Book Review: It’s the Regime, Stupid! A Report From the Cowboy West on Why Stephen Harper Matters, by Barry Cooper, Key Porter Books, 279 pp, $21.95
Shows the weak position we are in to understand fundamental issues. The author and reviewer raise interesting questions and don’t know how to deal with them, nor do we.
Combining philosophical, literary, and historical analysis, social science, and personal anecdote, Cooper analyzes the “logic” of the Canadian “regime,” which, borrowing from Plato and Aristotle, includes not only the offices and laws of a nation, but also its way of life, and with it the moral character types the regime calls forth to rule it. While the book focuses on Canada, Cooper’s analysis shows how Canada’s regime is in many ways typical of all modern regimes, since the end-point of Canada’s regime is in a sense the endpoint of a fault-line in modernity.
Since the 1954 Tremblay Report, which characterized the power of the Crown as “gift giving,” and so legitimated (or necessitated) federal spending in provincial jurisdictions, Canadians have ignored basic aspects of their constitution to override the distinction between federal and provincial responsibility, and the distinction between political representatives and bureaucrats. The result is a bloated “embedded state” that, instead of helping people out (the purported function of welfare), has created a culture of entitlements that has transformed what is left of citizenship into a “culture of grasping and seizing”. Canadians and foreign observers used to viewing Canada as a “kindler and gentler” (America will be surprised to see how the embedded state’s top-heavy attempt to create political friendship has left Canadians fragmented, dispirited, and resentful. ) All the incentives are in grasping for the levers of power.
Compare to another Canadian John Ralston Saul at the end of today’s notes.
This was a seminar last week., really good, showing how the idea of experience melded into experiment, and all this in religious language before sceince. CF the remarks on Bacon later.
Science and Religion: New Approaches, by the Program in History & Philosophy of Science & Technology
Monday, November 16, 2009. 3:00 PM.
Stanford Humanities Center, 424 Santa Teresa St.
free and open to the publichttp://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm? id=powering-a-green-planet
MAHB 11/5 Meeting Notes
Attendees & interests/ideas
Michael Zeligs (public art, communication and behavior change with art)
Ellery Wulczyn (study sustainability through anthor/sociological framework)
Hamatz Kopp-Yates (role of religion, spirituality, ethical framework in concepts of integration/separation with environment)
- Public art murals
Nick Wenner (Uncovering unexamined assumptions, putting it into public sphere, graphical and art communication of these subjects)
- Bring back in humanity and humanities into these discussion
Byrce Golden-Chen (overcoming political and cultural obstacles in creating change)
Paul Cook (looking of division of where we want to go; leverage climate crisis to steer path of which future we want)
- No shared vision of future world and what we want as a society, world, etc.
Jess McNally (community and social capital as necessary for sustainability and social sustainability; built environment and how to take what we have and create more social connection and village-like networks/community structure; growth without development or development without growth)
Chase Mendenhall (fleshing out what the group is about, common goals; limitations to science and scientific method; hierarchical structure of science and disciplines)
- Trapping us by ideologies
Brian Johnrud (humanities and cultural memory, integrating it with a culture’s view of the past; conceptions of past)
Bill Anderegg (stories and narrative to expand sphere of empathy in the human condition and inspire change)
- Post things on the MAHB website (mahb.stanford.edu) and to post the password is “mahb”
Nick Sawe (neuroscience and the perception of the environment, change, planning, etc)
Laura Bloomfield (intersection of env. Science, medicine, and art – communicating health via visual representations; changes in the environment impacting health directly; freshwater resources and water-borne illness)
Nicole Greenspan (social psychology and its influence on changing behavior; changing peoples’ behaviors and attitudes, community-based social marketing)
- Can’t ask people to step out of a canoe that’s sinking unless you offer them another canoe
Zhe Zhang (behavior and economics)
Matt Harnack (documentary film – things that are accessible, dramatic, and interesting to communicate)
Paul Princen (undergraduate involvement; ASSU Gaia summit; consumption issues and urban farming; sustainability through philosophy and language; Social-M Challenge to communicate climate??)
Take-home Points
- Really use and explore the website
- Developing framework for what our future could look like, steps required, goal or vision of what we want to see in the future
Next Thursday – same time, same place
Some notes
Leaders punt delaying binding agreement in Copenhagen. The big
problems is the scale of divisions, with the US unable to get legislation
being one of the larger issues. The Nfl article goes onto talk about
protectionism, and everyone seems more articulate. The world
regime is after all really a commercial regime, to which all other
policies are subordinate.
I attended at Stanford seminar by Steven Pincus on his new book
1688. It is a wonderful analysis of how bakdng and empire were
already centra lto events, and the arguments about value, civilization,
expansiveness, are all amazingly contemporary. This is important for
world system issues because he is eloquent about how deep and long
lasting a major shift like 1688 is. He extends this to other revolutions,
the French and the Russian, suggesting that they last decades.
