Obama’s dilemma

S P SETH

The sad state of the US politics was on display during the recent mid-term congressional elections where some Republican ads seemingly accused President Obama of ‘importing’ Ebola patients into the US, and making plans to bring terrorists into the country. A Republican National Committee ad reportedly urged people to vote Republican “to keep terrorists off US soil.” In other words, there is an attempt to personalize America’s problems to Obama’s stewardship of the US during the last six years.  At around 40 per cent Obama’s popularity is said to be just above George Bush who started the two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and presided over the worst financial crisis since the thirties’ depression. Obama is being reviled in some political circles as having started or aggravated all the problems that the US is beset with. His plan to stop the deportation of around 5 million ‘illegal’ immigrants, mostly Latinos, by executive action will further aggravate the turf war between the Republican- majority congress and Obama presidency. Indeed, there are some suggestions that they might even impeach him.

Why is Obama so unpopular? There are a number of reasons. When Obama became the US President after winning the 2008 election, an American satirical online magazine ran the headline: Black man given the worst job in the world. Like most satirical quips, there was enough truth in it. At the time of Obama’s election to the presidency, the US was facing tough times. The country had entered serious recession, dragging much of the world into it. At the same time, it was bogged down in two wars, which seemed to be going nowhere. The country was looking for someone, without political baggage, to pull the US out of quagmire. Obama was untainted with the wars that were going on and neither was he part of the money machine that had increasingly come to micro-manage US politics. Indeed, he had voted against the Iraq war which Hillary Clinton, his strongest rival for Democratic Party nomination, had enthusiastically embraced. Both in terms of raising money for his election and popular mobilization, Obama and his campaign made skillful use of the Internet. Obama was thus emerging as the new leader to manage difficult times in unconventional ways. And on the way he sought to emerge as the black man transcending racial divide to become a healer in all sorts of ways for his troubled country that needed healing badly. Many Americans saw hope in him and he raised their hopes.

But many Republicans didn’t trust him, so much so that that they didn’t even believe that he was born in the USA, thus casting doubts on his legitimacy as the country’s new president. Some polls, according to the New York columnist Nicholas Kristof, have shown that more than a third in the Republican Party said that he was born abroad and about one-fifth suspected that he could be the antichrist. Despite all this, his election was a historic milestone as the United States’ first black president. However, as Kristof pointed out in his column, many white voters could never come around to accepting such a momentous political change. With his presidency perceived to be lack luster or even failing, the number of white voters disillusioned with him only went up by the time of the 2012 election. As Obama told David Remnick of the New Yorker, “There is no doubt that there’s some folks who just dislike me because they don’t like the idea of a black President.” In other words, Obama’s race has been quite a daunting factor in his increasing unpopularity. Which only tends to magnify his perceived failure to deliver. His race has also contributed to the sort of ideological rigidity that has marked American politics since Obama became the country’s President. The rise of the Tea Party is a clear example of it. Alan Abramowitz of Emory University is said to have argued persuasively that the Tea Party is a product of growing racial and ideological polarization within the electorate.

Obama might not have done wonders as President but his record on balance is good. Let us take the US economy. When he became President, the US economy was in free fall and facing the toughest recession since the thirties’ depression. It is still not performing brilliantly but the unemployment rate of about 6 per cent (from 10 per cent in 2009) and the current annualized GDP growth rate of around 4 per cent are nothing to scoff at, considering that Europe is still languishing.  But the US economy is still not out of the woods. The problem is three-fold. The first is the low level of wages that have stagnated for now several decades.  According to Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, “Median household income, adjusted for inflation, remains below its level of a quarter-century ago.” Which means that most working and lower middle class people do not have much to spend on, apart from coping with the basics of life. Secondly and interconnected with the first, is the growing income inequality between the top 10 per cent and people at the low and middle level. In any case, GDP growth is not a true indicator of the economic situation of people at large. To quote Stiglitz, “Regardless of how fast GDP grows, an economic system that fails to deliver gains for most of its citizens, and in which a rising share of the population faces increasing insecurity, is in a fundamental sense, a failed economic system.”

And add to this the political gridlock in America, likely to get even worse following the mid-term elections with the Republican Party controlling the congress, things are not looking good. But to blame Obama for the systemic problems of economic and political governability is a bit of a stretch. When he won the 2008 elections, he was hoping to create a national consensus transcending party and racial/ethnic divisions for a new America. That hope was soon dashed because the Republican Party was determined not to legitimize the Obama experiment. Which is not to suggest that Obama’s initiatives in domestic policy, as well as in foreign and defence affairs, were beyond reproach. The point to make here is that a very significant part of the American political establishment, strongly entrenched in the congress, was determined to block his initiatives and policies, and the resultant gridlock has created a crisis of governability in the US. They even went to the extent of shutting down the federal government.  In the process American people are increasingly becoming disenchanted and withdrawn from their political institutions, both the congress and the presidency. With the best will in the world, Obama wouldn’t be able to resolve this crisis of governability.

