"The Global Delusion" (John Gray on globalization, NYRB)

[swag]

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18931

An very brief excerpt from an article that debunks both Friedmanesque and neoconservative delusions, among a host of other older and equally useless theories about planetary societal outcomes.

. . . John Gray is Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics. Among his books are False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism, Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals, and Al Qaeda and What It Means to Be Modern. (April 2006) . . .

Globalization and Its Enemies (by Daniel Cohen) is one of the most original and incisive inquiries into the subject I have seen. No one who reads and understands it can come away believing that the current phase of this complex and uneven process is leading to the peaceful universal market of business utopians, or accept the simple narrative of anti-capitalist movements in which underdevelopment is a consequence of the wealth of advanced countries. There is more wisdom in Cohen's short book than in dozens of weightier tomes; but there are some disconcerting lacunae in the analysis.

Cohen is far more conscious of the material environment in which industrial production takes place than most other economists. Globalization and Its Enemies has some fascinating discussions of the geographical and climatic conditions favoring or retarding economic development and the continuing importance of population growth. For example, Cohen notes the worsening relationship between fast-growing human numbers and available arable land. In 1913 Egypt had only 13 million inhabitants, today it has 70 million, and in 2025 it is expected to have over 100 million; but only 4 percent of Egypt's land is arable.

It is all the more surprising, then, that Cohen gives very little attention to globalization's environmental limits. In a number of asides he acknowledges that the current phase may be endangering the planet's ecological equilibrium. "One cannot continue for long," he observes, "leaving to private regulation the question of global warming, the opening of the ozone layer, or the disappearance of species." Yet Cohen seems not to see clearly that ecological instability is an integral part of the vast economic change that is currently underway. As an example, China is undergoing the largest and quickest industrialization in history. At the same time it is suffering unprecedented levels of pollution. Environmental crisis and the present phase of globalization are different sides of the same process.

Cohen argues that the present phase of the world economy involves a shift from an industrial to a post-industrial economy: while around 80 percent of global trade is in industrial and agricultural products, industry and agriculture account for only around 20 percent of employment in rich countries with the service sector providing about 80 percent. For developing countries, however, the current wave is simply another phase in the worldwide process of industrialization that began some centuries ago. The disturbance in the planetary environment we are currently witnessing is a by-product of this process, whether in rich countries or poor.

There can no longer be any reasonable doubt that the global warming the world is experiencing today is a side effect of fossil fuel use. The extraction and consumption of hydrocarbons has been integral to industrialization and remains so; but it is also the chief human cause of planetary overheating. A clear correlation exists between industrialization over the past 150 years and rising greenhouse gases. There is some uncertainty in estimates of when climate change will begin to disrupt the industrial civilization that has spread, in different forms, throughout much of the world; but observation of rapid melting in the Antarctic ice cap and the worsening prognosis of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggest that a major climate shift is underway that could have a severe impact on the way we live. It is easy to dismiss projections of looming environmental disaster as apocalyptic doom-mongering, and carry on with business as usual. Mounting evidence, however, suggests a growing possibility of an abrupt climate change in which rising sea levels will flood many of the world's coastal cities and damage large areas of arable land. In such conditions there would be serious conflicts over dwindling resources of food, water, and energy supplies together with large-scale population movements as millions flee areas that are no longer humanly habitable.

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[Kutjara]

1. This is why many of the anti-Immigration arguments are untenable.

The rapid economic development of the US and Europe during the past two and a bit centuries has created the very problems that are making many part of the world uninhabitable (both economically and environmentally).

Quite rationally, the denizens of these blighted regions attempt to migrate to more hospitible environments, many of them in the US and Europe.

Inevitably, they are met with hostility and fear.

Yet, wasn't it our policies that created the very problems that have led to the migration?

Don't we bear some responsibility for the millions knocking on our doors?