With the same perspective, but where the examples are the American
revolution, reconstruction, the Mexcan American war, civil rights,
And the Chinese railroadworkers. Each of these are major disruptors
and destroyers of many lives over decades. This needs to be taken
very seriously in thinking about ecology change in the future for all of
us. It is likely to be very disruptive as winners and losers struggle to
be on the winning side.
I highly recommend the sacred architecture museum in second life.
Quite an experience.
Also taking a new look at william Invin Thomson’s complex work on
the future of culture. Self and Society can be a starting point. Leads
me on a hunt finding The Wild River Review. Which takes us to Bill’s
article on a new constitution.
The interplay between science and belief may turn out to be central
to dealing with planet issues.
Scientific American has an interactive webpage on ooweringthe
green planet.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=powering-a-green-planet
http://www.wildriverreview.com/Column/Thinking_Otherwise/William_Irwin_ Thompson/10_16_09
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/200905/imf-advice
jellyfish swarm northward in warming world
Pasted from <http://www.physorg.com/news177516168.html>
The venom of the Nomura, the world’s largest jellyfish, a creature up to 2 meters (6 feet) in diameter, can ruin a whole day’s catch by tainting or killing fish stung when ensnared with them in the maze of nets here in northwest Japan’s Wakasa Bay.
"Some fishermen have just stopped fishing," said Taiichiro Hamano, 67. "When you pull in the nets and see jellyfish, you get depressed."
This year’s jellyfish swarm is one of the worst he has seen, Hamano said. Once considered a rarity occurring every 40 years, they are now an almost annual occurrence along several thousand kilometers (miles) of Japanese coast, and far beyond Japan.
Scientists believe climate change – the warming of oceans – has allowed some of the almost 2,000 jellyfish species to expand their ranges, appear earlier in the year and increase overall numbers, much as warming has helped ticks, bark beetles and other pests to spread to new latitudes.
The gelatinous seaborne creatures are blamed for decimating fishing industries in the Bering and Black seas, forcing the shutdown of seaside power and desalination plants in Japan, the Middle East and Africa, and terrorizing beachgoers worldwide, the U.S. National Science Foundation says.
A 2008 foundation study cited research estimating that people are stung 500,000 times every year – sometimes multiple times – in Chesapeake Bay on the U.S. East Coast, and 20 to 40 die each year in the Philippines from jellyfish stings.
In 2007, a salmon farm in Northern Ireland lost its more than 100,000 fish to an attack by the mauve stinger, a jellyfish normally known for stinging bathers in warm Mediterranean waters. Scientists cite its migration to colder Irish seas as evidence of global warming.
Pasted from <http://www.physorg.com/news177516168.html>
Species effects of climate change are not continuous, but sudden, much faster than the temperature curve alone.
When good companies do bad things: Examining illegal corporate behavior
Pasted from <http://news.msu.edu/story/7120>
EAST LANSING, Mich. – The more prominent and financially successful a corporation becomes, the more likely it is to break the law, according to a new study led by a Michigan State University scholar that challenges previous research.
MSU’s Yuri Mishina and colleagues argue that unrealistically high pressure on thriving companies increases the likelihood of illegal behavior, as the firms are faced with continuously maintaining or improving their performance. Previous research suggested high-performing firms are less likely to feel the strains that can trigger illegal activities such as fraud, false claims and environmental and anticompetitive violations.
Pasted from <http://news.msu.edu/story/7120>
“We found that high-performing companies tended not to be able to sustain that high level of performance over time,” said Mishina, assistant professor of management and lead researcher on the project. “At the same time, high performing and highly prominent companies tend to be the ones that are punished most severely for not meeting performance expectations. And so it becomes a choice: Do I cut corners to try to meet these high performance goals and maybe get caught, or do I accept the results of not meeting my performance goals and be punished for sure.”
The study is called “Why Good Firms Do Bad Things: The Effects of High Aspirations, High Expectations and Prominence on the Incidence of Corporate Illegality.” It was co-authored by Bernadine Dykes at the University of Delaware, Emily Block at Notre Dame and Timothy Pollock at Penn State.
Pasted from <http://news.msu.edu/story/7120>
Social Change 2.0
Pasted from <http://www.socialchange2.com/index.php/book>
Social Change 2.0 has a simple and some might say radical premise: That the natural starting point for changing our world for the better is us. That taking personal responsibility to make the needed changes within ourselves and our communities is the foundation for changing our institutions, not the other way around. That people are willing to make these changes if empowered by a personal vision and the means to bring it to fruition. That these changes can be accelerated and reinforced with the right laws and financial incentives, but the process begins with us.
Pasted from <http://www.socialchange2.com/index.php/book>
New book I found.
Social Change 2.0 represents such a solution for our social systems. It stands on the shoulders of Social Change 1.0 because it could not function optimally without the rule of law and a democratic form of government that allows for free expression. But it is designed to go beyond the constraints purposefully built into this more incremental approach to social change.
