An open letter to Greta Thunberg

My son asked me the other week: "who starts wars?"

The sheer anger in his question was palpable. At eight years old, he knows enough to hate and fear the idea of war. Why would anyone do such a thing? What kind of villain would condemn so many people to so much pain? I tried to tell him that people don't, usually, mean to start wars - it's something that happens when things go wrong, and the leaders lose control. They misjudge their enemies - or their friends - and do something that provokes a much stronger reaction than they wanted.

Like everything we tell children, that's only partly true. Of course lots of wars have been started on purpose, sometimes by people who were every bit as evil as the cartoon villains of young Tilly's imagination. But even they were reacting to pressures - trying to solve problems of their own, although these may not have had anything to do with the enemy they chose to fight.

It is our nature to see problems as like obstacles - things to be overcome one at a time, each one letting us make a little more progress to reach the next problem. We seldom give much thought to the issues behind us, that our ancestors overcame to get us this far - they don't seem relevant any more. Nor, when a problem seems very pressing, do we think that much about the legacy our "solution" will leave to the next generation. It's not easy to foresee what the next generation will see as their most critical problem, so there's not much we can do to help them with it - but if we can clear this one out of the way first, they'll be that much better placed to handle - whatever they decide to.

Thus from 1945 to 1991, the first priority for every decent European - politician or not - was to prevent another major European war. Some of those politicians did great things, others - less so, but one thing they all had in common was a cold determination that World War Three should not break out on their watch. Everything they did, they did with one eye on keeping the peace. It was to that end that they made "economic growth" the yardstick of progress: if you can create "more" (of everything), that means less fighting about how to share it.

Now there's another danger: climate change. Which, if we don't figure out what to do about it, threatens to bring about WW3 anyway, despite all our efforts to avoid it through other routes.

Greta Thunberg and her followers are right to be scared. But whether they are right to be angry, that's another question; anger may not produce the reaction they are looking for. Because although climate change is a huge threat to us all, it's not the only such threat. And in demanding that leaders focus solely on this - Ms Thunberg is every bit as guilty of tunnel vision as those same leaders she is hectoring.

What evades everyone so far - and Thunberg doesn't pretend to have an answer to this - is how to fix it. If we just halt all new emission-generating activity now (or, say, phase them out over the next ten years), that means crippling developing economies - leading directly to World War Three. If the elites try to impose restraint from the top down - we will get revolutions all over, leading to WW3. If we make some countries take the lead (on the grounds that they're richer and better placed to do so), then the peoples of those countries will protest because (as they see it) the rest of the world isn't sharing their sacrifice - and you get leaders elected like Trump, and Bolsonaro, who appeal to voters by promising to protect them from this injustice. This may allow us to stave off WW3 for a few more years, but only at the cost of increasing emissions.

None of these options looks particularly good.

Dear Ms Thunberg: I am sorry to break this to you, but that "67% chance of staying below a 1.5 degrees global temperature rise" is not going to happen. Nor is the 50% version. Those are the real fairy tales, concocted by scientists who have never stopped for a moment to think about politics. If you have a key to untie this knot, then please do share it - but don't imagine you can cut it with a sword, because that we really would not survive.

What you can do, and I think you may have already started this, is to help reconcile the public in the rich world to that poorer future that they will have to face. By speaking so bluntly to their leaders, you have also spoken to their voters. For that I thank you, although I fear what may come of it.

Leaders of the generation of Eisenhower and Adenauer did not foresee climate change - their goal was to overcome the problems of their time, while building as strong a system, with as many tools, as they could think of, to help your generation to overcome the challenges of its time, whatever they may prove to be.

In the same way, you don't know what will be the biggest problems of the 2070s; and if the policies you promote today tie the hands of future generations to deal with those, then it will be your turn to be unforgiven.

To return to Tilly's question, who starts wars? All kinds of people. Some wars are started by rich, strong, evil men who want to get richer and stronger. But others may be started by good, honest, innocent schoolchildren who want nothing more than "a future". There are many roads to hell.

Bad politics and bad journalism

Based on votes counted so far: the great British press has decided that Nigel Farage has thoroughly trounced the Tories, and Labour has ceded ground to the Lib Dems by its vacillation.

This is stupid. Look at the numbers (for all of England and Wales - Scotland and Northern Ireland still to report, at time of writing), as compared with 2014. (All numbers below are expressed as a share of the total vote.)

The great "triumph" of the Brexit party, taking the plurality, has come overwhelmingly not from the Tories, but from the utter collapse of UKIP. That 33.3% of voters for Brexit needs to be balanced against 25.6% of voters deserting UKIP. The net gain to (Brexit plus UKIP combined) is a rather more modest 7.7%.

