Friday, December 18, 2009
snow & Ball
Snow brings a frisson of enjoyable unpredictability to London, the prospect of the urban landscape transformed into a shining, unfamiliar environment. But the Times chose to see it as an opportunity to threaten children, by devoting its children's page in T2 to snow and its imminent disappearance from the planet if we don't take action to stop global warming.
what action, exactly, can children take to control the balance of gases in the Earth's atmosphere? What purpose can it serve to blackmail them, except to put moral pressure on their parents and sidestep scientific, technical, social and political debates?
Meanwhile, at a seasonal celebration of rationality and free speech, respected science broadcaster Johnny Ball, a man who inspired generations of scientists, was being booed and shouted off stage for expressing his unorthodox opinons on climate change. I cannot better Brendan O'Neill's article about this on Spiked, but I do think that people who call themselves skeptics should hesitate to shout down a speaker they disagree with, and that people who call themselves humanists should show more respect for their fellow humans, even those who don't follow their own (startlingly narrow) range of opinions and behaviours.
Another skeptic, James Randi, has recently put himself on record as a thoughtful sceptic of the climate change orthodoxy. He asserts mildly that the rush to consensus on what will happen to the climate, whose fault it will be, and what we ought to do about it, is premature and a tad unscientific. He points out that climate science tends to ignore the great rule of sceptical enquiry, which is to attack your own favourite theories as if you were trying to disprove them (not to tuck away inconvenient parcels of evidence to hinder your opponents from doing just that). And finally he expresses a political opinion, that "more attention to disease control, better hygienic conditions for food production and clean water supplies, as well as controlling the filth that we breathe from fossil fuel use, are problems that should distract us from fretting about baking in Global Warming."
For which, of course his erstwhile fans and fellow skeptics are shaking their heads over him as if a Salvation Army bandmaster had been caught, sodden with drink, in a brothel.
Free speech, in science as everywhere else, must be defended for everybody, not just for those who already agree with you and all your friends.
what action, exactly, can children take to control the balance of gases in the Earth's atmosphere? What purpose can it serve to blackmail them, except to put moral pressure on their parents and sidestep scientific, technical, social and political debates?
Meanwhile, at a seasonal celebration of rationality and free speech, respected science broadcaster Johnny Ball, a man who inspired generations of scientists, was being booed and shouted off stage for expressing his unorthodox opinons on climate change. I cannot better Brendan O'Neill's article about this on Spiked, but I do think that people who call themselves skeptics should hesitate to shout down a speaker they disagree with, and that people who call themselves humanists should show more respect for their fellow humans, even those who don't follow their own (startlingly narrow) range of opinions and behaviours.
Another skeptic, James Randi, has recently put himself on record as a thoughtful sceptic of the climate change orthodoxy. He asserts mildly that the rush to consensus on what will happen to the climate, whose fault it will be, and what we ought to do about it, is premature and a tad unscientific. He points out that climate science tends to ignore the great rule of sceptical enquiry, which is to attack your own favourite theories as if you were trying to disprove them (not to tuck away inconvenient parcels of evidence to hinder your opponents from doing just that). And finally he expresses a political opinion, that "more attention to disease control, better hygienic conditions for food production and clean water supplies, as well as controlling the filth that we breathe from fossil fuel use, are problems that should distract us from fretting about baking in Global Warming."
For which, of course his erstwhile fans and fellow skeptics are shaking their heads over him as if a Salvation Army bandmaster had been caught, sodden with drink, in a brothel.
Free speech, in science as everywhere else, must be defended for everybody, not just for those who already agree with you and all your friends.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
"Climate Change is not our fault", say voters
So, only 2 out of 5 people in the UK think human activity is to blame for global warming, according to a poll for the Times. And only 28% of those polled agreed that it is happening and is “far and away the most serious problem we face as a country and internationally”.
As somebody who gets to hang out with a lot of scientists, one of the perks of my job, I can already hear them tutting, muttering about denial, how people have been hoodwinked by the propaganda of oil companies and are too selfish and shortsighted to accept the truth, as handed to them by scientists, governments, and green campaigners.