Pasted from <http://www.socialchange2.com/index.php/book>
All people who were ready to start the EcoTeam Program in January or February 1994 received a request to participate in the research. A total of 60 EcoTeams was involved. All questionnaires which were used in the project included three sources of information (1) almost all 100 environmentally relevant household behaviors and investments that were included in the EcoTeam Program (e. g. turning off the faucet (tap) while brushing one’s teeth, use of the stand-by function of the television, and installation of energy-saving light bulbs), (2) psychological backgrounds of behavior, (3) data concerning the amount of solid household waste, and the amounts of natural gas, water and electricity that was used over a period of two weeks by participating households.
Pasted from <http://www.empowermentinstitute.net/files/Leiden_study.html>
[dc] we need to understand what the consequences would be if a large number of people adopted such practices. The implication as that such changes would make a significant difference. Does anyone know of studies that attempt to extrapolate from current practices to the consequences of changes in those practices? My impression Is that individuals do not compare to large systems, such as industrial production and commercial real estate. I am sure that individuals changing behavior has some effect and does educate them through sensitization that actions make s differences. But we don’t want illusions.
We simply do not know!
John Gray
- Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism by George Akerlof and Robert Shiller
Pasted from <http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n22/john-gray/we-simply-do-not-know>
The trouble with prevailing theories, in Akerlof and Shiller’s view, is that they assume human beings are more rational than they actually are.
Pasted from <http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n22/john-gray/we-simply-do-not-know>
. The observation that markets are prone to violent swings of emotion, recurrent illusions and powerful stories is a piece of perennial wisdom that was summarised in Charles Mackay’s Memories of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, published in 1841. More recently, George Soros has insisted that market behaviour is a reflexive process intrinsically liable to lead to cycles of boom and bust, as the beliefs and decisions of participants are reinforced by a desire to go with the trend until the market becomes unsustainable.
Pasted from <http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n22/john-gray/we-simply-do-not-know>
Certainly, the ‘invisible hand’ is one of Smith’s central ideas, but he never saw it as working in a mechanical fashion. A network of hidden adjustments whereby conflicting interests could be reconciled, in a complex process that always involved human emotions, the invisible hand was neither all-powerful nor uniformly benign. It could be thwarted by collusion among businessmen, and when given free rein its social effects could be seriously harmful. Like other thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith understood the imperfectability of human institutions.
Pasted from <http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n22/john-gray/we-simply-do-not-know>
He was concerned about the ways in which free markets detached people from communities, and some of these worries fed into the theory of alienation developed by that other celebrated classical economist, Karl Marx.
Pasted from <http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n22/john-gray/we-simply-do-not-know>
Even our list of possible outcomes may turn out to have omitted the ones that are most important in shaping events. Such an omission was one of the factors that led Long-Term Capital Management, a highly leveraged hedge fund set up by two Nobel Prize winning economists, to fail in 1998-2000. The information used in applying the formula did not include the possibility of such events as the Asian financial crisis and Russia’s default on its sovereign debt, which destabilised global financial markets and helped destroy the fund.
Pasted from <http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n22/john-gray/we-simply-do-not-know>
. The orthodoxy that came unstuck with the collapse of LTCM was not faulty because it neglected the vagaries of human moods; its mistake was to think that the unknown future could be turned into a set of calculable risks and, in effect, conjured out of existence, which was impossible. Several centuries earlier, Pascal – one of the founders of probability theory – had come to the same conclusion, when in the Pensées he asks ironically: ‘Is it probable that probability brings certainty?
Pasted from <http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n22/john-gray/we-simply-do-not-know>
The error was repeated in the 1990s, when economists came to believe that complex mathematical formulae could tame uncertainty in the murky world of derivatives. Steeped in history as they were, this was a delusion that none of the classical economists entertained.
Pasted from <http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n22/john-gray/we-simply-do-not-know>
The hegemony of Positivism in economics obscured Keynes’s scepticism about probabilistic knowledge, his most important contribution to the discipline. G.L.S. Shackle set Keynes’s argument out systematically in his neglected masterpieceEpistemics and Economics: A Critique of Economic Doctrines (1972). Shackle is probably the only significant economist to have been influenced both by Keynes and by his arch-rival, F.A. Hayek. He knew both of them well, but argued that neither had digested the full implications for economics of our ignorance of the future. Hayek said that governments could never know enough to plan the economy successfully – a claim vindicated by the miserable record of central planning in Communist countries. At the same time, he attributed near omniscience to markets, and never doubted that if left to its own devices the economy would liquidate mistaken investments and return to equilibrium. Against this, Keynes had shown that there is no market mechanism that ensures revival; economic contraction can be self-reinforcing, and only government action can then create a way out.
