Guardians of the Future: Enshrining Sustainability

A common complaint for those with environmental concerns is that rising temperatures punish most severely those that play little or no part in contributing to man made global warming. Droughts and food crises brought about through severe weather, as well as massive inequality of resources, do not harm Western industrialists but the most vulnerable people of our planet. At a time when the economy takes centre stage, it is easier to ignore the seemingly more distant threat of environmental calamity. Indeed, the problem for most people remains one of distance. One can ignore the danger to the future of our planet simply because we imagine it will not affect us for a number of years. Likewise, we are often guilty of contributing little more than sympathy when confronted with news of starvation in East Africa, simply because it is not occurring on our doorstep. How do we overcome this empathetic hurdle and make people more accountable for the decisions they make today?


Rupert Read, former Green Party candidate and environmental philosopher, recently launched a report in the House of Commons entitled 'Guardians of the Future: A Constitutional Case for representing and protecting Future People' with the aim of addressing this very important issue. Namely, how do we make today's politicians accountable to those that are unable to excercise their democratic right to vote. Read is principally concerned, as the report title suggests, with the generations that will come after us in the UK, but I think his idea could also be applied more widely to questions of global diplomacy.


To give a brief synopsis: Read suggests the creation of a third branch of governance to sit above the House of Lords that would be charged with the responsibility of protecting the interests of 'future' people. By future people, Read presumably means anyone and everyone in the future, so, if you are reading this, you too are a future person (or at least you will be). But, barring catastrophe, there are obviously more future people who are yet to be born, and it is the interests of these people in particular that we should be concerned.


As for the make-up and powers of this government body, it would be comprised of members of the public, selected in much the same way as a jury would be today, and would range in size anywhere between 7 and 144 people. The random selection process, Read maintains, would help alleviate the problem of partisanship which might arise if the group were selected by election or appointment. It would also, one would hope, represent a real cross-section of the population helping to undermine the possibility of demographic interests. The principle power of this body would be the ability to veto legislation found to be potentially harmful to future people, but it would also be granted the pro-active right to initiate legislation as well as review existing legislative practice. On a national level at least, there would be no higher authority.


Although the words sustainable or sustainability do not appear frequently within the report, it is abundantly clear that Read's intention is to enshrine them in our constitutional framework. For this alone, we should greet this report as a starting point for debate. The mere fact that an idea of this scope was launched in the House of Commons, in the presence of 3 MPs who all offered comments, is reason enough to be encouraged. With this in mind, I would like to offer up my own comments and criticisms but preface them with thanks to Rupert Read for bringing this debate to the very heart of governance in this country.


A great number of people will inevitably greet this report with a degree of scepticism, and may dismiss it without due consideration as unrealistic in its goals. Indeed, in terms of practical application, there are many things that would need to be ironed out. One potential danger is ensuring that the guardians chosen would be able to deal competently with complex legislation covering a diverse range of subjects. But, I think a more pressing concern would be the limits to the power of this body. Obviously, the key motivation for Read is environmental, but he leaves the door open for guardians to make decisions regarding any kind of legislation whatsoever. The difficulty here lies in utilising the democratic power of the guardians, whilst ensuring that important legislation is not unduly held up. One can imagine a question of economic policy, defence, or natural resources being one of potentially enourmous consequence for future people, but it may be less clear cut when it comes to questions of civil law, transport, education and so on. Who decides the limits of this power, and can the guardians be compatable with effective governance?


Moreover, Read's report seems to overlook the fact that, just like ourselves, future people will be formed of many, and not always complementary, interests, and legislating for them will be as challenging, indeed more so, than legislating for those currently involved in the democratic process. For example, it is not too difficult to imagine a particular piece of legislation being potentially beneficial for people in the immediate future, and even for some time after that. But it could quite easily be the case that a decision taken in the best interests of those future people could drastically or even fatally undermine the prospects of future people further down the line.


This brings me to what I think is the crux of the matter. No matter how good our intentions when we set out to protect the future, we are still in all essentials dealing with something that is by definition unknowable. We simply cannot account for unexpected future developments, and the recent financial crisis is proof enough of that. Likewise, we cannot possibly fully comprehend the consequnces of the decisions we make today. For this reason, the legislation we impose on the future can only ever be drawn from our understanding of the present, which is itself made up of our past experiences. Does this not mean, therefore, that when a body of guardians sets out to represent the interests of the future they are not in fact representing the will of future people so much as the idea of the future that present people extrapolate from the world around them? Because of the simple fact of the unknowability of the future, is it not an impossibility to represent its interests? This difficulty is one of huge importance to anyone with aspirations of building a sustainable society.


Another very real difficulty with implementing any kind of guardians-style body is the need to convince present people about the value of protecting future people. This is particularly difficult when more often than not this could involve a sacrifice on their part in order to improve or at least not damage the prospects of future people. As we have already learnt through debate on the question of climate change, this is not an easy sell. Cleverly, I think, Read cites Burke as the modern exponent of sustainability, noting that he insisted on fully representing the interests not only of the present, but of the past and future as well.