(As a bonus, the separation of the two parties has allowed the respectable Brexiters to distance themselves from the swivel-eyed bigots of UKIP, and a full 90% of their voters have taken the opportunity to do just that. Good for them.)

Now, granted 7.7% isn't nothing. But it's hardly a tsunami.

So of the 15.8% of voters deserting the Tories, we can say with confidence that less than half have switched to pro-Brexit parties. Which implies that what's disaffecting them is not the "failure to deliver Brexit".

Similarly, Labour's vote declined by 10.8% (of the electorate), but the Lib Dems' increased by 14%. Which implies that even if every single one of those Labour voters turned LD (and they didn't), there must still be a substantial number of defectors from other parties. In fact, those Labour defectors must be reckoned to include at least 2.5% going to Change UK, and probably at least half of the 4.6% swing toward the Greens - call it 2.3%. So the "Labour to Lib Dem" shift accounts for less than half of the Lib Dem's gain. The rest - fully 8% of the total electorate - must have come from the Tories.

I would go on to some regional analysis, but a quick glance makes me very doubtful that anything in those figures would change my mind.

Now, the Tories seem to think that if only they can deliver Brexit, all those Brexit and UKIP voters will return to the fold. But again, the numbers tell a different story. During UKIP's rise, it gained voters from both Labour and Tory ranks; there is no reason to imagine that if Brexit happened, and those parties evaporated together with their supposed raison d'etre, they would all flock back one way.

No, the real danger for them is that they will permanently lose the 20%-or-so of their party who have (provably) defected to the Lib Dems. If they press on with a hard Brexit, the Remainers will not forgive or forget that. It hurts to have your country sold out from under you.

For Labour, the message is clearer. If Corbyn can deliver a second referendum, the coalition of voters waiting to swing behind that is overwhelming - and even better, he'll frustrate the Tory plan to draw a line under the Brexit/UKIP insurgency. The Tories are suffering because they are torn apart by this issue. Labour doesn't have to be the same.

"Declare victory and move on"

That headline was the most sagacious political advice I got from my mentor in quality management. When I can't make headway on anything I've set my hand to - most probably, because of a complete lack of give-a-damnedness from above - the correct procedure is to announce that I've succeeded in my aim, and find something else to do. (I can rationalise this as "well, if management don't want any changes, clearly that means they're happy with what I've already achieved. Ergo, I've done my job. QED.")

It works in other contexts, too. No matter how disastrously a project has failed to reach its stated goals, there's always something you can take away from it - experience, if nothing else. So take that, and treasure it as your spoils. Tomorrow is another day.

Sadly, I've never been very good at it. It smacks of denial, of refusing to face the truth. But in a corporate context, "the truth" is, probably, that no-one really cares very much - "what you do next" will always matter more than "what you did last". You are judged on activity, not results - because no-one really knows how to measure those.

I'm not surprised Donald Trump follows the same philosophy. You can see him practising it today over trade talks with Mexico. If anyone knows how to define any outcome as "success", he does. And perhaps it explains his promise to make Americans "sick of winning".

It also explains why he gets mad when other people won't let him "move on". That's why he sacked Comey, and why he spends ever more time on his comical bawling about Mueller's "witch hunt". When people insist on examining the past, they're apt to find things that cast doubt on the brilliance of his victories. Why can't they just take his word for it?

Surrender, again

It's a curious thing, but whenever I think I've finally resolved my doubts about whether Britain should remain in the EU, the Europeans invariably hit upon some new way to disappoint me.

This week it was Jean-Claude Juncker throwing a lifeline to Trump by, basically, capitulating to his trade war. So much for the EU's vaunted "bloc strength" in negotiations. What exactly is the point?

EU-US tariffs are already very low, or at least they were until Trump started his evil little trade war. So "working toward zero" - even if "zero" is eventually attained - will have very slight impact anyway. But handing Trump a PR victory? - that's just fucking stupid. It's like giving a toddler an ice cream to stop them from throwing a tantrum.

Worst. Negotiation. Ever.

Wow.

I expected the US-NK talks to be thin on detail. I didn't expect Trump to capitulate unreservedly to all of Kim's demands, in exchange for a boatload of bones. But that's basically what he's promised.

Of course, we've seen before that what he promises and what he does are two quite orthogonal things. Just ask Mr Trudeau.

But at this point, he's shaken the hand of another despot, and pronounced the South Korean and Japanese alliances dead. Not for the first time, he's signalled that the USA has no real interest in what goes on around the Pacific Rim. South Korea and Japan now have two options: to apply to the Chinese for protection, with whatever foreign policy shifts that might entail; or to develop their own nukes, because clearly that's the only thing America respects.