Pasted from <http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n22/john-gray/we-simply-do-not-know>
Shackle took Keynes’s argument a step further, and showed that no economic policy can ensure economic stability indefinitely. ‘Keynesian’ policies are no exception to this rule. Deficit financing and monetary expansion may have worked well in the conditions that existed after the Second World War. It is not clear that they will be so effective today, when globalisation has brought a freedom of capital movements that did not exist then. The lesson of Shackle is that we must be resourceful in devising new remedies, while not losing sight of the fact that none of them works for long.
Pasted from <http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n22/john-gray/we-simply-do-not-know>
How can we understand this crisis when it seems to have come out of the blue with no cause?’ They are right that part of the answer lies in an intellectual default within economics, but they seem oblivious of the role of ideology in producing this default. The deformation of economics was not the result only of factors internal to the discipline, it was also part of the short-lived Western triumphalism that followed the end of the Cold War.
Pasted from <http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n22/john-gray/we-simply-do-not-know>
Those were the years when slackers throughout the world were enjoined to submit themselves to the rigours of ‘the Washington consensus’ – a mix of dogmatic policy prescriptions and hypocritical rhetoric that enjoyed the support of the great majority of economists. According to that consensus, the market regime that was installed in Britain, the US and a few other countries from the 1980s onwards could not only ensure stability and promote steady growth there but was a model – the only possible model – for countries everywhere. The one truly rational economic regime, free market capitalism, was also the most productive. As such it was bound to drive every other system out of existence, and would eventually be adopted worldwide. This faith in the universal spread of free markets animated much of the thinking of the American-led institutions overseeing the world economy, such as the IMF. Along with economists in university departments in much of the world, these institutions succumbed to a quasi-religious belief that the free market was the germ of a single, universal economic system.
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. Like other branches of the study of society, economics remains culturally parochial, and its underlying concepts based on a few centuries of Western experience.
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They don’t appear to realize that the assumption of a categorical distinction between ‘economic’ and ‘non-economic’ motives is one of the chief reasons recent economic theory has been so consistently remote from reality.
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Keynes and the classical economists before him knew that there is no realm of market exchange that obeys laws of the kind that can be formulated in the natural sciences. Economics and politics are not separate branches of human activity, and economic life cannot be studied independently of social divisions and political conflicts among populations, along with their cultures and religions
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. It must be doubted, though, that the authors will succeed in persuading economists of the inadequacy of the conception of rational action. The profession is one of the few areas of human activity in which that conception is applicable. In its intra-academic varieties, at any rate, economics is insulated from the world not only by its narrow explanatory methodology but also because it rewards the mathematical modelling that resulted in nearly all of its members failing to anticipate the financial crisis. As institutionalised in universities, the notion of rational decision-making is self-perpetuating. Economics as currently practiced may have only a slight grip on market behaviour, but it seems to be powerfully predictive of the behaviour of economists.
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Gray is right a far as he goes. The human sid eis not yet articulated, but we need t bear in mind Saul’s view that the economic crisis is a diversion from the real crisis, which is civilizational.
From the LA Times, another species hurting. This is a possible future for a billion/
Children starve in parched southern Madagascar
As temperatures rise, drought, crop failure and deforestation have combined to create a crisis of malnutrition.
Pasted from <http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-climate-madagascar21-2009nov21,0,3695358.story?page=2>
Screen clipping taken: 11/21/2009 8:27 PM from
http://www.logicbuy.com/deals/acer-aspire-timeline-as3810tz-laptop/16706.aspx
e360 digest
20 NOV 2009: EMERGENCY RAINFOREST FUND
CREATED BY PRINCE CHARLES AND 35 NATIONS
Britain’s Prince Charles has struck an agreement with 35 nations to contribute $22 billion to $36 billionto reduce the destruction of tropical forests by 25 percent by 2015. The Prince of Wales said the U.S. has agreed to contribute $275 million to the rainforest protection fund, which will pay countries such as Indonesia and Brazil to preserve forests rather than felling them for timber or agricultural use. Ed Miliband, the U.K.’s energy and climate change secretary, said a global mechanism for paying countries to protect tropical forests is on the agenda at next month’s Copenhagen climate summit and is “closer
Prince Charles
than it’s ever been” to being codified in an international treaty. Deforestation is responsible for nearly 20 percent of global carbon emissions, and various nations and conservation groups are working to develop programs known as REDD — Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation. Conservationists said the Prince of Wales’ effort must ensure that the funds are not squandered through local corruption or questionable forest protection schemes. The conservationists cited the example of Norway’s pledging $250 million to slow deforestation in Guyana. Since the Guyanese government claimed an artificially high rate of previous deforestation, it can receive payments while actually doing little or nothing to slow current forest loss.
From yale environment, might be intresting to look at thee summaries as a system.
Nitrogen, series, and connection to agriculture threaening to agriculture. And our food supply.
<http://e360.yale.edu/content/digest.msp?id=2155>
rtment: Analysis
by fred pearce
Over the last century, the intensive use of chemical fertilizers has saturated the Earth’s soils and waters with nitrogen. Now scientists are warning that we must move quickly to revolutionize agricultural systems and greatly reduce the amount of nitrogen we put into the planet’s ecosystems.
