When I was writing the chapter on climate change in my upcoming book Re-engage! America and the World after Bush I found many really excellent on-line resources on the issue. Some of the best-thought-out policy papers on the issue came from Oxfam. (See a list of these papers here.) One of the main points they make is that the rich northern nations must not only help the much poorer nations of the low-income world to undertake measures to adapt to the consequences of climate change– rising sea-levels, desertification, increased frequency of storms, etc– but they (we) must also take equally or more urgent steps to stop inflicting harm on them in this realm.
Many young (and not so young) people from the US and Europe become very idealistic and become fired up with the idea that they can go off to low-income countries and do something very worthwhile to “help” the people of those countries. It’s a laudable motivation. However, in terms of net amount of good done for humanity, I think such people might do a lot better to stay back at home in our own well-off countries and work to change those of our own countries’ policies that continue on a daily basis to inflict harm on the very vulnerable people in those other countries.
Human-induced climate change is one clear arena for such action. What the whole world most needs from Americans (and Europeans and residents of other high-income countries) right now is mainly that we should all emit far less CO2. Once we ourselves have done that, we can go around “helping” other countries to both reduce their emissions and adapt to the effects of the human-induced global warming that we know is anyway– even with the best emissions-control policies we can imagine– going to continue to occur for many years…
But first, surely, we should take responsibility for our own past and continuing actions and try to stop inflicting harm.
The US is by far the emittingest country in the world, on a per-capita basis: 20 metric tons of CO2 emitted per-head in 2004 in the US, as opposed to 3.6 metric tons in China, 11.7 in Japan, 9.4 in the EU…
Trade and economic policy is another area in which we fortunate residents of the rich world can do far more good all round if we work first to stop our own governments and societies from doing things they’ve been doing for some time, that have been inflicting great harm on vulnerable others elsewhere, than if we simply set out to start “helping” those others. Oxfam (again) has done some great research on the terrible effects that barriers to free trade such as tariffs and huge subsidies to domestic producers of agricultural goods, such as have been steadfastly maintained by the US, the EU, and Japan for many decades now, have had on farming communities throughout the low-income world. Some people come in with proposals to “help” the low-income countries by increasing the international aid contributions made by rich countries. Those are good and necessary suggestions. But they will have little to zero effect so long as the rich countries still hand out massive subsidies to their (our) own huge agribusiness conglomerates.
The concept of “do no harm” is an old one in the medical profession. But there are so many fields of international relations in which it should also be applied! Military/security policy is certainly another one.
Following a policy of “do no harm” is at one level rather easy. It is a fundamentally rather conservative policy, suggesting as it does that when we are in doubt about the effects of any given action we should avoid doing it until we have more information. It urges us not to do things, rather than urging us to get out and “do things”. (This is known as the precautionary principle.)
At another level, though, it is a rather demanding approach. It requires that we take some rather deep responsibility for the effects our actions and policy choices have on distant others, which in turn requires that we make energetic and good-faith efforts to find out what those effects are. And this applies, moreover, in areas such as farm subsidies or the development of our own national economies in which at one point we may not even have been aware that our policy choices had any effect on people outside our own borders. But now we know that those two do. Farm subsidies in the US, the EU, and Japan hurt millions of poor farmers around the world. (I want to give a big shout-out to Jimmy Carter for this fine article on the topic that he published in Monday’s WaPo.) And unbridled economic “development” in these same rich countries has been puffing out absolutely unconscionable amounts of CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere…
What other habits and policies might we be pursuing that, without our being aware of it, are inflicting harm on others elsewhere? Clearly, we need to pay attention.
Another aspect of the “do no harm” approach is that we need to recognize that the people of other countries are in every way just as human and as deserving of our respect and consideration as the people of our own countries. Even– or rather, especially– if they are people who are far, far more economically vulnerable and more politically marginalized than ourselves.
This is actually an important foundation at the very core of the Hippocratic oath approach. Doctors, after all, have often been thought of as especially powerful and smart members of the human race and they have often– in Nazi Germany, here in the US, and in many other places as well– become tempted into the mindset that they can or even should use their powers on more vulnerable other members of society at their own discretion and for their own reasons, without paying anything like due heed to the rights of those others.