"[Society is] a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are not born."

Burke, as I have noted in earlier blogs, is key to the environmental debate, but support of his suggestion that we should 'partner' the people of the future also rests on accepatance of his wider theory of human nature, in which he insists upon the vital importance of protecting social instritutions. Burke is hugely accountable for modern conservative views in Britain and the US, and his insistence that the interests of society outweigh the freedom of the individual gained great traction following the French revolution, an event he characterised as driven by selfish interest. Indeed, if one were to accept Burke's view of the primacy of society, it becomes far easier to accept the need to protect the interests of future people. If the future is not considered, then there is no way to guarantee the continued prosperity of present institutions.

However, the problem remains that the most vocal contestants of environmental protection reject Burke's view of human nature, prioritising instead the liberty of the indivdual over the concerns of wider society. When you confront this school of thought, particularly in its fiercely free-market manifestations, with the prospect of giving up the founding principle of individual autonomy in order to safeguard future people, they are liable to reject you outright with a few choice words. Time will tell whether this will be fatally destructive for libertarianism, but, as it stands, Read's ideas, and his appeal to Burkean conservatism, can simply gain no traction here.

Whilst I agree that there is a vital need to counteract the viscious short-termism of much of modern day politics by enshrining the concept of sustainability in legislation and governance, I find it difficult to fully endorse Read's idea as it exists. If a body of guardians were to be initiated, I could only view such an institution as a means to an end rather than a goal within itself. The key aim for anyone who wishes to build a sustainable society should be to demonstrate that sustainability is a good in itself, not something that has to be forced upon us to save us from ourselves. Rather than the existenace of a failsafe mechanism to ensure sustainable legislation, it should be a necessary requirement that any piece of legislation should be premised on the concept of sustainability itself. That said, until we throw down the false idols of short-term interest, what other option do we have to protect our future?

Have Labour just made themselves unelectable?

Ed Balls has left me no alternative but to recant everything I wrote in my last post about sensible Labour strategy. After a careful speech from Ed Miliband, in which he cautiously accepted the need for cuts whilst being very careful not to say exactly which cuts, Ed Balls has come out with all the subtlety of a randy gorilla and suggested that Labour would more or less leave all Tory cuts in place if they got to power in 2015. Am I crazy, or has this effectively destroyed whatever strategy the party has been following since the demise of Gordon Brown? Has it not just thrown itself into the same ideological cesspit as the Tories and their Lib Dem allies?

This is barefaced opportunism at its worst. I say at its worst because I don't believe it will actually pay off for the party electorally. Labour's line prior to Balls announcement, no matter how murky, was at least a genuine alternative to the coaltions slash and burn approach to public spending. Labour didn't need to win the economic argument at this point, they merely had to suggest something different, and attacking the governmnt for cutting too far and too fast was showing dividends. Rising unemployment, combined with inflation and zero growth, does not make for popular administrations, and Labour should have played on this and stuck to their guns.

I understood, though grew concerned, when  Miliband came out and said that Labour would have to accept some Tory cuts, and in time he would have had to identify which cuts those would be. I appluaded him for his attacks on irresponsible capitalism, and Cameron has been sufficiently alarmed by this manouevre to try and follow suit. Both of these strategies could have helped to boost Labour's credentials. Instead, Balls has basically conceded the economic fight to the Tories. By accepting Tory cuts, Labour  has abandoned those amongst the electorate who will be hardest hit in the coming years. There is now no major party in the UK that represents the interests of the most vulnerable people in our society (with the honourable exception of the Greens).

The worst thing about this from a Labour perspective, however, is that the party may well have just made themselves unelectable. Traditional Labour supporters must have been appalled by this announcement, and, whilst it may win back some in the centre, I would say the likely result will be a boost to smaller parties and independents as Labour voters abandon the party to seek a genuine alternative. What is left to distinguish Labour from the Conservatives?

Will Labour fairness trump Conservative cuts?

Fairness is a word that has long ceased to hold any cogent meaning within political discouse, but it has again been employed by the Labour party as the centrepiece of Ed Miliband's attack on irresponsible capitalism. The key difference with the fairness that Miliband is espousing, in contrast to his political predecessors, is a fairness that is aimed at alleviating the cause rather than the symptoms of unfairness. I think Ed has pulled a rather clever trick here, but time will tell if it resonates with the public.

In a speech to the commons 4 days ago, Jim Murphy urged Labour to present a 'credible' case on its plans to reduce the deficit. He was playing on the perception, encouraged by Lord Glasman, that the the party had been rather opaque in its economic arguments since the coaltion took power. The difficulty with Murphy's comment is that he was accurately reflecting the opinion shared by the majority of the population, a population that has demonstrably grown cold towards the virtues of the welfare state, and a population that has so far been won over by the Tory argument for cuts. Miliband's response to this challenge was always going to be critical. Side with Murphy, and you risk alienating core voters in an attempt to outflank the government on the right, stand against and you risk being unelectable.