Provocative New Study Warns of Crossing Planetary Boundaries
by carl zimmer
The Earth has nine biophysical thresholds beyond which it cannot be pushed without disastrous consequences, the authors of a new paper in the journal Nature report. Ominously, these scientists say, we have already moved past three of these tipping points.
by daniel goleman
Wal-Mart’s push to develop a sustainability index for the products it carries could prove to be a pivotal moment in the effort to make consumers aware of the environmental impacts of what they buy.
Climate Threat to Polar Bears:
Despite Facts, Doubters Remain
by ed struzik
Wildlife biologists and climate scientists overwhelmingly agree that the disappearance of Arctic sea ice will lead to a sharp drop in polar bear populations. But some skeptics remain unconvinced, and they have managed to persuade the Canadian government not to take key steps to protect the animals.
by michael d. lemonick
A new U.S. government report paints a disturbing picture of the current and future effects of climate change and offers a glimpse of what the nation’s climate will be like by century’s end.
Regional Climate Pact’s Lesson:
Avoid Big Giveaways to Industry
by keith schneider
As Congress struggles over a bill to limit carbon emissions, a cap-and-trade program is already operating in 10 Northeastern states. But the regional project’s mixed success offers a cautionary warning to U.S. lawmakers on how to proceed.
by richard conniff
Environmentalists, utilities, and green businesses are turning to behavioral economics to find innovative ways of influencing people to do the right thing when it comes to the environment. Is this approach really good for the planet or just a fad?
Despite Economy, the Prospects for Green Energy Remain Strong
by jackson robinson and elizabeth levy
The economic downturn need not halt the development of green energy. In fact, with renewable technologies improving dramatically and new U.S. policies emerging, continued progress toward an energy revolution is inevitable.
by john waldman
They’re calling it “global weirding” – the way in which rising temperatures are causing species to change their ranges, the timing of their migrations, and the way they interact with other living things. And the implications of all this are only beginning to be understood.
Surviving Two Billion Cars: China Must Lead the Way
by deborah gordon and daniel sperling
The number of vehicles worldwide is expected to reach two billion in the next two decades. Surprisingly, China – where the demand for cars has been skyrocketing – just may offer the best hope of creating a new, greener transportation model.
by richard conniff
Yale University’s recently opened Kroon Hall is a state-of-the-art model of where the green building movement is headed. Yet even this showcase for renewable energy highlights the difficulties of creating a building that is 100 percent carbon neutral.
As Effects of Warming Grow, U.N. Report is Quickly Dated
by michael d. lemonick
Issued less than two years ago, the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was a voluminous and impressive document. Yet key portions of the report are already out of date, as evidence shows the impacts of warming intensifying from the Arctic to Antarctica.
by bruce stutz
In the last few decades, urban sprawl, once regarded as largely a U.S. phenomenon, has spread across Europe. Now an emerging group of planners is promoting a new kind of development — mixed-use, low-carbon communities that are pedestrian-friendly and mass-transit-oriented.
by keith schneider
In a bold departure from past U.S. policies, President Barack Obama sees clean energy and “green jobs” as critical components of an economic stimulus strategy.
by carl zimmer
A number of companies, including one headed by biologist and entrepreneur Craig Venter, are developing genetically engineered biofuels that they say will provide a greener alternative to oil. But some environmentalists are far from convinced.
by jim motavalli
Any federal assistance package for U.S. automakers must require that they finally commit to retooling their industry to produce cleaner, more fuel-efficient cars.
by keith schneider
For four decades, American politicians have talked about ending U.S. dependence on foreign oil. But during the campaign and since his election victory, Barack Obama has made it clear that he finally intends to change the way America powers itself.
The Greenhouse Gas That Nobody Knew
by richard conniff
When industry began using NF3 in high-tech manufacturing, it was hailed as a way to fight global warming. But new research shows that this gas has 17,000 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide and is rapidly increasing in the atmosphere – and that’s turning an environmental success story into a public relations disaster.
by fred pearce
You’ve heard the environmental horror stories: rivers running black, air unfit to breathe, two new coal-fired power plants a week. But thanks to a surging entrepreneurial spirit and new policies, China is fast becoming a leader in green innovation, from recycling to developing electric cars to harnessing the wind.
by keith schneider
U.S. cities have been using green planning to spark economic development, helping create a real urban renaissance in America. With a new administration soon to arrive in Washington, these same approaches may finally start being used on a national scale.
by richard conniff
Despite the potential for abuse, the concept of paying others to compensate for our environmental sins can be a valuable tool in helping reduce carbon emissions. But the world can’t simply buy its way out of global warming.
by fred pearce
With food prices skyrocketing and climate change looming, the world needs a green revolution like the one a generation ago. But many valuable seed varieties have been lost – and scientists now are scrambling to protect those that remain before they vanish down the genetic drain.
