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February 15, 2007
Global Warming and Population
Robert Hardaway and Judy Swearingen
GLOBAL WARMING DEBATES IGNORES THE 800 POUND GORILLA
Robert Hardaway and Judy Swearingen
As the global warming debate degenerates into a proxy fight between competing political ideologies which have little to do with global warming itself, it becomes clear that both sides to the debate have lost sight of the underlying issues.
Those who claim that global warming caused by human activity will be the cause of an imminent environmental catastrophe are essentially beating a dead horse—namely that the planet is being environmentally degraded by modern civilization and the inevitable consequences of the industrial revolution. True enough, although the experts continue to debate both the percentage of global warming due to human activity and the significance of recent warming when measured on a scale of billions of years and countless cycles of global cooling and warming. Not to be forgotten is that some of the same “experts” who are now predicting catastrophic global warming, twenty five years ago were predicting a catastrophic ice age.
Where the forecasters of doom fail is in setting forth a solution to the problem of human activity. Most often implied, though rarely specifically set forth, is that the solution is to reduce per capita consumption.
The problem with this solution is that it has already been tried--back in the 1930’s. It was called “The Great Depression”, and most people didn’t like it.
On the other hand, those who claim that human consumption has no effect on the environment and may be safely ignored unit the evidence is actually “confirmed” by the loss of coastal cities seem equally adept at missing the 800 pound gorilla casting its shadow on the entire debate.
Most environmentalists are familiar with the Holdren equation for measuring environmental impact: I= PCU, which states that total global impact is the multiple of 1) population, 2) per capita consumption, and 3) the environmental impact of each unit of consumption.
Governmental environmental policy to date has focused on the third component by attempting to reduce the environmental impact of each unit of consumption, such as a car or refrigerator. The failure of this approach has been recognized by former EPA Director Lee Thomas as a self-defeating “circle game” in which pollutants in the air are simply transferred to the soil, or vice versa: “This circle game has got to stop… At best it is misleading—we think we are solving a problem and we aren’t. At worst, it is perverse—it increase(s) rather than reduce(s) pollution….”
This leaves the two remaining components, per capita consumption and total population. By favoring reducing per capita consumption as the solution for reducing global warming, the global warming lobby has conveniently ignored the self-defeating nature of this approach. Even if every consumer in the land could be induced to spend $50,000.00 on a hybrid car and thereby manage to cut his per capita gasoline consumption by 10-15%, it is difficult to see how total environmental impact will be reduced when at the same time a billion new consumers are lining up to drive cars (most recently in China).
The truly inconvenient truth is that such an approach can only result in environmental disaster, not to mention untold human suffering: taking three steps back for every one foot forward.
This leaves the final component, population as the only realistic component upon which to focus as a solution. It has been estimated that simply making birth control available to all women worldwide, as well as promoting the reproductive rights of women, would stabilize the world’s population and begin to immediately moderate total environmental impact.
Every one third of a second, about the speed a machine fires it bullets, the planet makes room to accommodate one additional human being, most unwanted and left to starve or be doomed to a life of degrading poverty. In her lifetime, each new human spews an average of 3.2 tons of carbon into the atmosphere and demands 297GJ of energy from nonrenewable resources; her waste products include her share of 355,000 tons of phosphorus dumped into the oceans, 30,000 of sulfur,, and 80,000 of carbon monoxide spewed into the air. To provide living space for each new human, 100 acres of tropical rainforest are destroyed every minute, and one entire living species is sacrificed each day, including one vertebrate species every six months. When she dies, her epitaph is written on a monument of garbage and waste 4000 times her body weight.
During the 1992 Presidential campaign, a sign posted prominently in Democratic headquarters remind campaign workers of what the election was about: “It’s the economy stupid.”
Today the sign that posted in both camps of the global warming debate should be: “It’s the population, stupid.”
Robert Hardaway is Professor of Law at the University of Denver Sturm College of law, and the author of twelve books on law and public policy, including “Population, Law, and the Environment” (Praeger Press. Judy Swearingen is an environmental researcher and co-author of “Tropical Forest Conservation”).
Posted by Saleem Ali at 05:47 PM | TrackBack
February 10, 2007
Obama and Islam
By Saleem H. Ali
Never before has the middle name of a US senator gained as much print coverage as that of Senator Barack Hussein Obama of Illinois. For the past several months the US media has been obsessed with the potential connection between Mr Obama and Islam, even though he has adamantly declared his credentials as a Christian.
