Globale Wasserkrise trifft Deutschland

27. August 2014

WWF-Studie warnt vor „importiertem Wasserrisiko“ in Zeiten der Globalisierung.

Bewässerung in Brasilien © Peter Caton / WWF

Gemüse aus Spanien, Baumwolle und Kleidung aus Indien, Metalle aus Südafrika, Rosen aus Kenia, Phosphor aus China: Deutschland hat bei vielen Waren ein besorgniserregendes, „importiertes Wasserrisiko“. Zu diesem Ergebnis kommt eine Studie der Naturschutzorganisation WWF. „Von Reputationsschäden bis hin zu Standortschließungen, versteckte Wasserrisiken können im Extremfall Milliardenausfälle für deutsche Unternehmen nach sich ziehen“, erklärt Philipp Wagnitz, WWF-Referent und einer der Autoren. Der WWF-Studie zufolge ist Wasser hierzulande zwar ausreichend vorhanden, doch da Deutschland als weltweit drittgrößte Importnation auf ausländische Waren angewiesen ist, müssten Unternehmen und Politik lokal angepasste Strategien für die globale Wasserkrise entwickeln.

So bezog die deutsche Wirtschaft aus dem wasserintensiven, südafrikanischen Bergbausektor 2012 rund 5,5 Mio. Tonnen im Wert von knapp 2 Milliarden Euro, darunter  Steinkohle, Metalle und Erze. Durch den Import von Baumwolle und Textilien hinterlässt Deutschland in Pakistan jährlich einen Wasser-Fußabdruck in Höhe von 5,46 Kubikkilometer. Das entspricht beinahe dem doppelten Volumen des Starnberger Sees. Und „Europas Gemüsegarten“ in Spanien droht sich durch teils illegale Bewässerung selbst auszutrocknen, wobei die Bundesrepublik von dort 2013 allein 180.000 Tonnen Tomaten im Wert von rund 250 Mio. Euro bezog.

„Wasser wird lokal immer knapper und dieses Problem betrifft nicht mehr nur Entwicklungsländer und Wüstenregionen. Für die Wasserkrise verantwortlich und zugleich von ihr betroffen sind wichtige deutsche Wirtschaftssektoren, vom Lebensmittelhandel, über die Automobilindustrie bis zur Modebranche“, so WWF-Experte Wagnitz. Eine wachsende Bevölkerung, steigender Konsum und der Klimawandel werden, so die Prognose, die Verfügbarkeit und Qualität von Wasser weiter verschlechtern - und damit auch Auswirkungen auf von Deutschland benötigten Waren und Ressourcen haben.

 „Viele Unternehmen wissen noch nicht einmal, dass sie versteckten Wasserrisiken ausgesetzt sind. Erst wenn es zu Engpässen oder Problemen kommt, werden sie sich dessen bewusst“, kritisiert Wagnitz. Eine wesentliche Ursache sei neben der Verschmutzung nicht nur die Verfügbarkeit und Nutzung von Wasser, sondern auch die unzureichende Verwaltung und Verteilung der Ressourcen. Dementsprechend seien besonders Regierungen und Unternehmen in der Pflicht, Wassermanagementstrategien etwa für betroffene Flussgebiete zu entwickeln und die Ressource gerecht aufzuteilen. Nur so könnten Konflikte um Wasser in Zukunft gemindert werden.

„Wasser ist nicht nur eine ökologische oder soziale Frage, sondern auch eine ökonomische. Simple Lösungen gibt es daher in diesem komplexen Gefüge leider meistens nicht“, so Wagnitz. Vielmehr müsse jede Region, jeder Fall gesondert analysiert werden. Danach gelte es, gemeinsam Lösungen zu entwickeln. Nur so könnten auch die betroffenen Unternehmen ihre ökonomischen und nicht zuletzt reputativen Risiken minimieren.

Hintergrund WWF-Studie „Das importierte Risiko“

Basierend auf einer Kombination ihrer Abhängigkeit von Wasser und ihrem Wasserrisiko wurden vier Wirtschaftssektoren mit direktem Wasserrisiko (Landwirtschaft, Chemie-, Textil- u. Bekleidungsindustrie sowie Rohstoffindustrie) und zwei Sektoren mit indirekten Wasserrisiken (Finanzdienstleistungen und Einzelhandel) ausgewählt und analysiert.

