World Coloured Glasses

Concerning Nigel: taking on the Omega Male paradigm

2010-04-03T00:27:00.000+01:00

Concerning Nigel: understanding the Omega Male from Ann Danylkiw on Vimeo.

The Omega Male is a new kind of man, in the last 30 years that has evolved out of feminism. Men's roles have changed alongside changes in social equity, but their roles and community have not been as well nor as effectively defined as feminism. The Man Collective is a group of men acting to redefine masculinity.

On 22 March, 2010 the Man Collective had their first Gathering in south London. Before the Gathering, I asked women what they wanted to know, and on the day, the men answered.

Lord Stern: the media had ought to “reflect… very carefully” on how they “behaved”

2010-03-21T10:24:00.004Z

Lord Nicholas Stern gave a lecture at the London School of Economics on 16 March (last week as this is posted, listen here). In addition to calling Freakonomics “cute,” Lord Stern defined the role for the media in the dialogue surrounding climate change, a role that needs to be more socially responsible than it has been.

Here’s what he said:

“If you look at why it is that people are more skeptical about global warming and ask them is it because they read all about the emails at the University of East Anglia or the glaciers in the Himalayas. Some of them, most of them, it’s a cold winter… so I think laying out the evidence if it’s a bad winter… explain to people they live on a planet and different parts of a planet, and have different kinds of experience and here they are, this isn’t so mysterious right?

“And this is the kind of explanation we have to do and you there on Panorama [BBC documentary TV series] ought to be doing exactly this kind of-- you’re there to provoke responsible, serious discussion not to say-- I’m not accusing you directly, let’s talk about the media. If you find someone that says the earth is round and someone that says the earth is flat, do you give them equal airtime? If policy depends on this, giving them equal airtime is deeply irresponsible. And that’s the kind of thing you’ve got to think through.

“If you find out that somebody may have been less than transparent about emails less than transparent in their academic work and may have been because there’s a report coming in about what happened at UEA, you ask yourselves the question: if that person’s work was deleted what difference would it make? … Let’s just suppose it’s deleted, what difference would it make to the 200 year old scientific argument? Joseph Fourier the great French scientist, mathematics, and physicist, who first worked out by looking at the heat stability, heat equilibrium of the earth that something was trapping the green house gases in 1820. Was he part of a conspiracy? This must be a conspiracy with a time machine!

“This is absolutely incredible that people in the media do not ask what is the relevance of the news I’m reporting for the big issue that we’re trying to understand--that’s where the irresponsibility lies-- not in the reporting-- of course these things should be reported, of course we have to have transparent discussion, that’s absolutely fundamental, very important. Yet the IPCC report is 1,000 pages, there must be 15 or 20 mistakes there. It would be an incredibly low number of mistakes in 1,000 pages. But we must open them up to scrutiny, ask ourselves where they are; let’s discuss them, put them right. But also what difference does it make to the basic policy argument about the risks we run from global warming.

“… So there’s some very big questions of how the media have behaved in all this that I think they ought to reflect on and reflect on very carefully and talk to academics who do the work to try to help that process, not just you, it’s all of us. But I found the nature of that discussion, to be rather irresponsible.”

Think before you speak is a concept we all should have been taught as children. And the media has always had a role in history as a rallying force -- the point is, sometime after the second world war (in an abstract, vague sense) the media’s role became more as provocateur, espousing less actual news and more extreme opinion. There is an argument to be had for creating a useful dialogue in airing different opinions, even extreme points of view. But it’s become sloppy, like a great big pile of loose stools. Airing different sides of the argument is no longer constructive.

In the media’s quest for page hits, provoking controversy is the easiest way to go about that. Say something extreme on your channel (webpage, etc.), direct your users to your blog to comment -- your blog that you’ve filled every available centimeter with flashing adverts-- and voila, instant page hits.

I’ve pitched social responsibility in media as a topic for many an editor and I have yet to find one that wants to have this discussion, really and honestly.

The kind of responsibility Stern is talking about may or may not step beyond the “unbiased” media paradigm. But I believe media has never been unbiased, there’s no such thing as unbiased. Even if a news story is reporting the facts-- which facts are being reported, why was the story covered at all, what makes news news and what parts of it are news worthy? Everything is a judgement call. Even considering the nature of being “unbiased” implies a judgement call.

We, the media, have always played an important role is shaping, broadly, the public dialogue on any topic. We need to think about that role again, not only for the future of the planet but perhaps more importantly, for the future of journalism.

Localized is beautiful OR how I learned to love the UNFCCC after Cop15

2010-02-26T19:19:00.004Z

I was at a panel of experts Thursday night given by FIELD entitled "Road to Mexico." (Cop16)

The consensus isn't good: for a legally binding, comprehensive, international agreement on climate change isn't likely at Cop16 in Mexico this year. And next year, Cop17 in South Africa, well... that's not looking too likely either.

But this is actually good news (and not just because it means I’m right;) ! Here's how:

I've been toying with the idea that a larger international agreement -- a fully comprehensive one-- isn't necessary, practical, or prudent.

While panelists stressed the need to get going immediately, Jan Hyvarinen (Director, FIELD) said, “concrete stuff on the ground is important this year. This year in a way needs to be a year of implementation and that will help bring the trust.” Panelist and LDC group Chair Bruno Sekilo from Ghana said that trust had gone from the process after Cop15. He sited the circus surrounding Obama’s appearance as a key undermining factor, saying “later it’s said he’s not coming to the end because it’s the outcome that is more acceptable to him. You have a group of negotiators here and they hear that the outcome is already known in the first place so that Obama can come. That was really demoralizing and it’s the timing of everything.”

Trust, the panel explained, will be built by countries doing individual adaptation and mitigation actions on their own to show, ostensibly, how committed they are to combatting climate change.

The audience, full of environmentalists, NGOs, and other professionals all echoed the itchiness to get going with climate change and not wait for certain countries that might never come a long.

Andy from Oxfam asked: “Is it not time to actually plow ahead and forge alliances between European Union, progressive countries and G77 and go ahead and start mapping out those norms and principles and rules that a majority of the world does agree are actually needed to start tackling this problem? And let the United States and other countries come along later, as and if they will.”

An audience member from ICE and a barrister both asked if perhaps now would be the best time for countries like certain small island states to bring proceedings in international courts against developed countries who have fallen short of their Kyoto emissions cuts or aren’t willing to cut emissions according to what’s dictated by the science.

Damian Morris from Sandbag asked about the possibility of global energy sector emissions cap, saying that power is the single largest sector and represents ⅓ of world wide carbon emissions, it’s capable of deeper cuts than whole economies, the global power sector could cut 60% by 2030, power cuts by biggest electricity emitters could widen Kyoto cuts 40%.

Panelist Camilla Toulmin (Director, IIED) said that it was perhaps best for countries to do what needed to be done, and that other countries’ efforts might goad those lagging behind on climate action into progress.

The undercurrent running through all of this is rather obvious: ultimately, what will matter most is localized solutions to combat climate change.

At a sociological level, we related better to each other face to face. If we think about that and extend it to policy, the discourse in international development policy has stopped being about finding a model for development but involving individual stakeholders to find solutions that work for them based on culture and geographical location (habitat) (i.e. what works in Guatemala won’t in Guyana). The success or lack thereof in combating climate change will come at a local level.

According to the OECD report on cities, “Local governments in OECD countries are already responsible for 70% of public investment and 50% of public spending in environment.” The report also says that local level policies are excellent incubators to “fine-tune national enabling frameworks.” Hint: keywords used; the words framework and enabling both imply broad policy measures, specificity is to left to the local level to figure out what works best in a given environment.

It’s worth noting that the most successful reforms whether it be in environment or development or governance work when national governments allow for autonomy in local governance to experiment. The largest examples of this are China’s democracy experiments (varying provinces and towns to varying degrees) and Kerala in India, not to mention 10:10 in the UK.

The same must be for an international climate agreement. Certain issues will be necessary to flush out at an international level, and others must be left up to individual countries to flush out for themselves and perhaps compete with each other on (in a good natured sort of way-- not the sort that leads to trade protectionism and sanctions).

At the international level, it is clear that there will need to be unified metrics for carbon emissions and tracking. This is the most important. There will also need to be clear regulatory framework that can be used at national levels to govern carbon offsets as well as some sort of international clearing house for carbon offsets that will also allow seamless carbon trading across borders.

But things like sectoral caps on emissions, carbon price floors (and ceilings) should be left to national governments. It will be left to municipal governments (state, city, village level) to come up with the best transport, resource distribution channels (food, water, for example) based on local capabilities and income levels.

I don’t think it’s coincidence that there have been many intercity and inter-region cooperative agreements about climate change adaptation already. The state of California (combined state and city level) may in fact now be more involved with equivalent level governments in China than either national governments are themselves (which offers further support of the notion that California really need to be its own country;). Five cities in the Mediterranean region (Fez, Barcelona, Haifa, Stuttgart, and Nouakchott) signed an agreement in January to agree to collaborate on innovative solutions to climate change. The EU and South Africa will be collaborating on transport reform in the run up to the 2010 World Cup and 2012 Olympics. And more news of small collaborative unions like these hit the news everyday.

As to finance, it’s been clear for some time that financiers are ready to get the money flowing towards profits coming from a low-carbon future. This is everything from increasing supply chain sustainability and efficiency to profiting on carbon trading. Insurers are calling for businesses to factor climate change into risk management. Up until now financiers have insisted they need firm national policy. Let’s see how fast that changes as the UNFCCC process drags on for years.