But not to worry. There are very, very few countries in the world with less resources than North Korea - which suggests that if they can build a nuclear capability to hit the US mainland, anyone can. We'll see how Mr Trump feels about countries taking responsibility for their defence when Venezuela gets the bomb.

Don't it just make you feel safe?

Crystal ball says

So, at this moment, Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un are having their historic meeting. The world holds its breath.

Spoiler: it's going to be a big success. DJT will emerge and tweet triumphantly about his "HISTORIC agreement that NO OTHER PRESIDENT managed, Kim is a very reasonable guy who just wants to be left alone." Because why wouldn't he? We already know he (consistently) gets along far better with despots than with elected politicians.

And, importantly, he hasn't taken any advisors to this talk - no-one who actually knows what a nuclear weapon or rocket looks like, much less how to inspect them. So they can't even discuss any actual inspection/enforcement regime. They both have nothing to lose by emerging and trumpeting their respective victories.

It won't be until after the midterms that it becomes obvious that the "agreement" had no actual content, it was nothing more than a handshake. Short-term effect: poll bump for Trump, quite possibly long-lived enough to see his party through the midterms. All the people who might have tried to pour cold water on the HISTORIC AGREEMENT are conveniently cowed (other Republicans who know what they're talking about), replaced with Trump toadies (the CIA), discredited (Democrats, the press), or simply silenced (McCain). Long-term effect: nil.

Enjoy the spectacle. Here's the president of the richest and most powerful country on earth, sucking up to a dictator who makes Charlie Chaplin look statesmanlike. He's eliminating a supposed threat to the mightiest military the world has ever seen, posed by a country with the GDP of Wiltshire. All it really needs is Peter Sellers, and the world would recognise it for the comedy it is.

Farcebook

I'm pretty sure the Facebook hysteria now qualifies as a moral panic. We've named a problem ("loss of privacy"), identified it with a public enemy (Facebook is obviously tailor-made for this role; Google might be an even better fit, but - well, they drew a long straw this time), abused tens of thousands of innocent words on describing and discussing and distancing ourselves from The Problem. Now we're at the stage where lawmakers have got in on the act, and Congress is grandstanding at Mark Zuckerberg.

That's worrying, because moral panics generally end in new laws to crack down on some pastime that had, up to now, been classed as - if not exactly virtuous, then at least not harmful enough to be worth the loss of freedom entailed by passing laws about it. Think legal highs, dangerous dogs, alcopops, motorcycle gangs. And the pastimes at stake here - communicating with friends and family, networking, personal publishing - are, basically, everything that is best about the internet. If politicians come to see "social media" as something that needs to be clamped down on, then it's hard to imagine any result that would leave blogs like this one untouched. (The British government is already going this way: its recent changes to press regulation are clearly designed to stifle independent comment, while keeping the press barons onside. It's not, in itself, fascism - but it's one of its building blocks.)

I imagine, by now, just about every country with any kind of commercially-driven media sector has had its say on the Facebook panic. Here is what someone who passes for a media commentator in New Zealand has to say. And I think it's an instructive study in how moral panics - as well as their direct dangers - are also susceptible to hijacking by special interests.

Look at the headline: "Govt needs to protect Kiwis from Facebook's power". Explicitly calling for government action (i.e. new laws), explicitly aimed at Facebook. The writer criticises Facebook - not for collecting data, nor for slinging "targeted" ads, but for doing all this from abroad. "Fundamentally", he says, "we need to have a voice with these overseas organisations who are increasingly playing such an important role in the daily life of New Zealanders". On the other hand, you can "trust local retailers and organisations who have no agenda apart from being useful and understanding you".

Yeah right.

The author, one Ben Goodale, is a frequent contributor to the New Zealand Herald. More germanely he's described, in an easily missable footnote, as "the managing director of justONE". I didn't know what "justONE" is any more than you do, but its website describes it as "New Zealand's pre-eminent data-driven marketing, CRM and loyalty agency".

So no, the stench of self-interest that rises from this drivel is not just our imagination.

Note to every legislator: Facebook is a publisher. (Zuckerberg denies this, on the grounds that Facebook doesn't create the content, and it's "a technology company". In other words, he doesn't know what a publisher is.)

You know how to regulate publishing. You've been doing it for hundreds of years. Don't let the new technology and associated gobbledegook blind you to that simple fact: Facebook needs to be treated exactly like every other publisher. How would you react to a publisher that surreptitiously gathered data on people, then carelessly shared that data with third parties?

NZ already has a perfectly good privacy law that covers that scenario, but for some reason nobody has ever thought to apply it to Facebook. We don't need new laws, and we don't . We just need to enforce the laws we've got.