How have these corporations colonised our public life?

Our politicians have delegated power to global giants engineering a world of conformity and consumerism

• 
• • George Monbiot
  • The Guardian, Tuesday 8 April 2014

One of Unilever's ‘real women' series of advertisements for Dove. Photograph: PA

How do you engineer a bland, depoliticised world, a consensus built around consumption and endless growth, a dream world of materialism and debt and atomisation, in which all relations can be prefixed with a dollar sign, in which we cease to fight for change? You delegate your powers to companies whose profits depend on this model.

Power is shifting: to places in which we have no voice or vote. Domestic policies are forged by special advisers and spin doctors, by panels and advisory committees stuffed with lobbyists. The self-hating state withdraws its own authority to regulate and direct. Simultaneously, the democratic vacuum at the heart of global governance is being filled, without anything resembling consent, by international bureaucrats and corporate executives. The NGOs permitted – often as an afterthought – to join them intelligibly represent neither civil society nor electorates. (And please spare me that guff about consumer democracy or shareholder democracy: in both cases some people have more votes than others, and those with the most votes are the least inclined to press for change.)

To me, the giant consumer goods company Unilever, with which I clashed over the issue of palm oil a few days ago, symbolises these shifting relationships. I can think of no entity that has done more to blur the lines between the role of the private sector and the role of the public sector. If you blotted out its name while reading its web pages, you could mistake it for an agency of the United Nations.

It seems to have representation almost everywhere. Its people inhabit (to name a few) the British government's Ecosystem Markets Task Force and Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the G8'sNew Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, the World Food Programme, the Global Green Growth Forum, the UN's Scaling Up Nutrition programme, its Sustainable Development Solutions Network, Global Compact and the UN High Level Panel on global development.

Sometimes Unilever uses this power well. Its efforts to reduce its own use of energy and water and its production of waste, and to project these changes beyond its own walls,look credible and impressive. Sometimes its initiatives look to me like self-serving bullshit.

Its "Dove self-esteem project", for instance, claims to be "helping millions of young people to improve their self-esteem through educational programmes". One of its educational videos maintains that beauty "couldn't be more critical to your happiness", which is surely the belief that trashes young people's self-esteem in the first place. But of course you can recover it by plastering yourself with Dove-branded gloop: Unilever reports that 82% of women in Canada who are aware of its project "would be more likely to purchase Dove".

Sometimes it seems to play both ends of the game. For instance, it says it is reducing the amount of salt and fat and sugar in its processed foods. But it also hosted and chaired, before the last election, the Conservative party's public health commission, which was seen by health campaigners as an excuse for avoiding effective action on obesity, poor diets and alcohol abuse. This body helped to purge government policy of such threats as further advertising restrictions and the compulsory traffic-light labelling of sugar, salt and fat.

The commission then produced a "responsibility deal" between government and business, on the organising board of which Unilever still sits. Under this deal, the usual relationship between lobbyists and government is reversed. The corporations draft government policy, which is then sent to civil servants for comment. Regulation is replaced by voluntarism. The Guardian has named Unilever as one of the companies that refused to sign the deal's voluntary pledge on calorie reduction.

This is not to suggest that everything these panels and alliances and boards and forums propose is damaging. But as the development writer Lou Pingeot points out, their analysis of the world's problems is partial and self-serving, casting corporations as the saviours of the world's people but never mentioning their role in causing many of the problems (such as financial crisis, land-grabbing, tax loss, obesity, malnutrition, climate change, habitat destruction, poverty, insecurity) they claim to address. Most of their proposed solutions either require passivity from governments (poverty will be solved by wealth trickling down through a growing economy) or the creation of a more friendly environment for business.

At best, these corporate-dominated panels are mostly useless: preening sessions in which chief executives exercise messiah complexes. At their worst, they are a means by which global companies reshape politics in their own interests, universalising – in the name of conquering want and exploitation – their exploitative business practices.

Almost every political agent – including some of the NGOs that once opposed them – is in danger of being loved to death by these companies. In February the Guardian signed a seven-figure deal with Unilever, which, the publisher claimed, is "centred on the shared values of sustainable living and open storytelling". The deal launched an initiative called Guardian Labs, which will help brands find "more engaging ways to tell their story". The Guardian points out that it has guidelines covering such sponsorship deals to ensure editorial independence.

I recognise and regret the fact that all newspapers depend for their survival on corporate money (advertising and sponsorship probably account, in most cases, for about 70% of their income). But this, to me, looks like another step down the primrose path. As the environmental campaigner Peter Gerhardt puts it, companies like Unilever "try to stakeholderise every conflict". By this, I think, he means that they embrace their critics, involving them in a dialogue that is open in the sense that a lobster pot is open, breaking down critical distance and identity until no one knows who they are any more.

Yes, I would prefer that companies were like Unilever rather than Goldman Sachs, Cargill or Exxon, in that it seems to have a keen sense of what a responsible company should do, even if it doesn't always do it. But it would be better still if governments and global bodies stopped delegating their powers to corporations. They do not represent us and they have no right to run our lives.

There's a new jobs crisis – we need to focus on the quality of life at work

British workers face low wages, but are also being hurt by job insecurity, stress and the demand of long hours

• 
• • Ha-Joon Chang
  • The Guardian, Sunday 22 December 2013 20.30 GMT

David Cameron addresses workers at a factory in Britain. ‘The dominant free-market ideology has convinced Britons that consumption is the ultimate goal of life, and that their work is only a means to gaining the income to buy the goods and services to derive pleasure from.’ Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/AFP/Getty Images

With economic growth now picking up and unemployment inching its way downwards, things are beginning to look up for Britain's economy. Except that it does not seem that way to most people.

David Cameron may be in denial, but most people in Britain are experiencing a "cost of living crisis", as Labour puts it. Growth in nominal wages has failed to keep up with the rise in prices. With real wages predicted by the Office for Budget Responsibility not to recover to the pre-crisis level until 2018, we are literally in for a "lost decade" for wage earners in Britain.

