So, Storm Isa is upon us. And BBC Radio 4’s 1pm news has some climate adaptation professor on. The announcer asks what needs doing and while the guy alludes to the government not having done stuff in the past, what he doesn’t do is come out and say any variation on this:
“Look, it’s kinda wasting your time, and mine – and that of the listeners – to answer your question with the pretence that the government – not just this one, but other ones – hasn’t already been told what to do repeatedly, over the last three plus decades. Because governments HAVE been told. In endless glossy reports, policy briefings, documents by Select Committees, centres for this that and the other, think tanks, NGOs, you name it. On dozens of climate-related issues. Hundreds, really, depending on how wide you want your definition to go.
“When you invite me to go along with the game of pretend that the problems are down to an information gap, or a “political will” gap, we’re not just fooling ourselves in the here and now. We’re setting ourselves up for more of the same failures in the future, however long that future is. When we don’t talk about the power of vested interests, what it is, how it is deployed, we are simply blowing smoke up our own and each others’ asses. It’s all just kayfabe.”
Because that would be “political”. That would be “cynical.” The academic who said that would not just not be invited back by the programme booker. Far more seriously, the academic would cause a political incident that brought his or her University into disrepute. They’d scupper their promotion chances. Their colleagues would be pissed off because the department would go to the back of the queue for funding.
So we all just play along.
Meanwhile, the emissions rise, and the consequences of previous emissions and inactions hurtle towards us at top speed, faster than we thought (possible).
There’s a pile of debris before us growing skyward….
Update. Also, this –
Also, I think if you say “we’re screwed” someone will reply “since when?” And if you say “a long time” then their next question is “why didn’t you speak up much much earlier, when something might still have been doable?” And that’s ‘awks’ as the kids used to say…
marchudson.net 
Hi Marc,
It seems to me that the Government is more interested in prosecuting anyone who protests about the Climate than they are in doing anything about it
Cheers, Ian
>
Ian, do the public really want to do “something about it”? If they do, just what is it they want to do? I don’t see the bulk of the public changing their day to day lives in any way!
Hi Marc,
I have received a reply, from jonangel, to my recent comment on your post. Unfortunately, I left out the word “Crisis” after the word “Climate” so it may not have made complete sense. I wanted to reply but I am unable to do this on the web page; there is a reply button but it is unusable! What I wanted to say was that I entirely agreed with him and, using our small shopping centre in Heald Green as an example. It is unlikely that many people shopping there will have travelled a long distance to shop in Heald Green, especially considering that there is a 2,000 parking space superstore less than a mile away. Most of the shoppers will live only a short distance away yet nearly everyone goes by car. I wonder how many of them think we should do something about the Climate Crisis and yet are not prepared to do anything themselves!
Cheers, Ian
>
Ian, I appreciate your response and yes what you state is, in my view, the norm. We all want action, but we all want some one else to take it.
I hate to say this, but the West has become a society of blame, it’s his, hers or the governments fault.
Well can I suggest the West takes a look in the mirror.
re: ‘the power of vested interests’
Arguably the original problem of democracy: private power constantly working at corrupting democratic government/governance to turn government to serve them.
Below, are William J Novak excerpts fleshing out with some history this point about private interests as perhaps the central and age old problem of democracy. These are excerpts from maybe the best writing I’ve personally found on the issue of private power dominating public democracy, to borrow/adapt Novak’s phrasing.
He’s arguing that the modern invention of the concept/terminology of capture theory doesn’t recognize it’s simply renaming of political corruption, and that capture or corruption is at root a pervasive political system problem, not just a regulatory problem.
Novak excerpt: ‘Thinking that the capture problem was peculiar to
the regulatory form rather than endemic to democratic institutions in general, modern capture
theory mistook the discovery of a general precondition for an immanent and incisive critique’
And that a realistic view of politics is that there’s just no way around but ‘the endless, vigilant democratic-republican project’.
And of course as Marc’s written about (maybe a couple times at least;) ) that ‘vigilant’ project requires effective sustained social movements drawn from the citizenry, which unfortunately haven’t been up to the task on climate.
Sam
excerpt: Novak | A Revisionist History of Regulatory Capture
excerpt: Corruption: The Original Capture Theory
Excerpts below from William J. Novak on pages 16 thru 31 of his chapter ‘
A Revisionist History of Regulatory Capture’ in The Tobin Project 2013.
Click to access Novak%20Revisionist%20History%20of%20Regulatory%20Capture%20(1.13).pdf
excerpt: ‘…to combat what progressives envisioned as a perennial problem in republican and
democratic governance – i.e., the tendency of private economic interests to capture the public
political sphere. More particularly, they viewed late-nineteenth-century agglomerations of
corporate wealth and power as producing a dangerous new form of the age-old threat of private
interest trumping public democracy. Of course, they did not use the modern language (yet alone
theory) of “capture” when they talked about this problem, rather in the vernacular of the time,
they invoked the very old theme and problem of “corruption.”
excerpt: ‘…there is simply no older theme in the Western legal and political tradition than the one highlighted by capture. In Plato’s Republic, Socrates noted that “Our aim in founding the State was not the disproportionate happiness of any one class, but the greatest happiness of the whole.”