So the Hippocratic oath (“do no harm”) approach reminds people with power (and with potentially dangerous skills) in any given society that their skills must be used in a way that:
- (1) accords due respect and consideration to the rights of vulnerable other persons;
(2) embodies a commitment to take pro-active steps to learn about the effects their actions and decisions have on those others;
(3) errs on the side of caution– not doing things, rather than doing them– if there is any suggestion or possibility that these effects might be harmful to others; and
(4) embodies a commitment to stopping actions that on examination turn out to be inflicting harm on others.
… Anyway, this is something I’ve been thinking about quite a lot over recent years. Reading all the news about the UNFCCC (Climate Change) conference in Bali reminded me about the whole topic again.
Look this global climate change it’s new religiously revelation in our present time.
With last fifty years of wars seeking power to over control oil resources around the world which lead to invasion of Iraq the 2nd largest estimated oil reserve on the planet now new goal set from new group of wealthy and power hungry introducing and pushing toward global climate change.
There are two interesting speeches in this new war came from former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and from Su Wei, director-general of the Office of National Leading Group on Climate Change in china in Bali conference I list the two views:
Global warming — just “hysteria“?
Meanwhile, former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt called for an end to the “hysteria” over global warming in the lead-up to the summit. The topic is “hysterical, overheated, and that is especially because of the media,” Schmidt told Germany’s Bild daily.
There has always been climate change on earth, Schmidt said.M
“We’ve had warm- and ice-ages for hundreds of thousands of years,” he said, and added that the reasons behind the multiple climate changes have been “inadequately researched for the time being.”
To assume that global climate change can be altered by any plans made at the Heiligendamm summit is “idiotic,” he said.
Su Wei, director-general of the Office of National Leading Group on Climate Change, said,
Su Wei, a top climate expert for China’s government attending the U.N. Climate Change Conference, said the job belongs to the wealthy. He said it was unfair to ask developing nations to accept binding emissions cuts and other restrictions being pushed for already industrialized states.
the United States and its fellow industrial nations have long spewed greenhouse gases into the atmosphere while newly emerging economies have done so for only a few decades.
“China is in the process of industrialization and there is a need for economic growth to meet the basic needs of the people and fight against poverty,” Su said.
Su noted the Chinese population is far bigger and said America’s emissions per person are six times higher than in China.
Look this global climate change it’s new religiously revelation in our present time.
With last fifty years of wars seeking power to over control oil resources around the world which lead to invasion of Iraq the 2nd largest estimated oil reserve on the planet now new goal set from new group of wealthy and power hungry introducing and pushing toward global climate change.
There are two interesting speeches in this new war came from former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and from Su Wei, director-general of the Office of National Leading Group on Climate Change in china in Bali conference I list the two views:
Global warming — just “hysteria“?
Meanwhile, former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt called for an end to the “hysteria” over global warming in the lead-up to the summit. The topic is “hysterical, overheated, and that is especially because of the media,” Schmidt told Germany’s Bild daily.
There has always been climate change on earth, Schmidt said.M
“We’ve had warm- and ice-ages for hundreds of thousands of years,” he said, and added that the reasons behind the multiple climate changes have been “inadequately researched for the time being.”
To assume that global climate change can be altered by any plans made at the Heiligendamm summit is “idiotic,” he said.
Su Wei, director-general of the Office of National Leading Group on Climate Change, said,
Su Wei, a top climate expert for China’s government attending the U.N. Climate Change Conference, said the job belongs to the wealthy. He said it was unfair to ask developing nations to accept binding emissions cuts and other restrictions being pushed for already industrialized states.
the United States and its fellow industrial nations have long spewed greenhouse gases into the atmosphere while newly emerging economies have done so for only a few decades.
“China is in the process of industrialization and there is a need for economic growth to meet the basic needs of the people and fight against poverty,” Su said.
Su noted the Chinese population is far bigger and said America’s emissions per person are six times higher than in China.
“Do no harm”, precautionary principle, “leave the oil in the soil”. I hear all this but there is a disconnect. The moral choices offered now seem cheap and facile in comparison with the moral burden to come.
It doesn’t matter whether the reason for climate change management is because we have fouled up the planet, or not. The consequence of climate control will be the same.
The result will be that we as human beings will become more God-like than ever. I wonder if you remember Dr Leach’s famous Reith Lectures, Helena?
To solve the problem of climate change we will have to arrive at a point where “we” (but who will be in charge?) will be able to advance or retard the warming or the cooling of the planet at will. This cannot be a neutral matter. In every possible change there will be winners and losers.