Darüber hinaus wurden Länder mit hohem Wasserrisiko identifiziert, die für den Warenimport mindestens eines Wirtschaftssektors von großer Bedeutung sind:

» China, Bangladesch und Indien – Textil- und Bekleidungsindustrie

» Russland, Libyen, Südafrika – Rohstoffe und Metalle

» Äthiopien, Indonesien, Argentinien – Landwirtschaft

» China, Indien, Marokko – Chemikalien

Zur Reduktion von Wasserrisiken hat der WWF das Water Stewardship-Konzept entwickelt. Mit einem schrittweisen Ansatz ist es Unternehmen dabei möglich, ein Wasserbewusstsein zu entwickeln, Wasserrisiken zu analysieren und darauf mit internen und externen Maßnahmen zu reagieren. Im Fokus stehen gemeinsame Strategien und Lösungen mit anderen Wassernutzern, Behörden und der Zivilgesellschaft in den betroffenen Gebieten.

UK Green Party blogger

 I found this fine blog by a speaker for the UK Green Party.  This one's from a few years ago, but seems as very relevant as ever.

gaianeconomics.blogspot.com.br/2007/10/competing-definitions-of-free-market.html

Competing definitions of a free market

The Competition Commission has found that supermarkets serve customers well. According to the limited economistic, marketistic mindset from which they see the world this is actually the correct conclusion. It is that mindset, and its political support, that we need to unpick in order to understand how they could have arrived at this frankly shocking conclusion.

The problem we face is that, as a society, we are undergoing a paradigm shift. For those of us living in the sustainable world of the future, diversity means a range of types of shopping, different shops or makers selling subtly different versions of the same product, or whose ownership structure or style suits our value system. To the Competition Commission diversity means four monocultural shopping outlets within which you can buy a range of 100 different fish all of which taste of very little. If you only have one of these you lack competition; if you have two the free market is functioning well for you.

For the proponents of supermarkets they are efficient places because you can buy everything you need as quickly as possible for as little time as possible, allowing you more time to make money to buy more. As a capitalist production-and-consumption unit supermarkets allow you to be as efficient as

possible. The fact that they rely on global agribusiness which uses 10 calories of energy to make 1 calorie of food (according to Richard Heinberg) does nothing to undermine their claims to efficiency.

Although such reports can lead to unhealthy gnashing and grinding of teeth the real problem is a political one. We are building the new, sustainable, community-focused world we want to live in. Nowhere is this more evident that in the area of food, where most greenies use an alternative system of wholefood shops or have their own wholefood co-op. The producers and distributors, many organised as co-operatives themselves, provide a parallel food economy based on the values of the future.

Public Relations- An Activist's View

      Well, television advertising has become very entertaining, and been that way for a long time now.  However, along with Public Relations, the business of Advertising became scientific a long time ago, and has obviously become part of the military-industrial complex and big business.  Subliminal Seduction was a great book by B. Wilson Key, I recall, but is fairly hard to obtain now.  Vance Packard wrote about it, but it goes back to people like Ed Bernays and another guy named Drecht, or something of that sort.   His name isn't mentioned in this wikipedia review.  The review does mention that the series may have been inspired by Stuart Ewen's PR! A Social History of Spin.  The film talks about the founding of the National Association of Manufacturers during the Roosevelt Administration, and Bernays' key role in the CIA's covert operations in the Guatemalan coup d'etats of 1954.  Cheers.  

The Century of the Self is a British television documentary series by Adam Curtis, released in 2002. It focuses on how the work of Sigmund Freud, Anna Freud, and Edward Bernays influenced the way corporations and governments have analyzed, dealt with, and controlled people.^[1]

Episodes

1. Happiness Machines (17 March 2002)
2. The Engineering of Consent (24 March 2002)
3. There is a Policeman Inside All Our Heads: He Must Be Destroyed (31 March 2002)
4. Eight People Sipping Wine in Kettering (7 April 2002)

Overview

"This series is about how those in power have used Freud's theories to try and control the dangerous crowd in an age of mass democracy." —Adam Curtis' introduction to the first episode.

Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, changed the perception of the human mind and its workings. The series describes the propaganda that Western governments and corporations have utilized stemming from Freud's theories.
Freud himself and his nephew Edward Bernays, who was the first to use psychological techniques in public relations, are discussed. Freud's daughter Anna Freud, a pioneer of child psychology, is mentioned in the second part, as is one of the main opponents of Freud's theories, Wilhelm Reich, in the third part.
Along these general themes, The Century of the Self asks deeper questions about the roots and methods of modern consumerism, representative democracy, commodification and its implications. It also questions the modern way we see ourselves, the attitudes to fashion and superficiality.
The business and political world uses psychological techniques to read, create and fulfill the desires of the public, to make their products or speeches as pleasing as possible to consumers and citizens. Curtis raises the question of the intentions and roots of this fact. Where once the political process was about engaging people's rational, conscious minds, as well as facilitating their needs as a society, the documentary shows how by employing the tactics of psychoanalysis, politicians appeal to irrational, primitive impulses that have little apparent bearing on issues outside of the narrow self-interest of a consumer population.
The words of Paul Mazur, a leading Wall Street banker working for Lehman Brothers, are cited: "We must shift America from a needs- to a desires-culture. People must be trained to desire, to want new things, even before the old have been entirely consumed. [...] Man's desires must overshadow his needs".^{[2][3][4][5][6][7]}

Germany Showing Backbone

  Germany is showing some gumption in recent trade talks.  A comment at the site goes beyond the article to suggest that it is the German people who are influencing a none too brazen government.  The German people have successfully lobbied a few times, and actually led much of the effort to create the favorable conditions for their renewable energy strength, following Denmark's pioneering steps, a very lonely but robust UK effort, and all along with the US and Spain's less democratic versions.  The selection below comes from Yes Magazine online.

 Why Germany Is Backing Away From a Trade Deal that Lets Corporations Sue the Government

A new round of international trade agreements threatens to increase corporate power over national governments. But news out of Germany suggests the deals aren't inevitable.

posted Aug 06, 2014



by Alexis Goldstein



A new round of international trade agreements threatens to increase corporate power over national governments. But news out of Germany suggests the deals aren't inevitable.
In a move that has many on the left cautiously celebrating, Reuters reported on July 28 that Germany might reject a new trade agreement between Canada and the European Union.

Some commentators see Germany's move as proof that organizing against the new round of trade agreements is gaining ground.

The deal is called the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, or CETA. It’s part of a new wave of large, aggressive trade deals that also includes the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the United States and the European Union, and the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) between 12 countries of the Pacific Rim.
If all the deals passed, they would affect more than half of the world’s economy. But the red light from Germany could signal that these agreements are not as inevitable as their advocates suggest.
Germany’s objections are centered specifically on the so-called “investor-state dispute settlement” provisions in CETA. These provisions—also known by the acronym ISDS—allow transnational corporations to take legal action against individual governments if they believe that the country’s domestic laws violate a trade agreement. And the legal disputes happen through arbitration, which is a way to settle disputes completely outside of the involved countries’ courts.
We’ve seen this movie before. Chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) stipulates that three-person panels of private attorneys decide who wins in disputes between corporations and individual governments. These proceedings are closed to public observation.
The fallout has been dramatic: Corporations have used the NAFTA tribunals to win big-ticket monetary settlements from the taxpayers of nations whose domestic laws interfere with corporate profits. According to a report by the consumer-rights advocacy group Public Citizen, there are 17 pending claims in which corporations are seeking a total of $38 billion through NAFTA and other deals.
The compensation won through these claims hits particularly hard in Argentina—the most frequent target of these cases according to a 2014 report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. In one example, Argentina was ordered to pay $185.3 million to the energy company BG Group, who sued for profits lost when the country froze gas prices in 2001.