As a climate agreement is hashed out in however many years (and it will take years), as international and national governments drag their feet on policy it is up to regional and municipal governments to push ahead with what needs to be done. We need to recognize what can realistically be achieved at each level of governance and allow that guide advocacy. This non-sense about pushing for an absolute legal agreement at Cop16 will not help to achieve the desired outcome and instead foster frustration and negativity and cannot be productive.

Localize solutions and the future will be clean and green.

The Yuan and the Chinese Labour Market Shortages

2010-02-24T17:55:00.004Z

Something funny’s going on in China. There’s a labour market shortage.

David Baille of CamSemi noted in an email interview last month (before the Chinese New Year holiday) that the South Korean firm that manufactures part of his product in China was short on workers because, “so many skilled workers left the coastal manufacturing areas over Chinese New year last February and have not returned.” That trend was expected to repeat this year as well.

Workers, according to Geoffrey Crowthall at China Labour Bureau, must be paid more to endure hazardous working conditions because factory conditions and wages (taken together) currently do not exceed the value working on a farm.

Liu Shinan writes in China Daily that labour shortages are due:

“First, the Chinese government's policy to give top priority to the development of agriculture and annul the agriculture tax has paid off. Rural residents are earning more from farming.
Second, the government's strategy of boosting development in central and western regions has achieved initial success.
The rural surplus labor has more employment opportunities in the manufacturing industries in towns near their home.
Third, China's earlier recovery from the economic recession has significantly increased orders for coastal manufacturing plants, which are eager to retrieve the workers they laid off when the economic crisis struck.”

But he also writes, “The average wage level is 10 times lower than that in the United States. It will take a long time for Chinese labor costs to catch up with developed countries.” Of course, this isn’t the right comparison to make. Recently, companies manufacturing in China have begun opening factories in other developing countries. It’s not developed country wages Chinese have to worry about.

The ease of doing business in China (without looking) probably isn’t very much different from many other developing countries. Not to say that there aren’t other advantages to do with things like geography and finance-- but that these other advantages probably don’t outweigh labour costs too much.

If wages are increased and the price of other inputs is relatively stable, the cost of production has to be bourn somewhere-- either this is in higher final price or reduced profit margins. Let’s also assume that benefits aren’t cut to make up the price cost of wages because working conditions are a problem as well. Depending on the sector, it’s also possible that the number of workers will be cut and that higher production quotas will face workers. In reality, it’s probably a combination of all of the above.

And even if Liu is accurate that “According to authoritative investigations, the money paid to laborers make up only 10 percent of the total operational cost of an enterprise in China; but it is 50 percent in developed nations.” Any way you look at it, the price of China’s exports increase.

China is facing dual pressures related to worker wages: working conditions and a second, less direct external pressure to increase the value of the Renminbi. The usual argument goes that currency devaluation will hurt China’s workers because it will drive the cost of exports up, increase costs of inputs, which will result in decreased demand for Chinese exports, cuts in production and as a result job cuts, and lower wages for workers, higher production quotas for those remaining (and thus a general deterioration of working conditions).

This article says that in the past, when the price of manufacturing products (exported by China to other countries) increases, the cost is passed on to the buyers. It sites a study from the US Fed Bank that says when the Yuan appreciated slightly in the past, consumer and capital goods prices didn’t change much, but industrial products increased quite a bit. Enough of the increased price was passed on to the consumer.

What happens if China does both-- increases wages enough to make a short term difference and values-up the Yuan?

The results will depend largely upon the level and ratio increase in wages and currency value, but the outcome is inescapably the same: China’s rate of employment decreases (relative to previous periods, you understand, but not overall) and the price of its exports increases.

Both Yuan revaluation and increased wages will erode China’s comparative advantage in cheap labour. But Chinese companies are also moving up the value chain in manufacturing, and the lower value manufacturing inputs are moving to Vietnam, North Korea, and Egypt, for example. As China begins to manufacture green products, it will have established ties to cheaper labour markets.

Right now, China is also facing a (increasing in short-run?) skills displacement. There aren’t enough candidates to fill relatively more high skilled services positions in cities (university level skill set being insufficient) and also in unskilled manufacturing jobs that might require as much physical labour as a farming job (the wages and physical exertion being relatively the same, workers won’t bother to leave home).

While it’s clear that Chinese companies are beginning to break into the next value level of development as more and more innovate on their own, there will be more pressure on demand for skilled jobs. Government policy has properly driven higher levels of academic achievement and Chinese universities (though currently no match for Western ones) are catching up.

The question is-- will the government be able to hold annual GDP growth at 8%? Will China have a bumpy few years? Will this delay China’s rise?

And what economic principles have I left out in my inexperienced naiveté (feedback please)?

After thought: another strain of thought to consider, that might have an overall effect on employment levels is that the Chinese government has made agricultural policy that keeps small farms lucrative. Where developed countries are mostly dependent upon imported food (not that China isn’t but) and have driven small, private farming out of business, and where people like Colin Tudge argue that we have to demechanize farming and make it hard labour again so that we value food and time more, presents another interesting tangent to consider. A skill displacement won’t necessarily be fixed by, as the WSJ article suggests, lifting China’s one child policy. In future, where will China’s illegal, unskilled, migrant workers come from? And how long with this pro-small farmer policy continue?

Climate Change Gaming: Please, good people, we'd like some more!

2010-02-17T15:36:00.003Z

Corporate social responsibility is big these days. As important as it is for companies to act responsibly, they also need to respond to the needs of our society. This is one of the key concepts behind social entrepreneurship-- those who are responding to the surging moral undercurrent in our society that’s tired of governments stalling (or outright failing, ahem, Iceland, Greece) and corporate insincerity (spinning a product as good for you, instead of making a product that actually IS good for you).

The new climate change game from Red Redemption is a product that responds to social needs of a society and will do good at the same time.

From the Guardian:

“Climate Change 2010 is a turn-based affair that gives you control of the earth. The downside is that all the consequences of your actions are accurately modelled over the 200 virtual years of game time.”

Commentators in the US and UK have often marveled about a public’s willingness to sign up to social movements like 350 degrees, 10:10, 38 degrees, Avaaz, memberships that result in declarative support but lack change substance. People more often say they are willing to change their behavior but lack the follow through.

Cultural behavior is something that results from the pervasiveness of ideas, concepts, and values that pervade a society and in order to carry through a true paradigm shift, something modern Western society is only flirting with at the moment, it needs use cultural tools to subversively spread ideas more than it needs overt support for such ideas. A climate change game like this and the earlier Sim City style game from the UK’s DECC myabodo.com, do just that: they subversively support and instill values in a way that no amount of lecturing from Frannie Armstrong and an army of 10:10 volunteers can achieve. These games and more like them can be even more effective if used in conjunction with school curriculums, especially in elementary schools during time allotted to earth sciences and biology, for example.

Please, society needs more of these! Awake game developers of the world! Please, we'd like some more!

Ann, Live from Cop15

2010-01-05T17:50:00.003Z

I probably should have posted each of these links as I wrote them, but oh well.

Here are links to my body of work from Cop15:

From solveclimate.com:

Micro Insurance Protects Poor Farmers From Climate Change

Climate Change Insurance: A Nuanced Approach

S&P, World Bank Launch Emerging Markets Index

China's Entrepreneurs Are Ready, But Is Their Government?

Is China Still a Developing Country?

iCET Piloting Voluntary Carbon Registry in Southern China

Can China Do Transparency?

Conference Parties Take Note of Accord

Post Cop15: Mexico City Offers Clearer Setting for Agreement

Hosted by the lovely Adam Shake of TwilightEarth.com

Live Dispatch from the Climate Express: The IPCC is not the University of East Anglia

The Bigger Picture, Pictures Cop15

Climate Express Dispatch: You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet!

Chinese Youth Call-Out Leaders on Climate Change

Fairtrade Chocolate Keeps A Diplomat Happy

Blue Box Solution to Climate Change

Algae to Oil Cop15 Interview with Solzyme CEO

NGO's Banned From Cop15 Bella Centre

Will China Teach Developed Countries a Lesson At Cop15?

What to Read and Watch on the Last Day of Cop15

My pictures from the events

Biochar: How to make the market work

2009-11-07T18:55:00.003Z

In short, it's darn-near impossible:

“Biochar Will Save the World!” proclaims a group page on Facebook. Popular Mechanics writes of an “ancient charcoal” that can “put the brakes on global warming.” More than its prospects as a carbon sink or a fuel, it has massive prospects for development (the economic kind) for developing countries and emerging markets. A very wise Finance professor* once told me, “Anytime anybody tells you they have a market for that, be very suspicious.” It’s not that biochar couldn’t work, but that the market to make it work would have to be nuanced and highly regulated.

“One of the dangers of a biochar industry in developing countries is that you can divert your biochar to fuel or that you can somehow create more of a demand for wood which would be completely counterproductive. What is a more sustainable system is to use agricultural and wood wastes,” explains Dr. Simon Shackley, at the UK’s Biochar Research Institute in Edinburgh.