Worse, the crisis for British wage-earners is much more than the cost of living. It is a work crisis too. Take unemployment. For most people this results in a loss of dignity, from the feeling of no longer being a useful member of society. When combined with economic hardship, this loss makes the jobless more likely to suffer depression and even to take their own lives, as starkly shown by Sanjay Basu and David Stuckler in The Body Economic. There is even some evidence, published in the British Medical Journal, thatout of work people become more prone to heart diseases. Unemployment literally costs human lives.

On this account British workers have been doing badly since the financial crisis began. Though the unemployment rate has fallen, it still stands at 7.4%. Most people find this rate acceptable, if regrettable – but that is only because they've been taught to believe that full employment is impossible. We may not be able to go back to the mid-1960s and the mid-70s, when the jobless rate was between 1% and 2%, but a rate much lower than today's is possible, if we had different economic policies.

There is also the issue of job security. The feeling of insecurity is inimical to our sense of wellbeing, as it causes anxiety and stress, which harms our physical and mental health. It is no surprise then that, according to some surveys, workers across the world value job security more highly than wages.

On this account too, British workers have been doing very poorly. The rise in the number of zero-hours contracts is only the most extreme manifestation of increasing insecurity for the workforce. The 2010 European Social Survey revealed that a third of British workers feared losing their jobs – giving Britain, together with Ireland, the highest sense of job insecurity in Europe.

Then there's the issue of the quality of work. Even if you are getting the same real wage – which most British workers are not – wellbeing is reduced if your work becomes less palatable. It may have become more strenuous because, say, the company has just turned up the speed of the conveyor belt in the factory, as happened to Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times. Or the stress level may have increased because the company reduced your control over your work, as Amazon did when it decided to attach GPS machines to its warehouse staff.

Whatever form it takes, any deterioration in the quality of work can harm the worker's wellbeing. And this is what has been happening to many employees in Britain.

The European Social Survey also revealed that a quarter of British workers have had to do less interesting work. The 2012 Skills and Employment Survey revealed that British employees are now working with much greater intensity than before the crisis; the proportions of jobs requiring high pressure, high speed and hard work all rose significantly from 2006.

And then there is the issue of commuting. Britons spend more hours travelling to and from work than any other workforce in Europe. But to make thing worse, the quality of the commute has been deteriorating. The failure to invest in transport has meant more crowded and more frequently disrupted journeys in many regions of the country. Recent surveys have also revealed that more and more people are working while they commute, at least in part to cope with increased workload.

Once we take into account all these dimensions, it becomes evident that the "cost of living crisis" is only one – albeit important – part of a broader problem that is afflicting most people in Britain.

Despite the graveness of the situation, this wider crisis – perhaps we can call it the "general living crisis" – is not seriously discussed because over the last few decades we have come to neglect work as a serious issue.

During this period, most Britons have come to see themselves mainly – or even solely – as consumers, rather than workers. The dominant free-market ideology has convinced them that consumption is the ultimate goal of life, and that their work is only a means to gaining the income to buy the goods and services to derive pleasure from. At the same time, the decline of the trade union movement has made many people believe that being a "worker" is something of an anachronism.

As a result, policies are narrowly focused on generating higher income, while any suggestion that we spend money on making jobs more secure and work less stressful, if it is ever made, is dismissed as naive. Yet this neglect of work-related life is absurd when most adults of working age devote more than half their waking hours to their jobs – especially if we include the time spent in commuting and, increasingly, out-of-hours work. We simply cannot ignore this when judging how well we are doing.

If we are to deal with the "general living crisis" we need to radically change our perspectives on what is a good life. We need to accept that consumption is not the end goal of our life, and stop measuring our wellbeing simply on the basis of earnings. We need to explicitly take the quality of our work-related life into account in judging our wellbeing. Let's start taking work seriously.

The Waste Management Crisis in Kerala

by Mohamed Nazeer in The Hindu

There is hardly any informed person in Kerala who does not have an opinion about waste being generated in the process of urbanisation, but nobody knows how exactly to manage it.

There is a serious crisis in urban waste management that has manifested itself in the form of deadlocked garbage disposal plans in some municipalities and Corporations in the State. It highlights the gap between accepted standards in solid waste management and their achievement.

Caught in the struggle are the civic bodies, the people and the government. The impasse in garbage disposal and treatment is acutely felt in the Corporations of Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi, Kozhikode, Thrissur and Kollam, and the municipalities of Kannur and Thalassery.

With an urban population share of nearly 48 per cent, Kerala comes close to the global rate. The hotspots of garbage management crisis in the State are a reflection of the collective failure to devise an appropriate strategy and technology. The crisis has turned local panchayats against municipalities and Corporations on the one hand and the civic bodies against the government on the other.

Transportation of waste to the landfills triggers protests by local residents, who raise the issue of their right to live in a clean environment. The waste disposal systems of the civic bodies are naturally left in a mess, with mounds of rotting garbage in parts of towns and cities.

The no-holds-barred battle between the Vilappil panchayat and the Thiruvananthapuram Corporation over a solid waste treatment plant set up there continues with no solution in sight. Even a decade after the plant started functioning, the Corporation is unable to put in place a leachate treatment plant. In spite of favourable High Court pronouncements, the district administration had to abandon two attempts to bring the plant-related equipment and clay to the Vilappil plant in the face of local protests.

C.P. John, member, Kerala State Planning Board, says if the Vilappilsala plant set up with private participation for processing biodegradable waste into manure had not failed because of a dispute over the pricing of the manure, it would have been a perfect model for solid waste management for the entire State. Much of the urban garbage woes in the State, he says, expose the absence of proper urban space planning. Such planning would have come about if urbanisation had occurred as part of industrialisation. But it is the service sector that accounts for nearly 70 per cent of the State’s economy, he says, and some of the service sector activities are waste-generating.

The Kochi Corporation, which faced the wrath of the people at the Vadavukode, Puthenkurishu and Kunnathunadu panchayats protesting against the Brahmapuram garbage treatment plant, appears to have learnt the lessons from Vilappilsala.

The Corporation has engaged a private agency for clearing the garbage that has piled up at its plant site.

The agency can also take the manure produced. As the government is in the process of identifying an agency for a new plant at Brahmapuram, the Corporation is planning to have a tie-up with a Pune-based private firm to set up a plant for treating plastic waste.