Noam Chomsky on the Crimea

Chomsky uses T. Cambanis' idea of "red lines" to analyze the Crimean situation and US behavior.  He simply condemns Putin Russia's invasion in terms of its illegality, but emphasizes the illegalities in international context brilliantly, especially Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.  Comments were made that helped me understand the ethnic context better.
     One comment refers to the commenters WISH that the US could be a moral force, and that US Leaders need to learn THEIR lesson.  It is clear to me that no leader who can create a democratic economy can get elected until social movements in the US do so first.  Chavez in Venezuela acted brilliantly and almost with incomprehensible tact to implement significant advances in economic democracy there.  Would it take a similar enlightened military man in the US?  Philip Agee, for example, ex-CIA, might have been a kind of character up to the challenge in his heyday.  

The Politics of Red Lines: Putin's takeover of Crimea scares U.S. leaders because it challenges America's global dominance Noam Chomsky In These Times, May 1, 2014

The current Ukraine crisis is serious and threatening, so much so that some commentators even compare it to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. Columnist Thanassis Cambanis summarizes the core issue succinctly in The Boston Globe: "[President Vladimir V.] Putin's annexation of the Crimea is a break in the order that America and its allies have come to rely on since the end of the Cold War -- namely, one in which major powers only intervene militarily when they have an international consensus on their side, or failing that, when they're not crossing a rival power's red lines." This era's most extreme international crime, the United States-United Kingdom invasion of Iraq, was therefore not a break in world order -- because, after failing to gain international support, the aggressors didn't cross Russian or Chinese red lines. In contrast, Putin's takeover of the Crimea and his ambitions in Ukraine cross American red lines. Therefore "Obama is focused on isolating Putin's Russia by cutting off its economic and political ties to the outside world, limiting its expansionist ambitions in its own neighborhood and effectively making it a pariah state," Peter Baker reports in The New York Times. American red lines, in short, are firmly placed at Russia's borders. Therefore Russian ambitions "in its own neighborhood" violate world order and create crises. The point generalizes. Other countries are sometimes allowed to have red lines -- at their borders (where the United States' red lines are also located). But not Iraq, for example. Or Iran, which the U.S. continually threatens with attack ("no options are off the table"). Such threats violate not only the United Nations Charter but also the General Assembly resolution condemning Russia that the United States just signed. The resolution opened by stressing the U.N. Charter ban on "the threat or use of force" in international affairs. The Cuban missile crisis also sharply revealed the great powers' red lines. The world came perilously close to nuclear war when President Kennedy rejected Premier Khrushchev's offer to end the crisis by simultaneous public withdrawal of Soviet missiles from Cuba and American missiles from Turkey. (The U.S. missiles were already scheduled to be replaced by far more lethal Polaris submarines, part of the massive system threatening Russia's destruction.) In this case too, the United States' red lines were at Russia's borders, and that was accepted on all sides. The U.S. invasion of Indochina, like the invasion of Iraq, crossed no red lines, nor have many other U.S. depredations worldwide. To repeat the crucial point: Adversaries are sometimes permitted to have red lines, but at their borders, where America's red lines are also located. If an adversary has "expansionist ambitions in its own neighborhood," crossing U.S. red lines, the world faces a crisis. In the current issue of the Harvard-MIT journal International Security, Oxford University professor Yuen Foong Khong explains that there is a "long (and bipartisan) tradition in American strategic thinking: Successive administrations have emphasized that a vital interest of the United States is to prevent a hostile hegemon from dominating any of the major regions of the world." Furthermore, it is generally agreed that the United States must "maintain its predominance," because "it is U.S. hegemony that has upheld regional peace and stability" -- the latter a term of art referring to subordination to U.S. demands. As it happens, the world thinks differently and regards the United States as a "pariah state" and "the greatest threat to world peace," with no competitor even close in the polls. But what does the world know? Khong's article concerns the crisis in Asia, caused by the rise of China, which is moving toward "economic primacy in Asia" and, like Russia, has "expansionist ambitions in its own neighborhood," thus crossing American red lines. President Obama's recent Asia trip was to affirm the "long (and bipartisan) tradition," in diplomatic language. The near-universal Western condemnation of Putin includes citing the "emotional address" in which he complained bitterly that the U.S. and its allies had "cheated us again and again, made decisions behind our back, presenting us with completed facts with the expansion of NATO in the East, with the deployment of military infrastructure at our borders. They always told us the same thing: 'Well, this doesn't involve you.' " Putin's complaints are factually accurate. When President Gorbachev accepted the unification of Germany as part of NATO -- an astonishing concession in the light of history -- there was a quid pro quo. Washington agreed that NATO would not move "one inch eastward," referring to East Germany. The promise was immediately broken, and when Gorbachev complained, he was instructed that it was only a verbal promise, so without force. President Clinton proceeded to expand NATO much farther to the east, to Russia's borders. Today there are calls to extend NATO even to Ukraine, deep into the historic Russian "neighborhood." But it "doesn't involve" the Russians, because its responsibility to "uphold peace and stability" requires that American red lines are at Russia's borders. Russia's annexation of Crimea was an illegal act, in violation of international law and specific treaties. It's not easy to find anything comparable in recent years -- the Iraq invasion is a vastly greater crime. But one comparable example comes to mind: U.S. control of Guantanamo Bay in southeastern Cuba. Guantanamo was wrested from Cuba at gunpoint in 1903 and not relinquished despite Cuba's demands ever since it attained independence in 1959. To be sure, Russia has a far stronger case. Even apart from strong internal support for the annexation, Crimea is historically Russian; it has Russia's only warm-water port, the home of Russia's fleet; and has enormous strategic significance. The United States has no claim at all to Guantanamo, other than its monopoly of force. One reason why the United States refuses to return Guantanamo to Cuba, presumably, is that this is a major harbor and American control of the region severely hampers Cuban development. That has been a major U.S. policy goal for 50 years, including large-scale terror and economic warfare. The United States claims that it is shocked by Cuban human rights violations, overlooking the fact that the worst such violations are in Guantanamo; that valid charges against Cuba do not begin to compare with regular practices among Washington's Latin American clients; and that Cuba has been under severe, unremitting U.S. attack since its independence. But none of this crosses anyone's red lines or causes a crisis. It falls into the category of the U.S. invasions of Indochina and Iraq, the regular overthrow of parliamentary regimes and installation of vicious dictatorships, and our hideous record of other exercises of "upholding peace and stability."