Biochar as a fuel is in the middle of a hierarchy of fuels commonly used in developing countries. Dr. Shackley explains that the poorest tend to use wood, then charcoal, then propane. In developed countries charcoal is a luxury fuel, and it would be “absurd” for people in developed countries to all of a sudden switch to heating our homes with it. There in lies the problem: biochar is viable on the market as both an agricultural tool and as a fuel in developing countries.

The best strategy then, according to Shackley, is to find sustainable feed stocks. He gives an example, “if you’ve got a rice paddy system... the rice husks are thrown into the paddy field and they decompose for methane, which is a very powerful greenhouse gas. So in that case, it’s much more efficient to put the rice husk into a pyrolysis or gasification machine, carbonize it, and put that into the field and you’re returning the nutrients to the soil.” And then you get a carbon negative process. Depending on the machine, the pyrolysis process itself can produce energy that can be used as well.

Sounds great, right? In principle, sure.

Few problems:

In terms of accounting biochar is only carbon neutral or negative if the biochar is replanted into the soil right away and not used as a fuel. More likely is that it is stored. Shackley says that common practice is not to count pyrolysis process in the CO2 footprint. Pyrolysis does produce CO2. And if the biochar isn’t planted but used as a fuel then it is carbon positive. Sure it emits less carbon than fossil fuels, but using it as a fuel would distort its price as an agricultural input.

This leads to the second problem: logistics. Shackley describes the process, “You’ve got a lot of movement of material: you’ve got to grow it somewhere, you’ve got to use quite a lot of land to grow it, you’ve got to move it [left over wastes], you’ve got to store it, you’ve got to process it, you’ve then got to store the biochar before it goes onto the field. And if you’re talking about very large volumes, you’ve got to store it somewhere.”

In biochar manufacture and use there is a temporal delay: Shackley says often the feedstock waste from agriculture will come from the end of a harvest, but the most useful time to use it would likely be the following spring or summer. Logistics are a huge part of the process but those details are often glossed over.

Only loosely mentioned is a third problem: no one is entirely certain of the optimum composition of biochar for maximum temporal carbon sequestration. An article about biochar on MNN mentions in passing, “Plowing biochar into soil sequesters the carbon for a long time -- biochar fields have been found in South America dating back thousands of years and still full of their carbon solids.” A long time sure, but it depends on what it’s made of.** Scientists may be able to test terra preta to see what it’s been made of in the past, but other materials will be used to create modern biochar.

So why not only make biochar from certain specific materials? Simplistically: Soil contains bacteria and mineral nutrients that help plants grow. Biochar contains minerals as well that are beneficial to plant growth, which makes it beneficial as a fertilizer. Different biochar compositions could provide optimum minerals depending on the soil composition. It’s common sense that in order to be sustainable, biochar be composed of native organic materials. So, wherever it’s used its make up will vary.

Biochar can be made of almost any material and some materials, according to Dr. Saran Sohi, a soil specialist at the UK Biochar Research Institute, are more stable than others. Stability determines how long carbon will be trapped (sequestered) in the soil. There’s not yet been enough research to determine how long certain materials will sequester carbon.

“When you pyrolyze material you end up with a complex substance. And some of that is volatile,” explains Shackley. Any biochar used as an agricultural fertilizer (carbon sink) will have to be stable for well over 100 years, “Ideally we want to keep 75-80% of carbon in a stable form for hundreds of years. If it all comes out as CO2 after 100 years, in my view, it isn’t worth it.... Because if we haven’t solved the problem, and it all comes out again in 100 years time ...you could get billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide back in the atmosphere and we might be having a severe climate crisis and it could be disastrous.”

Forth, the market model is uncertain on several levels: Sohi says that more research must be done on biochar composition so that the benefits to farmers (i.e. increased crop yield) can be clearly enumerated. Until then a market price for biochar as a fertilizer will be hard to pin down. It will also be difficult to displace traditional chemical fertilizers with this “natural” alternative, where the added yields are certain. Any market in developing countries where charcoal is used as a fuel (even as a low-carbon alternative) and an agricultural input must be heavily regulated: in order that charcoal remains cheap enough to be used as a low cost agricultural input, to prevent people trading the biochar at profit to be used as fertilizer (rather then fuel too), then from turning to another fuel that might degrade the environment.

After years of colossal f-ups, the development community has to come to an agreement that aid must be nuanced-- that is, designed specific to the environment in which it’s implemented. The financial crisis(es) have shown us that we need heavy market regulation, not just of financial markets but commodities as well. In order to address climate change we need to use all of the technology at our disposal, which includes biochar. But unless we take our time, and correctly implement its use, biochar could do more harm than good. The US’s biochar bill might be something to be weary of. Shackley points out that such a bill will drive more investment into research and make certain that regulators ask the right questions about safety and benefits. On the other hand, history has shown that governments dolling out money must be monitored to make certain processes are safe. More research must be done on biochar, its use should not be rushed into, and the market must be heavily regulated.

* Dr. Paulo dos Santos, SOAS.
**For example manure, palm tree litter are more volatile.

Scopes Climate Trial

2009-11-02T13:04:00.005Z

I had the fortune to see Kevin Spacey’s “Inherit the Wind” at the Old Vic during its run. The film is a fictionalized account of the Scopes monkey trial which pits nature against religion in the strictest sense (for a full summary click here) in a court room. Watching Spacey's version of "Inherit the Wind," for me parallels a friction that exists in a neo-secular modern world: where evolution science becomes climate change/ new-economics and creationism traditional Market capitalist ideology. This is a dichotomy I’ve run into with increasing regularity in the last few months.

“Progress has never been a bargain, you have to pay for it! Sometimes I think there’s a man who sits behind a counter and says, “Alright, you can have a telephone but you lose privacy and the charm of distance. Madam you may vote but at a price: you lose the right to retreat behind your powderpuff or your petticoat. Mr, you may conquer the air but the birds will lose their wonder and the clouds will smell of gasoline. Darwin took us forward to a hilltop from where we could look back and see the way from which we came but for this insight, this knowledge, we must abandon faith in the pleasant poetry of Genesis.”

Beyond the American Chamber of Commerce’s backwardness on climate change and the American penchant for putting ideas on trial, the new evolution science is climate science. Strikingly similar to the evolution of evolutionary theory the story has a conspicuously missing middle: we know the world is changing but we're fuzzy about the extent and rapidity of that change, much like the missing evolutionary hominids during Darwin’s time. Put another way, climate science is uncertain to the extent that changed world-wide average temperatures will have on individual places and people.

A study by O’Gorman and Schneider at the MIT and Caltech Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change find that for every 1 degree Celsius increase in average global temperature increases the likelihood of extreme weather events by 5 to 6%. Another study from the same program by Sokolov and Prinn (et al) finds that by 2100 there is a 90% chance that average global temperatures will rise between 3.5-7.4 degrees Celsius. While it is clear that our lives will change, we are collectively grasping at straws about what to expect.

No one (except maybe backwoods rednecks and dedicated, disillusioned contrarians) doubts climate science anymore. But what climate believers still doubt is the necessity to alter our value systems or our ability to do it. Marketing green the same way, well, everything has been marketed in the past: green is the new black, strategies to sell climate change to the consumer. There are two telling examples of this:

The IPPR released a report called “Consumer Power: how the public thing climate change can be made mainstream.” The report recommends continuous re-consumerization of sustainable products and behaviors into “objects of desire,” to attract a key group of consumers: the Now People. The report goes on to suggest not to mention climate change when selling climate change (and not to mention environmentalism either) because it isn’t “cool.” It suggests talking about climate change with humor because humor will “sustain the attention” of the “Now People more than communications that are overly serious.” The report finally recommends that anyone talking about carbon emissions substitute the word “pollution” for emissions because emissions are invisible but pollution isn’t. While the report discusses a certain subset of people, marketers being marketers, it’s safe to assume that these suggestions will be used to market green to everyone. (As an aside, a psychologist friend of mine looked over the report and said that it was typical of marketing psychology, that the approach worked best for the general public but that the Now People wouldn’t be fooled.)

The other indicative example is the extent to which the carbon derivatives market (still not properly regulated-- warning bells should be going off) is said to expand in the near future-- to £4.3 trillion by 2015. According to the report Fortifying the Foundation: State of the Voluntary Carbon Markets 2009, trade in the voluntary carbon market around the world more than doubled in 2008 from $313 million to $705 million. Most of carbon market is voluntary: 48% world wide and over 45% in Asia alone. As little as three years ago there were over 20 carbon offset standards in the global carbon market and today there are fewer than 10.

The extent to which the free market has made carbon derivatives markets more “efficient” is probably over-- the market has consolidated. The extent to which it can be manipulated-- well, the “carbon cowboy” era maybe ending but prospect for vast manipulation remains. As long as national markets remain unintegrated, regulation within and between borders is ambiguous, the more complicated the CDM process at the UN, and the longer explicit offsets are delayed the greater the prospect for near future manipulation, a near future in which these markets need to work (leaving aside the debate on whether or not they are a good idea).

What has been done in both instances: the Now People marketing strategy and the Carbon market has just carried on old, market economics and old climate change science. For all the talk Stiglitz et al (Duncan Green over at Oxfam has a great discussion of it here) and NEF make about revaluing the economy there are very few people and fewer world leaders who either get it or are willing to engage in the debate (new economics/climate change science). Very bluntly, while we accept that climate change is real, the ambiguity with which it will present itself and its effects on our lives is keeping us from fortifying our societies for earth shifting changes we physically face as a species.