The previous Left Democratic Front government issued an order on implementation of Lalur Model Project for Solid Waste Management (LAMPS), a decentralised initiative, but the Thrissur Corporation has not implemented it. Garbage removal in the city has been hit for seven months because of protests by Lalur residents. The situation is no different in Kollam as the Corporation’s modernised garbage treatment plant at Kureepuzha is unable to become operational in the face of protest by residents against the erection of a leachate plant. Six biogas plants set up by the Corporation have mitigated the garbage problem.

The dumping ground of the Kozhikode Corporation at Njeliyambra, located previously in the Nallalam-Cheruvannur grama panchayat, (now merged with the Corporation), has also drawn protests. The demand is for the corporation to upgrade the garbage treatment plant, construct a leachate collection unit and get a new landfill site. Waste disposal of the Kannur and Thalassery municipalities has been hit for months owing to protests by residents living in the vicinity of landfills at Chelora and Pettippalam respectively.

The waste management crisis in the State has already emerged as its single major development issue.

The Greed Game

Sugar: it's time to get real and regulate

The consumption of fructose and sucrose is on the increase – and so are preventable diseases such as Type 2 diabetes

• 
• • Jacqueline Windh
  • guardian.co.uk, Monday 13 February 2012

Last week, a trio of American scientists led by Robert Lustig, professor of clinical paediatrics at the University of California, published an article in the journal Nature, outlining the toxic effects that sugar has on humans and arguing for governmental controls on its sale and distribution. While the authors come short of labelling sugar a "poison" outright, in a 2007 interview with ABC Radio about excess sugar consumption, Lustig said: "We're being poisoned to death. That's a very strong statement, but I think we can back it up with very clear scientific evidence."

That evidence has been growing – particularly in the western world, where consumption of sugar is increasing rapidly. Globally, sugar consumption has tripled in the past 50 years. But, it turns out, the greatest threat to human health is one type of sugar in particular: fructose.

In the US, per-capita consumption of fructose, a common food additive there – mainly in the form of high-fructose corn syrup – has increased more than 100-fold since 1970. Although fructose is not a common added sweetener in the UK and other countries, sucrose is; sucrose contains 50% fructose. Lustig and his co-authors note that last year, the United Nations announced that non-communicable diseases (NCDs) had, for the first time, overtaken infectious diseases in terms of the global health burden. Non-communicable diseases now account for 63% of all deaths, and that total is expected to increase by a further 17% over the next decade.

The scientists cite growing evidence that our increasing consumption of sugar is partly responsible for the growth of NCDs: diseases such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and the suite of symptoms known as metabolic syndrome. And they argue that, as for substances known to cause NCDs such as tobacco and alcohol, sales and distribution of sugar should be controlled, and products with added sugar should be taxed.

I used to be a sugar addict. And yes, for those who haven't found out first-hand, sugar is addictive; perhaps not to the same degree as alcohol and tobacco, but a recent study has shown that sugary foods, or even just the expectation of eating sweets, can trick the brain into wanting more. When I decided to cut my sugar consumption 12 or so years ago, I had no idea of the serious health concerns that excess sugar consumption brings. I only wanted to avoid the so-called "empty calories" that sugar provides. I had noticed that eating cookies and desserts was making me feel lethargic.
Sugar, and in particular fructose, affects metabolism. Unlike glucose, fructose can only be metabolised in the liver. Some of its effects on the human body include increasing levels of uric acid, which raise blood pressure; increased fat deposition in the liver; and interference with the insulin receptor in the liver. This inhibits ability of the brain to detect the hormone leptin, which regulates appetite. So beyond the empty calories that fructose provides, eating it makes you want to eat more.

When I started reducing my sugar intake, I had no intention of cutting it out completely. Reducing my consumption was a gradual process, over many years. Sugar had been used as a reward when I was a child, and sweets were still a comfort food for me. But I found that the less of it I ate, the less I craved it. Today, I barely eat sweetened foods at all. If I were to eat what to most North Americans or Europeans is an "average" dessert serving, I would feel sick. Avoiding sugar is no longer an exercise in willpower; I have developed a revulsion for it. I feel that I have brought my body back to its original state. Sugar, in anything other than small quantities, feels like a poison to me.

Illnesses related to dietary choices do not affect only the individuals who become sick; they affect us all, as a society. The US alone spends $150bn on healthcare resources for illness related to metabolic syndrome. Of course, I would like to think that governmental regulation of a food-item such as sugar is not necessary. I do place value on an individual's right to choose, and on personal responsibility. But in the case of sugar, it's time to get real. The incidence of preventable diseases such as Type 2 diabetes is increasing and many health authorities have expressed concern that our current youth may be the first generation that does not live as long as their parents.

Most of us have known for some time that excess sugar is not good for us, but education and knowledge are clearly not enough. Regulation is required. This is no longer an issue of personal responsibility, but one of public expenditure and public health.

Climate Justice Requires A New Paradigm

By Vandana Shiva

02 December, 2011
Newleftproject.org

Twenty Years ago, at the Earth Summit, the world’s Governments signed the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to create a legally binding framework to address the challenge of climate change.

Today, the Green House Gas emissions that contribute to climate change have increased not reduced.

The Climate Treaty is weaker not stronger.

The failure to reduce green house gases is linked to following the flawed route of carbon trading and emissions trading as the main objective of the Kyoto Protocol to the Climate Convention.

The Kyoto Protocol allows industrialized countries to trade their allocation of carbon emissions among themselves (Article 17). It also allows an “investor” in an industrialized country (industry or government) to invest in an eligible carbon mitigation project in a developing country in exchange for Certified Emission Reduction Units that can be used to meet obligation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This is referred to as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) under Article 12 of the Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol gave 38 industrialized countries that are the worst historical polluter’s emissions rights. The European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) rewarded 11,428 industrial installations with carbon dioxide emissions rights. Through emissions trading Larry Lohmann observes, “rights to the earth’s carbon cycling capacity are gravitating into the hands of those who have the most power to appropriate them and the most financial interest to do so”. That such schemes are more about privatizing the atmosphere than preventing climate change is made clear by the fact that the rights given away in the Kyoto Protocol were several times higher than the levels needed to prevent a 2°C rise in global temperatures.

