"The automobile industry is the dominant industry in the world and it is the dominant industry in the United States, and contributes about 4.5% to the GDP of the United States. Obviously, what America drives, drives America. We contribute an awful lot to the US economy. If there is a treaty on global greenhouse gases that would put the United States at a competitive disadvantage; it would have the effect of sending jobs overseas and that would hurt the US automobile industry and it would hurt the US economy."
The international conference on global warming is being held this
week in Kyoto, Japan. It is a conference about "saving the
earth", according to the BBC. The alternative to saving the
earth is mass suicide; or, at the very least, intergenerational
genocide.
The Kyoto Conference represented the best opportunity that humankind
has to introduce an international protocol that obliges each nation
to tread lightly with respect to carbon emissions into the atmosphere.
Unfortunately, the politics of national competitiveness - in
particular the problem of American imperialism - is preventing
international cooperation from taking place.
The pushers of "national competitiveness" arguments
are the merchants of doom (see "Competitiveness Buffs are the Real Merchants of Doom") in two ways. They predict
national doom, as an act of political blackmail. Yet, when getting
their own way, other nations are being given the message that
they should "beggar" their trading partners, promoting
economic war of all nations against all nations, Thomas Hobbes'
recipe for Armageddon.
American industry wants to maintain its privileged access to the
world's environment; to protect a "playing field" tilted
markedly in America's favour. Corporate America is the home of
unreconstructed mercantilism: what's good for General Motors is
good for America, and what's good for the planet simply doesn't
matter. Mercantilism is the economics of unsocialised nations;
nations seeking gain at the expense of each other.
Through an organisation called the Global Climate Coalition, politicians
at all levels of American politics are being bought by a big business
sector that can only survive global competition by "externalising"
its costs; in this case by making us all pay through global pollution.
Ironically, Al Gore - the "green" vicepresident
has been captured - and, through him, Bill Clinton also. Clinton
who cannot be reelected in 2000, should be above interest
group pressure. Nevertheless Clinton sees it his duty to smooth
the passage to the White House of Gore, his heir elect whose Kyoto
masterstroke was a willingness to negotiate "flexibly".
The Global Climate Coalition represents a cynical business interest
in much the same way as Peter Shirtcliffe's antiMMP campaign.
Incredibly, the lobbyists for the American rustbowl industries
are arguing that the environmental health of the world is of less
importance than the industrial might of a single nation. (They
also argue that global warming is not a proven effect of massively
increased carbon emissions. And they argue, contrarily, that
global warming will be a good thing, at least in Ohio. Who cares
about the rest of the world when you live in a place where the
world champions of sport can be decided in a contest between Cincinnatti
and Milwaukee?)
It is the pleadings of these representatives of corporate America
who give protectionism a really bad name. Economists are in the
unfortunate habit of presuming that all calls for protectionism
are blatantly nationalist; are mercantilist. Corporate USA reinforces
this view, as if the Green movement (who support a very different
form of protection) were of a like mind with the hombres from
Detroit.
This issue reveals a lot about the innately "protectionist"
- strictly "mercantilist" - character of big business.
Mercantilism means economic warfare. Capitalists favoured by what
Immanuel Wallerstein calls "relative monopoly" use any
fair or foul political means to maintain their privileged trading
positions. They advocate national protective measures - be it
tariffs or licences to pollute - when it pays them to do so. They
advocate free trade when free trade pays them. They argue for
protection "to secure jobs" when protection pays them.
Or, when it pays them, they will argue the contrary position that
the marketplace will create full employment of its own accord
so therefore they need have no conscience about making large numbers
of workers redundant.
While mercantilism is in fact the antithesis of economic liberalism,
the mercantile interest will argue along neoliberal (New Right)
lines whenever the political implications of that stance serve
to buttress existing privileges. The whole Global Climate Coalition
business is reminiscent of the British free trade lobby in the
nineteenth century.
LateVictorian mercantile interests represented English economic
nationalism under cover of a cosmopolitan economic liberalism
espoused in the 1840s by a few radical pacifists on the fringe
of earlyVictorian British politics. Richard Cobden and John
Bright (dubbed as "little Englanders") - had pushed
for a global system of multilateral free trade. IN 1846, Britain
took the first step, unilaterally. There were few other takers,
however. So Britain had to go it alone, while strongly opposing
forms of protection within the colonies that did not discriminate
in favour of Britain.