If you truly believe we have to stop contributing to “global warming”, then you should destroy your computer and go live in a cave. Everything you do as a citizen of the modern world, in your world-view, contributes to the problem. Imagine the energy needed to build the factories and roads and equipment to build computers and networks and libraries and universities, power-plants, & cars, etc., etc. And all of that, you believe, is killing those in poor countries rather than bringing them opportunity and medicine and knowledge. There is no other way but to go forward with technology and hope that “global warming” really is just a new religion and not a scientific reality.
I don’t agree you can’t do anything. Obviously things have to be managed. The root problem is the same one, of Imperialism versus democracy.
Cuba has no problem to realise that you don’t refine food for use as motor-spirit. The USA insists on doing so, even claiming that it is atmospheric carbon-neutral. The effect is that poor people in South Africa are already seriously poorer, because the (compulsorily global thanks to the same USA) price of the staple maize meal has gone up.
The question is: Who decides? As John Turner once wrote.
Bob, you really bring a counsel of despair (or of pure fantasy) here. The Stern Review (PDF, which brought together the best possible data from both the scientists and the economists concluded (1) that anthropogenic global warming is undeniably real, (2) that there are many things that can be done that over time can bring greenhouse-gas emissions down beneath the level at which healthy forests worldwide (and perhaps other mechanisms) can reabsorb each year’s carbon emissions as they are produced, thus halting additional warming, (3) that making the kinds of changes in the rich world’s economies and lifestyles that can achieve this requires considerable investment in new technologies, and (4) that making an investment on the order required won’t be easy, but the countries involved need to commit to doing so earlier rather than later, since the costs will inevitably rise the longer we delay.
People do not have to live in caves. But neither should any of us be living in McMansions and indulge a “dependence” on private automobiles. To do so inflicts known harms on all of humanity. To “hope” that the evidence we now have on climate change is all chimeric and the diagnosis itself is only “a religion” is wilfull obfuscation.
Dominic, which Reith Lectures were those? And btw, you are completely right to articulate your concerns about biofuels… Could you send me/JWN a lot more solid information on how this fad has been affecting people in Africa? I see the Economist has a big cover-story on “The end of cheap food” (worldwide), but I haven’t had time to read it yet.
Hello,
I fully agree to the article; it makes me remember that I refused to go into cooperation in Africa on my military duty, and would rather partake in French occupation of Germany (some 40 years ago…). Otherwise, I take the opportunity of your reference to Hippocrates “do not harm” to suggest that this noble principle seems out of fashion now, especially regarding the famous/infamous waterboarding. I read somewhere that people shouldn’t complain, as there are doctors who attend and monitor the “technique”. I would be happy to find a comment on this from the American Doctors’ Union, if there is any such group.
I’ll look out for some suitable stats. The bottom line is that prices are doubling for staple foods.
Capitalism is based on scarcity.
“The end of cheap food” is a cruel sort of sentiment when food has never been cheap for the poor.
The Edmund Leach Reith lectures were in 1967. What he was saying is that human beings have become like Gods in the sense that they are in charge of everything. That much is fine. It follows that we must collectively and democratically take conscious charge of the temperature control of the planet, among many other things.
What Leach also made clear was that there is no way back. The trouble with your formulation about balancing things so that the forests absorb the carbon every year is that it comes close to the idea that we are going to restore the world to some sort of re-naturalised state.
It is this ambiguity that I find problematic. Bob is to an extent right, there is a sense, in the mass enthusiasm for this thing, that humans have sinned, must repent, and must restore some sort of status quo ante. This is very mistaken, and can end in mass dissillusion. At any rate it is not conducive to mass rational behaviour.
There is no available status quo ante. That is even more reason why there must be a rational response. But human beings do not yet have a mechanism for ensuring a collective, rational response. This is demonstrated by the related issue of bio-fuels, which are much more than just a fad, by the way, in my opinion.
I would be happy to find a comment on this from the American Doctors’ Union, if there is any such group.
IF NOT…they approved after a lot of researches on human body and abilities with weatherboarding for inelegance techniques suggesting it with their advises.
Remember the Iraqi military officer who died while the interrogators in sleeping back with water just cover his body, using weatherboarding technique by lifting him from his legs, but they left him and died!! This one of horrific acts one of crimes that US forces doing in Iraq.