Climate activists focused exclusively on getting the Kyoto Protocol implemented in the first phase. They thus, innocently, played along with the polluters.

By the time the Copenhagen Summit took place, the polluters were even better organised and subverted a legally building outcome by having President Obama push the Copenhagen Accord.

Copenhagen and Beyond : The agenda for Earth Democracy

The UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen was probably the largest gathering of citizens and governments [ever? To do with what?]. The numbers were huge because the issue is urgent. Climate chaos is already costing millions of lives and billions of dollars. The world had gathered to get legally binding cuts in emissions by the rich North in the post Kyoto phase i.e. after 2010. Science tells us that to keep temperature rise within 2°C, an 80% cut is needed by 2020. Without a legally binding treaty, emissions of greenhouse gases will not be cut, the polluters will continue to pollute, and life on earth will be increasingly threatened.

There were multiple contests at Copenhagen, reflecting multiple dimensions of climate wars. These contests included those:

>> Between the earth’s ecological limits and limitless growth (with its associated limitless pollution and limitless resource exploitation).

>> Between the need for legally binding commitments and the U.S led initiative to dismantle the international framework of legally binding obligations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

>> Between the economically powerful historical polluters of the North and economically weak southern countries who are the victims of climate change, with the BASIC countries (Brazil, South Africa, India, China) negotiating with the South but finally signing the Copenhagen Accord with the U.S.

>> Between corporate rule based on greed and profits and military power, and Earth Democracy based on sustainability, justice and peace.

The hundreds of thousands of people who gathered at Klimaforum and on the streets of Copenhagen came as earth citizens. Danes and Africans, Americans and Latin Americans, Canadians and Indian were one in their care for the earth, for climate justice, for the rights of the poor and the vulnerable, and for the rights of future generations.

Never before has there been such a large presence of citizens at a UN Conference. Never before have climate negotiations seen such a large people’s participation. People came to Copenhagen because they are fully aware of the seriousness of the climate crisis, and deeply committed to taking action to change production and consumption patterns.

Ever since the Earth Summit in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro the U.S has been unwilling to be part of the UN framework of international law. It never signed the Kyoto Protocol. During his trip to China, President Obama with Prime Minster Rasmussen of Denmark had already announced that there would only be a political declaration in Copenhagen, not a legally binding outcome.

And this is exactly what the world got – a non-binding Copenhagen Accord, initially signed by five countries, the US and the Basic Four, and then supported by 26 others – with the rest of the 192 UN member states left out of the process. Most countries came to know that an “accord” had been reached when President Obama announced the accord to the U.S Press Corp. Most excluded countries refused to sign the accord. It remained an agreement between those countries that chose to declare their adherence. But it nevertheless showed the willingness of the US and others to disregard the needs of those in the global South. Arguing against the accord, Sudan’s Ambassador Lumumba Di Aping said the 2°C increase accepted in the document would result in a 3 to 5 degree rise in temperature in Africa. He saw the pact as a suicide pact to maintain the economic dominance of a few countries.

As Jeffrey Sachs noted in his article “Obama undermines UN Climate Process”:

“Obama’s decision to declare a phoney negotiating victory undermines the UN process by signaling that rich countries will do what they want and must no longer listen to the “pesky” concerns of many smaller and poorer countries – International Law, as complicated as it is, has been replaced by the insincere, inconsistent, and unconvincing word of a few powers, notably the U.S. America has insisted that others sign on to its terms – leaving the UN process hanging by a thread.”[1]

Even though the intention of the award was to dismantle the UN process, the reports of the two ad-hoc working groups on the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP) and the long term cooperative action (AWG-LCA) which have been negotiating for four years and two years were adopted in the closing plenary.

The Copenhagen Accord will undoubtedly interfere with the official UNFCC process in future negotiations as it did in Copenhagen. Like the earth’s future, the future of the UN now hangs in balance. There has been repeated reference to the emergence of a new world order in Copenhagen. But this is the world order shaped by corporate globalization and the WTO, not by the UN Climate Treaty. It is a world order based on the outsourcing of pollution from the rich industrialized North to countries like China and India. It is a world order based on the rights of polluters.

Climate change today is global in cause and global in effect. Globalisation of the economy has outsourced energy-intensive production to countries like China, which is flooding the shelves of supermarkets with cheap products. The corporations of the North and the consumers of the North thus bear responsibility for the increased emissions in the countries of the South.

In fact, the rural poor in China and India are losing their land and livelihood to make way for an energy-intensive industrialization. To count them as polluters would be doubly criminal; corporations, not nations, are the appropriate basis for regulations atmospheric pollution in a globalised economy.

Twelve years after citizens movements and African governments shut down the WTO Ministerial in Seattle, the same contest between corporate power and citizens power, between limitless profits and growth and the limits of a fragile earth was played out in Copenhagen. The only difference was that in trade negotiations the commercial interests of corporation’s stands naked, whereas in climate negotiations corporate power hides behind corporate states. The Copenhagen Accord is in reality the accord of global corporations to continue to pollute globally by attempting to dismantling the UN Climate Treaty. It should be called the “Right to Pollute Accord”. It has no legally binding emission targets.

The COP 15 talks in Copenhagen and COP 16 in Cancun did not show much promise of an outcome that would reduce Green House Gas Emissions and avoid catastrophic climate change. And the deadlock is caused by an outmoded growth paradigm. There are series of false assumptions driving the negotiations, or rather, blocking them.

>> False assumption No. 1: GNP measures Quality of Life

>> False assumption No. 2: Growth in GNP and improvement in Quality of Life is based on increased use of Fossil Fuel

>> False assumption No. 3: Growth and Fossil Fuel use have no limits

>> False assumption No. 4: Polluters have no responsibility, only rights.

These false assumptions are stated ad nauseum by corporations, governments and the media. As stated in an article in the Times of India, “Emissions are directly related to the quality of life and industrial production, and hence economic growth also has a direct link with it”.

Assumption No. 1 is false because even as India’s GNP has risen, the number of hungry people in India have grown. In fact, India is now the capital of hunger. The growth in GNP has in fact undermined the quality of life of the poor in India. And it has concentrated wealth in the hands of a few 100 billionaires now control 25% of India’s economy.