Evolution versus creationism hasn’t ever been settled and thus “Inherit the Wind” remains perennially relevant to the American political sphere. But new economics versus market capitalism is a debate that must be settled. And it must be soon. In almost two years past the beginning of the financial crisis we’ve done very little to re-regulate financial markets, to say nothing of the house cleaning needed in the carbon markets. I would hate to see welfare reformed growth metrics discussion on the international stage go the way of the creationism- evolutionary debate in the US.

Some serious journalism going on here...

2009-10-30T18:01:00.003Z

I've had some success lately:

The Third Rail of Climate Change: Climate Refugees

The Little Climate Campaign that Could: 10:10 sparks three hour debate in parliament

Carbon Trading Schemes Don't Just Fall From the Sky
(Sam Nelson approached me to write the story... very flattered)

Social responsibility in journalism, new media, niche media at the start of the 21st century-- an indictment

2009-09-17T12:09:00.010+01:00

I’ve had an odd confluence of events yesterday:

In the morning I interviewed Mark Brayne for a feature I’m writing about the psychology of climate change. And in the afternoon I had a fight with my boss about the content for the green blog video site I blog professionally for.

The interview with Brayne was mostly about how society becomes convinced enough about the prospect of climate change to actually change our behavior. As a former journalist and current psychotherapist, Brayne has a unique perspective on the ability of the media to influence behavior (scroll down to hear a podcast of our conversation about the media). He also has a very profound indictment of the state of the modern media.

Taking a step back, during and before both world wars propaganda campaigns were waged by governments to aid the war effort. More specifically, during World War II, the British government needed the British population to behave in a certain way: austere behavior in the buying and use of goods. Austerity, green-economic experts like Andrew Simms believe, needs to be revived to make the public transition to the mentality necessary to adapt to climate change and continue to survive on this planet.

Post WWII, Sigmund Freud’s daughter Anna and his nephew Edward Bernays were instrumental in spreading consumption as the driver of economic growth. Post-war people were too frugal, the market for newly produced goods wasn’t big enough. Bernaise figured out how to appeal to our animal instinct in order to get us to buy things and fulfill subconscious needs.

Brayne has a rather profound indictment of early 21st century journalism and ~~it’s~~ its effect on human behavior: “The concept of modern independent free media that I can write what I like and that’s it’s really just about ratings and sales is profoundly irresponsible.... The media don’t want to be regulated, actually they don’t want to be accountable to anybody. Journalists have a massive responsibility to take their profession more seriously than they do.”

“And if journalists say ‘well, I’m only in the business of giving people what they want, and entertainment,’ I think the media at the beginning of the 21st century is not fit for purpose. I don’t think politics is fit for purpose. And I don’t think consumerism--economics-- is fit for purpose.”

(To listen to our conversation about the media in full, click below: )

Social Responsibility in 21st century Journalism

Ann Danylkiw's Podcast

What does this have to do with my day job as a professional green blogger?

The site I blog for professionally is partnered with NGO's, businesses, and government agencies. My vision for the blog is to make a discussion space for different views about transitioning to a sustainable economy: like juxatopsing Alstom and their “green” plans for carbon capture and storage next to Greenpeace which opposes coal power (we have videos from both). Without saying too much about the dispute: there are plenty of frivolous green websites that sell themselves using celebs, nudity, and material-culture to consumerize green. The green video site I blog for has a responsibility to be bigger than consumerism. And it is well positioned in the UK market to be exactly that.

Franny Armstrong in a 1010uk.org video says about the stakes of climate change, “It’s everything you know, everyone you love, everything’s at stake.” Brayne is right, the media helped consumerize our culture and now it has a deep and profound responsibility to contribute to the sustainable transition. That’s the kind of journalist I want to be.

*for more information about Brayne's work on climate change psychology, see his consortium website

Update 20 Sep: My boss and I did have it out and I've retained my editorial freedom for now on the basis of the success of the blog. But if it comes to blogging about celebs and porn I'll quit first. And that would be sad for the green video site because I am unpaid labour: if I walk the blog shuts down. The environment is too important for failure.

Open access to data breeds corruption. Open access to data breeds transparency. Which is it? Both.

2009-09-05T23:26:00.006+01:00

Free the data. Open access to data breeds corruption. Open access to data breeds transparency. Which is it? Both.

You’ll notice I haven’t posted on either of my blogs in a while. That’s partly to do with most of my ideas have gone to my professional blogging, but also because I’ve been cooking this post and having trouble with the argument and linking all the bits together. Leave a comment: tell me if I’ve put the pieces together right, what I missed that’s related. I’m relatively certain this is still a naive viewpoint:

At the end of July I was at a Barcamp Transparency mini-conference in Oxford. Most of those attending were open source guys. The connection between information transparency and open source technology is that information, especially statistical information, can be used to create software that can tell businesses about consumer behavior, for example. Advertisers collect this information on the internet, on blogs and online newspapers.

And therein lies the issue: do you want data on your spending habits to be available to corporations, or your credit card monitored by government for suspicious activity in ostensibly to predict crime? Tie these two together and you get something like Amazon deleting copies of 1984 from it’s Kindle via remote (admittedly, the government was not involved in this but thinking about it, it’s not a large step to think it could be-- see Farhad Manjoo on the topic).

But what if freedom of access to information also leads to your ability to monitor government and know when they spend tax payer dollars on duck hutches and moats (for the Americans in the audience, see MP allowance scandal)-- sounds good in that instance. Transparency in government is another issue in the open access to information hemisphere.

More broadly, thinking about transparent information also brings up the changing model of journalism: the pay model for online newspapers. As a blogger (prefer bloggess, actually, but...) I can’t do what I do unless I have access to news articles and reports. For bloggers in places like Egypt, Tunisia, and Iran, the ability to view free news (stories, full reports) and have free access to information diffusion services (google’s Blogger, Facebook, Twitter) means something completely different-- those who live in oppressive regimes can hold their governments to account on the world stage by using the free information and information services online to do everything from blog about injustice to launching full scale campaigns.

Social media comes into play here, witness Iran’s tw-evolution. Social media is access to real time information. And there’s a fantastic argument to be made (as @apesphere does) for making Twitter a social enterprise to guarantee freedom of speech as a universal human right.

NPR’s Kevin Anderson was on the Guardian’s Media Talk podcast recently (31 July), teaching the British how NPR continues to free information: it asks for money. MoJo does something similar by putting the tipjar on it’s page. LinkTV displays a huge link, “Support LinkTV.” These site explain exactly what certain dollar denominations buy the consumer: however many $ = an episode of “Morning Edition.” That makes it explicit and that’s why it works. (The British I’ve noticed, are uncomfortable explicitly asking for money. They need to get over it.)

As an aspiring journalist I realize that if the pay model isn’t figured out, then I won’t be able to make a living. But as a bloggess, if the pay model is too heavy on the pay bit, then I won’t be able to make a living either. Some bloggers make money through advertising (admittedly, not very much).

There is an interesting dimension to open access to information when it comes to advertising, as Jay Rosen wrote on PressThink , “Advertisers aren’t in business to advertise; they do it to reach customers making a buying decision.” In other words, advertising on the internet is used to gather information. It’s not profitable in and of itself, but because it can theoretically help corporations make better marketing strategies at some point in the future. According to Rosen (via doc Searls), there’s a lot of economic cost inefficiency or market leakages here.

If advertising isn’t a viable business option for funding information sources, then what? Paying by link? No, linking to my sources in blog posts make me accountable.

I firmly believe that access to information has to be free-- it ensures that governments are accountable to their citizens, businesses to their consumers, and the media to the citizens it serves. As long as information is free (not unprotected, mind-- this is another issue) and (most) data transparent, the tools are available to protect us all. The internet and online newspapers must remain free.

Reslicing the African Cake: Emerging Markets are the Neo-Neo-Colonialists

2009-07-05T22:52:00.012+01:00

WE all remember seeing it in high school history class: the cartoon caricatures of 19th century world powers looming over a cake labeled "Africa," poised to carve it up (anybody out there got a URL for a copy of this cartoon? I’d appreciate it). And thus began the pre-World War I scramble for resources. At the beginning of the 21st century, as at the close of 19th, the story hasn't changed but the players have: China, South Korea, India, Qatar, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Dubai, and the US (to name a few) are seeking to protect their people's future as climate change begins to drastically alter the ability for these countries to feed (and power) themselves.

According to recent reporting in the Guardian Environment, China is an instructive case study: China has recently halted reforestation projects in “marginally arable land” on fears of food shortage. These reforestation projects would have helped offset increased carbon emissions from Chinese industrialization, slow desertification in southern China, and ease water shortages. How? Land that is not used for agriculture is allowed to rest, and by doing so becomes healthier again as the soil regains nutrients; less crop irrigation means that there would be more water in the system generally. Most forms of crop irrigation use water inefficiently.

China is facing triple pressure: rising food prices, the need to keep industrialization growing a pace, and changing ecological conditions due to climate change. In western China, according to a recent article in the Guardian, new industrial projects will cut into arable land. In other areas, desertification and failing soil will cut into agricultural production. By the end of 2008 China’s arable land has decreased to within 1% of the 120 million hectare land area needed for China to maintain food self-sufficiency. That’s why Chinese interests have secured land for food and biofuel crops in sub-Saharan African countries, and Asia too. There are over one million Chinese farmers in Africa.

