutting C02 from cars by promoting diesel. Which in turn pollutes through nitrogen dioxide. Most environmental agencies also rely on industry figures. See the VW scandal for how much these can be trusted.
None of this matters, call me a 70s greenist, if the levels of C02 is rising. Which it is. The Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii issues the most reliable figure of C02 parts per million and that's a continuing trend upwards (407.98 ppm January 2018 from 406.13 ppm January 2017).
It's important to note that this can't factor in melting sea ice or the ocean warming effect. Oddly Pinker mentions none of this. One can bandy around figures all day but the PPM figure is really all that counts.
“Crucially, the wealthier the country the cleaner the environment.”
This is primarily because manufacturing has been exported to large polluters, China, India, Bangladesh. The UK is sixth. We have good water and sanitation but air quality is increasingly problematic, we've outsourced nearly all industry to China and the Indian subcontinent and our growth relies almost completely on consumption (retail sales, see below) and financial services.
Within the bottom three countries Bangladesh, the garment manufacturing centre of the world and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where all the minerals are mined for our smartphones.
He uses a graph to suggest that environmentalists believe “to stop pollution we must stop economic growth” but look you can cut pollution and still have growth, he argues...
This is rubbish. Great, Nox, S02, etc. pollution is down but he even says it himself, C02 emmissions have gone up in a period where most manufacturing has been exported to the developing world. By far the greatest threat is C02 levels. The graph actually shows that despite the direst warnings Americans have blithely continued to escalate C02 emissions.
Pinker carries out another false dichotomy, suggesting environmentalists are essentially “agreeing with Donald Trump, helping the environment or economic growth, it's one or the other.” Which is nonsense. Most argue for change in the way the economy works. For moving into green economies rather than believing you can carry on consuming at 3% growth and cut emissions at the same time.
To reiterate, economic growth is based primarily on consumption. In the UK, for instance, the service industry is by far the biggest sector (around 80%), with retail its biggest sector along with financial services, which is a kind of wealth laundering service.
"This graph shows that GDP can increase at the same time the pollution can decrease.”
That's a gross manipulation of that data. Some pollution. But as we've seen in the UK, instead of pursuing a less car mileage economy, we've simply offset one gas with another.
The US contributes nearly 15% of all C02 emissions yet has just over 4% of the world's population. Electricity and transport outweighs emissions from industry in the US (29%, 27%, 21%).
“It's not true that economic growth causes pollution.”
Actually it is true. At present. Economic growth in the US is predicated on consumer spending, financial and information services as much as industry (durable goods) so...
Pinker turns to deforestation. And shows a graph from 1700 to 2010 and shows a large drop since the 1970s in tropical deforestation.
Or rather, it shows a drop in the rate of tropical deforestation. The graph works in the same way as population. But in reverse. That is, since WWII around 50% of the world's rainforests have been cut down, the land they covered have decreased from around 14% to 6%. From 1947 to the mid 1990s we lost 50% of the rainforests, if that trend had continued we would have been facing the complete loss within a few years. While Brazil have carried out extensive work to cut back on deforestation the trend is still towards a loss. It's just that the trend is slowing. Again, simple maths, you have ten trees, you cut down 5 last week, that's a 50% loss, you continue this week with a 50% loss and that's 2.5 trees. Obviously as the wood becomes scarcer the trend will be a statistical fall. Isn't this just percentage graph bamboozling?
Pinker has already told us that the US citizens are driving more miles and that trend can be exported to all developed countries. So instead of dealing with our continued reliance on oil he gives us a graph on oil spills. They've gone down from 1970 by a lot. Great, lots more oil for us to burn. I'm guessing (I am not a scientist, but then nor is Pinker) that burning the oil has a worse environmental effect than spilling it in the ocean? C02, ocean warming, sea ice loss, etc. Again this is just sleight of hand, show some data involving oil that has gone down, audience cognitively take on board the positive message despite our oil use happily continuing as ever.