Assumption No. 2 is false because there are alternatives to fossil fuels such as renewable energy. Further, reduction in fossil fuel use can actually improve the quality of food and quality of life. Industrial agriculture based on fossil fuels uses ten units of energy to produce one unit of food. Ecological systems based on internal inputs produce 2 to 3 units out of every unit of energy used. We can therefore produce more and better quality of food by reducing fossil fuel use.

Assumption No. 3 is false because the financial collapse of 2008 showed that growth is not limitless, and Peak Oil shows that fossil fuels will increasingly become more difficult to access and will become costlier.

Assumption No. 4 formed the basis of carbon trading and emissions trading under the Kyoto Protocol. This allowed polluters to get paid billions of dollars instead of making the polluter pay. Thus ArcelorMittal has walked away with £1 billion in the form of carbon credits. ArcelorMittal was given the right to emit 90m tonnes of CO2 each year from its plants in EU from 2008 to 2012, while the company only emitted 68m tonnes in 2008.

To protect the planet, to prevent climate catastrophe through continued pollution, we will have to continue to work beyond Copenhagen by building Earth Democracy based on principles of justice and sustainability. The struggle for climate justice and trade justice are one struggle, not two. The climate crisis is a result of an economic model based on fossil fuel energy and resource intensive production and consumption systems. The Copenhagen Accord was designed to extend the life of this obsolete model for living on earth. Earth Democracy can help us build another future for the human species – a future in which we recognize we are members of the earth family that protecting the earth and her living processes is part of our species identity and meaning. The polluters of the world united in Copenhagen to prevent a legally binding accord to cut emissions and prevent disastrous climate change. They extended the climate war. Now citizens of the earth must unite to pressurize governments and corporations to obey the laws of the Earth, the laws of Gaia and make climate peace. And for this we will have to be the change we want to see.

As I have written in Soil Not Oil, food is where we can begin. 40% emissions are produced by fossil fuel based chemical, globalised food and agriculture systems which are also pushing our farmers to suicide and destroying our health. 40% reduction in emissions can take place through biodiverse organic farming, which sequesters carbon while enriching our soils and our diets. The polluters ganged up in Copenhagen for a non-solution. We as Earth Citizens can organize where we are for real solutions.

References

[1] Economic Times, 25th December, 2009

Vandana Shiva is a philosopher, environmental activist, and eco feminist. Shiva, currently based in Delhi, has authored more than 20 books and over 500 papers in leading scientific and technical journals. She was trained as a physicist and received her Ph.D. in physics from the University of Western Ontario, Canada. She was awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 1993. She is the founder of Navdanya

Criticism of Schumacher - if you curtail growth, living standards drop

Schumacher was no radical – if you curtail growth, living standards drop

By suggesting it's better to be economically poorer and spiritually richer, Schumacher ignores links between growth and wellbeing

• 
• • Daniel Ben-Ami
  • guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 16 November 2011 11.30 GMT
  • larger | smaller

Consumer revolution … a customer inspects washing machines at a supermarket in Wuhan, China. Photograph: Darley Shen/Reuters

EF Schumacher's Small is Beautiful is widely viewed as a humanistic and radical tract. Nothing could be further from the truth. Viewed in its proper context it is both profoundly anti-human and deeply conservative.
The central idea in Schumacher's text is that there is a natural limit to economic growth. As he put it: "Economic growth, which viewed from the point of view of economics, physics, chemistry and technology, has no discernible limit, must necessarily run into decisive bottlenecks when viewed from the point of view of the environmental sciences."

Schumacher objected to organising the economy on a large scale precisely because he believed that more prosperity would damage the environment. He correctly understood that small-scale communities cannot produce nearly as much as those operating on a regional or global scale. A modern car, for example, typically relies on components, raw materials and know-how from around the globe. From the perspective of Schumacher's "Buddhist economics", it is better for people to be poorer in economic terms if they can be spiritually richer.

This argument flies against a huge weight of evidence showing that material advance is closely bound up with progress more generally. The past two centuries of modern economic growth have seen huge advances in human welfare along with technological innovation and social advance. Perhaps the most striking single indicator of this improvement is the increase in human life expectancy from about 30 in 1800 to nearly 70 today. Note that this is a global average, so it includes the billions of people who live in poor countries as well as the minority who live in rich ones.

Almost every other measure of wellbeing has increased hugely over the long term, including infant mortality, food consumption and level of education. Most of humanity, even in the developing world, has access to services our ancestors could only have dreamt of, including electricity, clean water, sanitation and mobile phones.

None of the arguments used by Schumacher's followers to counter this narrative of progress are convincing. Greens often side-step the broader case for growth by deriding the accumulation of consumer goods and services. Environmentalist arguments have more than a tinge of elitism, with comfortably middle-class greens scoffing at the masses for wanting flat-screen televisions and foreign holidays. It should also be remembered that some consumer goods, such as washing machines, have directly led to huge improvements in human welfare.

Anti-consumerism reveals more about the narrowness of the green vision than it does about economic growth. Viewing rising prosperity simply in terms of consumer goods is incredibly blinkered. Growth provides the resources for much else including airports, art galleries, hospitals, museums, power stations, railways, roads, schools and universities. Popular prosperity provides the bedrock for much that we value in contemporary society.

Another common green rebuttal to the benefits of growth is to point to the existence of inequality. Of course it is true that there are huge disparities both within countries as well as between the developed and developing world. The key question, however, is how best to tackle the problem. From Schumacher's perspective it is desirable to reduce the living standards of everyone except the poorest of the poor. His is a narrative of shared sacrifice and lower living standards for almost all. The alternative vision, the traditional position of the left, was to argue for plenty for everyone.