Decreased arable land due to climate change will threaten every country. And the decline of fossil fuels will push up food stuff prices all over the world. Last summer the Philippines and India both restricted exports of rice to protect domestic prices and because they feared they wouldn’t have enough to feed their own populations. Environmental groups have launched “buy local” campaigns. The trouble is, many developing countries and emerging markets (I’m differentiating here between the 2nd and 3rd world) remain heavily dependent upon the export of primary products. If the “buy local” movement has its way and a carbon tariff is imposed upon imported food, these countries’ export markets will decline and their economies will suffer. In the run up to World War I not only did colonial holdings increase, but trade protectionism did as well. Protectionist policies designed to mitigate climate change in conjunction with a new resource stripping of Africa via land sales makes it difficult for Africa to reach full economic development in the future.

In the future, the largest global population increases will come from Africa, according to the UN. But given the state of most African economies, jobs do not and will not exist when Africa’s labour force begins to peak later this century. According to Oxfam, as a result of the global recession, 100 million more people slipped into “hunger” and of the now 1 billion people living in hunger worldwide, one-quarter are in Africa. If food prices are increasing, Africa is selling its arable land to foreigners, and it can’t feed itself now, how can it hope to do so in the future?

African governments desperate for cash will allow countries to buy up their resources now, in order to maintain political stability (which will attract future investment). But with climate change already beginning, will Africans have enough resources to reach full economic development themselves in the future? The G8 failed on their Gleneagles promises. This week in L’Aquila they have promised a new $20 million in food aid to Africa. Will they follow through this time? Likely not. G8 governments are heavily indebted and don’t have enough money to carry through plans for greener energy. Infrastructure throughout Europe and America need massive reconstruction if governments' plans to green energy are to be successful. Ironically, Africa’s lack of infrastructure has historically been a barrier to aid absorption and one of the reasons that the developed world has been reluctant to carry-through on promises to double aid to Africa.

As Africa is re-carved by emerging and declining economic giants, it isn’t another lost-decade of development Africa faces as the global recession carries on. Africa faces becoming the continent lost to climate change.

[This is a good place to stop, but anybody worth their salt studying the social effects of climate change will realize the migration implications—and I’ve already ranted enough, I think about missing the (immigration policy) bear.]

Please take note: my sources for this article are mainly from the Guardian articles linked above.

More on Missing the Bear

2009-06-29T23:24:00.002+01:00

Check out my next two blog posts on Missing the Bear:

Meghan McCain: the saviour of the republican party?

Climate Refugees

Missing the Bear-- when the media misses the target

2009-06-20T19:08:00.003+01:00

My secondary blog is Missing the Bear: when the media misses the target.

First blog post: Eon at the Guardian Climate Change Summit

The End of the Line

2009-06-09T11:07:00.003+01:00

I went to see "The End of the Line" last night, at one of the premier venues in London. I posted a review to Newsvine.

Climate Change Campaigner's Biggest Challenge: Changing the Use Value of Money

2009-06-02T18:06:00.005+01:00

Hay-on-Wye
28 May 2009

By Ann Danylkiw

“Clinton got it wrong. It's not, 'it’s the economy stupid,' it’s : the economy is stupid, stupid.” This, the final conclusion from Elaine Brook, the third of three panelists to discuss “How Green is your Money?” at the Guardian’s Hay on Wye literary festival Thursday. Brook, Alistair Sawday and Barbara Haddrill, an activist, a publisher, and travel book writer respectively, explained that the oft missed point of a “green economy” is re-evaluating valuation dynamics of modern economic growth.

Economic growth is commonly measured in national statistics as GDP or GNP, gross (domestic) national product—comprised of consumption (by far the largest proportion) plus investment (private) plus government spending (public investment) plus national savings plus parenthetical imports minus exports (usually vastly negative for developed countries like the US, UK, and EU and thus enviously positive for emerging economies like China and India). It lacks a coherent cost-benefit analysis of used environmental capacity or quality of life (though supposedly tackled by utility theory, the analysis utility provides is still wanting). These are topics tackled more recently by the New Economics Foundation, and many years ago by Marilyn Waring (MP, New Zealand). GDP says a lot about the volume and velocity of money flowing around an economy and very little about the way its people live.

Each panelist in turn makes their own experiential case as to why we, as individuals, must actively take positive decisions that force the economy to respond to a slower pace of life. Haddrill did so several years ago when she attended a friend’s wedding in Australia in a way that was compatible with her low carbon-lifestyle. “I saw being an environmentalist as a positive choice… I had the idea of slowing it [the trip] down so that the journey was the point, and not just the destination.”

Haddrill is a late twenty-something. In a loose hippie-style blouse and billowing brown trousers, her authority is classically statuesque: “The more I planned my travel, the more I thought about our addiction to flying and was it improving our lives? …What was it about—time or money? …All these people that have no time also say 'there is no way I could spend 7 weeks getting to Australia… its alright for you.' But why is it alright for me? I gave up my job and my life that I really loved and before I left really 80 percent of me probably actually didn’t want to travel ‘round the world by bus, boat, and train, but I did it because I made that choice and I believe we can always make that choice,” she insists.

Sawday speaks next. He is the typical perpetually “chillaxed” mid-lifer: gelled grey hair, plaid button up shirt, khaki trousers, loafers. Seeming almost like a new age preacher-man, he extols the virtues of authenticity, awareness, the political and social conviviality of the Slow Food movement—“through food, we can effect, individually, a small revolution if we buy a pig from the man next door who has grown it with love and isn’t particularly concerned about the profit and we eat it slowly and convivially with our friends, we are part of a small revolution.”

As a society, he urges, we must begin to favor people that take their time—“those that walk over those that drive,” artisans over mass production. And more importantly to acknowledge the affect the modern, faced-paced lifestyle has had on our society. He relates the time he stayed with the Amish community in Michigan, “they are intelligent about the way they view the outside world… they take a telephone and they realize that the telephone can completely disrupt and destroy their lives, but it is very clever. So they take it and put it outside their house, in a special box, and only use it between five and six in the evening, and never answer it otherwise… and the efficiency is still there… and so are the Amish.”

Elaine Brook, finishes out the trio of presenters and is the founder of a business network, Greenlinks. The view of the Green movement has evolved, in her view, “We have started with we have to want what we want now, but in a Green way—and that has moved to want something different that is Green. People have decided that they want something different and they just do it—and businesses respond!”

Brook, embodies the true spirit of a British woman—a charismatic explorer in her white linen suit, short blonde hair arranged to look casually swept back. Cheerily she recalls the years she spent living with Himalayan Buddhists, “an example of a real zero fossil fuel economy…people have really nice, big houses, a fantastic social life, they had enough to eat.” An ecologist, business woman, and activist, she says she had trouble “selling” the theory of zero carbon economies upon her return because for modern, Western societies there is no blueprint for people to relate to.

This vision of what Brook and the others suggest is very far from where we are today, but is nevertheless compelling. “I think it's possible to run a business with a lower expectation of profit and a higher expectation of community contribution. Every business is a real part of a community,” Sawday concludes; time and human contact, an awareness of the world around us—both our effect on it, and its effect on us.

As they finish there is applause, but yet a vapid sense of agreement. They make it sound so easy: make a positive decision and change the way you react to the global economy and the economy will respond via simple comparative statics. And it is an easy decision, for an audience almost entirely composed of grey hairs, twenty-something females employed by NGO’s, and white upper middle class couples. Granted this is crowd the Guardian Hay-on-Wye literary festival draws—but there is a lingering feeling that this is not the crowd that needs convincing.

Should Michelle Obama Lose Weight?-- oh Come ON!

2009-02-16T22:01:00.003Z

The unfailing ability of feminists to discredit the potential of the new First Lady (and burn down our own agenda in the process)

The Huffington Post recently posted an opinion piece entitled “Should Michelle Obama Lose Weight?”[1] The very imposition of this question today is not only insulting to all women but utterly absurd! For only the second time in recent history the First Ladyship is occupied by a woman who has the potential to change the feminine paradigm in two ways: first, she can act to change the role of First Lady from passive (traditional feminine) support to an Office and in doing so, in a secondary capacity, shift the paradigm of the feminine roles as wife, mother, and hostess—thus, effecting the overall perception of women’s equity in society.

Examining the national visibility of recent first ladies

The Bush Ladies chose the paradigm of what I’ll call debutante society wives: pet cause promotion and charity work, not to be taken too seriously or make too much noise so as to obscure or threaten their husbands’ agendas/profiles. What they lacked, and what Hillary Clinton attempted and Michelle Obama has the potential to change, is to act in a more advocatory capacity. It is true that First Ladies aren’t elected, but they do hold an important nationally symbolic position.

Hillary Clinton was vilified via the media for attempting to play a more active role in her capacity as a national symbol: Clinton held health care meetings and was criticized for treating those meetings as government functions and told she could not continue because First Lady is not a government office—she had no authority to explore policy. However, de facto, the First Lady could be perceived as a government role by combining the important traditional, matriarchal role with the role of women as professionals. This role must be defined in practice, through evolution by example. Michelle Obama has the potential to do this. With Clinton, she shares several traits: highly educated, a professional (and successful one at that) and an advocate in her own right.