by vaclav smil
Texas billionaire T. Boone Pickens has always been one to think big. But his sweeping 10-year energy plan for America faces obstacles that may be insurmountable.
by jeff goodell
The coal industry, political leaders, and some environmentalists have high hopes for the concept of carbon sequestration, which takes carbon dioxide emissions from coal plants and buries them underground. But so far, this new technology does not live up to the hype.
by chris mooney
The Bush administration has been widely criticized for placing politics over science when it comes to environmental policy-making. The next president must act to reverse that trend.
by carole bass
Nanotechnology, now used in everything from computers to toothpaste, is booming. But concern is growing that its development is outpacing our understanding of how to use it safely.
by carl zimmer
Paleontologists and geologists are looking to the ancient past for clues about whether global warming will result in mass extinctions. What they’re finding is not encouraging.
Water Scarcity: The Real Food Crisis
by fred pearce
In the discussion of the global food emergency, one underlying factor is barely mentioned: The world is running out of water. A British science writer, who authored a major book on water resources, here explores the nexus between water overconsumption and current food shortages.
Carbon’s Burden on the World’s Oceans
by carl safina and marah j. hardt
The burgeoning amount of carbon dioxide in oceans is affecting a lot more than coral reefs. It is also damaging marine life and, most ominously, threatening the future survival of marine populations.
Pasted from <http://e360.yale.edu/content/department.msp?id=115>
O’Reilly Warns Of Web War
The Web, which began life as an open community where information and tools were freely shared across geographic, political, and social boundaries, is in danger of becoming segmented into a federation of closed camps led by a handful of increasingly powerful vendors, said Internet pundit Tim O’Reilly. O’Reilly said efforts by Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, and other tech vendors — as well as publishers like Rupert Murdoch’s Dow Jones — to create closed communities around their products and services are jeopardizing the freedom, and the spirit, of the Web. "It’s no longer about the Internet as a platform," said O’Reilly. "It’s Google as a platform, it’s Amazon as a platform, it’s Microsoft as a platform," he said
<http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/web2.0/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=221800396>
Economics lacks an anchored understanding of the nature of the reality that economics is supposed to illuminate. This column, which introduces a new CEPR Policy Insight, says that instability of leverage, connectivity, and the potential instability of the price level have all been neglected in stable-with-frictions macro theory. Technical innovations will not bring real progress as long as “stability-with-frictions” remains the ruling paradigm. Meanwhile, governments are not prepared to face another crisis.
Fifty-some years ago, students were taught that the private sector had no tendency to gravitate to full employment, that it was prone to undesirable fluctuations amplified by multiplier and accelerator effects, and that it was riddled with market failures of various sorts. But it was also believed that a benevolent, competent, democratic government could stabilise the macroeconomy and reduce the welfare consequences of most market failures to relative insignificance.
Fifty years later, around the beginning years of this century, students were taught that representative governments produce pointless fluctuations in prices and output but, if they can be constrained from doing so – by an independent central bank, for example – free markets are sure to produce full employment and, of course, many other blessings besides. Macroeconomic policy doctrine had shifted from stabilising the private to constraining the public sector.
This long swing in our understanding of the economy spans a half-century of prolific technical accomplishments in economics (Blanchard 2008). But what the story shows is that, ontologically, economics has been completely at sea, drifting on the surface in currents of our own making. We lack an anchored understanding of the nature of the reality that economics is supposed to illuminate.
Neoclassical syntheses
Around the turn of the century the pendulum began to swing back – although not very far. “Freshwater” and “saltwater” macroeconomists came to a “brackish” compromise known as the New Neoclassical Synthesis. The New Keynesians adopted the dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) framework pioneered by the New Classicals while the latter accepted the market “frictions” and capital market “imperfections” long insisted upon by the former.
This New Synthesis, like the Old Synthesis of fifty years ago, postulates that the economy behaves like a stable general equilibrium system whose equilibrating properties are somewhat hampered by frictions. Economists of this persuasion are now struggling to explain that what has just happened is actually logically possible. But the recent crisis will not fit.
The syntheses, Old and New, I believe, are wrong. They stem from a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of a market economy. Further technical innovations in economic modelling will not bring real progress as long as “stability-with-frictions” remains the ruling paradigm. The genuine instabilities of the modern economy have to be faced.
A complex adaptive system
The economy is an adaptive dynamical system. It possesses the self-regulating, “equilibrating” properties that we usually refer to as “market mechanisms”. But these mechanisms do not always suffice to ensure the coordination of activities in the complex system. Almost forty years ago, I proposed the “corridor hypothesis”. The hypothesis suggested that the economy might show the desirable “classical” adjustment properties within some “corridor” around a hypothetical equilibrium path but that its self-regulating capabilities would be impaired in the “Keynesian” regions outside the corridor. For large displacements from equilibrium, therefore, the market system might not be able recover unless aided by stabilisation policy.
