The Climate Domino

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/06/opinion/krugman-the-climate-domino.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=2

Paul Krugman, NYT, June 5, 2014

Maybe it’s me, but the predictable right-wing cries of outrage over the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed rules on carbon seem oddly muted and unfocused. I mean, these are the people who managed to create national outrage over nonexistent death panels. Now the Obama administration is doing something that really will impose at least some pain on some people. Where are the eye-catching fake horror stories?

For what it’s worth, however, the attacks on the new rules mainly involve the three C’s: conspiracy, cost and China. That is, right-wingers claim that there isn’t any global warming, that it’s all a hoax promulgated by thousands of scientists around the world; that taking action to limit greenhouse gas emissions would devastate the economy; and that, anyway, U.S. policy can’t accomplish anything because China will just go on spewing stuff into the atmosphere.

I don’t want to say much about the conspiracy theorizing, except to point out that any attempt to make sense of current American politics must take into account this particular indicator of the Republican Party’s descent into madness. There is, however, a lot to say about both the cost and China issues.

On cost: It’s reasonable to argue that new rules aimed at limiting emissions would have some negative effect on G.D.P. and family incomes. Even that isn’t necessarily true, especially in a depressed economy, where regulations that require new investment could end up creating jobs. Still, the odds are that the E.P.A.’s action, if it goes into effect, will hurt at least a little.

Claims that the effects will be devastating are, however, not just wrong but inconsistent with what conservatives claim to believe. Ask right-wingers how the U.S. economy will cope with limited supplies of raw materials, land, and other resources, and they respond with great optimism: the magic of the marketplace will lead us to solutions. But they abruptly lose their faith in market magic when someone proposes limits on pollution — limits that would largely be imposed in market-friendly ways like cap-and-trade systems. Suddenly, they insist that businesses will be unable to adjust, that there are no alternatives to doing everything energy-related exactly the way we do it now.

That’s not realistic, and it’s not what careful analysis says. It’s not even what studies paid for by opponents of climate action say. As I explained last week, the United States Chamber of Commerce recently commissioned a report that was intended to show the terrible costs of the forthcoming E.P.A. policy — a report that made the least favorable assumptions possible in an attempt to make the costs look bigger. Even so, however, the numbers came out embarrassingly small. No, cracking down on coal won’t cripple the U.S. economy.

But what about the international aspect? At this point, the United States accounts for only 17 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, while China accounts for 27 percent — and China’s share is rising fast. So it’s true that America, acting alone, can’t save the planet. We need international cooperation.

That, however, is precisely why we need the new policy. America can’t expect other countries to take strong action against emissions while refusing to do anything itself, so the new rules are needed to get the game going. And it’s fairly certain that action in the U.S. would lead to corresponding action in Europe and Japan.

That leaves China, and there have been many cynical declarations over the past few days to the effect that China will just go ahead and burn any coal that we don’t. And we certainly don’t want to count on Chinese altruism.

But we don’t have to. China is enormously dependent on access to advanced-country markets — a lot of the coal it burns can be attributed, directly or indirectly, to its export business — and it knows that it would put this access at risk if it refused to play any role in protecting the planet.

More specifically, if and when wealthy countries take serious action to limit greenhouse gas emissions, they’re very likely to start imposing “carbon tariffs” on goods imported from countries that aren’t taking similar action.Such tariffs should be legal under existing trade rules — the World Trade Organization would probably declare that carbon limits are effectively a tax on consumers, which can be levied on imports as well as domestic production. Furthermore, trade rules give special consideration to environmental protection. So China would find itself with strong incentives to start limiting emissions.

The new carbon policy, then, is supposed to be the beginning, not the end, a domino that, once pushed over, should start a chain reaction that leads, finally, to global steps to limit climate change. Do we know that it will work? Of course not. But it’s vital that we try.

Piketty and the Pope, and why Marx is back

http://rt.com/op-edge/164156-piketty-pope-marx-back/

The criticism of income inequality that Thomas Piketty exposes in his bestselling “Capital in the 21st Century” is not very different from Pope Francis’s views on capitalism in his apostolic exhortation “Evangelii Gaudium” last year.