But despite the increasing number of women present in the media, the majority of the coverage of Michelle Obama has been limited to her fashion sense and her weight. To the extent that women in the media have a responsibility to effect the way other women are portrayed in society, women in media have tripped over themselves both when they failed to stand up adequately for Hillary Clinton during the campaign when her outfit was criticized as “inappropriate” because she showed too much cleavage and for portraying Michelle Obama only in the traditional feminine capacity. The Huffington Post article about Obama’s weight concluded something to the effect “Michelle Obama is a size 12, which is appropriate for her height,” and her health adds to her husband’s potential to set an example for America. What about her ability to set an example as the embodiment of modern American femininity? Alas, her superficial qualities are all that seem to be relevant—very seldom was she quoted on the campaign trail, deemed worthy only as arm candy for her husband’s campaign and speculatory rhetoric about how she will help the fashion industry survive the economic crisis.

Lady Obama’s Potential

It is curious in this age with women in the workplace all but a forgone conclusion, that the role of the nation’s First Woman remains “traditional” in the wife/mother/hostess sense. While her husband gets props for introducing an equal wage bill, Michelle Obama has the potential to take women’s equality even further through active advocacy. To place “active” in juxtaposition: passive advocacy can be understood to be what the Bush Ladies did: make statements about the importance of women’s rights. A prime example occurred in the last month of Laura Bush’s husband’s presidency: Afghani school girls were attacked with acid and Mrs. Bush responded by making a strong condemnatory statement. Where active advocacy would be more like Hillary Clinton’s health care meetings during her husband’s first term; the First Lady, in effect, becomes an active participant (as all Women are) in the perpetual forward motion of society, whether or not forward motion (i.e. reform) is delegated to the First Lady to further her party’s agenda, or one of her own. Why should presidential wives be side-lined when as non-political wives they actively shape society anyway?

Michelle Obama has the potential to transform the role of First Lady. Obama’s husband’s campaign broke paradigms (which are obvious and I won’t go into here because quite enough has been written about him), and the American establishment is primed for “Change.” Additionally, an important argument was made for Elizabeth Edward’s husband’s presidential ascendancy based upon her education and medical public policy prowess: “two for one,” argued some pundits. Lest we fail to make a big deal about Obama’s husband considering Mrs. Edwards for a cabinet position!

Drawing on honorable traditions of the wife as cultural preservationista and moral center, Michelle Obama has the potential to historically redefine this social feminine paradigm. This paradigm is of the wife as active partner in both society and marriage—where the roles in both cases equalize (finally) between men and women. Not only does Lady Obama stand as an equal with her husband welcoming foreign diplomats and domestic leaders to the seat of American government, representing the women of America, she does so as an educated professional and equal.

Dwelling on superficialities like weight and designer clothing is not only self-defeating for the evolution of American women but sabotages Obama before she has the chance to get going. Admittedly, Mrs. Obama has not yet made much indication of her agenda as First Lady, beyond her commitment to Military families. However, the point is worth making—the time has come to change the role of First Lady of the United States of America. The previous examples set by the First Ladies of the free world is more akin to the paradigms US Presidents have attempted to change through foreign policy than an example that feeds that foreign policy. Michelle Obama has the ability to rise to this challenge and it is our responsibility as Women (and men) of America to support her. So let’s please cease with this self-defeating superficial discussion of weight and clothing, shall we!
[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/irene-rubaumkeller-/do-you-think-michelle-oba_b_159639.html

Financial Crisis: The Final Harbinger of Bucolic Demise?

2008-12-31T19:06:00.004Z

Antigo, WI—“I don’t know what its like to be clean,” farmer David Wilson of Grass Point Farms Cooperative chuckles, takes off his American Farm Cooperative cap, shakes and scratches his balding head before replacing it. Not twenty minutes earlier he had gallantly stepped in front of a stream of cow urine in the milking room. The sharp stench of urine dissipates a bit but lingers out of doors. “I’m beginning to think I’m crazy,” he sighs, "because I’d rather do this than earn $10 an hour and come home clean everyday, workin’ some job in town.” David works nearly 20 hours a day, 7 days per week on his family farm of 80 head herd of cross-Jersey cows for an income of less than $20,000—less than he’d make if he worked that $10 an hour job.[1]

The Wilsons are a rare breed of American: debt averse. Their farm is strictly family run: David, his wife Pam, and their 13 year old daughter Michaela. “We’ve never really struggled because we live the life that we live,” Pam shrugs and grins; she’s a jolly countrywoman with eyes that radiate warmth and confidence, “We’re awfully frugal.” Wilson explains that they have been debt free three times, the last for one month this August. For years they used short term debt to finance their operation, for example, to buy feed if there isn’t enough rain during the growing season, or the cost of commodity prices sky-rocket—both conditions Wilson has had to work with the past five years.

But in the contracting financial climate the Wilson family’s debt situation is likely to change. The Wilson’s position isn’t unusual for a small family dairy farm in Wisconsin, according to Dr. Paul Mitchell at the University of Wisconsin Madison Agricultural Economics department. In the past agriculture has been one of the few borrowing sectors where the borrower-lender relationship has remained tight. And agricultural banks like M&I and Wells Fargo, he explains have not had the exposure to bad loans that other banks have had, “The overall access to credit shouldn’t change. There might be a little more paperwork and demonstrations of credit worthiness than you had in years past—they’ll just have to do a little more work to get credit.”[2]

Dr. Costas Lapavitsas at the School for Oriental and African Studies in London disagrees. He explains that as the credit crisis deepens, the first casualties of the distressed credit market will be small and medium sized enterprises.[3]

“Big business can use open markets to obtain finance, it has been. Therefore banks as consumers have turned to individuals and to making money out of derivatives and other financial transactions of the type. Small and medium businesses across the world are facing problems with obtaining finance as a result.” If interbank lending doesn’t pick up soon, no matter how strong a position agriculture banks are in, it won’t matter and credit lines to families like the Wilsons will dry up.

But there is another dimension to the financial crisis that Wilson will have to be concerned about: futures prices. Farmers like Wilsons have been able to turn to derivatives in the form of futures and options to secure prices for their output. Dr. Mitchell explained that farmers have turned increasingly to these markets as prices have become more volatile since the 1990’s. Dr. Lapavitsas associated the rise of the derivatives market with overall price volatility in the market.

He explains that derivatives are “an outgrowth…of what has been happening in finance for the last two to three decades… It’s come out of the instability that has been created in the world of finance because of liberalization…. If you repressed finance… then all that world of financial innovation, derivatives, and everything that goes with it, will have much less reason to exist. There won’t be the price instability, for a start, upon which these things thrive.” Indeed, according to the “Dairy Situation and Outlook” from the University of Wisconsin Cooperative Extension, futures prices for milk and cheese are at historic lows and expected to decline.[4]

In other words, in the future small dairy farms in Wisconsin will continue to dwindle but at an accelerating rate. Small independent farms make up the bulk of the farming sector in Wisconsin, 86% according to the Wisconsin Farm Bureau association. But they also have the least collective dollar output relative to agricultural corporations.[5] It is not just credit constriction that works against small farms, but the nature of the financial market itself which doesn’t allow much room for survival. There are regulatory changes to be made to ensure that families like the Wilsons can continue to live the way they choose.

David looks dreamily out over his green fields in the late afternoon sun. In the distance there is a grove of Pine trees. He leans closer to tell me that this year he is finally going to build his wife and daughter the home “they deserve.” The Wilsons currently live in a wooden version of a double-wide. David planted those pines when he and Pam married, with plans to use them for a house one day. His ability to do so will depend heavily upon the next steps a so far inept Congress and Treasury Department take to reform financial markets.

[1] Interview, David Wilson, Aug 2008.
[2] Phone Interview, Dr. Paul D. Mitchell, 17 December 2008.
[3] Interview, Dr. Costas Lapavitsas, 17 December 2008.
[4] Bob Cropp. “Dairy Situation and Outlook.” 18 December 2008. University of Wisconsin Cooperative Extension. http://future.aae.wisc.edu/outlook/cropp_dec_08.pdf.
[5] “Wisconsin Agriculture Farm Facts,” http://www.wfbf.com/ag_links/ag_facts.aspx.

Pardon Me Sir, But You’ve Missed the Bear.

2008-12-31T02:02:00.002Z

“For most Asians modernity is associated with very simple things… at the age of ten when we went from [a metal bin] to a flush toilette I felt my life had improved by 100% at least.” The former Singaporean ambassador the UN, Keyshore Mahbubani, recently appeared on KQED’s “Forum.” The host David Iverson, taken aback responded, “Not to be facetious about this but, in a sense, are you making the argument that the greatest thing we could do to promote world peace would be to have more flush toilettes?”

Indeed he was, as I am now about to advocate the installation of such contraptions as the singular most pressing foreign and domestic policy priority for the incoming President of the United States. Now seriously, hang in there. Flush toilettes are a singular manifestation of a larger necessity: Infrastructure. Americans do not suffer a shortage of flush toilettes, but those living in the developing world do. This short paper is meant as a response to Senator Barack Obama’s address to the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, where he outlined “Five Ways America Will Begin to Lead Again.” In his speech the Senator outlined his foreign policy agenda; and while the policies he put forth can be described as spraying enough buck-shot for the future of American foreign policy, metaphorically speaking, he still managed to “Miss the Bear.”