Finally, there is the argument about the environment itself. The most popular variant of the idea of a natural limit nowadays is that growth inevitably means runaway climate change. However, there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. There are many forms of energy, including nuclear, that do not emit greenhouse gases. There are also ways to adapt to global warming such as building higher sea walls. Since such measures are expensive it will take more resources to pay for them; which means more economic growth rather than less. If anything the green drive to curb prosperity is likely to undermine our capacity to tackle climate change.
Schumacher's fundamentally conservative argument chimes well with those who want to reconcile us to austerity. It suits those in power for the mass of the population to accept the need to make do with less. Under such circumstances it is no surprise that David Cameron, like his international peers, is keen for us to focus on individual contentment rather than material prosperity.

It is hard to imagine a more anti-human outlook than one advocating a sharp fall in living standards for the bulk of the world's population.

Consumption is the real problem, not population growth.

Beyond the headlines from the UN population report lies a clear message: consumption is still a far bigger threat to the planet

By George Monbiot

A worker repairs a grain lifter on a soy bean mountain in Salto, Argentina. Photograph: Diego Giudice/AP

 

It must rank among the most remarkable events in recent human history. In just 60 years, the global average number of children each woman bears has fallen from 6 to 2.5. This is an astonishing triumph for women's empowerment, and whatever your position on population growth, it is something we should celebrate.
But this decline in fertility, according to the United Natinos report published on Wednesday, is not the end of the story. It has also raised its estimate of global population growth. Rather than peaking at about 9 billion in the middle of this century, the UN says that human numbers will reach some 10 billion by 2100, and continue growing beyond that point.

That's the middle scenario. The highest of its range of estimates is an astonishing 15.8 billion by 2100. If this were correct, population would be a much greater problem – for both the environment and human development – than we had assumed. It would oblige me to change my views on yet another subject. But fortunately for my peace of mind, and, rather more importantly, for the prospects of everyone on earth, it is almost certainly baloney.

Writing in the journal Nature in May, Fred Pearce pointed out that the UN's revision arose not from any scientific research or analysis, but from what appeared to be an arbitrary decision to change one of the inputs it fed into its model. Its previous analysis was based on the assumption that the average number of children per woman would fall to 1.85 worldwide by 2100. But this year it changed the assumption to 2.1. This happens to be the population replacement rate: the point at which reproduction contributes to neither a fall nor a rise in the number of people.

The UN failed to explain this changed assumption, which appears to fly in the face of current trends, or to show why fertility decline should suddenly stop when it hit replacement level, rather than continuing beyond that point, as has happened to date in all such populations. I expected yesterday's report to contain the explanation, but I was wrong: it appears to have plucked its fertility figure out of the air.

Even so, even if we're to assume that the old figures are more realistic than the new ones, there's a problem. As the new report points out, "the escape from poverty and hunger is made more difficult by rapid population growth". It also adds to the pressure on the biosphere. But how big a problem is it?

If you believe the rich, elderly white men who dominate the population debate, it is the biggest one of all. In 2009 for example, a group of US billionaires met to decide which threat to the planet most urgently required their attention. Who'd have guessed? These men, who probably each consume as many of the world's resources in half an hour as the average African consumes in a lifetime, decided that it was population.
Population is the issue you blame if you can't admit to your own impacts: it's not us consuming, it's those brown people reproducing. It seems to be a reliable rule of environmental politics that the richer you are, the more likely you are to place population growth close to the top of the list of crimes against the planet.
The new report, inflated though its figures seem to be, will gravely disappoint the population obsessives. It cites Paul Murtaugh of Oregon State University, whose research shows that:

"An extra child born today in the United States, would, down the generations, produce an eventual carbon footprint seven times that of an extra child in China, 55 times that of an Indian child or 86 times that of a Nigerian child."

And it draws on a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which makes the first comprehensive assessment of how changes in population affect carbon dioxide emissions. It concludes:

"Slowing population growth could provide 16-19% of the emissions reductions suggested to be necessary by 2050 to avoid dangerous climate change."

In other words, it can make a contribution. But the other 81-84% will have to come from reducing consumption and changing technologies. The UN report concludes that "even if zero population growth were achieved, that would barely touch the climate problem".

This should not prevent us from strongly supporting the policies which will cause population to peak sooner rather than later. Sex education, the report shows, is crucial, as is access to contraception and the recognition of women's rights and improvement in their social status. All these have been important factors in the demographic transition the world has seen so far. We should also press for a better distribution of wealth: escaping from grinding poverty is another of the factors which have allowed women to have fewer children. The highly unequal system sustained by the rich white men who fulminate about population is one of the major reasons for population growth.

All this puts conservatives in a difficult position. They want to blame the poor for the environmental crisis by attributing it to population growth. Yet some of them oppose all the measures – better and earlier sex education, universal access to contraception (for teenagers among others), stronger rights for women, the redistribution of wealth – that are likely to reduce it.

And beyond these interventions, what do they intend to do about population growth? As the UN report points out:

"Considerable population growth continues today because of the high numbers of births in the 1950s and 1960s, which have resulted in larger base populations with millions of young people reaching their reproductive years over succeeding generations."

In other words, it's a hangover from an earlier period. It has been compounded by another astonishing transformation: since the 1950s, global life expectancy has risen from 48 to 68.

What this means is that even if all the measures I've mentioned here – education, contraception, rights, redistribution – were widely deployed today, there will still be a population bulge, as a result of the momentum generated 60 years ago. So what do they propose? Compulsory sterilisation? Mass killing? If not, they had better explain their programme.

Yes, population growth contributes to environmental problems. No, it is not the decisive factor. Even the availability of grain is affected more by rising livestock numbers and the use of biofuels – driven, again by consumption – than by human population growth.

Of course we should demand that governments help women regain control over their bodies. But beyond that there's little that can be done. We must instead decide how best to accommodate human numbers which will, at least for the next four decades, continue to rise.

www.monbiot.com

Learning From China: Why The Existing Economic Model Will Fail

By Lester Brown

16 September, 2011
Earth Policy Institute

For almost as long as I can remember we have been saying that the United States, with 5 percent of the world’s people, consumes a third or more of the earth’s resources. That was true. It is no longer true. Today China consumes more basic resources than the United States does.

Among the key commodities such as grain, meat, oil, coal, and steel, China consumes more of each than the United States except for oil, where the United States still has a wide (though narrowing) lead. China uses a quarter more grain than the United States. Its meat consumption is double that of the United States. It uses three times as much coal and four times as much steel.

