The Deference Engine

As every fool knows, if you want to write a letter to the Queen, you start it with

May it please Your Majesty

And on the envelope, the first line of the address should read

Her Majesty The Queen

If, on the other hand, it is the Prince of Wales who is to be the beneficiary of your insight and advice, you should open the letter with a straightforward Your Royal Highness, while addressing the envelope — HRH The Prince of Wales.

So far, so good. The complications come when wishing to petition some of the more exotic species to be found amongst the English aristocracy. For example, let us imagine for a moment that you are the tenant of a marquess and that you wish to write him a letter begging to be relieved of some feudal obligation. 

You might start the letter with My Lord Marquess and address the envelope: 

The Most Hon The Marquess of Whatever

OR, alternatively  

The Most Hon The Marquess Whatever

But only one of these is right and it depends on some obscure rules. While attempting to clarify the matter you might unearth the following guidance:

It (the ‘of’, that is ) may be omitted in the form of Marquessates and Earldoms and included in the form of Scottish Viscountcies. It is never present in peerage Baronies and Lordships of Parliament and always present in Dukedoms and Scottish feudal Baronies.

All of which — let us admit it — is as clear as mud. Get it wrong however and your carefully crafted letter is likely to find itself cast, unopened onto the fire.

In the case of the marquesses it seems there is little alternative other than to work your way, one by one, through the entire list in order to discover whether, in your particular case, the ‘of’ should be included or not. 

Which is precisely what I was assigned to do during one of the more unusual jobs I did ‘back in the day’. Having been taken on by a small, one-man company contracted to construct the mailing lists for DeBretts Peerage and Baronetage (available from all good booksellers — £100), my job was to work through all the names and addresses in order to ensure that, in the automatically generated mailshots, begging letters and so on, the recipients would find themselves addressed as befitted their station. 

However, as is well known, computer programmers are reputed for their laziness. Rather than spend half a lifetime verifying the correct form of address for the entire aristocracy, not to mention the upper ranks of the armed forces, members of the judiciary and senior clerics, it struck me that the entire process could be better done by an algorithm. After all there are rules and a set of rules is all that is needed in these cases. 

Nevertheless, some of the rules are fairly complex. Take this, for example:   

If the definite article is not used before courtesy peerages and The Hon Elizabeth Smith marries Sir William Brown, she becomes The Hon Lady Brown, but if she marries the higher-ranked Lord Brown, a courtesy Baron, she becomes only Lady Brown. If this Sir William Brown's father is created Earl of London and Baron Brown, as a result of this enoblement, his wife's style will actually change, from "The Hon Lady Brown" to "Lady Brown". It is important to note that while the style may appear diminished, the precedence taken increases from that of the wife of a knight to that of the wife of an earl's eldest son.

And quite right too, I say. 

However, when the time came to embark on implementing my project, it was sadly one of those cases where the anticipated volume of sales (paltry) was unlikely to justify the projected development effort (significant) and I had no alternative but to set it aside. 

All the same, it was worth it just for the name: The Deference Engine

Three questions concerning the future

Have we forgotten how to imagine the future - or at least one that we would be happy to live in? 

I have been thinking about this in connection with the climate emergency. There is a broad acceptance that urgent action is needed if we are to avert climate disaster, yet it is matched by an equally broad reluctance to relinquish familiar — if increasingly fragile — comforts and securities. If the necessary changes are to be undertaken in time, we need a positive vision of the kind of world we would like to live in - not simply a dread of the kind we hope to avoid. 

Of course, as far as nightmare versions of the future our concerned, our culture has proved itself capable of delivering a wealth of examples. In film: the Hunger Games, Blade Runner and Mad Max; in books: The Handmaid’s Tale and The Children of Men - to name just the ones that immediately spring to mind. 

Far from goading us into action, these dystopian visions can have the effect of scaring us into a state of anxious inertia. We might watch the film version of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. It appears horrifyingly plausible. We hope that things won’t come to that, so we try to get better at recycling and we consider buying a smaller car. 

We will need to do better than this however, if our children and grandchildren — along with countless other organisms — are to have any sort of future. We need to recover our ability to imagine a future we would be happy to live in — one capable of motivating and shaping our decisions. 

Making progress on this — if it is to be remotely realistic — will call for serious scientific and engineering insight but it will depend equally on an attitude of mind similar to that of an artist. 