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au

Climate change: an existential threat

S P SETH

The much hyped-up agreement between the US and China in Beijing towards the end of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) is frankly too little too late. Under the agreement the world’s two biggest polluters, accounting for 42 per cent of the carbon emissions in the atmosphere, would undertake to control/limit their emissions. China is looking to peak its emissions by 2030, while the US is undertaking to reduce its emissions by 26 to 28 per cent of 2005 levels by 2025. In other words, even if the two countries match up their commitments/targets, the pollution will still continue to grow exponentially. After 2030 only 20 per cent of China’s energy mix will be from renewable sources, such as solar, wind and nuclear, while 80 per cent will come from fossil fuels.  While in the US, with the recent mid-term elections delivering the control of both houses of the congress to the Republicans, Obama’s deal is unlikely to be ratified. The deal is more symbolic to spur action by other countries at the late-2015 Paris summit.

Let us face it, climate change is easily the most dangerous existential crisis for humanity and we are still not seized of it, as we should. The vast body of scientific literature and the periodic reports of the UN’s panel on climate change, including the latest one, has warned that without effective action to slow down, at the very least, the rise in carbon emissions, the world is inexorably heading towards an unimaginable disaster for the only planet that is known to support life. It is feared that any rise in global warming beyond 2 per cent Celsius will hit the danger button. But the projections that it might reach 4 degrees Celsius or more by the end of the century will be a catastrophe. As one leading climate change scientist, John Schellnhuber, has reportedly said, “The difference between two and four degrees is human civilization.”

What would that mean? As Paul Kingsnorth, reviewing two books on climate change in the London Review of Books, writes, “Four degrees [of warming] guarantees the total melting of the Greenland ice sheet and probably the Western Antarctic ice sheet, which would raise sea levels by more than thirty feet.” Furthermore: “Two-thirds of the world’s major cities would end up under water.” And it will, even before it reaches the 4 degrees level, create waves of environmental refugees moving all over the world to find safe places to live. The movement of people everywhere and the struggle for scarce and depleting resources will create national security scenarios all over the world. It is an unimaginable and incomprehensible situation, which is probably one reason why people can’t get their heads around it.

In his book, ‘Don’t even think about it: why our brains are wired to ignore climate change”, George Marshall writes that, “Scientists, who are, as a group, extremely wary of exaggeration, nonetheless keep using the same word: catastrophe.” Without a sense of urgency about a prospective calamity, we simply are not prepared for global action plan that might mitigate the situation. But at the same time, as Marshall puts it, “The science around four degrees [of warming] keep moving usually in the direction of greater pessimism.” And he wouldn’t be wrong considering that not much progress has been made since the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro where the need for some action to deal with climate change was first canvassed. And the way things are, the next year’s Paris Summit might not prove any more productive than the previous efforts like the Kyoto Conference in 1997 and the more recent (2009) Copenhagen conclave. 

The problems are at two levels. First, in the developed rich countries their internal politics and ideological orientation stands in the way. Marshall illustrates this with reference to the United States. He writes (as quoted in the London Review of Books), “Attitudes on climate change… have become a social cue like gun control: a shorthand for figuring out who is in our group and cares about us.” Such ideological and “cultural coding” has put much of the Republican Party against any significant move to curb carbon emissions. Here in Australia, the ruling conservative coalition won an election promising to abolish carbon tax, which they duly did after forming the government. Indeed, Tony Abbot, before he became Prime Minister, had called global warming “crap”, simply denying the science around it. And recently, at the opening of a coalmine, he pronounced that coal ‘is good for humanity’. And this from the prime minister of a country that has the highest per capita carbon emissions in the world. Canada is, more or less, in the same league. The worst thing is that some of the governing elites in these countries, who should know better, even deny that climate change is happening. At another level, some of the rich countries, even though keen about cutting carbon emissions, do not want any fundamental change that will affect their economic growth and life styles. At the same time, the developing countries are being urged to commit to reducing carbon emissions to set targets.

The main reason why the world is in such mess is due to the economic growth model that has been followed since the industrial revolution. And that model is simply unsustainable, as the planet has almost reached its limit to accommodate voracious demand on its capacity. While the rich countries continue to pillage the earth’s resources due to their insatiable consumer demand, many developing countries cannot even feed their people. And to expect them to cut their use of fossil fuels, when there are no alternatives that they can access and afford, is to commit them to a permanent state of poverty. There are no effective international mechanism for developing countries to access technology and capital for transition to renewable energy sources.

For any effective action on global warming there is need for coordinated global response with proportionate contribution based on the economic conditions of respective countries. Another important way will be to overhaul the economic model that requires continuous and rising growth. Naomi Klein’s book, “This changes everything: capitalism v. the climate”, tries to explore this approach based on global activism, like “mass movements of regular people” against corporate interests. At the same time, it will require people in rich countries to get over a culture of consumerism that has no limits. While it is important to transition rapidly to low carbon economy but without concurrent and corresponding action on reorienting global economy, any real progress is unlikely. Are we then hurtling towards the eventual destruction of our world, as we know it? With real and sustained action on global warming hard to come by it is hard to be an optimist.

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au