What he chose to do instead was plot a course that would potentially appeal to both factions. If there is one thing that unites forces on the left and right of the political spectrum at the moment it is revulsion at corporate greed, and the perception that there are a few unscrupulous souls ruining the fun for the rest of us. By playing to this crowd Ed may well have won back a number of votes in that cherished middle ground, whilst retaining his traditional support. Rather than tackle inequality through spending, he has undertaken the highly ambitious target of reforming the way that business and capitalism functions. By addressing the source of the problem, he hopes to alleviate the pollution further downstream. In doing so, he has admitted the need for cuts, which some on the right may perceive as a victory, but he has also positioned Labour in the driving seat of economic reform and Cameron is already trying to play catch up.

The difficulty now lies in convincing the electorate that Labour cuts will be better than Tory cuts, and that economic reform isn't a byword for the return of Old Labour. If Cameron and co are able to make the 'anti-business' label stick, Ed may well be worse off than before.

Libertarians and Climate Change Denial

I have recently enjoyed posts by Matt Bruenig and George Monbiot as they have both tried to identify exactly why the theory of anthropogenic climate change is met with such determined resistance from Libertarians. A discussion introduced by Monbiot portrayed the Libertarian position as an extention of the concept of negative liberty, and specifically the blind assertion of Libertarians that they should be free to pollute as they see fit without regulatory interference. Bruenig dismissed this line of reasoning out of hand (like Monbiot I think rather prematurely) but raised the important matter of property rights derived from procedural justice. Summarised, Bruenig argued that the whole philosophy of modern day Libertarianism is rooted in individual property rights based on procedural justice, and if one were to accept that global warming and pollution violate the property rights of others then one radically undermines adherence to the idea of procedural justice itself.

Both writers are, I think, largely correct in their assessment of the ideological underpinnings of climate change denial, but I believe it might also be helpful to stretch the argument and demonstrate why this problem is so specific to Libertarianism and not necessarily a problem shared with the rest of the political spectrum. I will do this with reference to a very interesting article published recently by Mark Lilla in the New York Review of Books in which the author strives to understand the new apocalyptic fervour gripping right-wing politics in the US.

Lilla neatly separates Conservatives from Libertarians through reference to two key writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Edmund Burke and John Stuart Mill. He maintains that it is in these writers’ contrasting conceptions of the individual and society that we find the key difference in these two ingluential schools of thought. Burke, whom Lilla associates most closely with traditional Conservatism, defined himself through his vilification of the French revolutionaries whom, he claimed, were attempting to accomplish the impossible task of breaking entirely from France’s monarchical past. The slate of history, Burke maintained, could never be wiped clean no matter how fearsome the cleansing. Energy, therefore, is always better directed to maintaining and improving that which is pre-existing. To this end, the State has a responsibility to neutralise individual exuberance when it threatens to undermine the stability of society. 

In contrast, Mill’s Liberalism maintained that liberty, properly defined, was the preserve of the individual agent, and not contingent on his or her position within a group. In short, an individual should be utterly free to reach the fullness of his or her potential without the interference of social or political forces. In Mill’s world, government should only exist in order to ensure that individual autonomy is maintained and protected. This challenge to traditional conservative thinking, Lilla contends, lies at the heart of Libertarian philosophy and remains a defining attribute or all its various branches and institutions.

If we now take these two contrasting political traditions and apply them to a modern day discussion of climate change, we can see just how isolated Libertarians become from more moderate elements of the political right. If we accept the theory of man-made climate change, and acknowledge that we need both national and international regulation to combat it effectively, we are required to not only reasses our understanding of property rights but also to tacitly accept that the importance of individual liberty is outweighed, in this instance, by the need to conserve society, even if that means curbing individual activity. As this is a line of reasoning that the political predecessors of Libertarians denied more than 100 years ago, it is scarcely one they are prepared to accept now. To do so would entirely evaporate the founding principle of Libertarianism.*

Like Monbiot and Bruenig I agree that property rights are of considerable importance in this discussion, but whilst both Conservative and Libertarian traditions are united in their defence of private property, the two are more at odds when the question of individual liberty is raised. This is perhaps why we can see that climate change denial is most closely associated with the far-right than with more moderate Republican and Tory politicians. One can quite easily make the argument that Conservatives should be amongst the most vehement campaigners for environmental protection, but for Libertarians this would involve a direct challenge to their most basic political instincts.


* Incidentally, this argument perhaps helps to explain why those Libertarians that accept the scientific consensus on climate change argue for policies of adaptation, rather than mitigation. Adaptation leaves the polluter free to pollute, and the onus is placed on the market to provide technological solutions to our problems. The State only need play a minor role in this scenario.

Rick Santorum is my new moral compass

I recently claimed that Jeremy Clarkson was my moral compass simply because if I strove to do the exact opposite of what he did then I would always be in pretty safe territory. Well, move over Jeremy, I've found a new guiding light in the form of Mr. Rick Santorum. Rick is doing us all a wonderful service with his displays of wilful ignorance in the face of overwhelming evidence against climate change, and we should salute him for his brave efforts to make the rest of us feel a bit better about ourselves. I look forward to doing the exact opposite of anything Rick does in the future.