The New Way

[Daveparts still]

The New Way
By David Glenn Cox


So, I’ll begin again. I’ve started several times to write about the failure in Copenhagen. In a way it was naive to begin with, the idea that the nations of the world could come together and hammer out any sort of environmental agreement. It is discouraging but it needn’t be; there are other ways.

The pinnacles of world power are fueled by capitalism and capitalism is fueled by cheap labor and cheap electricity. The Chinese have the fastest growing industrial economy on the planet. Do you really think they going to allow that to be hindered by environmental concerns? The United States is the second largest polluter because of its addiction to automobiles and burning coal.

Everyone in every nation has their own excuse, which makes it all very convoluted. This whole cap and trade issue where we tax polluters and they can buy indulgences from the environmental pope just seems bass ackwards. The goal should be to eliminate the old way in favor of new ways. That vision of Dickensian London with thousands of chimneys and a haze of coal soot over the city, the Thames so mired in filth and human waste that you could almost walk across it, these things ended because the leaders found better ways and better technologies.

We have painted ourselves into a corner with trade organizations that only deal with fairness to corporations and the bottom line. Last week the WTO ruled, in a case regarding access to European markets, in favor of Central and South American banana producers over African producers. The African producers are based in former European colonies and mostly are small and medium-sized family farms. The Central American growers are American transnational corporations. The result of the ruling means Europeans will save a few pennies on bananas. American corporations will add to their bottom line and African farmers will suffer.

That is just one of hundreds of such rulings, not unlike the ruling that opened Mexican markets up to American corn producers putting tens of thousands of peasant farmers in Mexico out of work. In areas of Mexico, villages are now depopulated or are lacking men of working age. Not because they want to see the world or to live in the land of the free and home of the brave, but because they can’t sit at home and starve.

If the world was just about making pennies roll themselves into dollars, the rulings were absolutely correct. But no one is factoring in the damage done to local economies. Volkswagen brings German-made parts to Mexico to produce cars for importation to the American market; Samsung does the same with television sets. The toxic waste is dumped into the Tijuana water supply and washed out to the sea and ends up on California beaches.

As long as there is a country or kingdom or duchy in the world where corporations are allowed to dump into the water or the air unmolested, all the Copenhagen’s in the world won’t help us. We need a different way. We judge cars by miles per gallon or by safety and we choose accordingly. We should do the same with other products. There should be a green standard, based on quality of environmental production, labor practices, and fair treatment of workers. Suddenly mercury lights manufactured in China or Mexico versus the United States would have meaning and any extra cost would seem small and easy to understand.

Automobiles manufactured in South Korea by workers earning five dollars an hour or a Chevrolet manufactured in Mexico would have a lower rating and a higher tariff than a Ford produced in Michigan or a BMW in Regensburg, because of higher wages and pensions for workers and environmental standards overall. Overnight using coke made from the trees of the Amazon rainforest would become completely uncompetitive. The tragedy of cutting down the rain forest to make pig iron for export would cease because our tariffs would be judged accordingly and a floor would be set. The bottom of the barrel floor of unacceptability, child labor, slave labor or raping of natural resources, would make it unavailable for export, not unlike ivory.

Manufacturers interested in exporting to world markets would invest time and efforts in cleaner methods of production and alternative forms of energy. The United States is the Saudi Arabia of solar power potential and also has the largest potential for wind power energy in the world! In the entire stinking world and the technology is there, but the dollars are not. But if those products for export faced higher tariffs because the electricity used for manufacture was generated with coal, how soon would that change?

When I was born the US Army was experimenting with captured V2 rockets. When I was twelve, men landed on the moon. The technology developed because of impetus and funding to do those things and is still paying dividends and in the end might be our only salvation. We will not be able to achieve worldwide standards, but if we established a green standard and individuals countries began to adopt them then the green countries would begin to ostracize the polluting countries.

If, for instance, the European Union adopted those standards, then that entire trading block would be closed to polluters and exploiters. Then, say, Japan signed on, and Latin American countries or even Iran. Markets would begin to shrink then for polluting nations, wouldn’t they? Plus it is something that we could do at home in our own countries, to lobby for a green standard and for international green standards. We could point our fingers at our politicians and ask, “Do you support international green standards?” Yes or no?

There is no future in coal mines or in gasoline-powered automobiles, and that’s not the left or the right, that’s the facts. If you think that your ten-year-old child is going to grow up and drive your grandchildren around in a gas-powered automobile, then your bustle is too tight. The future is not frightening if we accept the promise of what it can be and begin to make it be.

The profit motive will become invested into new technologies as gas-powered machines must compete with non-polluting alternatives. Corporations hate tariffs and taxes, and if we make their choice either the old way or the new way, the decisions will make themselves. Rather than indulgences for polluting less, there would be rewards for not polluting at all, or as is least possible.

Let's have a green standard based on the following criteria:
Manufacturing carbon footprint
Transportation carbon footprint
Workers wages and benefits
Benefit / damage to local economy