Y Safle

The new challenge is something that I think was completely unexpected a few years ago and that is that at one time when I was chancellor the oil price per barrel was $11. It’s now $125

Gordon Brown, interviewed on the Today Programme, 15/5/08.

Let’s focus on this word “completely unexpected”, Gordon. Because that tells us a lot about your lack of foresight, and the limited reading you are doing.

Anyone who did not expect sharp rises in the price of oil, 10 years or more ago, really was not paying attention. North sea oil production is past its peak, and global supply of oil has clearly been outstripped by demand. The result was predictable - relentlessly rising oil prices which will show frequent spikes at periods of highest demand.

I was writing about this in the 1990s, as were many others. The figures were all available, the trends quite clear.

With this low level of foresight, what hope do we have? Just once I would like to see a politician with a real grasp on the reality beyond what he is being fed by his short sighted peers.

“In my view, the Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children, under a free government ought to be instructed…No truth is more evident to my mind than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people.”

Noah Webster (Preface to the 1828 edition of Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language)

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Jonathon D Colman

Selahv mentioned in a comment the disdain of the world for America - but there are in fact two distinct types of anti-Americanism. There is one kind which is just prejudice. There are people who disdain Americans simply because they are in a different “in group”, and it is fallen human nature to disdain out groups. Therefore every bad thing from America (fast food and sugary drinks for instance) is held against them. Every good thing (Clam chowder for instance) is ignored.

Such prejudice is hard to battle against, but it really is not Americans that need worry about this. The same people that hate Americans because of this prejudice probably have similar prejudices about any out group they care to consider.

However, there is another kind of anti-Americanism which is really anti-American policy, rather than the nation or its people. This is the feeling expressed in surveys that suggest people across the world believe that America is the biggest threat to world peace. This feeling comes around because of the gun boat diplomacy of one or other American administrations.

The Opium Wars

Note that America is no different from other nations here. In the 19th Century, the UK fought two wars against China to force them to accept the trade in opium. The drug was legal in the UK at the time - used as a seditive - particularly for gripey babies! But China banned the drug, citing public morals as the reason. After an incident when Chinese authorities boarded British ships and confiscated smuggled opium, a contingent of the British navy, including the new “iron clads” steamed into China. The fleet was larger than anything the Chinese had expected, and the first opium war was quickly lost. The peace treaty opened up a number of Chinese ports and ceded a lease on Hong Kong island to the British.

If you asked at that time who was the biggest threat to world piece, the answer in Shanghai would no doubt have been “the British”.

All countries act out of self interest most of the time. The thing that people dislike about American policy is its willingness to flout international law and order to pursue its self interest. Failure to become signatories to the ICC, arming of Israel as they kill people in Lebanon, The invasion of Iraq, support of regimes that persecute their own people, the arms trade, sidelining the UN and excessive use of the veto when the issue concerns client states, failure to ratify the Kyoto protocol - the list goes on (and these are just the recent examples).

But whilst I personally have a problem with all of these policies, I am not personally against Americans. (Indeed I am opposed to much UK policy for very similar reasons, but I am not anti-British).

Iraq

Selahv was speaking about Iraq, so the question is: how does this help Iraq?

We are where we are, and Iraq is suffering. What can we do? Cut and run? That would cause the disintegration of the nation. Stay the course? There is no sign that this strategy will ever succeed.

We pray for peace in Iraq - and we pray for wisdom and humility in our leaders. Particularly the humility to go to the United Nations and ask for help. If the occupying force could be replaced with a peace keeping force, and if we gave up our claims to Iraqi assets, just as we forced Russia and France to give up their claims, then there may yet be a hope for this country.

It would take a miracle for the US to willingly humble themselves and pursue this problem through the UN. It would take another miracle to see the policy succeed, and peace finally come to the nation of Iraq.

But fortunately, I believe in miracles.

if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

2 Chronicles 7:14

“We have no interest in oppressing other people. We are not moved by hatred against any other nation. We bear no grudge. I know how grave a thing war is. I wanted to spare our people such an evil. It is not so much the country; it is rather its leader. He has led a reign of terror. He has hurled countless people into the profoundest misery. Through his continuous terrorism, he has succeeded in reducing millions of his people to silence. The maintenance of a tremendous military arsenal can only be regarded as a focus of danger. We have displayed a truly unexampled patience, but I am no longer willing to remain inactive while this madman ill-treats millions of human beings.”

In hindsight we may argue that some of these threats regarding the military arsenal were over-estimated. But who can deny that the case for war was adequately made in this speach?

I will leave it as an exercise for someone to work out which great world leader said it, but in the same vein, he also said the following:

“By the most brutal methods of terrorism, a regime sought to maintain an existence that was condemned by the overwhelming majority of its people…I have tried to persuade the responsible authorities that it is impossible for a great nation, because it is unworthy of it, to stand by and watch millions belonging to a great, an ancient civilized people be denied rights by their government

Juan Cole gives some perspective on the recent Virginia Tech tragedy.

