“Don’t get confused by economic science; go with your heart”, he said. “Listen to the scientists who study Antarctica. They know what’s happening.”
I was leaving a lecture by Jeffrey D. Sachs last night, with a man who had asked him a tricky question: given the risks involved, how can you justify encouraging Australians to invest in ‘clean’ coal and nuclear power? The man beside me knew his stuff, having worked in this field as a scientist. I have paraphrased his question, which included figures and citations.
Only four questions were taken. This one was side-stepped and ignored.
The MC accused my friend of taking up too much time, with his references and figures. He was hurried along. Sachs stumbled over his words for a bit before responding with an argument for investing in more ‘clean’ technology now because it was economically ‘practical’.
Jeffrey D. Sachs is an American ‘sustainability’ economist, famous for his work with people in extreme poverty in Africa. Speaking to a packed hall at the University of Sydney, he launched a new centre for research into economic sustainability. After promoting his own project, Millenium Promise Alliance, he suggested this was something Australia could do for our poor neighbouring countries. The word Colonialism came to mind. And I wondered about his self interest.
As a rousing lecture aiming to shock people into action, it was good. But what action is good? Important questions and possibilities were ignored.
The MC’s introduction had been long and irrelevant, a comic piece on Australian football. It irked me that he should abbreviate my friend’s questioning, which was delivered with such dignity. This was a sleek show, presented by deft showmen.
I came away feeling angry.
My friend is much older than me, and wiser. He graciously applauded Sach. Later he said he didn’t blame politicians for wasting our time in responding to the crisis. It’s all about people, he said. It’s people who vote them in.
Now is time to support all the solar and methane and wind technologies we possibly can. I wanted to hear about those projects, unfunded by our previous government. I want to know that they be supported Now. The immediate priority for the politicians and the economists is the short term fix. Surely we can both.
Sachs said he had spoken with Rudd, and urged us to support Rudd’s Green Paper. This paper advocates more investment in coal and uranium mining.
When Sachs declared his personal pleasure in the ‘rich’ life of the West, and that the third world countries were simply ‘catching up,’ Kant’s Catagorical Imperative immediately sprang to mind:
Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.
Kant, Immanuel; translated by James W. Ellington [1785] (1993). Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals 3rd ed.. Hackett, p30. ISBN 0-87220-166-x. Cited in Wikipedia
In other words, act in ways that would work well for the world, if everyone acted in those ways.
So where does this leave us? How can we act now, to leave the world a better place?
Some who live in the Western world have already made choices allowing them to live as lightly on the planet as they can. They find pleasure in walking, riding a bicycle, and buying the products or services that impact least on our environment.
Utopias have been dreamed of through the ages. They are all dreams. We can only change our selves.
.
Event:
Launch of the Sydney Institute for Sustainable Solutions, a public lecture by Professor Jeffrey D Sachs. MC for the afternoon, Mr Adam Spencer
5:30pm The Great Hall, University of Sydney
Maybe this little piece might be relevant to the current discussions about the spin of Emissions Trading and the effectiveness of markets to solve global problems:
The end of neo-liberalism?
By Joseph E. Stiglitz
First Published: July 7, 2008
The world has not been kind to neo-liberalism, that grab-bag of ideas
based on the fundamentalist notion that markets are self-correcting,
allocate resources efficiently, and serve the public interest well. It
was this market fundamentalism that underlay Thatcherism, Reaganomics,
and the so-called “Washington Consensus” in favor of privatization,
liberalization, and independent central banks focusing single-mindedly
on inflation.
For a quarter-century, there has been a contest among developing
countries, and the losers are clear: countries that pursued
neo-liberal policies not only lost the growth sweepstakes; when they
did grow, the benefits accrued disproportionately to those at the top.
Though neo-liberals do not want to admit it, their ideology also
failed another test. No one can claim that financial markets did a
stellar job in allocating resources in the late 1990’s, with 97% of
investments in fiber optics taking years to see any light. But at
least that mistake had an unintended benefit: as costs of
communication were driven down, India and China became more integrated
into the global economy.
But it is hard to see such benefits to the massive misallocation of
resources to housing. The newly constructed homes built for families
that could not afford them get trashed and gutted as millions of
families are forced out of their homes, in some communities,
government has finally stepped in – to remove the remains. In others,
the blight spreads. So even those who have been model citizens,
borrowing prudently and maintaining their homes, now find that markets
have driven down the value of their homes beyond their worst
nightmares.