The British Manufacturing interest - under the banner of the Cobden
Club - would shower free trade propaganda upon any nation or interest
group that threatened empire free trade. This had nothing to do
with the multilateralism of Cobden. This was the mercantilism
of British interests. Free trade became Britain's chosen form
of nationalist protection. Whereas British mercantilism in the
18th century had used the law to prevent Americans from competing
with British manufacturers, in the 19th century British mercantilism
opposed New Zealand, Canadian and Australian manufacturing through
propaganda and patronage.
American mercantilism in the 1990s is just the same. Just substitute
"Global Climate Coalition" for the "Cobden Club".
US profligacy is responsible for one-quarter of world's carbon
emissions, and that's just fine with the Global Climate Coalition;
that means America is winning the greenhouse wars even if the
world is losing. The GCC has even patronised the television weather
presenters, in essentially the same ways that international drug
companies patronise doctors.
What is an equitable solution to the carbon emission problem?
The New Zealand Government's representative, Simon Upton, favours
a system of tradeable pollution quotas. This is a neat neoliberal
solution. It represents a kind of bulk allocation of pollution.
Just as bulk funding of universities becomes bulk underfunding
of universities (the University of Auckland is this month embarking
on a mass redundancy drive as its means of dealing with bulk underfunding),
bulk allocation of pollution becomes bulk underallocation
of pollution. Neat.
A system of tradeable pollution quotas cannot work, however, because
(i) there cannot be agreement as to what is a just initial allocation,
and (ii) because the whole neoclassical model of international
trade assumes that trade is conducted between corporate entities
called "sovereign nations", whereas production is the
province of firms, some of which are subnational and others
of which are transnational. Creating compliance with such
a quota system would be impossible for governments, many of which
do not have the will to enforce restrictions that are not popular
with the firms that patronise political parties.
The American position on just allocations is, in effect, "we
will not cut back unless everyone cuts back", ignoring that
fact that Americans emit far more carbon into the atmosphere than
anyone else. As with the British last century, the Americans confuse
just allocations with the status quo. They see justice as retention
of relative monopoly. They will only move if everyone else agrees
to move.
A priori, the only equitable allocation of pollution rights
would be if they were granted on a strict per capita basis. The
USA could never agree to that. If pollution rights were granted
on a per capita basis, however, tradeable pollution quotas would
become a useful mechanism for paying off much of the Third World's
debt; America would have to buy carbon pollution quotas from China,
Congo, Russia etc. It is a nice textbook solution, but could never
be more than a textbook solution, given the unlikelihood of all
national governments being able to enforce a pollution quota system.
The real solution is, in essence, that every nation owns a part
of the problem, and that the rich industrial nations take a lead
in owning the greater part of the carbon problem. Third World
countries should seek to develop in more environmentally sustainable
ways than those adopted in the past by First World countries.
That means that all countries should be charging carbon taxes
and providing subsidies for conservation and conversion to renewable
energy sources. This approach is sound whether or not the massively
increased carbon emissions create a greenhouse effect. (The consensus
of independently funded scientific research is that they do.)
The simple rule is that it is in the interest of humankind as
a species to tread lightly on our natural environment.
Waging economic war as a means of asserting national competitiveness
- war on the environment and war on other nations - is a means
by which a few privileged persons gain for a few years at the
expense of everyone else. Economic nationalism of this sort is
about unsocialised capitalist greed, and has nothing to do with
the free market nor with scientific truth. The rearguard action
by a profligate American auto industry, if persevered with, leads
to a war in which all assert their national right to pollute.
Such a war is a war without winners.
The problem is economic nationalism, or at least greed dressed
up as nationalism. The solution is multilateral cooperation in
which sovereign governments override sectional interests operating
within their jurisdictions. The philosophical division is between
mercantilist and cosmopolitan approaches to global economic management;
it is not between protectionism and neoliberalism. The problem
is often mercantilist protection dressed up as neoliberalism.
The solution lies in the realm of cosmopolitan protection, which
is liberal but not neoliberal.
{ This document is: http://www.oocities.org/Athens/Delphi/3142/krf38-kyotoCO2.html
{ the above references are to: http://www.oocities.org/RainForest/6783/krfarchive_nov97.html#30-doom_busin
and:
http://www.oocities.org/RainForest/6783/krfarchive_sep97.html#9-cos_prot
 Back to: Rankin File Archive |
 Go to Keith Rankin's page |
( viewings since 28 Dec.'97: )