But let’s try to draw a line here. A very small number of respondents – less than one in ten - thought climate change was a natural phenomenon, and environmentalist propaganda falsely blames human activity. Only 15% think it’s not happening at all (and, if you pick your timescale, they’re right. The warmest year on record was 1998, since when global temperatures have not risen. So if you’re an undergraduate now, things really have got no warmer since you started secondary school).
That means most people think the climate is changing and that human activity could, or definitely does, have a role in causing it. But that is not the same thing as accepting culpability. “Climate change is not our fault, say most voters”, as the Times headline puts it. And indeed, in what sense could you say that the concentration of greenhouse gases in today’s atmosphere is the “fault” of today’s British voters?
There’s little we, as individuals, can do to change the emissions profile of civilisation, even if we were to embrace the austerity agenda and give up the things like cars, planes, central heating and a varied diet that our parents and grandparents struggled to win for us. Denmark is the poster child of renewable energy, but its CO2 emissions per capita were close to Germany’s 10 tons in 2004. Sweden was closer to France’s 6 tons, thanks to its heavy reliance on nuclear power alongside its renewable sources. Does that mean that the Danes and Germans are nearly twice as guilty as the French and Swedish? If the UK government built new nuclear power stations and a Severn barrage they’d do more to change our emissions profile than any amount of wearing sweaters indoors.
When newspaper articles use the terms “cause”, “blame” and “fault” interchangeably, no wonder the interviewees aren’t sure whether they’re being asked for a scientific or a moral judgement. But asking whether a warming planet is “the most significant problem we face” is clearly a political, not a scientific question. And in the face of a global recession, rising unemployment, an intractable war, and persistent world issues like underdevelopment, disease and conflict, the answer is not a foregone conclusion.
Even within the UK, you might well think that your child having a good education and growing up in a democracy, with the chance to do a worthwhile job, live in a decent home and be free to travel, for example, would make more difference to their life than whether the world is 2 degrees warmer or the sea a foot higher.
In the developing world it is surely nonsense to suggest that a changing climate will have more effect on the next generation’s life than having access to the things that we take for granted – sanitation, transportation, industrial production of food and other goods, higher education, convenient and safe energy on tap. If minimising emissions is prioritised over economic development, will the citizens of a still-impoverished Bangladesh really be thanking us in 2050 for keeping their world just as it was?
All this, of course, presupposes that the science is robust, and that human industrial activity is the main and controllable cause of global warming. The problem is that, thanks to this kind of elision of scientific, moral and political categories, it is becoming harder, not easier, to point to objective and reliable scientific opinion on the issue. The more scientists line up to tell us that their research shows we ought to fly less often or eat fewer steaks, the less objectivity they can claim.
On page 3 of Saturday’s Times is another science story. The Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition reports that previous guidelines on how many calories the average man and woman needs to consume were a bit small. Unless you are simply spending your time in one room doing nothing, you’re burning off more calories than they thought, and should be able to consume 2,900 calories a day (men) or 2,350 (women) without getting any fatter. That’s an extra 2 pints of lager, 2 large glasses of red wine, or a Tesco chicken salad sandwich.
Underneath the main story, page 3 stunna and qualified nutritionist Amanda Ursell warns how irresponsible it is to tell us fatties what the scientists have found. ‘My main worry with these figures from the Government’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition is not the figures but how they will be interpreted… One response will be “scientists got it wrong, we can’t trust them.” Another will be: “we can eat more”.’
Ms. Ursell seems to think that we will stop listening to scientists altogether because they tell us the truth about what they’ve found. Either that, or be confused enough to believe that our bodies have somehow been recalibrated overnight (like a cable TV box) to take on 400 more calories than the day before without gaining weight.
We are not idiots. Most of us have simply spotted that life is too short to count calories, or carbon.
As somebody who gets to hang out with a lot of scientists, one of the perks of my job, I can already hear them tutting, muttering about denial, how people have been hoodwinked by the propaganda of oil companies and are too selfish and shortsighted to accept the truth, as handed to them by scientists, governments, and green campaigners.
But let’s try to draw a line here. A very small number of respondents – less than one in ten - thought climate change was a natural phenomenon, and environmentalist propaganda falsely blames human activity. Only 15% think it’s not happening at all (and, if you pick your timescale, they’re right. The warmest year on record was 1998, since when global temperatures have not risen. So if you’re an undergraduate now, things really have got no warmer since you started secondary school).