To be sure, there were some short-term benefits from the excess
investment in real estate: some Americans (perhaps only for a few
months) enjoyed the pleasures of home ownership and living in a bigger
home than they otherwise would have. But at what a cost to themselves
and the world economy!
Millions will lose their life savings as they lose their homes. And
the housing foreclosures have precipitated a global slowdown. There is
an increasing consensus on the prognosis: this downturn will be
prolonged and widespread.
Nor did markets prepare us well for soaring oil and food prices. Of
course, neither sector is an example of free-market economics, but
that is partly the point: free-market rhetoric has been used
selectively – embraced when it serves special interests and discarded
when it does not.
Perhaps one of the few virtues of George W. Bush’s administration is
that the gap between rhetoric and reality is narrower than it was
under Ronald Reagan. For all Reagan’s free-trade rhetoric, he freely
imposed trade restrictions, including the notorious “voluntary” export
restraints on automobiles.
Bush’s policies have been worse, but the extent to which he has openly
served America’s military-industrial complex has been more naked. The
only time that the Bush administration turned green was when it came
to ethanol subsidies, whose environmental benefits are dubious.
Distortions in the energy market (especially through the tax system)
continue, and if Bush could have gotten away with it, matters would
have been worse.
This mixture of free-market rhetoric and government intervention has
worked particularly badly for developing countries. They were told to
stop intervening in agriculture, thereby exposing their farmers to
devastating competition from the United States and Europe. Their
farmers might have been able to compete with American and European
farmers, but they could not compete with US and European Union
subsidies. Not surprisingly, investments in agriculture in developing
countries faded, and a food gap widened.
Those who promulgated this mistaken advice do not have to worry about
carrying malpractice insurance. The costs will be borne by those in
developing countries, especially the poor. This year will see a large
rise in poverty, especially if we measure it correctly.
Simply put, in a world of plenty, millions in the developing world
still cannot afford the minimum nutritional requirements. In many
countries, increases in food and energy prices will have a
particularly devastating effect on the poor, because these items
constitute a larger share of their expenditures.
The anger around the world is palpable. Speculators, not surprisingly,
have borne more than a little of the wrath. The speculators argue: we
are not the cause of the problem; we are simply engaged in “price
discovery” – in other words, discovering – a little late to do much
about the problem this year – that there is scarcity.
But that answer is disingenuous. Expectations of rising and volatile
prices encourage hundreds of millions of farmers to take precautions.
They might make more money if they hoard a little of their grain today
and sell it later; and if they do not, they won’t be able to afford it
if next year’s crop is smaller than hoped. A little grain taken off
the market by hundreds of millions of farmers around the world adds
up.
Defenders of market fundamentalism want to shift the blame from market
failure to government failure. One senior Chinese official was quoted
as saying that the problem was that the US government should have done
more to help low-income Americans with their housing. I agree. But
that does not change the facts: US banks mismanaged risk on a colossal
scale, with global consequences, while those running these
institutions have walked away with billions of dollars in
compensation.
Today, there is a mismatch between social and private returns. Unless
they are closely aligned, the market system cannot work well.
Neo-liberal market fundamentalism was always a political doctrine
serving certain interests. It was never supported by economic theory.
Nor, it should now be clear, is it supported by historical experience.
Learning this lesson may be the silver lining in the cloud now
hanging over the global economy.
Joseph E. Stiglitz, Professor at Columbia University, received the
2001 Nobel Prize in economics. He is the co-author, with Linda Bilmes,
of The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Costs of the Iraq Conflict.
This commentary is published by Daily News Egypt in collaboration with
Project Syndicate (www.project-syndicate.org).
I find this block of text dense with complexities. The words help us think.
But I am impatient. I like to act immediately I sense any problem.
It was my heart, not my brain, that told me to live simply.
Years ago, it was something could do, and sustain.
I had some friends then, who were scientists, and understood the most serious ploblem: the expodential growth of our human population.
It was an article published in an Egyptian paper. It is an article that questions the market based foundations of the Rudd Governments strategies.
I can now read this article more easily.
Perhaps this is because, during the Copenhagen meeting last month, I heard these issues discussed almost daily on the radio.
Perhaps it is because I have learned to write as a way of thinking, and can now more easily follow these kinds of texts.
It’s a great piece of writing because it is a good argument.