“Few people realize that as the amount of oil transported by sea has continued to increase the number of oil spills has plummeted. Again showing that economic activity and environmental protection do not have to be at cross purposes.”
Does he actually read this stuff back to himself and not think, hang on...amount of oil increasing...environmental protection...
We then move on to cereal yields per hectare from 1965 to 2014. We can now produce more cereal from less ground. Oddly, Pinker was extolling the cutting of pollutants in the US not moments before but here salutes the industry with perhaps the worst record of polluting the environment with excess nitrogen, ammonia, etc. from fertiliser. You can't magically grow more crops. There is, of course, GM to factor in too.
“Still extraordinarily worrying but still glimmers of hope the amount of C02 emitted per dollar of economic activity has been in decline all over the world.”
If that isn't faith based then what is?
“There's a bit of hope in this deceleration here.”
He just gets more desperate to cling to the word hope.
“As you know there are plans for decarbonisation (he stumbles a lot here)...how it might be uh possible to taper off our use of C02 with the goal of bringing it to zero.”
What plans?
Where?
Who?
The Paris Agreement:
"(a) Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change;
(b) Increasing the ability to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change and foster climate resilience and low greenhouse gas emissions development, in a manner that does not threaten food production;
(c) Making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development.
There's nothing about zero. In fact it quite boldly talks about limiting impact, pursuing rather than definitely agreeing to limit levels and looking at ways to build metaphorical bomb shelters when it goes off by adapting society to inevitable impacts. We're screwed but we endeavour to be screwed slower.
And the US aren't even willing to screw slowly. Or at all.
“Even if the US pull away there are threats of sanctions against the United States, carbon tariffs on American products.”
This is pure pie in the sky nonsense. How is anyone going to enforce that? Who? The UN? Oh yeah, the US will take notice of that one.
“So even there all hope is not lost.”
“So, now, when people hear about these improvements they say, oh you're saying the environment improved all by itself, we don't have to do anything.”
It hasn't improved. What improvements? This is quite simply wrong. C02 emissions have increased, the world is getting warmer.
So is there cause for optimism, Pinker asks, after proving we're on the right track and poo pooing the doubters like Pope Francis. Should we be optimistic?
Well, that's the point of this talk. This data cherrypicking, this hope in the face of actual facts, this great sleight of hand. Optimism.
He concludes that there's a difference between “complacent optimism” and “conditional optimism.” And he explains this thoroughly.
“Complacent optimism is a child on Christmas eve waiting to get the presents the next morning.”
Ok.
"Conditional optimism is the child who gets a hammer and some wood and gets together with some other kids in the hope of building a tree house.”
Well, that cleared that up. We need to make our children take up carpentry (oddly Pope Francis would agree, what with the son of God liking that kind of thing as a kid) and break the news there's no presents, kids, you have to make your own. Which, unless I'm missing something goes against his whole argument, as the Christmas present is good for economic growth but if we didn't buy the presents and just made our own then the current economic system would collapse. But we'd get a neat tree house. Assuming we're wealthy enough to have a suburban garden house.
He clears up any confusion by concluding:
“I don't think we can be complacently optimistic but I do think we can be conditionally optimistic. The best way to explain it is to quote the engineer, Arthur Kantrowitz: My job is to explain two things to you. Pessimism is a self fulfilling prophecy. Optimism is a self fulfilling prophecy.”
There you have Pinker's position explained. Absolutely nothing concrete wrapped inside a Christmas present you don't receive on Christmas morning because he believes you should be making a tree house. Or something. The conclusion is clearly gibberish because he hasn't backed up any of his argument at all.
But it sounds authoritative. And it's the message we all want to hear. You don't have to do anything about your lifestyle because your lifestyle is great for the planet just don't be passive, be conditional. Whatever that means in concrete terms. Enlightenment. Rationality. Reason.
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