The original argument for the corridor concerned the conditions under which to expect significant deviation-amplifying multiplier effects and might not be all that persuasive by itself. It is the case, however, that all other known complex dynamical systems, whether human-made or occurring in nature, are known to have the property that their homeostatic capabilities are bounded. It is extremely unlikely that the economy would be different in this regard.
It is reasonable to believe, therefore, that the state-space of the system – in addition to regions with good equilibrating properties – has regions where deviation-amplifying processes have impaired these properties. But the story does not end there. The present crisis has shown us a whole array of destabilising, positive feedback processes that are not as tightly bounded as the multiplier. Deleveraging by banks, for example, cuts off credit to businesses, which leads to a recession, which in turn impairs bank assets and adds to the incentive to shorten bank balance sheets. The most dangerous of these destabilising feedback loops, which we have so far managed to avoid, is Fisherian debt-deflation. There are regions of the state-space that should be avoided at all cost.
This kind of impulse-propagation reasoning asks what the system’s behaviour will be if it is displaced far from equilibrium. It treats the impulse as exogenous and misses, therefore, the possibility of endogenously generated instability.
We have known about the endogenous instability of fractional reserve banking for some 200 years. It is Hyman Minsky’s contribution to have explained that this financial instability extends beyond just the commercial banking system. Minsky argued that a long period without crises – such as the late “Great Moderation” – would lead to an increased willingness to assume risk and thus cause the system to become financially fragile. And the fragile system will sooner or later crash.
Systemic problems
The currently pressing problems all concern instabilities that have been neglected in stable-with-frictions macro theory. They constitute three themes I discussed in more detail in previous Vox columns (Leijonhufvud, June 2007, January 2009, and July 2009).
- Instability of leverage. Competing to achieve rates of return several times higher than returns in industry, financial institutions were at historically high levels of leverage towards the end of the boom, earning historically minimal risk spreads – and carrying large volumes of assets soon to be revealed as “toxic.”
- Connectivity. In the US, under the Glass-Steagall regulations, the financial system had been segmented into distinct industries each characterised by the type of assets they could invest in and liabilities they could issue. Firms in different industry segments were not in direct competition with each other. Deregulation has dramatically increased connectivity in the global network of financial institutions. The crisis of the American savings and loan industry in the 1980s, although costly enough, was confined to that market segment. The present crisis also started in American home finance but has spread and amplified across the world.
- Potential instability of the price level. Over the current decade, the American consumer goods price level has been stabilised largely through the exchange rate policies and competitive exports of China and several other export-oriented emerging countries. The Great Moderation has left a legacy of low volatility of inflation expectations. If these conditions were to change, inflation targeting with endogenous base money and the federal funds rate as the only instrument is bound to prove inadequate for monetary control.
Current issues
There are four issues to watch for:
- Twin dangers looming ahead are Japanese-style stagnation on the one hand and Latin-American-style high inflation on the other. In more normal times, we would regard these prospects as both unlikely and very far apart on a spectrum of eventualities. High levels of public debt, large unfunded liabilities, and large current deficits mean that they are not at all far apart in the current situation. The apparent political difficulties in decisively remedying the public finances are likely to mean that this is not just a temporary predicament. The navigable channel between Scylla and Charybdis has become quite narrow.
- One overwhelmingly important fact should guide policy over the near-term future – since current bailouts and stimulus policies have stretched public finances to the utmost, governments do not have the fiscal resources to handle another bubble bursting. Policy, therefore, should be conducted in afail-safe mode. The current policies of extremely low interest rates are not fail-safe. They are aimed at reflating asset prices just enough to stave off a deeper recession. This is a delicate operation, not a robust, fail-safe move. It is creating strong incentives for the banks to return to the tables and resume the game of maturity transformation at high leverage that got us into our current troubles in the first place. It is evident that the banks are responding promptly to those incentives
- High leverage has been the big culprit in the current disaster. To reduce the risk of another crash, we must curb leverage. But governments do not want the financial sector to deleverage now because the requisite falling asset prices and curtailed credit would deepen the recession. The question, of course, is: If not now, when?
- The central banks are planning “exit strategies” by which they mean returning their balance sheets, which are presently bloated beyond recognition with a mix of strange assets, to a condition more resembling that normal to central banks. This will not be easy. If they succeed, however, they will still face the prospect of having to engage in many of the same desperate, unconventional policies in a future crisis. Under present arrangements, the responsibilities of central banks have no well-defined limits. This problem can only be solved by regulation of the financial sector. At present, it does not seem that we know how to do it.
References
Blanchard, Olivier (2008), “The state of macro,” NBER Working Paper 14259.
Leijonhufvud, Axel (2007), “The perils of inflation targeting”, VoxEU.org, 25 June 2007
Leijonhufvud, Axel (2009), “Fixing the crisis: Two systemic problems”, VoxEU.org, 12 January.