http://www.chomsky.info/articles/20140501.htm

Noam Chomsky: Will Capitalism Kill Us?

I've just watched the Howard Zinn doc "...Moving Train" and am in the middle of watching the Noam Chomsky doc "Manufacturing Consent" (both again), and revived my realization that Zinn had been and Chomsky has been amazing activists.  I found this 2013 piece by Chomsky at chomsky.info, and think it is 
superb.  He refers to Mondragon, Ohio, and Alperovitz, and his own bright light, Dewey.  I wasn't familiar with Dewey's powerful relevance.  I guess one thing he doesn't seem to acknowledge is the existence of Federal laws like Germany's Worker Co-Determination law with some other European Work Councils.  The original Danish approach from protests to mechanics to associations to co-ops was followed by Germany to its larger scale, with an interesting version injected into the UK.  Ohio has an example applying this, I understand.  An example I like in the US is that of the food co-operatives and credit unions.  There are plenty of both.  Nevertheless, it is the industrial strength ones that need to inspire most of us, and so I am honored again to mention Michael Moore's last film, Capitalism, with his visits to Wisconsin and San Francisco industrial co-ops.

Can Civilization Survive Capitalism?

Noam Chomsky

Alternet, March 5, 2013

The term "capitalism" is commonly used to refer to the U.S. economic system, with substantial state intervention ranging from subsidies for creative innovation to the "too-big-to-fail" government insurance policy for banks.
The system is highly monopolized, further limiting reliance on the market, and increasingly so: In the past 20 years the share of profits of the 200 largest enterprises has risen sharply, reports scholar Robert W. McChesney in his new book "Digital Disconnect."
"Capitalism" is a term now commonly used to describe systems in which there are no capitalists: for example, the worker-owned Mondragon conglomerate in the Basque region of Spain, or the worker-owned enterprises expanding in northern Ohio, often with conservative support -- both are discussed in important work by the scholar Gar Alperovitz.
Some might even use the term "capitalism" to refer to the industrial democracy advocated by John Dewey, America's leading social philosopher, in the late 19th century and early 20th century.
Dewey called for workers to be "masters of their own industrial fate" and for all institutions to be brought under public control, including the means of production, exchange, publicity, transportation and communication. Short of this, Dewey argued, politics will remain "the shadow cast on society by big business."
The truncated democracy that Dewey condemned has been left in tatters in recent years. Now control of government is narrowly concentrated at the peak of the income scale, while the large majority "down below" has been virtually disenfranchised. The current political-economic system is a form of plutocracy, diverging sharply from democracy, if by that concept we mean political arrangements in which policy is significantly influenced by the public will.
There have been serious debates over the years about whether capitalism is compatible with democracy. If we keep to really existing capitalist democracy -- RECD for short -- the question is effectively answered: They are radically incompatible.
It seems to me unlikely that civilization can survive RECD and the sharply attenuated democracy that goes along with it. But could functioning democracy make a difference?
Let's keep to the most critical immediate problem that civilization faces: environmental catastrophe. Policies and public attitudes diverge sharply, as is often the case under RECD. The nature of the gap is examined in several articles in the current issue of Daedalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Researcher Kelly Sims Gallagher finds that "One hundred and nine countries have enacted some form of policy regarding renewable power, and 118 countries have set targets for renewable energy. In contrast, the United States has not adopted any consistent and stable set of policies at the national level to foster the use of renewable energy."
It is not public opinion that drives American policy off the international spectrum. Quite the opposite. Opinion is much closer to the global norm than the U.S. government's policies reflect, and much more supportive of actions needed to confront the likely environmental disaster predicted by an overwhelming scientific consensus -- and one that's not too far off; affecting the lives of our grandchildren, very likely.
As Jon A. Krosnick and Bo MacInnis report in Daedalus: "Huge majorities have favored steps by the federal government to reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions generated when utilities produce electricity. In 2006, 86 percent of respondents favored requiring utilities, or encouraging them with tax breaks, to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases they emit. Also in that year, 87 percent favored tax breaks for utilities that produce more electricity from water, wind or sunlight [ These majorities were maintained between 2006 and 2010 and shrank somewhat after that.
The fact that the public is influenced by science is deeply troubling to those who dominate the economy and state policy.
One current illustration of their concern is the "Environmental Literacy Improvement Act" proposed to state legislatures by ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-funded lobby that designs legislation to serve the needs of the corporate sector and extreme wealth.