First, what is meant by infrastructure? Thefreedictionary.com defines infrastructure as, “The basic facilities, services, and installations needed for the functioning of a society or community.” Arguably the most important classification of infrastructure is the type exemplified by the edifices that make up physical infrastructure; the roads that we drive on, bridges, ports, etc. that facilitate the basic every day functioning of society: the movement of people, goods, and services that drive our economy.

Foreign Policy

In his speech, Senator Obama’s second and forth ways America will begin to lead again are “to alleviate poverty” and “spread American goodwill around the world.” Building infrastructure in lesser developed countries will facilitate the meeting of these goals through what economists call a multiplier effect-- if it’s done right that is. If economic development is facilitated at the “grass roots level,” based on a population’s self-described needs, in a self-prescribed manner, using indigenous intellectual and material resources, then that development will be sustainable, providing community investment in the development process that will last into the future. The logic of the multiplier is this: by pumping money into infrastructure projects (paving roads, building bridges and schools), it helps people to provide themselves with the economic means of survival (access to resources), people gain a sense of self-accomplishment and stake in the economic present and future of their country. Why not just let Mr. Obama’s policy proposals alone if they will be achieved via the means of building infrastructure? Misdirection, lack of specificity; the obligatory nature of “alleviating poverty” and “spreading American goodwill” have the potential to give way to ambiguous action plans with equally ambiguous measures that will not in the end achieve the stated goal. However, building X number of bridges or paving Z kilometers of roads is a clearly defined goal, the success of which can be measured in a simplistic binary fashion.
While there is a lot to criticize in the argument made by eminent economist and foreign aid advocate Jeffrey Sachs that simply providing more money to the developing world will alleviate poverty and lead to economic development, his analysis of infrastructure necessity in the developing world is spot on. In a recent column for The Scientific American, Mr. Sachs wrote,
Investments in infrastructure can also break economic isolation. Such improvements include all-weather roads, wider cellular phone coverage, the extension of power grids to rural areas (like the New Deal program of rural electrification in the U.S.) and the extension of broadband Internet services through fiber-optic cables and satellite connections. Connecting formerly remote villages to regional and world markets enables them to earn much more cash income through sales of agricultural commodities, processed goods (such as textiles) and services (such as tourism or even IT-based rural services).
If the basic means to provide economic enfranchisement are present in a society, the overall functioning of that society’s economy will improve. Another key part of Mr. Sach’s point is that the diffusion of information is key to developing a society. Building information technology infrastructure will make this process quicker by decreasing the information monopoly that the enfranchised hold over the disenfranchised. The organization One Laptop Per Child provides a useful example about how this process can work: Their aim is to provide children in classrooms in developing countries with access to the internet, the dearth of information available on the internet as a substitute for textbooks. The organization’s premise is that equal access to education is inhibited by lack of access to information where Western publishing companies hold an intellectual property monopoly on textbooks and education systems in the developing world cannot afford to buy textbooks (lacking a domestic textbook publishing industry) of a magnitude sufficient to keep the children of their countries learning competitively on par with children of the developed world. The implication being that the human resources infrastructure in the developing world has been stunted. The multiplier is this: those children will take the computers home and their families will learn to use them as well, the ability to use a computer becomes a transferable skill that older men and women can use to get a job, get better jobs and improve the overall welfare of their families.

Indeed, in general there is a reason that almost every single humanitarian aid report lists “lack of infrastructure” in varying terms as the reason that development aid is relatively less effective than it could be. According to recent studies by The World Bank, economic development in Latin America is inhibited by lack of infrastructure. Lack of logistical infrastructure costs domestic exporters throughout Latin America 15-34% more than their counter parts in comparable developed economies. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs report on Sudan’s economy concludes that the biggest challenge for Sudan’s economy is lack of transportation and irrigation infrastructure. There is no point in throwing more money at international development schemes with out making a conscious effort to first improve the basis upon which developing countries function: the means by which they can move goods, services, information, and labour from one place to another. One might wonder that the disaster recovery in Indonesia may have been “quicker” had infrastructure been better to begin with. Burma, after Cyclone Nargis, faces the same consideration.

Populations that have a sense of enfranchisement and equitable access to their society, via economic and political means are arguably more socially “stable” societies. A key assumption of this argument is made by Amaryta Sen: poverty implies unequal access to resources, both material and economic in nature, and indeed that economic development is a universal human right. As Mr. Mahbubani explained, when his family was able to install a flush toilette in their home, his sense of well-being improved. Saying nothing about the broader economic status of his country, income gaps between rich and poor, he simply felt better about his situation in life. It has become accepted theory that the strong base of Islamic extremism and outbreaks of inter-ethnic violence, for example, are highly correlative to relatively more impoverished societies with large income gaps between groups. The Multiplier: If the United States assists in providing enfranchisement to the global economic system by facilitating the installation of flush toilettes (a manifestation of improving urban infrastructure), it will be a step further to achieving the goals that Mr. Obama outlined: “allievating poverty” and “spreading American goodwill around the world,” thus enabling the reduction of political instability and “Islamic extremism,” another long term American foreign policy goal. And thus, wrapped up prettily with a tiny bow on top: building flush- toilettes is the basis for solving all the world’s little problems.

Domestic Policy
Infrastructure Abroad and At Home: Rebuilding Domestic Infrastructure will improve the US Economy
Last year saw the collapse of a bridge in Minnesota, exploding drain pipes in New York City, and flooding in Fernley, Nevada due to a failed levee. These episodes are indicative of a larger and much ignored problem not only in America itself but all over the developed world: Infrastructure decay. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that it will cost $1.6 trillion dollars invested over a five year period in order to rebuild American infrastructure to “good condition.” At least 13 State Governors have recently agreed that the decayed state of American infrastructure qualifies as a national emergency.

There are more examples: Florida’s infrastructure alone needs $200 billion in investment; San Francisco’s crumbling highway infrastructure annually costs the economy $7.4 billion dollars. Shipping containers received in American ports face an average of seven days delay, which costs both shippers and receivers. But the ocean ports aren’t the only ones that need modernizing: Inland American waterways utilize lock and dam systems for keeping goods moving across the country, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers, half of these need replacing. The American economy is no longer producing the bountiful growth it did in the last decade, it is declining and becoming less competitive. It isn’t just the lag in re-education of American workers from jobs that have been outsourced, the basic infrastructure by which the economy functions is making the American economy less competitive and is likely contributing to the lag time from outsourcing loss turnover.

Rebuilding American infrastructure will support job growth and keep America competitive while re-instill in Americans a sense of unified national purpose in a confusing time. The American economy is beginning a downward trend with many pundits predicting “recession.” The American economy has lost ground to cheaper labour and production processes abroad. According to the Pew Research Center this April, Middle-Class Americans have given the US Economy “the most downbeat short-term assessment of personal progress in nearly half a century.” Judging their performance over the last five years, 31% of Americans say they have “fallen backwards,” while 25% say they are no better off than they were. Americans are no longer confident in the American economy. A Pew poll from May also finds that only 37% of Americans feel “favorable” about Federal Government performance, again the lowest rating for the last decade.

As previously discussed, economic infrastructure is vital for economic growth and recovery and American infrastructure, like the American consciousness, is in a dismal state. In a recent article in The American Prospect Damon Silvers links the decay in American Infrastructure directly to the downward trend of wages by way of tax cuts and free trade agreements. He writes that “In the public sector, starting in the 1980’s, tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefited the rich robbed government of revenues necessary to fund public investment, both at the state and federal level.” He explains that as American business drove the opening up of the American economy to globalization, this put downward pressure on wages, which in turn undermined the ability of the American middle class to save—meanwhile government policy encouraged borrowing in order to keep consumption levels high, thus driving the economic growth. The end result, however, was “the first postwar economic expansion in which wages did not rise.” While tax cuts prohibited proper government investment in human resources and infrastructure; Silvers calls for re-investment in infrastructure and new investment in alternative energy technology with “a wartime sense of urgency” because he explains, while our education systems have declined, America still has the capitalist know-how and physical resources to lead the world in the development of new, clean energy technology.

Thus, the state of American infrastructure, for the purpose of national policy, can be made into a physical manifestation of the American psychological state. If the national infrastructure reconstruction is made a national priority and the American public can be enlisted to provide energetic dynamic support for such a policy, then the policy will provide Americans with a sense of purpose and hope in a manner that invigorates national identity. As Mr. Mahbubani felt that his family’s prospects had improved with the installation of a flush toilette, Americans will recover their confidence in the strength of their national entity, its prospects for the future with the re-building of infrastructure and restoration of American economic-competitiveness. And as American self-confidence recovers, it is possible that it might also have the effect of recovering America’s image abroad.

The question remains: how can America be invigorated by domestic infrastructure policy? There are two possible but not necessarily mutually exclusive responses to this question: While the Economics of FDR’s “New Deal” policy proved false, the image of a new “New Deal” will harken back to grand old days of a growing American economy providing a positive image for the economic outlook of the country. As with some economic concepts, positive imagery can provide a self fulfilling prophecy.

Second, if we take Mr. Silvers’ “wartime sense of urgency” and run with it-- rebuilding American infrastructure can be used to revive enrollment numbers in the armed forces (specifically in the Army Reserve and National Guard corps, whose task it normally is to respond to domestic natural disasters like those made worse by decaying infrastructure: e.g. flooding due to levys bursting) and provide employment and means of re-integration for Iraq war veterans struggling with issues of re-adjustment and post-traumatic stress disorder. The National Guard needs enough personnel to retain the ability to alleviate domestic crisis, the Army Reserve needs enough personnel so that those Reservists called up for duty can at the very least retain the full length of rest periods between service, periods that have steadily declined in length since the beginning of the Iraq War.