That means most people think the climate is changing and that human activity could, or definitely does, have a role in causing it. But that is not the same thing as accepting culpability. “Climate change is not our fault, say most voters”, as the Times headline puts it. And indeed, in what sense could you say that the concentration of greenhouse gases in today’s atmosphere is the “fault” of today’s British voters?
There’s little we, as individuals, can do to change the emissions profile of civilisation, even if we were to embrace the austerity agenda and give up the things like cars, planes, central heating and a varied diet that our parents and grandparents struggled to win for us. Denmark is the poster child of renewable energy, but its CO2 emissions per capita were close to Germany’s 10 tons in 2004. Sweden was closer to France’s 6 tons, thanks to its heavy reliance on nuclear power alongside its renewable sources. Does that mean that the Danes and Germans are nearly twice as guilty as the French and Swedish? If the UK government built new nuclear power stations and a Severn barrage they’d do more to change our emissions profile than any amount of wearing sweaters indoors.
When newspaper articles use the terms “cause”, “blame” and “fault” interchangeably, no wonder the interviewees aren’t sure whether they’re being asked for a scientific or a moral judgement. But asking whether a warming planet is “the most significant problem we face” is clearly a political, not a scientific question. And in the face of a global recession, rising unemployment, an intractable war, and persistent world issues like underdevelopment, disease and conflict, the answer is not a foregone conclusion.
Even within the UK, you might well think that your child having a good education and growing up in a democracy, with the chance to do a worthwhile job, live in a decent home and be free to travel, for example, would make more difference to their life than whether the world is 2 degrees warmer or the sea a foot higher.
In the developing world it is surely nonsense to suggest that a changing climate will have more effect on the next generation’s life than having access to the things that we take for granted – sanitation, transportation, industrial production of food and other goods, higher education, convenient and safe energy on tap. If minimising emissions is prioritised over economic development, will the citizens of a still-impoverished Bangladesh really be thanking us in 2050 for keeping their world just as it was?
All this, of course, presupposes that the science is robust, and that human industrial activity is the main and controllable cause of global warming. The problem is that, thanks to this kind of elision of scientific, moral and political categories, it is becoming harder, not easier, to point to objective and reliable scientific opinion on the issue. The more scientists line up to tell us that their research shows we ought to fly less often or eat fewer steaks, the less objectivity they can claim.
On page 3 of Saturday’s Times is another science story. The Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition reports that previous guidelines on how many calories the average man and woman needs to consume were a bit small. Unless you are simply spending your time in one room doing nothing, you’re burning off more calories than they thought, and should be able to consume 2,900 calories a day (men) or 2,350 (women) without getting any fatter. That’s an extra 2 pints of lager, 2 large glasses of red wine, or a Tesco chicken salad sandwich.
Underneath the main story, page 3 stunna and qualified nutritionist Amanda Ursell warns how irresponsible it is to tell us fatties what the scientists have found. ‘My main worry with these figures from the Government’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition is not the figures but how they will be interpreted… One response will be “scientists got it wrong, we can’t trust them.” Another will be: “we can eat more”.’
Ms. Ursell seems to think that we will stop listening to scientists altogether because they tell us the truth about what they’ve found. Either that, or be confused enough to believe that our bodies have somehow been recalibrated overnight (like a cable TV box) to take on 400 more calories than the day before without gaining weight.
We are not idiots. Most of us have simply spotted that life is too short to count calories, or carbon.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Scientific Advice? Keep your mouth shut, professor.
So, the government has sacked Professor David Nutt from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs for saying what he thinks - which is that the separation between illegal drugs like cannabis and (relatively) legal ones such as alcohol and tobacco was artificial, not based on actual differences in the risks they carry. He's previously compared the dangers of ecstasy to those of horse riding.
Home Secretary Alan Johnson wrote to him that "I cannot have public confusion between scientific advice and policy and have therefore lost confidence in your ability to advise me as chair of the ACMD."
Which is not entirely wrong. It's the job of scientific advisors to advise on the science, and the job of the government to make and apply policy. But really, whose fault is it that people are confused?