The ALEC Act mandates "balanced teaching" of climate science in K-12 classrooms. "Balanced teaching" is a code phrase that refers to teaching climate-change denial, to "balance" mainstream climate science. It is analogous to the "balanced teaching" advocated by creationists to enable the teaching of "creation science" in public schools. Legislation based on ALEC models has already been introduced in several states.
Of course, all of this is dressed up in rhetoric about teaching critical thinking -- a fine idea, no doubt, but it's easy to think up far better examples than an issue that threatens our survival and has been selected because of its importance in terms of corporate profits.
Media reports commonly present a controversy between two sides on climate change.
One side consists of the overwhelming majority of scientists, the world's major national academies of science, the professional science journals and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
They agree that global warming is taking place, that there is a substantial human component, that the situation is serious and perhaps dire, and that very soon, maybe within decades, the world might reach a tipping point where the process will escalate sharply and will be irreversible, with severe social and economic effects. It is rare to find such consensus on complex scientific issues.
The other side consists of skeptics, including a few respected scientists who caution that much is unknown -- which means that things might not be as bad as thought, or they might be worse.
Omitted from the contrived debate is a much larger group of skeptics: highly regarded climate scientists who see the IPCC's regular reports as much too conservative. And these scientists have repeatedly been proven correct, unfortunately.
The propaganda campaign has apparently had some effect on U.S. public opinion, which is more skeptical than the global norm. But the effect is not significant enough to satisfy the masters. That is presumably why sectors of the corporate world are launching their attack on the educational system, in an effort to counter the public's dangerous tendency to pay attention to the conclusions of scientific research.
At the Republican National Committee's Winter Meeting a few weeks ago, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal warned the leadership that "We must stop being the stupid party ... We must stop insulting the intelligence of voters."
Within the RECD system it is of extreme importance that we become the stupid nation, not misled by science and rationality, in the interests of the short-term gains of the masters of the economy and political system, and damn the consequences.
These commitments are deeply rooted in the fundamentalist market doctrines that are preached within RECD, though observed in a highly selective manner, so as to sustain a powerful state that serves wealth and power.
The official doctrines suffer from a number of familiar "market inefficiencies," among them the failure to take into account the effects on others in market transactions. The consequences of these "externalities" can be substantial. The current financial crisis is an illustration. It is partly traceable to the major banks and investment firms' ignoring "systemic risk" -- the possibility that the whole system would collapse -- when they undertook risky transactions.
Environmental catastrophe is far more serious: The externality that is being ignored is the fate of the species. And there is nowhere to run, cap in hand, for a bailout.
In future, historians (if there are any) will look back on this curious spectacle taking shape in the early 21st century. For the first time in human history, humans are facing the significant prospect of severe calamity as a result of their actions -- actions that are battering our prospects of decent survival.
Those historians will observe that the richest and most powerful country in history, which enjoys incomparable advantages, is leading the effort to intensify the likely disaster. Leading the effort to preserve conditions in which our immediate descendants might have a decent life are the so-called "primitive" societies: First Nations, tribal, indigenous, aboriginal.
The countries with large and influential indigenous populations are well in the lead in seeking to preserve the planet. The countries that have driven indigenous populations to extinction or extreme marginalization are racing toward destruction.
Thus Ecuador, with its large indigenous population, is seeking aid from the rich countries to allow it to keep its substantial oil reserves underground, where they should be.
Meanwhile the U.S. and Canada are seeking to burn fossil fuels, including the extremely dangerous Canadian tar sands, and to do so as quickly and fully as possible, while they hail the wonders of a century of (largely meaningless) energy independence without a side glance at what the world might look like after this extravagant commitment to self-destruction.
This observation generalizes: Throughout the world, indigenous societies are struggling to protect what they sometimes call "the rights of nature," while the civilized and sophisticated scoff at this silliness.
This is all exactly the opposite of what rationality would predict -- unless it is the skewed form of reason that passes through the filter of RECD.