I keep hearing from US politicians and the US mass media that the “situation is improving” in Iraq. The profound sorrow and alarm produced in the American public by the horrific shootings at Virginia Tech should give us a baseline for what the Iraqis are actually living through. They have two Virginia Tech-style attacks every single day. Virginia Tech will be gone from the headlines and the air waves by next week this time in the US, though the families of the victims will grieve for a lifetime. But next Tuesday I will come out here and report to you that 64 Iraqis have been killed in political violence. And those will mainly be the ones killed by bombs and mortars. They are only 13% of the total; most Iraqis killed violently, perhaps 500 a day throughout the country if you count criminal and tribal violence, are just shot down. Shot down, like the college students and professors at Blacksburg. We Americans can so easily, with a shudder, imagine the college student trying to barricade himself behind a door against the armed madman without. But can we put ourselves in the place of Iraqi students?

We must not downplay the very real tragedy that happened on Monday in Blacksburg. We do not excuse it, or ignore it. But how much more should we not excuse or ignore the daily tragedy of Iraq? We pray for the people of Blacksburg, and those touched by the tragedy. But let us not forget the people of Iraq, who are daily and routinely touched by tragedy.

Paul Wolfowitz, one of the puppeteers who used the spectre of terrorism to get George Bush to invade Iraq, was always a controversial appointment to the head of the World Bank. A man with nothing apparently to offer the role, this was patronage pure and simple.

You see, whilst European shares outweigh American shares in the World Bank, there is a cosy little arrangement whereby the IMF head is in the gift of the Europeans, and the World Bank head in the gift of the Americans. Not surprisingly, the result is political patronage and a lack of accountability in these positions.

Knowing this, Wolfowitz recently announced that he would crack down on corruption by government and officials in developing world nations (see: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4688022.stm).

So it is somewhat ironic that he did not crack down on his own corruption, by doing the honourable thing and resigning forthwith. Instead he argues he should stay to cintinue the work he is doing. It is arrogant of the man to suppose that he is the best man (even that he is an acceptable man) to root out corruption and lead the institution in such circumstances.

How is the World Bank supposed to be taken seriously in a drive to root out corruption and mismanagement when its head is there by virtue of patronage, and involved in just the kind of corruption that is the bane of developing countries.

It is not only time Wolfowitz was given his marchiong orders - it is time that this corrupt institution, and the IMF too, had a more democratically accountable means of selecting a competent head.

This is the classic video of John Redwood, the English MP that John Major put in charge of the Welsh Office in the 1990s, not realising that Redwood would use the post to launch his bid to become the next prime minister.

Redwood can be widely credited for creating the discontent that led to devolution in Wales. As he handed back millions of pounds to England, wrecked the health service and destroyed public services with a political vision diametrically opposed to that of the Welsh people, he proved once and for all that Wales would be better off handling its own affairs.

And not just because we do know the words to the national anthem.

Viewers of channel 4 have been swindled by director Martin Durkin (again), and Carl Wunsch of MIT is angry about it. He was approached by Durkin to make a supposedly balanced film about global warming issues, getting away from the hysterical propoganda from the polarised political debate (particularly in the American political arena).

What concerned scientist would object to such a thing? But Durkin misled Wunsch. For instance, Wunsch writes:

In the part of the “Swindle” film where I am describing the fact that the ocean tends to expel carbon dioxide where it is warm, and to absorb it where it is cold, my intent was to explain that warming the ocean could be dangerous—because it is such a gigantic reservoir of carbon. By its placement in the film, it appears that I am saying that since carbon dioxide exists in the ocean in such large quantities, human influence must not be very important — diametrically opposite to the point I was making — which is that global warming is both real and threatening in many different ways, some unexpected.

You can read the whole of Carl Wunsch’s open letter.

So what do we make of this programme? It is the most biased an scientifically illiterate documentary I have seen in a while - but actually true to form for channel 4 and Durkin. In 1997 he made a series for Channel 4 called “Against Nature”, which compared environmentalists with Nazis, conspiring against the world’s poor. The people he interviewed thought that he was making a balanced critical examination of environmentalism, but the contributors were lied to about the contents of the programmes and given no chance to respond to the accusations the series made.

The Independent Television Commission handed down one of the most damning verdicts it has ever reached: the programme makers “distorted by selective editing” the views of the interviewees and “misled” them about the “content and purpose of the programmes when they agreed to take part.” Channel 4 was forced to make a humiliating prime time apology.

As formal complaints have made by this programme’s contributors too, we can but await another apology from channel 4. The question is why this channel ever agreed to use this same producer again.

A link to one of my articles on the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog elicited a comment that included this:

The so-called ‘market economy’ (a euphemism for monopoly capitalism) is not environmentally sustainable, no matter how much green paint and promises of ‘eliminating poverty’, etc., you apply.

As a very ambivolent anti-capitalist, I found strong sympathy with that statement, and yet I find that I cannot agree. These are my reasons:

1. Capitalism is driven by greed and consumerism. It is an illogical and wasteful system, and one that has huge problems. However, whilst the greed leads to an anti-environmental cycle if left unchecked, it is nevertheless possible to intervene to use the assumptions of capitalism for environmental benefit. An example of this might be the EU emissions trading scheme, which puts a price on emission reduction, and thus generates a trade. Whilst the scheme is not perfect, it is better than hand wringing or sticking our heads in the ground and saying there is no problem (or the problem is intractable).

