Belated linkpost

[dolorosa_12]

I haven't had internet at home for a while, so I'm just now catching up on all my feeds, There's been a lot of interesting stuff posted recently, so I thought I'd make a linkpost.

Sarah Rees Brennan posted this thought-provoking piece about what it means to be an author and have an internet presence.

And then, for a total change in tone, she wrote a hilarious liveblog of Teen Wolf, making it sound so funny that I might be tempted to check it out.

Catherynne M. Valente posted about how she was fed up with arguing about ebooks.

She also wrote about the misconceptions social conservatives hold about 'women's work', and the supposed golden age of pre-industrial times.

sophiamcdougall made a Romanitas playlist. I geeked out.

Here's an article from Rolling Stone about the effects of global warming in Australia. I found myself nodding away to pretty much everything being said.

It's been said before, but it needs to be said again: unpaid internships are exploitative and perpetuate inequality.

Our forum interviewed Philip Pullman.

Finally, I blogged about the start of the semester in Germany.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

The second Catherynne Valente piece looks very interesting - in a sense its obvious once pointed out - the facts about how the pre-industrial economy was structured are not new to me - but I never connected those particular dots before. I look forward to reading the whole thing....

The Rolling Stone piece is well written, but (like pretty much everything published outside the actual scientific literature in the climate debate) has some issues.

Australia is certainly very unlikely to be "poorer" in 100 years time (except relatively poorer compared to what we could have been if climate change didn't occur.) Indeed, the MIT projections of 9 degrees warming - which is WAY outside the scenarios considered most probable by the IPCC - would have to assume massive ongoing economic growth in Western countries to be plausible.

The piece also glosses over the costs of prevention, which are are real, and misses that the chief impact is in indeed going to be on poor people not just because of geography, but because they won't be able to afford mitigation, whereas the rich world probably will.

Also, the finish is really unfortunate, for an article that seems to want to advocate for action:

"What about the prime minister's drive to put a price on carbon pollution? Couldn't that save coastal areas like Sydney? Goodwin shakes his head. "We could transform Australia's energy system to 100 percent solar tomorrow, and if we keep exporting coal to China, it won't really matter much in the big picture," he says. "But if we stop exporting coal, our economy will fall apart. So it's a stalemate."

This falls straight into the primary argument Abbott et al use, and if it were right, then a carbon tax WOULD be a bad idea.

But cutting emissions in rich countries world actually does three things toward solving the problem, all of which are important:

1) The direct reduction, which if Australia were to end up acting unilaterally, would indeed be small (although not totally insignificant as the skeptics would have it).

2) Increased political pressure on other countries to act. This is a very important point - indeed at the moment the Tony Abbotts of China are arguing that of all things Climate Change is an *American* conspiracy to try and put a break on growth in Asia. Its a game of chicken - "we won't cut until the rest of you cut" - and it clearly is easiest and makes the most sense, both rationally and morally, for the rich countries to cut first.

3) More investment in emission reducing technologies. This is really critical. By creating a market for solar, wind, nuclear, electric cars, energy efficient buildings, storage, smart grids etc now, we can massively increase the amount of private spending on research and development, help the companies that make these things establish economies of scale, and so forth. China, India, Brazil etc are unlikely to go to a downward trajectory on emissions for at least a decade or two, and to be honest that's only fair. But once they do start prioritising the issue, it will be *much* easier for them to make cuts rapidly if the groundwork has already been done by the OECD.

So yeah - some things to agree with, but I'd be wary about "pretty much everything".

- Jordan