The Financial Times is trying to demonstrate that the French economist’s theory is wrong, and Rush Limbaugh, among other conservatives, has accused both men of Marxism, which for him is synonymous with being wrong, of course. But being labeled a Marxist is not offensive anymore; it’s simply a sign that Marx has returned from the remnants of communism to invite academics, activists, and even clerics to seek in his thought solutions to the ongoing global recession.

Even though Piketty and the Pope (formerly Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergolio) have denied any interest or faith in Marxism, they will not be forgiven anytime soon because anyone who points out capitalism’s social flaws pulls a fire alarm in our state of exception.

The good aspect of this alarm is that it indirectly gathers together people concerned with such vital matters as the distribution of wealth, health and education, as demonstrated by UNASUR and the Occupy Movement.

The Pope has called for redistribution, and Piketty has suggested a way that this can be implemented through a progressive global tax on capital or wealth. And has also (indirectly) become the papal economist. In order to explain why the French economist’s solution is appropriate for the pope’s concerns, let’s quickly recall both theses.

The most interesting feature of “Evangelii Gaudium” is not that the Pope calls for a more equitable distribution of wealth but rather that he makes this call in the spirit of Gustavo Gutiérrez’s liberation theology.

According to Pope Francis, a “financial reform” is necessary not only “because the socioeconomic system is unjust at its root” but also because “today’s economic mechanisms promote inordinate consumption. “When this unbridled consumerism is combined with inequality it proves particularly damaging to our society, where the “excluded are not the ‘exploited’ [anymore] but the outcast, the leftovers.”

As we can see, the Pope is opposing not just an economic system where exclusion is possible but one where it has become the norm, that is, the “result of ideologies which defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation.” As a true postmodern philosopher, Pope Francis concludes his observations by pointing out how far “we are far from the so-called ‘end of history’” because economic growth, encouraged by a free market, instead of bringing greater prosperity for all, has increased “widespread corruption and self-serving tax evasion, which have taken on worldwide dimensions.”

Piketty seems to have provided both historical and economic justification for the Pope’s concerns over an “economy of exclusion” and a “financial system which rules rather than serves.” If capitalism has become such an economic system it is not simply because of its natural drift toward high inequality, which the author demonstrates through detailed historical analysis, but also because capitalism permits the concentration of wealth to perpetuate from one generation to the next (as the Spanish royal family has just demonstrated).

This occurs when the “rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of growth of output and income” and“ capitalism automatically generates arbitrary and unsustainable inequalities that radically undermine the meritocratic values on which democratic societies are based.” The French economist suggests a “progressive annual tax on capital” that would contain the “unlimited growth of the global inequality of wealth, which is currently increasing at a rate that cannot be sustained in the long run and that ought to worry even the most fervent champions of self-regulated market.”

If Piketty seems to have become Francis’s economist, it is not simply because he provides a solution the Pope would most likely endorse, but also because he has moved away from the scientific nature of his discipline, that is, economic determinism. After all, the French economist believes that the “resurgence of inequality after 1980” was not caused simply by capitalism’s inevitable drift towards inequality but also by “the political shifts of the past several decades, especially in regard to taxation and finance.” The Pope’s call for a financial system that “serves instead of rules” is directed against this political shift, which has always avoided financial reforms such as those suggested by both men.

Although Piketty will probably continue to teach economics in France instead of moving into the Vatican, the Pope now has an economist whom he can rely upon when he pontificates from Rome, regardless of all accusations of Marxism. These accusations, then, are not only necessary to bring together economists and the Holy See but also serve to mark a turning away from capitalism’s acceleration of inequality for anyone so accused, regardless of our faith or social status.

[...]

Santiago Zabala is ICREA Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of Barcelona. He is the author of, among other things, The Hermeneutic Nature of Analytic Philosophy (2008), The Remains of Being (2009), and, most recently, Hermeneutic Communism (2011, coauthored with G. Vattimo), all published by Columbia University Press and translated into several languages. His forthcoming book is Only Art Can Save Us. He also writes opinion articles for The New York Times, Al-Jazeera, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Guardian.