Take public health. Scientific advice on what we eat, drink and smoke is regularly handed down to us in a form the scientists might not recognise. How much alcohol is it safe to drink in pregnancy? None. or some. Depending on what they think will be most effective in getting us to change our wilful ways. When public health advice gets changed, it's rarely becuase research has made a breakthrough - not biomedical research, anyway. There may be new market research that means if they tell us not to do something at all, on average we'll do less of it and the NHS will hit more targets.
What's worse, even sociology and politics have to masquerade as science now. Matthew Taylor, formerly Tony Blair's advisor, now believes that choosing the next government for the UK should be a matter not of looking to the parties' policies or their visions for society, but of choosing the benevolent, interventionist authority that will give our poor, stressed, monkey-brains the best chance of recovery. Though elsewhere in his Times piece he calls on everyone to be more self-reliant, so I'm not sure why we need all this intervention in dysfunctional families, or training impetuous four-year-olds to hold out against the consumer marshmallow culture (if you think I'm rambling drunkenly, read the piece yourself here).
So, to return to the unfortunate Professor Nutt, it's right that scientific advisors should try to distinguish between the scientific evidence (cannabis is little worse than alcohol in terms of addiction, physical or social harm) and the politics (we can't be seen to encourage teenagers to go mad on reefers, especially when there's so many things their parents aren't allowed to do any more). But you can't blame the man for losing sight of that, when scientific advisors to other departments are so often wheeled out to tell the public what to do, while the supposed policy-makers waft their hands and say, "see? The science tells us so! It's the science! Quick, recycle your lightbulbs or the science will get you!"
Enough craven so-called politics. I'm off to the annual Battle of Ideas, to get more real political, scientific and cultural debate in two days than I get in the other 11 months of the year. If you're coming, hope to see you either at my Sunday event on Space, or on the Saturday evening balloon debate to decide, once and for all, which revolution has done the most to transform human life. Bet you it isn't the Blair revolution.
Home Secretary Alan Johnson wrote to him that "I cannot have public confusion between scientific advice and policy and have therefore lost confidence in your ability to advise me as chair of the ACMD."
Which is not entirely wrong. It's the job of scientific advisors to advise on the science, and the job of the government to make and apply policy. But really, whose fault is it that people are confused?
Take public health. Scientific advice on what we eat, drink and smoke is regularly handed down to us in a form the scientists might not recognise. How much alcohol is it safe to drink in pregnancy? None. or some. Depending on what they think will be most effective in getting us to change our wilful ways. When public health advice gets changed, it's rarely becuase research has made a breakthrough - not biomedical research, anyway. There may be new market research that means if they tell us not to do something at all, on average we'll do less of it and the NHS will hit more targets.
What's worse, even sociology and politics have to masquerade as science now. Matthew Taylor, formerly Tony Blair's advisor, now believes that choosing the next government for the UK should be a matter not of looking to the parties' policies or their visions for society, but of choosing the benevolent, interventionist authority that will give our poor, stressed, monkey-brains the best chance of recovery. Though elsewhere in his Times piece he calls on everyone to be more self-reliant, so I'm not sure why we need all this intervention in dysfunctional families, or training impetuous four-year-olds to hold out against the consumer marshmallow culture (if you think I'm rambling drunkenly, read the piece yourself here).
So, to return to the unfortunate Professor Nutt, it's right that scientific advisors should try to distinguish between the scientific evidence (cannabis is little worse than alcohol in terms of addiction, physical or social harm) and the politics (we can't be seen to encourage teenagers to go mad on reefers, especially when there's so many things their parents aren't allowed to do any more). But you can't blame the man for losing sight of that, when scientific advisors to other departments are so often wheeled out to tell the public what to do, while the supposed policy-makers waft their hands and say, "see? The science tells us so! It's the science! Quick, recycle your lightbulbs or the science will get you!"
Enough craven so-called politics. I'm off to the annual Battle of Ideas, to get more real political, scientific and cultural debate in two days than I get in the other 11 months of the year. If you're coming, hope to see you either at my Sunday event on Space, or on the Saturday evening balloon debate to decide, once and for all, which revolution has done the most to transform human life. Bet you it isn't the Blair revolution.
Sunday, October 04, 2009
Water on the Moon
I was a bit disappointed last week when the headline “Water found on the Moon” didn’t occasion newsflashes across all media. Perhaps I really am a space geek and should stop getting so excited about the faint echoes of the golden Space Age.