These numbers reflect national consumption, but what would happen if consumption per person in China were to catch up to that of the United States? If we assume conservatively that China’s economy slows from the 11 percent annual growth of recent years to 8 percent, then in 2035 income per person in China will reach the current U.S. level.

If we also assume that the Chinese will spend their income more or less as Americans do today, then we can translate their income into consumption. If, for example, each person in China consumes paper at the current American rate, then in 2035 China’s 1.38 billion people will use four fifths as much paper as is produced worldwide today. There go the world’s forests.

If Chinese grain consumption per person in 2035 were to equal the current U.S. level, China would need 1.5 billion tons of grain, nearly 70 percent of the 2.2 billion tons the world’s farmers now harvest each year.

If we assume that in 2035 there are three cars for every four people in China, as there now are in the United States, China will have 1.1 billion cars. The entire world currently has just over one billion. To provide the needed roads, highways, and parking lots, China would have to pave an area equivalent to more than two thirds the land it currently has in rice.

By 2035 China would need 85 million barrels of oil a day. The world is currently producing 86 million barrels a day and may never produce much more than that. There go the world’s oil reserves.

What China is teaching us is that the western economic model—the fossil-fuel-based, automobile-centered, throwaway economy—will not work for the world. If it does not work for China, it will not work for India, which by 2035 is projected to have an even larger population than China. Nor will it work for the other 3 billion people in developing countries who are also dreaming the “American dream.” And in an increasingly integrated global economy, where we all depend on the same grain, oil, and steel, the western economic model will no longer work for the industrial countries either.

The overriding challenge for our generation is to build a new economy—one that is powered largely by renewable sources of energy, that has a much more diversified transport system, and that reuses and recycles everything. We have the technology to build this new economy, an economy that will allow us to sustain economic progress. But can we muster the political will to translate this potential into reality?

Lester Brown is an United States environmentalist, founder of the Worldwatch Institute, and founder and president of the Earth Policy Institute, a nonprofit research organization based in Washington, D.C. BBC Radio commentator Peter Day calls him "one of the great pioneer environmentalists."

Copyright © 2011 Earth Policy Institute

The DEVELOPMENT Deception

By Brendan P O'Reilly

Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have their say. Please click here if you are interested in contributing.

"At present, we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it GDP."
- Paul Hawken

There is a dangerous lie that permeates the media, government and general discourse of nearly every single nation on Earth.

That lie is the Development Deception. This myth is based on three concepts. First is the distinction between the developed nations (North America, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, and Japan), and the Developing Nations (everywhere else).

The second idea is that "developing" countries can become "developed" through improved education, stable governance, and opening their markets to trade and investment. The third leg of this Deception is that such a transformation is not only possible, but also desirable.

The metric used to distinguish "developed" nations from "developing" nations is gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. Poor nations aspire to reach a certain economic level to become so-called "developed nations". The Myth of Development has four fundamental inter-related flaws. The first one is the problem of the Gray Area.

The gap between "developed" and "developing" countries is presented as a simple black-and-white dichotomy. I often hear from my Chinese students say, "China is a developing country. America is a developed country. We want to become a developed country."

Fair enough. But which country has high-speed trains? Which country has a higher unemployment rate? How can the government of a "developed" country owe trillions of dollars to a "developing" country?

Obviously many nations in Asia and Africa, and Latin America have very serious structural problems, which could be alleviated through stable government and educational reform. Very poor countries should aspire to create social and economic institutions that allow their people to live with dignity. Nevertheless the rise of new economic powers such as Brazil, India, and (especially) China, coupled with the massive financial difficulties faced by Europe, Japan, and the United States, call into question the utility of the developed/developing dichotomy.

The second problem with the Myth of Development is philosophical. The very term "development" implies a steady linear progression from poverty and ignorance to wealth, literacy, and general happiness. This viewpoint is Western in origin, and alien to many of the world’s cultures.

The idea of the inexorable march of progress has roots in the Judeo-Christian worldview of time (God creates the world, the world exists, the world ends), and has been largely co-opted by modern science. We are told to believe that progress is inevitable, that the quality of life for each new generation will be better than the life of their parents. Never mind the fact that humanity has created weapons that empower a handful of political leaders to destroy civilization itself.

Never mind obesity is now challenging starvation as a cause of premature death. Of course, the advances made in the last century in curing diseases, increasing literacy rates, and fighting hunger must be lauded. However, to blindly value "progress" above all else threatens our very survival as a species.

The third problem with the Development Deception stems from definitions. As mentioned previously, GDP per capita is the standard the yardstick for measuring development. This assessment ignores serious social difficulties faced by the so-called developed nations.

For example, a third of the adult population of the United States of America, the archetype "developed" nation, suffer from obesity, with another third classified as overweight. The United States of America also has the dubious distinction of having the highest incarceration rate of any nation on Earth.

Meanwhile Japan, the paragon of "development" in Asia, has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, leading to a rapidly aging population. This trend, unless dramatically reversed, will exacerbate Japan’s social, economic, and political crisis, as more retirees put enormous strain on the working population. Japan’s population is set to shrink by roughly thirty million over the next four decades (Citation here). Are these worthy goals for the so-called "developing" nations to aspire to?

The fourth and final problem with the Myth of Development is a terminal defect. Citizens in countries such as China and India are encouraged to join the middle class and live "Western" lifestyles. As benign as it sounds, this goal is completely impossible. Simply put, there are not enough natural resources on this planet to sustain such an increase in consumption.

According to World Bank figures, in 2008 Americans, on average, used 87,216 kilowatt hours of electricity. The average Chinese used 18,608 kilowatt hours, and the average Indian 6,280. All three countries depend primarily on coal for electricity. To bridge the gap between these levels of resource utilization of would entail environmental catastrophe and global shortages on an unimaginable scale. Coal is just one example - one could also look at oil, lumber, or meat consumption. Indeed, many of the fundamental challenges facing the world economic system - such as rising food and fuel costs - are directly related to economic development.

The Development Deception is perpetuated by international corporations and national governments. Resource mining, production, and overconsumption are the basis for the current globalized economic system. Human beings are classified as "consumers", because overconsumption entails short-term profit.