The auditory similarity between “Obama” and “Osama” has led to all kinds of jokes and media slips that are quite revealing of the continuing apprehensions about Islam that so many citizens continue to feel across the land. Of course, the US Congress now has a bona fide Muslim member, Keith Ellison, from the state of Minnesota, and his decision to take an oath on the Quran instead of the Bible created an uproar as well. However, the significance of Mr Obama’s Islamic connection is far more consequential because of his national prominence.
Never before has the middle name of a US senator gained as much print coverage as that of Senator Barack Hussein Obama of Illinois. For the past several months the US media has been obsessed with the potential connection between Mr Obama and Islam, even though he has adamantly declared his credentials as a Christian.
The auditory similarity between “Obama” and “Osama” has led to all kinds of jokes and media slips that are quite revealing of the continuing apprehensions about Islam that so many citizens continue to feel across the land. Of course, the US Congress now has a bona fide Muslim member, Keith Ellison, from the state of Minnesota, and his decision to take an oath on the Quran instead of the Bible created an uproar as well. However, the significance of Mr Obama’s Islamic connection is far more consequential because of his national prominence.
Obama is already the front-runner among the democratic candidates in terms of overall popularity, despite being dismissed by some conservatives as a political novice with “oddity appeal”. The roots of Obama’s Muslim lineage and its potential implications, if he were to become the next American President, have only received polarised coverage. His opponents have pounced on the connections to discredit him while his supporters have been quick to dismiss the lineage as remote and of little relevance.
The reality is perhaps more complex and Muslim countries and Americans should have a more mature approach to understanding his multicultural identity.
Barack Obama’s paternal lineage is important for us to consider as it clearly has played an important part in the crafting of his personality. Mr Obama’s father was a Kenyan Muslim who separated from his American mother when the senator was only two years old. However, his mother soon remarried another Muslim, from another corner of the world — Indonesia. Obama’s stepfather Lolo Soetoro, was an important presence in his early years, specially since the family moved to Jakarta. His longing for a connection with his cultural roots, and his sense of loss at being separated from his father is perhaps best articulated in his first book (written twelve years before his presidential aspirations), which is titled Dreams from my Father.
However, because of the political rumblings, the poor senator has been cornered into distancing himself from his connections with Islam and pandering to pristine patriotism. The mere possibility that he might have attended a madrassa in Indonesia at the tender age of six suddenly became more important than his Harvard law degree.
In his recent book The Audacity of Hope, Obama presents a more secular cadence about his early years: “During the five years that we would live with my stepfather in Indonesia, I was sent first to a neighbourhood Catholic school and then to a predominantly Muslim school; in both cases, my mother was less concerned with me learning the catechism or puzzling out the meaning of the muezzin’s call to evening prayer than she was with whether I was properly learning my multiplication tables.”
While such a resolute commitment to objective knowledge on his mother’s part may well be commendable, the exposure to foreign cultures and traditions which Obama experienced should always be considered an asset by all. Indeed, his connections with Islam could be a means of improving America’s strained relations with the Muslim world through empathy and erudition.
Sadly the American political landscape is still not ready to break the glass ceiling for a truly multicultural candidate. In the last election, the complex African-Portugese lineage of Senator Kerry’s wife Teresa Heinz Kerry became the talk of the town. At least as a result of the Kerry caper, a large number of my fellow Americans were able to locate Mozambique on a map.
America is not alone in its fear of minority dominance. Pakistani politicians are always suspicious of non-Muslims climbing up the ladder in political circles, which is just as unfortunate. Occasionally we may have individuals such as Jamshed Marker or Justice Cornelius rising to major posts of authority. The same occasional nontradiational outliers in the US government, such as Zalmay Khalilzad or Shirin Tahir-Kheli may also be found. However, nationalism is still the game of dominant players in most polities.
In Israel, there was divisive rhetoric this week hurled against the first Arab member of the cabinet, Raleb Majadele, who remains without a portfolio because of entrenched discrimination. India’s ceremonial President Abul-Kalam has frequently been questioned by the conservative Hindu establishment for his Muslim allegiance which he feels obliged to wash away with champagne cheers.
Sadly, we are still living in a world where credentials are constantly being filtered through ethnically determined innuendoes. Beyond the platitudes of ‘diversity requirements’ in US colleges or corporate training programs, it is high time that multiculturalism becomes an essential credential for leadership rather than being a liability.