Leijonhufvud, Axel (2009), “Curbing instability: policy and regulation”, VoxEU.org, 11 July.
Leijonhufvud, Axel (2009), “Macroeconomics and the Crisis: A Personal Appraisal”, CEPR Policy Insight 41, November.
Pasted from <http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/4244>
Pasted from <http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/4244>
SUMMARY OF A FAIR COUNTRY:
In this startlingly original vision of Canada, thinker John Ralston Saul unveils 3 founding myths. Saul argues that the famous “peace, order, and good government” that supposedly defines Canada is a distortion of the country’s true nature. Every single document before the BNA Act, he points out, used the phrase “peace, welfare, and good government,” demonstrating that the well-being of its citizenry was paramount.
Pasted from <http://www.johnralstonsaul.com/SUM_AFC.html>
John Ralston Saul is already explaining that almost all of the reactions to the crisis which officially began in 2008 have been little more than that – reactions to the status quo. Most of them have made the mistake of thinking that the crisis was provoked by a financial crisis. Saul says this is not the case, and the crisis is far broader and far more profound. He believes that the more we react to the financial crisis the more we will freeze ourselves into the old globalist system, which is already on its way out.
The Collapse of Globalism is going to be re-issued with a major new conclusion, first in Great Britain in June 2009 withAtlantic Books. There will be further editions around the world re-issued over the next 6 months. Stay tuned!
SUMMARY:
Proponents of qlobalism predicted that nation states were heading toward irrelevance: that economics. not politics or arms, would determine the course of human events; that growth in international trade would foster prosperous markets that would, in turn abolish poverty and change dictatorships into democracies.
The successes of globalization include the astonishing growth in world trade and the unexpected "se of India and China, which seem slated to become twenty-first-century superpowers. But its collapse has Left us with a chaotic vacuum: the United States appears determined to ignore his international critics; in Europe. Problems such as racism. terrorism and renewed internal nationalism call for uniquely European solutions born out of local experiences and needs, Elsewhere, the world looks for answers to African debt. the AIDS epidemic, the return of fundamentalism and terrorism. all of which perversely refuse to disappear despite the theoretical rise in global prosperity.
Insightful and prophetic, The Collapse of Globalism is destined to take its place as one of the seminal books of our time.
Pasted from <http://www.johnralstonsaul.com/SUM_Collapse.html>
From the bacon biograpjy..
oppose.d to a Nature. re.duce.d to malleable matter. Bacon
faults the irrational magicians of the. Reaissairce.—alcimists
aird otir.r sci.irtiflc forebears .who studie.d nature. aird
coirducte.d experiments iir tire. irope.s of directing iratural
force.s toward irumair e.irds—for being too re.straiire.d iir tire.ir
collaborative. approacir to nature.. Witir tire. ne.w
technologies, men could irave. tire. powe.r “not oirlv to be.ird
nature. ge.ntlv, but to conque.r aird subdue., even sirake. ire.r to
ire.r fouirdatioirs.” Even tirougir iris scie.irtiflc utopia
propose.d air e.sse.ntiallv me.ciranistic approacir to solving
proble.ms by bre.akiirg tire.m down iirto parts. Bacoir’s
writiirgs are. full of viole.irt, vivid. sexually cirarge.d
me.tapirors iir wiricir ire. ofte.ir pe.rsoirifle.s Nature. as a
re.calcitrairt womair. Promisiirg tirat tire. ire.w scie.irce. would
briirg about “tire. masculiire. birtir of time.,” ire. declares. “1 am
… le.adiirg to you Nature. witir all ire.r cirildre.ir to biird ire.r to
your service. aird make. ire.r your slave..” Guide.d by tins
ove.n.ve.e.iriirg ambitioir, mode.rirs irave. pursue.d air extreme.,
aggressive., grairdiose. irotioir of domiirioir—Domiirioir witir a
capital D.
Screen clipping taken: 11/21/2009 9:10 PM
. Just as Proteus had to be bound fsL before he
would change his shapes, so nature" cxhibits herself more clearly
wider the (riais and vexations of alt than when left to herself.” Art was
He would not have been moved by Max Webers
dšsenchanted comment that sciencc as a value-free activity can say
nothing about the meaning of the world or give any answer to Tolstoy’s anguished question, ‘What shall we do and how shall we live?
For tue meaning of the world Bacon looked not to science but to the
teachings of the Christian religion, in which he was a believer Nor
could he have considered science ro be a valoc-Ercc activity, sincc for
him he invcsLigaE.iofl of nature, the book of God’s works, for the
purpose of increasing knowledge and human welfare, could itself be
seen as a religious activity, a form of service Lo CodY
their country had received honor no higher than heroic. In
the case of the inventions of printing, gunpowder, and the magnctk
compass, he pointed out that they had changed the whole face of the
world—so much so that no empire, no sect, no star seefl,s to hase
exerted greater influence in human affairs than these mechanical
Discoveries.