If you compound enough hypocrisy, and shovel it into a big enough pile, it just becomes ordinary evil, doesn’t it?
You’ve heard it, probably, a thousand times: man-made climate change is a “collective action problem.” This is a term of art in economics, not rocket science. It means that measures by a person, group, or society to limit carbon emissions might not only be costly in themselves, but competitively disadvantageous — if other people don’t take similar measures at the same time.
Another famous example of a collective action problem is corruption, graft and bribery by multinational companies The government is obviously being let off the hook a little, however, on its devotion to internationalism. The DPA rules introduced last year contain language meant to protect the OECD convention. Those rules say that the prosecutor in a foreign bribery case is forbidden from considering “the national economic interest” in deciding whether to defer the prosecution and start bargaining with the defendant.
The cynic’s take on this is that it’s a “political decision.” Cabinet makes decisions on the basis of narrow economic interest, or mere dread of dumb headlines, all the time. The Liberals yammer on about fighting climate change, but they bought a pipeline, and at a dear price, too, when there were votes in it. This is the same kind of thing. It happens. International anti-corruption measures, yea: cutting off our nose to spite our face, nay.
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