2. Capitalism is an organic system like any other. It may be a system driven to consume resources, but like any system, if the consumption is too aggressive, then there are negative feedbacks into the system that restrain it. (The problem being that the negative feedbacks perhaps kick in too late to be of any use to the people that are suffering now!)

3. Historically capitalism has been evil, and yet has paradoxically also been a great benefit. The UK invented capitalism with our industrial revolution. It could be argued that Wedgewood invented the idea of planned obsolesence, and modern marketing. In generating a market in patterned chinaware, he essentially began the whole process, even as indutrialisation was changing our landscape.

But here is the oddity - industrialisation created the terrible “labour market” whereby even skilled labourers would be stuck on subsistence wages, and any response to change in the labour market would take a generation to work through - which did not help those with skills no longer valued. But at the same time, the industrialised UK saw population growth - especially in industrialised towns, whilst non industrial countries saw famine and starvation that killed millions.

So unless we have a solution that is better for people than capitalism, we have to paraphrase Churchill et al. and say “Capitalism is the worst of all systems. Except for all the others”.

1. Finally, I am a pragmatist. The way to change the world is in small steps and individual changes.

A comment on another blog raised the question of whether environmentalism and international development are working at cross purposes. The argument is as follows:

In many ways Environmentalism and International Development are conflicting, if not totally incompatible agendas. Which is ironic, given that they tend to both be pushed by the same people, simultaneously. 1. Local food restricts developing countries’ access to world markets – thereby stunting their economic growth; 2. Organic and GM-free foods encourage biodiversity, but can’t possibly produce the yields needed to avert famines in the developing world; 3. So called ‘Fairtrade’ locks third world producers into inefficient, commodity-crop farming when they should be diversifying – thereby ensuring they will never earn more than just-above-poverty wages. These agenda are both essentially bourgeois. It’s alright for us in the west because we are rich and developed enough to be able to make these food choices without risk, but to enforce them on the developing world is a death sentence – economically, developmentally, and (in many cases) physically. Sadly, many on the left don’t actually want the third world to develop. They’d rather keep them in a mythical, agrarian ‘golden age’ and have this patronising view of people there as ‘noble savages’ – victims who need to be ‘saved’ from globalisation and the west. They can’t accept the unpalatable truth that what people in the developing world REALLY want is to be go-getting, middle-class capitalists like the rest of us.

Dizzy Thinks Blog

Now there is much to say here, but I intend to ignore the issue of whether the writer really understands what “the left” wants. (My argument would be that the right/left division is, in any case, essentially bogus).

On the assumption that we can agree that people have concern for the environment and compassion for the poor, and what to see an improvement in the condition of both, how do we answer these claims?

On point 1, does local food production restrict access of developing countries to local markets?

Well on some level there might be some truth in this. If we buy strawberries in february, where do they come from? Are they flown in from Africa?

Clearly that is an environmental disaster. We should eat fruit in season, and not pander to a must-have culture that ramps up the food miles and energy cost of growing foods. But if we do so, then we inhibit the ability of the African farmer to sell his crop on the world market.

But we are not locking the farmer out of the market. Instead, if we live by environmentally sound principles, we ensure that there is no market for strawberries in february. What will teh farmer do? diversify into a crop that he can sell. That is just market forces at work.

As long as the African farmer is free to sell any crop into our markets without restriction, there is not a problem.

But there is a problem, because we do lock African countries out of our markets. We prevent the market from working for the benefit of these farmers.

The answer is not to eat more strawberries. The answer is to free up the markets.

1. Organic production encourages biodiversity, yes. But it is a fundamental misunderstanding of the organic movement to think that this is the root of the movement (although the misconception is a common one, helped on by many who market organic food).

Organic production is primarily about sustainability. E.F. Schumacher wrote a book “Small is Beautiful” which made the point that fossil fuels are energy capital. They are a limited resource, and so good economic principles insist that we only spend the resource in ensuring sustainability.

So the point of organic production is precisely to get to a point where efficient sustainable production of food can indeed meet our needs. It can be done, but will only happen if we move step by step towards the goal.

1. Fairtrade does not lock producers into a crop. It guarantees a fair wage for that crop. Now that may seem artifically high for the crop, because non fair trade coffee can be purchased by companies for a lower price, and it may be that some of those selling at the lower price would do better to diversify.

What will happen? Those who should diversify will. The price of coffee paid to the grower will thus edge up, as demand outstrips supply, and everyone will benefit, without fair trade affecting anyone.

Now if a fair trade grower could earn more by diversifying, then they will also diversify. Indeed, the fair price for their crop will ensure that they have access to more capital to allow for the diversification.

The very idea that paying consumers less than a fair price for their crop will somehow economically benefit them is preposterous.

So this commentator is wrong on all points. Environmentalism is not an enemy of international development.

Indeed, there are some benefits from environmentalism. For instance, the disadvantaged nations of the world will be disproportionately worst hit by the effects of climate change. Efforts to tackle this problem (caused by the richer nations) will aid the third world.