But now NASA’s probes are about to crash into the Moon’s South Polar area, hoping to throw up a plume of debris and reveal more water than the faint coating on the lunar dust found by Chandrayaan. Since this mission is less susceptible to the new “no, no, we’re all on the same side now, really” space race (NASA vs. China vs. India) it will probably get more media coverage.
Is it good to get excited about finding vital resources on the Moon? Nobody’s suggesting we import water onto Earth, but it could make a permanent Moon colony more viable. And if Helium – 3 really is plentiful up there, it could make a contribution to solving Earth’s energy problems. Though hopefully not using the kind of inhuman set-up we saw in Duncan Jones’s film, Moon.
But there’s a danger of letting space be about nostalgia instead of new challenges (see MOON 40, below). And, apart from Jones’s excellent film, science fiction cinema seems to be dominated by remakes, sequels, rehashes of old ideas. Rather like the actual space programmes that don’t seem to have moved much beyond a remake of the Apollo Missions – only on a smaller budget and with a less ambitious storyline.
That’s why I’m producing a satellite event for the Battle of Ideas called Space – from Infinite dreams to Recurring Nightmares? On October 23rd, in London's Royal Observatory Greenwich, Scientists and science fiction writers will debate whether we need a bit more imagination and ambition, in space as well as fiction. It's part of Sci-Fi London's Oktoberfest Sci-Fi Universe night.
After all, if half of today’s babies are going to live to be 100, they’re going to need some truly inspiring projects to make the most of all that time!
But now NASA’s probes are about to crash into the Moon’s South Polar area, hoping to throw up a plume of debris and reveal more water than the faint coating on the lunar dust found by Chandrayaan. Since this mission is less susceptible to the new “no, no, we’re all on the same side now, really” space race (NASA vs. China vs. India) it will probably get more media coverage.
Is it good to get excited about finding vital resources on the Moon? Nobody’s suggesting we import water onto Earth, but it could make a permanent Moon colony more viable. And if Helium – 3 really is plentiful up there, it could make a contribution to solving Earth’s energy problems. Though hopefully not using the kind of inhuman set-up we saw in Duncan Jones’s film, Moon.
But there’s a danger of letting space be about nostalgia instead of new challenges (see MOON 40, below). And, apart from Jones’s excellent film, science fiction cinema seems to be dominated by remakes, sequels, rehashes of old ideas. Rather like the actual space programmes that don’t seem to have moved much beyond a remake of the Apollo Missions – only on a smaller budget and with a less ambitious storyline.
That’s why I’m producing a satellite event for the Battle of Ideas called Space – from Infinite dreams to Recurring Nightmares? On October 23rd, in London's Royal Observatory Greenwich, Scientists and science fiction writers will debate whether we need a bit more imagination and ambition, in space as well as fiction. It's part of Sci-Fi London's Oktoberfest Sci-Fi Universe night.
After all, if half of today’s babies are going to live to be 100, they’re going to need some truly inspiring projects to make the most of all that time!
Labels: battle of ideas, Moon, science fiction
Thursday, September 03, 2009
Hot, crowded and wonderful
I’m just back from Hong Kong, which was everything they say it is – hectic, hotter than a sauna, a seething mass of humanity packed into high-rise buildings, growing so fast they’re having to create new land to build on.Yes, it was love at first sight.
The multinational, multicultural vibrancy, the sheer beauty of the place, audaciously tall buildings proliferating between mountains and sea. If anyone reading this can offer me a job in Hong Kong, I’m there.
Then I read an article in New Scientist about cheap IVF in Africa – using new technology to make fertility treatment available to women who could never afford the thousands of pounds it normally costs. In general I’m in favour of people in developing countries getting the best, not the cheapest, but the new programme will enable a lot of childless African women to have families. I’d first read about this a couple of years ago in Nature, and thought at the time it had enormous potential to change lives.
Cause for optimism – but then I scrolled down to read some of the comments on the New Scientist piece. Were the readers filled with joy for African women, some of whom faced not only personal sorrow but social and economic fallout from being unable to conceive naturally?