Rich nations leverage their "developed" status to influence poorer nations, while the governments of these poor nations use the promise of development to maintain political power. None of this propaganda changes the fact that it is grossly misleading for the nations who over-consume the Earth’s finite resources to be considered developed.

Advocates of The Development Myth may point to science as a savior. We are constantly told that new inventions will allow for more efficient use of resources, or allow for sustainable consumption patterns. This argument provides only false hope. We cannot speculate our way out of environmental pollution and a collapsing natural resource base. Unless and until new "green" technology actually exists and is utilized, science is actually exacerbating ecological disaster.

Recently, the Human Development Index (HDI) has been promoted as a more "human-centered" alternative to GDP as a metric for measuring development. HDI uses data on life expectancy, literacy, number of years in school, and GDP to determine the development status of a country. Although this presents a useful alterative, the continued use of GDP as a basis for measuring development is HDI’s fundamental flaw. Unsustainable consumption of finite resources cannot reasonably be classified as "development".

What is the viable alternative to the Development Myth? Bhutan has advocated Gross National Happiness as an alternative goal to increasing GDP per capita. Citizens are asked about their Subjective Well Being in order to establish Gross National Happiness. Obviously this measurement is difficult to define and numerate, and ignores problems such as illiteracy and extreme poverty. However, it does point in the right direction.

Development needs to be redefined in order to account for human physical and emotional well-being as well as environmental sustainability. Otherwise it is only a lie, and a dangerous one at that. To seek economic advance at the expense of human interests and future generations is a recipe for global disaster.

When extreme wealth is challenging extreme poverty as the bane of human existence, a revolution of values is needed. We as a species must advance values of conservation, and teach people to live within the means of the productive capacity of our planet. No longer can the scramble for nonrenewable resources be viewed as a zero-sum game. Human beings need to develop solidarity on a global scale. Citizens of wealthy nations must learn to live with less.

The most important development is that of the individual. Social and spiritual harmony is the antidote to the Development Deception, for all traditions encourage compassion and warn of the destructive power of greed. To quote LaoZi (as translated by D C Lau):

There is no crime greater than having too many desires;
There is no disaster greater than not being content;
There is no misfortune greater than being covetous.
Hence in being content, one will always have enough.

Brendan P O'Reilly is a China-based writer and educator from Seattle. He is author of The Transcendent Harmony.

Oprah and the philanthropy that chokes

Billionaire celebrities want to save the world Oprah Winfrey-style. But their giving has a price

• 
• • Priyamvada Gopal
  • guardian.co.uk, Sunday 14 August 2011 17.36 BST
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Oprah Winfrey has given money to New Orleans, HIV/Aids prevention, abused women's shelters and private scholarships. Photograph: Mario Anzuoni/Reuters
Media empress Oprah Winfrey has been nominated for a special Oscar, the Jean Hersholt award, for those "whose humanitarian efforts have brought credit to the industry". This has created mild controversy in the US, with some charging that she is insufficiently Hollywood to merit an award held by the likes of Elizabeth Taylor and Paul Newman. But Winfrey is as good a choice as any to confer an aura of piety on an industry better known for lavish lifestyles than saving the world. Her contributions to charitable causes have included reconstruction in New Orleans, HIV/Aids prevention, abused women's shelters, church charities and private school scholarships for disadvantaged children. More interesting is why humanitarianism has assumed such importance as a must-be-seen-to-be-doing-it activity for the rich and the famous. From the obligatory royal photo-op with the homeless on LA's Skid Row to the ubiquitous images of white female celebrities cradling African babies, exhibitionist "caring" is as essential a marker of wealth and celebrity as signature scents and personal assistants. It's too easy to argue this is about mitigating guilt and resentment. More significant is how billionaire benevolence is closely tied to the big neoliberal political manoeuvres of our time. This relationship can be scrutinised without necessarily questioning Winfrey's personal sincerity or denying that wealthy giving benefits a few. Brand Oprah is a seamless and hugely influential melding of capitalism, self-help, humanitarian aspirations and spirituality. Endless consumption is encouraged by personal recommendations and lavish freebies from iPods to jewellery. At the same time, disciples can practise tasteful austerity with "debt diets" reminding us that "we are all responsible for everything that happens to us". The poor, too, are responsible both for their condition and for overcoming it. Buying things for the deserving poor – and Winfrey is clear that they are not all deserving – must be seen as "giving them bootstraps". Pledging to "destroy the welfare mentality", Winfrey has often suggested that receiving state assistance is a choice, one she herself rejected. Her grand philanthropic acts, such as the failed experiment to move 100 Chicago families into private housing during Bill Clinton's "welfare reform" efforts, are accompanied by politically welcomed criticism of public assistance as dependence. Yet as psychologist Bruce Levine notes, it is precisely "fundamentalist consumerism" which destroys self-reliance. Winfrey has been justifiably accused by activists of "reinforcing the US war on the poor" by blaming victims. In practising what should really be called "humanitarian privatisation", Winfrey and other philanthropists like Bill Gates have targeted public education with missionary zeal, speaking authoritatively on a subject they know little about. Having decided not to donate to inner-city public schools after criticising them and deeming their students unwilling to learn, Winfrey has publicly backed those advocating "charter schools", the US equivalent of free schools – including Gates and the makers of a controversial film, Waiting for "Superman", which attacks teachers and unions. In a parallel move, Rupert Murdoch is going ahead with plans to sponsor an academy in east London over the objections of the local council. The billionaire "humanitarianism" of Winfrey, Gates and Murdoch is deeply compromised not only by its failure to acknowledge the causal relationship between extreme wealth and great poverty but by participating in an ideological assault on the welfare state. It posits itself as the only way to change the world – from above and with a wealthy few firmly in control. A Hollywood celebrity more worthy of our respect is Matt Damon who, as American schoolteachers demonstrated this month in a Save Our Schools rally, confronted media suggestions that job security made teachers lazy. In a video clip that has gone viral, Damon lambasts "MBA-style thinking" as "the problem with [education] policy right now". This solidarity with the aspirations of the many and not the self-interested paternalism of the few is the humanitarianism that our times call for.

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