Posts by WH
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Great post Keith. I'd been too distracted by talk-like-William-Shatner Day to even buy presents for Earth Day.
These were cheap, immediate, effective and economical policies. They paid for themselves and had no downside. And they're history. So what's the point in talking about the kind of climate change action that is expensive, that will spread the cost throughout the economy, that will slow down growth, that will hurt households?
Earth Hour talks a good game, but we need to get real here: We're pretty fucked. The front on climate change action in New Zealand has collapsed. Our political environment is so toxic to rational debate that the simplest, cheapest, easiest measures can get defeated by dimmer switches and pseudo-liberalism. Solidarity of the human race and global action to save the planet is all well and good... but it's perverse to talk in those terms when we can't change a lightbulb.
That's tops.
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Dyan - thanks for your thoughtful response. I wasn't really trying to suggest that killer bees are not harmful, that SARS is not deadly or that Y2K did not have to be dealt with. I was lazily associating radiation from microwaves to smoking and lung cancer to apocalyptic climate change predictions, and wondering whether people fatigue of warnings or tire of having their emotions jangled by the coverage of crises notwithstanding the merits of any particular issue.
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there's only so many times you can warn people
I can understand that people immersed in the culture that bought us SARS, killer bees and Y2K might be cautious and reluctant to engage. There are always so many plausible points of view and most of us aren't able to evaluate technical claims, expert opinion or scientific evidence ourselves, even if we wanted to.
The whole topic veers dangerously into sandwich board dooomsayer territory, which makes it hard to discuss vividly and accurately without sounding like a crazy person. Smart money wouldn't ordinarily get too far out in front on something quite so dramatic.
I do think it's interesting that leaders in their fields have begun to frame their projections in such strident terms, even if the persuasive power of dire warnings and frightening images has been worn down by our collective irritation with routine exaggeration and needless drama.
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Sorry to repeat myself (okay, actually I'm not sorry):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/mar/13/stern-attacks-politicians-climate-change
The conference also heard that:
· A 4C rise could turn swaths of southern Europe to desert.
· Sea levels will rise twice as fast as official estimates predict.
· Modest warming could unleash a carbon "time bomb" from Arctic soils.
· A failure to cut emissions could render half of the world uninhabitable.
· Rising temperatures could kill off 85% of the Amazon rainforest.
Several experts at the conference warned that temperatures are likely to soar beyond the 2C target set by European politicians, though they are reluctant to say so publicly. "The 2C target is gone and 3C is difficult. I think we're heading for 4C at least," one said. Oxford University yesterday announced that it would hold a conference in September to discuss the implications of a rise of 4C or more.
Past time for action, perhaps.
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It's not a happy time to pick up a newspaper. Rod Oram was developing similar themes in his Four Horsemen articles.
The New Scientist recently outlined what a world warmed by four degrees might look like, noting that:
A 4 °C rise could easily occur. The 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose conclusions are generally accepted as conservative, predicted a rise of anywhere between 2 °C and 6.4 °C this century. And in August 2008, Bob Watson, former chair of the IPCC, warned that the world should work on mitigation and adaptation strategies to "prepare for 4 °C of warming".
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My take on this is that religion is very interesting, but the people (particularly strangers) who bring it up are often not.
I like to learn about other people's considered religious views and their spiritual experiences. It all goes into a big pot marked 'who knows' from which no conclusions need be drawn.
I was recently reading Stephen Jay Gould's essay on non overlapping magisteria, and was struck by his polite and thoughtful treatment of the viewpoint from which he was dissenting.
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If they were to replace the third strike consequence of life with 25 years non-parole with preventive detention with a non-parole period equal to the finite sentence that would have been imposed, I'd probably still be opposed, but I'd have a much harder time making the case.
Yes. It's the exceptionless nature of such potentially harsh consequences I don't like - once the legal threshold is crossed it's twenty-five years for a crime that might otherwise have earned you five, regardless of subsequent rehabilitation or remorse.
I suppose Garrett's point is that more lenient approaches inevitably fail to prevent some fraction of violent reoffending. The parole system has seen its share of high profile tragedies. There is an absurd frustration to knowing that our institutions are releasing people considered likely to re-offend and who are re-offending.
So I might accept that, in some as yet undefined circumstances, a recidivist offender should not qualify for release merely by completing a third sentence of the ordinary kind. But without reliable diagnostic methods to screen and effective rehabilitative techniques with which to fix, I wonder what should we do instead.
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But this is getting tedious...no-one here - ironically it seems with the exception of Lucy Stewart - is at all interested in debating the "three strikes" proposal...like all intellectuall lefties, you just KNOW you're right and those of us who disagree are redneck idiot bigots (feel free to add another alternative label)
I think it's great that we have the opportunity to exchange ideas with someone who sees this issue so differently. I have read both versions of the bill.
I think there are a couple of serious technical problems with a three strikes law. The first Graeme identified in his main post - a mandatory 25 year sentence may simply be too harsh a punishment for a particular third offence. Secondly, because there is no possibility of early release for genuine rehabilitation, the bill requires continued imprisonment even where inmates are no longer likely to re-offend, even where they did not 'deserve' a 25 year sentence on purely retributive grounds.
Another set of objections are structural. I have a friend who works with offenders thought to have a moderate risk of recidivism, and she's mentioned how most report backgrounds of criminal neglect and serious emotional and physical abuse. I don't believe it's a platitude to say that the lives of some offenders are shaped by circumstances out of their control, and I'm not comfortable throwing away the key in such cases. (She has also mentioned that a 10% rate of successful intervention is considered effective internationally.) </hearsay>
I tend to be sympathetic to arguments from personal responsibility and retributive punishment. The idea of someone 'choosing' a life of serious offending makes me angry, and I'll admit that part of me thinks it would be a good idea to lock recidivist violent offenders up until they change (shades of A Clockwork Orange notwithstanding). Another part of me wonders whether this does the problem justice.
I suppose that I'm conflicted, but don't like to see these sorts of proposals made without at least discussing how the underlying social problems in our communities are going to be addressed. </progressive>
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There are some interesting statistics on recidivism and re-imprisonment rates on the Corrections website. It is said that 34% of offenders who serve a sentence of more than 5 years will be re-imprisoned:
It is generally accepted, based on a wide range of studies, that most offenders do not "specialise" in any one type of offence: that is, the vast majority of persistent offenders have criminal histories featuring a sequence of convictions for offences across the criminal code. For example, many "violent offenders" will have histories in which a smaller number of convictions for violence are interspersed with large numbers of convictions for traffic offences, property offences, drug use, and so on.
Unfortunately, rehabilitating offenders seems to be painstakingly difficult.
I don't support this law, but what should be done about recidivist offending given the apparent clamour for tougher sentences and three-strike preventative detention?
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It seems to me that the best that can be said for three strikes laws is that they ostensibly recognise that repeat serious offending is more culpable than the sum of its parts - they reflect the idea that there must be a price for repeatedly refusing society's invitation to change. I think you're right to say that the major objection is that people would receive sentences that the seriousness of their actual offending may not warrant.
I wonder whether there is a better way to recognise the concerns that motivate these sorts of proposals, even if that takes us to familiar differences about the value of retributive justice, the prospects of genuine rehabilitation, the rights of victims and potential victims, and the effectiveness of our criminal justice system. All of which I'm curious like to know more about.