No. Comments include “I find the prospect of millions of African Octomoms to be horrifying”… Women in those overpopulated nations are judged by how many children they can spew”… “If all women in the world underwent mandatory long-term contraception from the time they are 10 until they are 25 the world would be a better place … Do the [African] fertility clinics enforce any age limits or minimal educational accomplishments for the mother?” … “…a program (sic) to offer cash benefits for people to be sterilised would actually help. At the moment as soon as the west provides more food, they just breed to a new level of poverty and starvation….” And so on.
There are a couple of dissenting voices, some brilliant satire from “Darwin”, and a pithy note from Mike Harris, who comments, “Why Shouldn’t Africans have access to IVF? Do they not have babies for the same reason as anyone else? Do they not love their babies as much? Or is it that rich, pink babies are adorable while poor, brown babies are a “population problem”?”
It's probably true that lots of people are thinking exactly that, but it’s not the whole truth. People like the Optimum Population Trust in the UK actually think nobody should have too many children. They don’t go around arguing for mandatory contraception, or for Nature to be allowed to weed out those who can’t have babies with her help (in Africa, this is often not for genetic reasons, but as a result of poor-quality medical care and infection). But they do think that too many humans are a bad thing, and the planet would be better off with fewer of us.
Yes, it’s the same argument that’s been used since the time of Malthus, when the imminent “peak” of supportable human population was a few billion fewer than are now alive. The argument that assumes future generations will be able to eat/burn fossil fuel/throw away plastic bags, but will be incapable of producing more food, finding solutions to environmental problems, or having any kind of positive impact on the world.
Before I could get too depressed, I learned about a debate at this year’s Battle of Ideas that will be raising exactly these issues. Three’s a crowd? The battle over population and reproduction. So I will be able to go along on October 31st and have the arguments out with those who want all of us to have fewer babies.
Which brings me back to Hong Kong, that crowded, busy, built-up city making its own land to expand onto. Yes, it’s far from perfect. Yes, it has poverty, exploitation, over-work and underpay. But it’s also richly alive, developing and growing, setting a standard of ambition and achievement that the UK could learn from. And what’s driving that achievement is the people who live there.
The more the better, I say, whether it’s Hong Kong, Africa or Tooting.
Sunday, August 02, 2009
Right to live, right to die
Reports of the legalisation of death are exaggerated. All the UK’s Law Lords have done is rule that the law should be clarified, so people like campaigner Debbie Purdy can let their loved ones help them die abroad without fearing prosecution here. We’re a long way off a policy change that would officially sanction helping somebody else to end their own life.
And a good thing too. I’m sure it’s a small comfort, facing an illness that gradually takes away all your physical capabilities, your freedom and your autonomy, to think that you could at least decide how and when to end it. Nor is there anything absolutely sacred about human life in the sense of mere survival, stripped of everything that actually makes us human.
It’s not even the fear of unscrupulous families, bumping off Grandma to get their inheritance before the care home exhausts it, that makes legalising assisted suicide such a bad idea. It’s the idea that the right to a friendly shove off this mortal coil should be seen as some kind of triumph. When there is so much room to improve the lives of the living, not only medically but in all sorts of practical and social ways, is a more convenient and comfortable exit really something to celebrate?
The Law Lords ruling is based on the European Convention on Human Rights, which agrees that everyone has the right to respect for their private life. But there is scant respect for our right to choose a shorter and better life in other ways.
Take smoking. It can lead to a premature and sometimes painful death, but millions of smokers knowingly take that risk in return for the ephemeral pleasures of tobacco. Alcohol too is a short-term pleasure many of us pursue in spite of potential impact on our life expectancy (though those calculations are more ambiguous, and in fact moderate drinking – whisper it – is more healthy than abstinence. Unless you're combining it with driving or heavy machinery.). Is our autonomy respected when it comes to choosing a smoker’s or a boozer’s death? Is it bollocks!
Eating for pleasure and ignoring the obesity police, having unprotected sex, spending time reading instead of doing aerobic exercise, none of these assertions of autonomy in our private lives is remotely respected by the authorities who harangue us to live longer lives whether we want to or not. To drive without a seatbelt or ride a motorcycle without a crash helmet is against the law, though it’s only our own lives we’d be risking.