As Brian Eno puts it:  

”I’ve always thought that art is a lie, an interesting lie. And I'll sort of listen to the 'lie' and try to imagine the world which makes that lie true... what that world must be like, and what would have to happen for us to get from this world to that one.”

With this in mind I have come up with three questions. How to answer them is something I am thinking about a lot right now. 

Question 1: Using the technological capabilities available today, is it possible to envisage a sustainable ecosystem capable of supporting the current world population?

I might have added the words “along with other organisms”. However. as it is widely accepted that biodiversity is essential to sustainability, I have chosen not to make this explicit. 

I might also have chosen to omit the part about sustaining the current world population. Certainly the view that there are simply too many people is a popular one amongst those who acknowledge the reality of climate change but who secretly consider that a mass cull of the poor might be the only way for the wealthy to survive it. Quite apart from the fact that it is ethically dubious, this is simply too easy an answer. Since it is broadly accepted that unchecked climate change will give rise to a catastrophic decline in the human population, this view amounts to little more than an acceptance of a future that is — in Thomas Hobbs’ words — ‘nasty, brutish and short’. 

That said, I believe that the answer to the first question is yes. I believe it is possible to conceive of a sophisticated ecosystem capable of accommodating a human population of 8 billion alongside the animals, plants and processes with whom we share the planet. It would inevitably depend on highly sophisticated, closed-cycle technologies, compared with which our present poisonous, waste-encumbered efforts would appear recklessly primitive. 

If we can’t answer yes to this first question then there is little point in troubling ourselves with the other two.

Question 2: Assuming a future sustainable ecosystem is possible, is there a way to transition to it from where we are now? 

We might be able to envisage a sustainable future but it might not be possible to reach it. The steps required to shift methods of energy generation, construction, transport etc. can in themselves entail the release of significant quantities of greenhouse gas. For example, in the UK, homes account for over 40% of energy consumption, of which over half is used for space heating. If we were to replace our present housing stock with modern, highly-insulated alternatives then we could achieve major reductions in CO2. However, if we take into account the energy and CO2 cost resulting from demolishing millions of homes and building new ones the picture is nowhere near as rosy.

So there is a time dimension involved in answering this question: do we have the time to undertake the steps necessary to transition to a new, sustainable ecosystem before the negative consequences of both our present and our transitional arrangements threaten to catch up with us and overwhelm us?  

It is like the Marx Bothers film, Go West in which the passenger train they are on is running out of fuel. Harpo is sent back through the carriages with an axe and begins chopping up the train and carrying the pieces forward to feed the boiler. Of course, the question is: will the train get to its destination before it has been completely demolished? 

Nevertheless, as far as the answer to second question goes I have to answer yes again. That said, figuring out how to transform almost every aspect of our industrial and agricultural ecosystem is decidedly more difficult than dreaming up a hypothetical future — so it has to be a cautious yes.

Question 3. Assuming a ‘yes’ to both questions 1 and 2, how can we muster the political will to embark on a program of action that has any hope of success? 

Present strategies for tackling climate change tend to focus on mitigation or, to put it another way: we have identified the processes and patterns of behaviour that are bringing about the present crisis and therefore the general consensus is that we should stop doing them.

This is all terribly negative however and, with the exception of a privileged minority who have chosen to adopt a variety of green measures as a lifestyle choice, most people find the privations necessary to reduce their carbon footprint distinctly unattractive. Governments meanwhile, attempting to burnish their green credentials, are quick to take advantage of any method of accounting that can portray CO2 reduction statistics in a favourable light. Meanwhile, one only has to take a look at the rate of global heating, sea-level rise and instances of extreme weather to see that our headlong race toward the abyss continues unabated. 

It is a chilling thought that, of the three questions outlined here, it is the immediate one,  the one we face right now, that is the hardest to respond to positively. It is becoming increasingly clear that the response from both governments and individuals is falling sadly short of what is necessary. This is leading a number of people to resort to an ideology termed Deep Adaptation, as outlined in an influential paper by Jem Bendell: Deep Adaptation — a Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy. 

As the abstract to the paper puts it:

"The purpose of this conceptual paper is to provide readers with an opportunity to reassess their work and life in the face of an inevitable nearterm social collapse due to climate change."

Or, as Rupert Read, one of the spokespersons for Extinction Rebellion states: 

“Deep Adaptation means adaptation premised upon collapse.”

These people may be right, and they certainly have the weight of evidence on their side. All the same, without detracting from the force of their argument, I am inclined to take an optimistic view.