Atomic States of America

I listened to this segment again last night.  I recently showed the film Erin Brockavich to one of my classes.  These are the tragedies that can help give people a reality check.

Nuclear power has drawn wide support from both sides of the aisle, with both Republicans and Democrats advancing a pro-nuclear agenda even in the aftermath of last year’s Fukushima disaster in Japan. We speak with Sheena Joyce, co-director of the new documentary "The Atomic States of America," which is featured at 2012 Sundance Film Festival. We’re also joined by Kelly McMasters, whose book "Welcome to Shirley: A Memoir from an Atomic Town" inspired the film. Joyce says, "We used Kelly’s book and the town of Shirley as kind of a springboard into the issue, to just talk to people really on both sides, but mainly to speak to the people in reactor communities... We wanted to seek an intelligent dialogue." [includes rush transcript]

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re broadcasting from Park City, Utah, home of the Sundance Film Festival, the nation’s largest festival for independent cinema. Today we’re talking about nuclear power. Why? Well, the corporate media brings out debate when the establishment in Washington is divided—Democrats debating Republicans. That scope of debate, they bring us. But what happens when the majority of Democrats and Republicans in Congress, and the president, as well, agree? You’re not going to get much coverage of the issue. And that’s the story of nuclear power today. Just two years ago, President Obama gave his State of the Union address and was applauded on both sides of the aisle when he said this.
We’re broadcasting from Park City, Utah, and we’re about to go to a clip of President Obama speaking two years ago at the State of the Union address, when he addressed the issue of nuclear renaissance.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: [But to create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production,] more efficiency, more incentives. And that means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country, because the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy, and America must be that nation.

AMY GOODMAN: That was President Obama in 2010 giving his State of the Union address. And that is a clip of a new movie that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival called The Atomic States of America. It’s directed by Sheena Joyce and Don Argott. And Sheena Joyce is joining us now.

The film is based on a book called Welcome to Shirley by a Shirley resident, Kelly McMasters. That’s Shirley, Long Island, New York. And Kelly joins us today.

....   http://www.democracynow.org/2012/1/24/the_atomic_states_of_america_exploring