It would be up to the President to issue an executive order that the domestic task of the Army Reserve and/or National Guard make it their top domestic priority to upgrade and restore American infrastructure to globally competitive levels. The bulk of military, war-time recruits, according to the Heritage Foundation, are largely made up of those that come from middle class income brackets: $35,000 to $79,999 totaling just over 60% of the total with more recruits coming from the mid to lower end of that range, 43.8% from rural areas. It is precisely this socio-economic class of Americans that have felt, according to Mr. Silvers and others, the brunt of real wage stagnation. While military recruits are often 18 to 24 year olds, it is their economic future that is at stake. Military recruiters could go to high schools and colleges with a message of domestic servitude within American communities, the long term result of which is the probability of a brighter future after military service; the same Heritage Foundation report also notes that most recruits join for tertiary educational benefits—thus the passage of a new and improved GI Bill (like the one currently making its way through congress) is vital to this strategy as well.

In order to actively and dynamically co-opt the civilian American population to the rebuilding effort, the Overseas Development Institute guidelines for “Mainstreaming Public Participation in Economic Infrastructure Projects” are instructive. The basic premise is that no matter what organization or agency is charged with building economic infrastructure projects, those projects will be less relatively less efficient (efficiency as the ultimate goal for economic policy) unless the local community is actively involved in every part of the process.

The report states that the purpose of public participation, “At its most effective, it is about empowering all those parties influential in and/or affected by a project, in defining and realizing the project’s objectives, and ensuring sustainable benefits.” In communities that have seen economic decline due to globalization, outsourcing, and the mortgage crisis, being actively involved in reclaiming their “American Dream” (the raison d’etre for Middle America) by participating in rebuilding America’s economic life force, will provide a unifying sense of purpose amongst Americans. In using the rebuilding of Economic Infrastructure as a military recruiting strategy, the same sense of unified American Purpose will have strong, dynamic psychological effects on the current generation and hopefully next generation of American youth. In as far as constructing something with one’s hands is found to be psychologically satisfying—thus as a possible therapy and in exchange for meals and housing, maybe even a moderate salary, Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans might psychologically benefit from participation in rebuilding the American economy. As rebuilding infrastructure seeks to co-opt local communities into the process, involvement with their local communities may aid veterans in reintegration into civilian life.

Conclusion

The purpose of Infrastructure is not just the functionality of the edifices themselves, but also the psychological multiplier mentioned by Mr. Mahbubani: simply “feeling better.” Americans have had a rough time of late and the foreign and economic prospects don’t look good. The good opinion of America abroad is declining, for the short-run domestic economic prospects look grim. Abroad, the developing world does have a few major stars: Brazil, China, India, and Russia—but even the most successful developing countries have masses of poor. If Senator Obama, as President, hopes to “spread American goodwill” around the world by “allievating poverty,” the most effective means of doing so is by clearly specifying policy: building infrastructure will achieve these goals. Or, if you like, paving X number of highways, and installing T number of flush toilettes provide a precise, measurable means of success that will translate into a more positive image of America abroad in a way that using abstract strategies cannot: providing a functional tactile outcome.

Early Failures...

2008-08-17T19:13:00.010+01:00

Housing Promises Alleviate Harsh Living Conditions but Not Poverty
July 2005
By J. Daniels

Cape Town, South Africa—Driving along the highway outside Cape Town the tour bus grinds to halt; protestors block the way. They are demonstrating for the houses the government has promised them will replace their dilapidated squatter shacks.

At first glance, the surrounding area seems an endless wasteland, with randomly discarded items strewn over an indeterminate surface. Upon closer examination, the upside-down wheel barrows, concrete blocks, makeshift sandbags hold down a sea of corrugated tin roofs against the wind that blows over the Cape Flats. Wooden poles stretch into the air with so many cables coming off of them: electrical sail rigging.

These are the temporary structures that make up the squatter camps that stretch eastward from Cape Town for miles along the N2, a major national highway. They constitute a sprawling mini-metropolis made up entirely of such improvised shelters, and they typify squatter camps that have arisen outside most major cities here since the nullification of apartheid-era laws.

The post-apartheid government is under increasing pressure to respond to its promise to build 1 million houses every five years, a pledge the African National Congress (ANC) made when it came to power in 1994. So far, it has only built 2 million houses under its highly touted Reconstruction and Development Program.

Government officials say that are responding to the housing crisis as quickly as they can, but they argue that competition for scarce resources limits their ability to expand the program. Meanwhile, the houses they do build are often far from the cities and available employment opportunities. The lack of affordable public transport means that even the government’s successes actually have a negative multiplier effect on the poor: lack of access to resources necessary to survive.

“The 2 million RDP houses, a not negligible roll-out, has exacerbated many problems,” says Jeremy Cronin, the Deputy Secretary of the South African Communist Party (SACP) and a leading ANC Member of Parliament. “In the course of this housing program we became too obsessed with a numerical target, and there was too little attention paid to integrated spatial and developmental planning.”

At another point along the N2 highway, one finds hundreds of small, brightly-colored concrete houses. They, too, are topped with corrugated tin roofs, but have proper window and door frames. They are the government-built houses for which the residents of the squatter camps wait. But there are not nearly enough to go round, and they lack many basic utility services.

“The new housing localities are often rows and rows of ‘match-box’ houses, arguably better than un-safe, fire-prone shacks, but they are not part of sustainable communities in their own right,” says Cronin. “There are few if any parks, amenities and space. They remain absolutely dependent on distant localities for most shopping, for work.”

“In order to meet numerical housing unit targets the temptation was to go for lowest cost land, typically far away from city centers, businesses, work places, amenities,” he says.

Today in the townships people find novel ways to earn a living. On street corners women sit in front of low wooden tables or blankets displaying produce. Many have small gardens to provide food for their families and supplement their income. Others produce traditional crafts.

Winding down dirt streets between the tiny houses and shacks, a sign for a small business reads: “Martin’s funerals you can afford.” Further down are metal machine parts piled in front of one shack, a mechanic’s shop. Further still, a man stands at a lopsided wooden stand, covered in blood and surrounded by animal carcasses. He is a neighborhood butcher.

A large concrete building looms in the distance: the Pick N’ Save grocery store. Smaller stalls ring the parking lot. This is the commercial center where vendors sell produce, candies and chips, clothing, shoes, simple housewares.

Adjacent to the vendor area stand a fleet of white minibuses, their side doors thrown open to collect passengers. These are

special taxis that run a specified route from one place to another. They are one of the three main ways people from townships make their way into the cities to work.

Fatima sits at the back of a stall covered by a blue tarp at the Green Point Flea Market in Cape Town. She is a plump and reserved woman. She wears a light purple head scarf, blue flower patterned shirt, and long denim skirt. She is selling carved wooden bowls, statues, and masks.

“A taxi from Khaylitsha to Cape Town is 20 rand per day; that is expensive, yeah, because most people aren’t working,” she says. “ I can sit at market all day and not make anything.”

Fatima says that while public transportation from the townships is convenient, it is expensive. The train is the cheapest way to come to town, but it is not always on time. The best way is to come by taxi, but that can take a while because there is always a long cue.

Beverly, a young shop girl at the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront Mall in Cape Town waits for a mini-bus. She has to wake up early, at about 7 a.m. in order to get to work on time. She says that in the morning when she leaves and when she comes home in the evening, it is dark outside and not safe. From Beverly’s township a one-way bus to the waterfront costs 15 to 16 Rand and takes one hour and 45 minutes. A one-way taxi costs 7.50 Rand and the train costs 5.50 Rand, both take about 45 minutes to reach the Waterfront. According to parliamentary estimates, 64 percent of all commuters use the minibus/taxis.

“The public transport systems have gotten worse, not better. Poor households are spending an unacceptable amount of their income on transport. Others are simply stranded,” says Cronin.

“Some of these petty-entrepreneurial activities are actually extremely critical to our whole society—the minibus industry being the most obvious example,” says Cronin, “If we are to make townships more habitable and sustainable in their own right, we need to help link them up with the main industrial and retail centers.”

“We are looking at helping to build cooperative forms of organization, at connecting government spending with local productive activities, e.g., local women’s baking coops, or food garden initiatives,” says Cronin.

South Africa currently spends R4 billion per year subsidizing the commuter rail and bus services, transport that Beverly and people like her depend upon to get to work every day. However, trying to control transportation costs is not easy. Buses are owned by municipalities or private companies, the trains are run by public companies, and the minibuses and taxis are run as private businesses within the townships. Each receives subsidies from different levels of government. Cronin says he hopes that the Parliament can act to reform the transport system to make it more affordable, to help improve quality of life in the townships.

“We want to move towards an alignment of spatial planning and transport subsides by bringing them both into the same sphere of government. Secondly, we want to move to subsidizing integrated, multi-modal public transport systems—so that trains, buses, minibuses, etcetera, work together in a single system, rather than competing as is presently the case,” says Cronin. In terms of future housing, Cronin says the government hopes to build closer to cities, providing “medium density housing.” The government also wants to place commercial and industrial centers closer to townships, so that more people can find gainful employment. But there is a rather substantial distinction to be made between hope and ability.