So, though I’m all for everyone’s freedom to determine their own death, I’d prefer to join a campaign for more freedom in how we live, our freedom to take risks in the name of living to the full for as long as we can.
And a good thing too. I’m sure it’s a small comfort, facing an illness that gradually takes away all your physical capabilities, your freedom and your autonomy, to think that you could at least decide how and when to end it. Nor is there anything absolutely sacred about human life in the sense of mere survival, stripped of everything that actually makes us human.
It’s not even the fear of unscrupulous families, bumping off Grandma to get their inheritance before the care home exhausts it, that makes legalising assisted suicide such a bad idea. It’s the idea that the right to a friendly shove off this mortal coil should be seen as some kind of triumph. When there is so much room to improve the lives of the living, not only medically but in all sorts of practical and social ways, is a more convenient and comfortable exit really something to celebrate?
The Law Lords ruling is based on the European Convention on Human Rights, which agrees that everyone has the right to respect for their private life. But there is scant respect for our right to choose a shorter and better life in other ways.
Take smoking. It can lead to a premature and sometimes painful death, but millions of smokers knowingly take that risk in return for the ephemeral pleasures of tobacco. Alcohol too is a short-term pleasure many of us pursue in spite of potential impact on our life expectancy (though those calculations are more ambiguous, and in fact moderate drinking – whisper it – is more healthy than abstinence. Unless you're combining it with driving or heavy machinery.). Is our autonomy respected when it comes to choosing a smoker’s or a boozer’s death? Is it bollocks!
Eating for pleasure and ignoring the obesity police, having unprotected sex, spending time reading instead of doing aerobic exercise, none of these assertions of autonomy in our private lives is remotely respected by the authorities who harangue us to live longer lives whether we want to or not. To drive without a seatbelt or ride a motorcycle without a crash helmet is against the law, though it’s only our own lives we’d be risking.
So, though I’m all for everyone’s freedom to determine their own death, I’d prefer to join a campaign for more freedom in how we live, our freedom to take risks in the name of living to the full for as long as we can.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Moon 40
I admit it, I am wallowing in lunar nostalgia, looking back 40 years to a time I don't even remember, when going to the Moon was a great thing to do because it was hard, because it was risky and daring and nobody had done it before. And, of course, because of the Cold War and the drive to beat the Russians to something, after they'd put the first satellite, the first man and the first woman into orbit.
It's salutary to remember how much greater were the technological obstacles faced by the Apollo missions in the 1960s. Neil Armstrong's childhood friend, invited to watch the launch of Apollo 11, filmed it on his super 8 cine camera. The limited computing power of the Lunar Landing Module nearly scuppered the mission. But still they tried, and they succeeded.
So I love the whole daring enterprise of sending human beings so far beyond the rest of us that the whole world became a small disc in their sky. But I do also have a small feeling of unease that we're looking back when we should be looking forward. The future, as seen from the sixties, is shiny and simple and retro. But it's as long ago now as 1929 was then. What are the new goals that can unite and inspire us in the twenty-first century? In fact, I'm organising a session at this year's Battle of Ideas festival on this very subject.
After space exploration going out of fashion for so long, it's great to see NASA and even the UK government getting serious about sending human beings beyond our home planet again. As the great visionary Konstantin Tsiolkowsky said in 1911, "Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in the cradle forever".
It's salutary to remember how much greater were the technological obstacles faced by the Apollo missions in the 1960s. Neil Armstrong's childhood friend, invited to watch the launch of Apollo 11, filmed it on his super 8 cine camera. The limited computing power of the Lunar Landing Module nearly scuppered the mission. But still they tried, and they succeeded.
So I love the whole daring enterprise of sending human beings so far beyond the rest of us that the whole world became a small disc in their sky. But I do also have a small feeling of unease that we're looking back when we should be looking forward. The future, as seen from the sixties, is shiny and simple and retro. But it's as long ago now as 1929 was then. What are the new goals that can unite and inspire us in the twenty-first century? In fact, I'm organising a session at this year's Battle of Ideas festival on this very subject.
After space exploration going out of fashion for so long, it's great to see NASA and even the UK government getting serious about sending human beings beyond our home planet again. As the great visionary Konstantin Tsiolkowsky said in 1911, "Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in the cradle forever".