So I intend to work with others on developing positive visions of the future. These don’t even need to be entirely plausible — at least not in the first instance. As a species, we are susceptible both to imagery and to stories. Maybe it is time we allowed our imaginations the space to explore them again.   

Climate emergency, cultural emergency

There’s a cultural dimension to the climate emergency and for the last 50 years we have been playing it all wrong. Ever since the Ecologist magazine published its Blueprint for Survival in 1972 it seems there have been people warning of imminent environmental collapse and others inclined to dismiss them as alarmists, killjoys and prophets of doom. The scales may have tipped in the intervening years but the cultural attributes of the two sides have hardly changed.

The problem with the activist side is that the message is essentially negative: we face extinction or, at best, serious environmental, economic and social breakdown unless we significantly reduce the rate at which we are releasing CO2 into the atmosphere. We can help to do this by eating less meat, giving up the second car, flying less and so on. It is a familiar picture.

Of course, for that significant fraction of the world’s population who can see little beyond the daily struggle to provide food and shelter for their children, such concerns risk appearing somewhat academic. For the rest of us it boils down to a matter of managing guilt - either through reparation or denial.

There is nearly always an element of guilt - mostly on account of the fact that, faced with the prospect of climate change, most of us find it difficult to give up enough to make a significant difference. Many choose to do as much as they can and quietly rank themselves according to the extent of their self-assessed virtue. Others, finding themselves culturally at odds with the whole green lifestyle, prefer to hold out for action at government level. While they might be worried about climate change, they don’t feel there is much they can (or wish to) do about it. A common view is that there are others whose responsibility for the problem is far greater than their own. Why should they give up their own hard-won, yearly holiday when there are others boasting about reducing theirs from three to two?

But let’s not fool ourselves: despite the fact that they would have us believe we’re all Green nowadays, there really is another side - namely the side that would have us all wander over the cliff edge, just so long as there are profits to be had on the way. There is little point in identifying the individuals who seem intent on taking us down this path. The momentum dragging us inexorably towards disaster is locked-in to the structures, customs and practices that make up capitalism and its variants. Individuals might grow weary of serving this machine but there are always others eager to replace them. Meanwhile the algorithms continue to do their work.

When it comes to opposing and belittling climate activism, the opposition finds itself with a wealth of targets. Those advocating radical change are variously described as: naive, privileged, middle-class, egotistical, disruptive, unglamorous, unrealistic fantasists. Many of these labels resonate even amongst sympathisers. As so much of Green ideology appears to focus on self-denial, Greens are easily portrayed as ardent killjoys - despite the colourful clothes and the drumming. It’s like those happy-clappy evangelists; they might look like they’re euphoric but deep down you suspect they’re not actually having much fun.

The problem with programs for addressing climate change is that they focus on the steps we need to adopt to transition from where we are now to a green and sustainable future. Of course there is nothing wrong with this from a scientific point of view but in terms of presentation it is a disaster, principally on the grounds that the measures advocate abandoning the familiar and embarking on a voyage into the unknown with no clear destination in sight.

It doesn’t need to be like this. Here is what I think we should do.

Firstly, we should focus more energy on developing a vision for the future that describes how humans and other creatures can inhabit the earth in a sustainable way. Sustainability is the key concept here, in as much as it refers to the ability to co-exist with nature and the environment in a way that is ongoing. Far from representing ‘back to nature’ fundamentalism, the future global ecology will depend on highly sophisticated closed-cycle technologies, compared with which our present poisonous, waste-encumbered efforts will appear recklessly primitive. Such ecologies will draw on environmental energy flows, as opposed to fossil fuel extraction and there will be a natural tendency in favour of geographic dispersal, based around small communities and towns, where both energy and resource flows will be predominantly localised.

Secondly, we should turn the tables. At present, the environmental movement appears willing to participate in a scenario in which it is cast as the alternative to a mainstream which is manifestly broken, and yet it is the environmental side that is obliged to explain itself. This is all wrong. We should be putting the difficult questions to apologists for the status quo; they are the ones from whom we should demand answers. In all our communications we should rebrand the environment-despoiling, fossil-fuel burning, climate change deniers as the Opposition - for that is precisely what they are. 

I have no doubt whatsoever that a future sustainable ecology using known advanced technologies is 100% feasible. What is less clear, of course, is how to make the transition from where we are now. That said, we should not be apologetic about the fact that we don’t have immediate answers. Without a destination it is difficult to plan the journey.

Instead, we should demand that the Opposition explain exactly where it is they think they are taking us.