UNASUR

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/cepr-blog/unasur-emerging-geopolitical-force/

Written by Alex Main   

Thursday, 20 May 2010

Earlier this month, as the US loudly complained about Venezuela’s decision to purchase arms from Russia, South America’s ministers of defense came together in Guayaquil, Ecuador and put the finishing touches on an agreement to develop common mechanisms of transparency in defense policy and spending. The agreement, which also calls for the creation of a multilateral Center for Strategic Defense Studies, is the most recent example of the growing effectiveness of the Union of South American Nations (Spanish acronym UNASUR) as a forum for addressing the most urgent and sensitive issues on the regional agenda. Though the group remains unknown to most of the US public - and is rarely referred to by US policy makers - it has, in the space of a few years, emerged as one of the Western Hemisphere’s leading multilateral bodies and, in the process, is rapidly undermining the regional clout of the Washington-based Organization of American States (OAS).

UNASUR first began to take form in 2004 when South American leaders signed theCusco Declaration that committed their governments to creating “a politically, socially, economically, environmentally and infrastructurally integrated South American area.” Despite the diverging political agendas of the region’s governments, the leaders agreed on prioritizing the group’s role as a geopolitical actor or, in the words of the declaration, pursuing “concerted and coordinated political and diplomatic efforts that will strengthen the region as a differentiated and dynamic factor in its foreign relations.”

In May 2008 UNASUR was officially established with the signing of a constitutive treaty in Brasilia. In September of the same year the group achieved its first diplomatic milestone when it successfully defused South America’s most serious political crisis of the last five years: the attempted violent destabilization of Evo Morales’ government in Bolivia. President Michele Bachelet of Chile, the pro-tempore president of UNASUR, convened an emergency meeting of South American heads of state in Santiago that quickly issued a unanimous statement strongly condemning the attacks against Bolivian democracy and announcing the creation of a commission of “support and assistance” to the Bolivian government. Soon afterwards, Bolivia’s opposition groups abandoned their violent tactics and agreed to enter negotiations with the Morales government.

Though the US administration has been actively promoting the OAS as a defender of democratic stability in the hemisphere, that organization played no role at all in the peaceful resolution of the 2008 Bolivian crisis, due no doubt in part to the US’ambivalent position towards the opposition’s destabilization campaign. In the nearly two years that have elapsed since UNASUR’s successful diplomatic intervention in Bolivia, the group has continued to demonstrate its ability to take on the region’s thorniest issues, independently of the OAS and Washington.

[...]

Tiananmen Square, 25 years later

Compared to the Tiananmen protesters, China’s young today are more concerned with economic growth than political reforms.

by Adrian Brown

04 Jun 2014

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/06/tiananmen-square-25-years-later-20146372348433611.html

Beijing, China - As a young reporter, it was hard not to get caught up in the euphoria of the student-led pro-democracy protests in Beijing that ended in bloodshed 25 years ago.

"Is this a revolution?" I asked a group of them in early May 1989. "Yes, why not?" came the reply in unison. Looking back, I realise my questions were as naive as their answers. But they really did believe they could bring about change by daring to stand up to the one-party system that had ruled China for 40 years.

Their demands, on reflection, seemed quite modest. They included a free press, full disclosure on how much senior government officials earned, and an end to nepotism, in which the sons and daughters of party officials received the best jobs.

No one I spoke to specifically demanded the end of communist rule as such, but just a fairer society. Of course, in the eyes of China's rulers these demands amounted to treason. Yet the leadership was deeply divided over how to respond. The nascent pro-democracy movement seemed to begin almost spontaneously after the death of pro-reform party leader Hu Yobang on April 15, 1989. He was an iconic figure to many students who mourned his death by pouring into Tiananmen Square.

And that's where they stayed until the night of June 3. I arrived in the Chinese capital two weeks later on an official visa, ostensibly to cover a visit by Mikhail Gorbachev, leader of what was still the Soviet Union. There were so many students in the square by then that embarrassed officials were forced to cancel the official welcoming ceremony. Gorbachev was ushered into the Great Hall of the People through the back door. Of course, there was a profound irony in all of this. Six months later, on Gorbachev's watch, the Berlin Wall crumbled - but the Chinese one remained very much intact.

I know very little about this part of history. One reason is I am not very interested in politics. The second reason is this event was not mentioned in the history books I read. - Wang Qian, young job seeker

[...]

Thomas Piketty and Elizabeth Warren

Two united by the shared love of the third thing?