Sitting on the razor's edge

Concluding her recent book on nuclear war, Annie Jacobsen writes:

Nuclear war is insane. Every person I interviewed for this book knows this. Every person. The whole premise of using nuclear weapons is madness. It is irrational. And yet here we are. Russian president Vladimir Putin recently said that he is “not bluffing” about the possibility of using weapons of mass destruction. North Korea recently accused the U.S. of having “a sinister intention to provoke a nuclear war.” We all sit on the razor’s edge. Nuclear War: A Scenario, Annie Jacobsen, March 2024

Each step along this razor's edge was taken rationally given the incentives on offer, and historical precedent, which tells us that if someone else, enemy or not, has a decisive weapon in their artillery, then we had better acquire one too. These individually justifiable steps have taken us, collectively, to the brink of nuclear exchange. (The term 'nuclear war' isn't really apt, as it's likely the exchange would take place over hours rather than years.) It speaks to the madness of humanity's current condition that we are at a point where our best hopes for nuclear deterrence lie in having leaders who are, or who appear to be, irrational (pdf).

Where do we go from here? The technology to develop and deliver nuclear weapons (which also doesn't sound right - they're not for fighting, they're for killing whole populations) can't be wiped from our collective memory - except by their use, which would wipe out our collective memory and all of humanity and most other life besides.

Under the current system, while the total number of weapons has shrunk, the number of countries that own them has risen. The knowledge and materials needed to build them are widely, and increasingly, available worldwide. There's little to deter state and non-state actors, from doing their best to acquire them.

Numerous actors are making efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation. They aren't, though, rewarded in ways that are linked to their success or otherwise in their mission. This does not mean that they aren't working as hard as they can, nor that they are not sufficiently motivated. It means that they have fewer resources at their command with which to continue with their current efforts and to explore other, perhaps more effective, approaches.

My suggestion is that, with the need for diverse, adaptive approaches, interested governments, NGOs, and others collectively back and issue Nuclear Peace Bonds. These bonds would reward the sustained achievement of nuclear peace, however it's brought about, and whoever helps achieves it. Effectively, the bonds would be paying people to stop other people initiating mass annihilation. It's some way short of ideal, but it is better than where we appear to be heading. Ms Jacobsen continues:

What if deterrence fails? “Humanity is just one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation,” United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres warned the world in the fall of 2022. “This is madness,” he says. “We must reverse course.” How true. The fundamental idea behind this book is to demonstrate, in appalling detail, just how horrifying nuclear war would be.

Another way of subsidising the rich

Environmental policy now seems focused almost exclusively on greenhouse gas emissions. Almost anything that might reduce the net emissions of those gases that are currently thought to be the instigators of global warming is lauded and, indeed, subsidised, regardless of its impact on land use, water quality, child labour, and the viability of public transport.

And inequality. Take Norway, which is...

...constantly being hailed as a frontrunner in the promotion of electric cars. It is true that there has been a real boom of BEV [battery electric vehicle] sales in the country – due to generous government subsidies. However, the overall picture is not so rosy - one might even consider it tragic. Namely, in 2010, there were 2,308,000 cars, while by 2022 this number jumped to 3,105,000 – in a country with a population of 5.4 million. During this period, the number of internal combustion engine (ICE) cars did not decrease at all. ... Many [Norwegians] think that it would have been more useful to invest more in public transport and encourage cycling and walking. Subsidies for electric cars have also increased social inequalities by primarily benefiting the wealthier individuals who usually bought one or more additional cars to the already existing one(s). Electric cars are a dead end, András Lukács Aydan Gurbanova, 'The Ecologist', 16 April

There's something really cynical about this. If we are serious about wanting to reduce our impact on the climate, then we need to enact policies that reduce our impact on the climate. We need also to take into account the negative externalities of our policies, not only on distribution (of income or wealth), but also on the environment more generally. 

My suggestion is that we focus on the outcomes that we want to achieve, rather than the supposed means of achieving them. The fundamental question is whether we want to change the climate, or to reduce the adverse impacts of climate change. We could, for example, aim for a range of social, physical, biological and financial indicators (insurance claims for instance); all of which must fall within an approved range for a sustained period in order for our climate goal to be deemed achieved. The tunnel vision focus on greenhouse gas emissions won't do anything to bring about such a broad range of goals. In fact, despite vast expenditure of bureaucratic energy, technical advances, coercion and subsidies it's even failing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions: 

'Climate activism became a big public cause about halfway along this graph. Notice any effect?' From Riding the Climate Toboggan, John Michael Greer, 6 September

Our scientific knowledge about the impacts of, and optimal solutions to, climate change is constantly expanding, and we need policies that allow for that. My suggestion is that we reward those who achieve an array of meaningful climate-related targets by backing and issuing Climate Stability Bonds. These would stimulate research into, and implementation of the diverse, adaptive approaches that will be necessary to bring about an efficient solution to the climate change problem.

Betting markets and benign manipulation

Zachary Basu writes about the 'explosion of legalized gambling' in the US, which 'has set the stage for a provocative new frontier in the world of risk-taking — betting markets for everyday events, ranging from Taylor Swift streams to hurricanes hitting major U.S. cities.'

Punters...

...can bet on hundreds of real-world events — whether the Fed will cut rates, the high temperature today in Miami, Oscar nominations, the outcome of Supreme Court cases — on Kalshi, the only federally regulated exchange dedicated to event markets.... Some ethics experts have raised concerns about the integrity of betting on natural disasters and other markets tied to human suffering, as well as those that could be subject to manipulation. America the slot machine, Zachary Basu, 10 April

If there were a market that promised huge rewards for successfully predicting, say, a halving of the number of people killed by natural disasters in the US, then you can see how it would be in punters' (otherwise known as 'investors'') interests to do whatever they can to improve US citizens' resilience to such disasters. And that explains how I came up with the idea of Social Policy Bonds: the aim is to reward not so much the successful prediction of future events, but successful efforts to influence future events to the benefit of society. Hence, in this example, Disaster Prevention Bonds.

The Social Policy Bond principle is a beneficial form of the manipulation to which Mr Basu refers, which can manifest itself in the sports world as match fixing. With governments (unsurprisingly) and philanthropists (disappointingly) taking only tiny steps in the direction of rewarding successful achievement of beneficial outcomes, perhaps another approach would be to set up a market with Kalshi for a relatively unambitious goal. Those who stand to lose money from, say, high crime rates in a particular city, such as insurance companies, could bet that crime in that city will not halve in the next five years. Punters on the other side of that gamble, and would be motivated to do all they can to make sure that such a halving does occur. Everybody would gain from this benign form of manipulation. Such is the Social Policy Bonds differ only in that those setting up the bet would aim to reduce all forms of losses, not only those that can be valued monetarily.