And he bemoaned “the corruption of society” whereby “the guardians of the laws and of the
government are only seemingly and not real guardians” who “turn the State upside down” and
ultimately destroy it.35 Aristotle’s Politics also decried the corrupting effects of private interest
and private vice on the commonwealth noting, “The true forms of government, therefore, are
those in which the one, or the few, or the many, govern with a view to the common interest; but
governments which rule with a view to the private interest, whether of the one, the few, or the
many, are perversions.”3
excerpt: ‘As Gordon Wood, J.G.A. Pocock, and many other historians have convincingly argued,
it was precisely this classical tradition from Aristotle to Montesquieu and its preoccupation with
corruption and the private capture of the public sphere that structured the revolutionary political
thinking of the original American founders. As Wood put it, “When the American Whigs
described the English nation and government as eaten away by ‘corruption,’ they were in fact
using a technical term of political science, rooted in the writings of classical antiquity, made
famous by Machiavelli, developed by the classical republicans of seventeenth-century England,
and carried into the eighteenth century by nearly everyone who laid claim to knowing anything
about politics.”37 Anyone who knew anything about politics in the late 18th century was well
aware of the dangers of “corruption” and the way the legislature and other branches could be
turned from the public good by the force of private vice, group interest, and/or ministerial
manipulation.’
excerpt: ‘Long before the advent of the 20th century, in other words, concern about private
interests or factions capturing public governing institutions and bending them towards selfish
ends rather than general benefits was a well-developed (indeed perhaps the central) trope in
American political and economic commentary.’
excerpt: ‘So, though seldom recognized by capture theory, it should come as no surprise that by
the turn of the 20th century, the problem of private interest in public governance was well
understood. ‘
excerpt: ‘So strong was the progressive preoccupation with private influence on public
policy that historian Richard L. McCormick placed the “Discovery that Business Corrupts
Politics” – the awakening of the people to illicit business influence in American public life – at
the very origin point of progressivism itself.41 Progressives used “corruption” in its classical sense indicating the despoiling of a distinctly collective public sphere (a republic supposedly devoted to res publica – the public things) by private and individual economic interests.’
Click to access Novak%20Revisionist%20History%20of%20Regulatory%20Capture%20(1.13).pdf
Sam, just how do you define “Private Power”? Democracy supposedly is the will of the people, aren’t those who hold such power, part of the people?
If those who hold this “Private Power” are able to sway the view of the masses, much as I disagree with them, the result is to be respected.
To restore true Democracy, those supporting it just have to work harder, I doubt there are such people.
jonangel re your question about defining ‘Private Power’?
Feel welcome to read Novak’s full piece at the link I provided to get the understanding I working with of the definition of private power and some classic examples of strategies and tactics of private power/vested interests to corrup democratic governance away from serving the public good, the good of the whole.
If after reading that piece, which is not long, it is still not clear what I am referring to regarding private power, then here below are some links to shorter pieces about the corruption of democratic governance by the private power of the oilsands/oil/gas industry in my province of Alberta, in Canada, over the last 3 decades or so when it’s become extreme in dominating political parties, govt departments, and agencies. Some long time observers argue, book length in some cases, that my polity is a captured polity or petrostate. There’s polisci definitional debates about definitions of petrostate, but there’s no good faith argument that the industry as a private power’ is not the governor of laws, regulations and tax policies affecting it. The fact that a majority of Albertans are aware of the industry dominance over democratic governance but still vote for political parties that feel it necessary to cater to industry rather than serve the public good, is not an argument that these private citizens are actually the private and ‘democratic’ power running the province.
Anyways, that’s all I have to say about this. I can’t explain my thoughts on what is private power in a democracy better than these explanations, explications in these pieces and Novak’s.
https://thenarwhal.ca/how-oil-hijacked-alberta-s-politics-behind-curtain-former-liberal-leader-kevin-taft/
https://edmontonjournal.com/news/insight/graham-thomson-oil-deep-state-controls-alberta-former-liberal-leader-kevin-tafts-new-book-says
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2018/04/19/opinion/kevin-taft-what-turned-rachel-notley-crusading-critic-big-oil-crusader
EXCERPT: The oil industry takes what it calls a “whole of government approach,” a phrase that should chill the bones of anyone who cares for democracy. A July 2017 strategy document by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) made clear what a whole-of-government approach means for Alberta: a “steering committee” drawn from industry; the premier’s office; the ministries of energy, economic development, and environment; and the Alberta Energy Regulator, that “would provide government and industry oversight to…drive performance on key files.”
It’s a deliberate short-circuiting of democracy. Industry sits at the table with senior politicians, civil servants, and regulators (some of whom are already close allies of industry) to “provide oversight” on issues like environmental protection and Indigenous land claims. A more blatant display of corporate power in a modern democracy is hard to imagine, and the same CAPP document advocates a similar approach to the federal government. Industry is entitled to input on these issues, but not to oversight.
EXCERPT: The easy answer is that it improves her chances in next year’s election, but that glosses over this much deeper reality: Rachel Notley may be in office but the oil industry is in power. Wherever its interests are concerned the oil industry runs Alberta. To a lesser but significant degree the same thing applies in Ottawa.
Sam, I had read your pervious post, which is why I asked the question.
The large organizations/companies of which you speak, are in fact owned by the people (shareholders) and I see little if any revolt against your “Private Power”.
While I agree such organizations/companies have an undue influence on governments, Governments themselves are, in a Democracy, the face & voice of the people.
I don’t really understand what you are after? But suggest that to attain it a cultural change is required. Sadly, I don’t see that in our future, in fact I see your “Private Power” becoming more dominant.