Climate change and global poverty

S P SETH

When Oxfam came out with a damning report highlighting the obscene wealth gap between the world’s rich and its poor, it made news and pricked the conscience of some people for some time. It was difficult to ignore the enormity of the gap; with just 85 of the globe’s richest said to be controlling as much wealth as half the world’s population, which is about 3.5 billion people. It is self-evident that such skewing of the world’s wealth to benefit so few is morally indefensible, however one might define morality. But still we live with such injustice everyday, not realizing that it might one day blow up in our collective face, rich and poor.

One person, and he is no ordinary person, has been carrying on a crusade against this trying to draw a link between the assorted ills of our world. And that person is Pope Francis who is managing to combine, without much difficulty, the role of a religious leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, as well as someone who simply feels the need to talk some sense to highlight the complex but easy to unravel tapestry of the universe that holds us all together. A rich person or a rich and powerful nation obviously has the advantage in the lottery of life but when the fury of nature we have been provoking comes after us it might not spot any difference between the rich and the poor as its scale keeps on enlarging to engulf humanity at large. The reference here obviously is to climate change that is causing havoc here and there, with melting glaciers and warming oceans.

In a recent encyclical, a papal message of relevance to us all, Francis first draws attention to an increasing disconnect between today’s material world and nature and argues that the world’s ecological problems can only be solved by also fixing the “ethical, cultural and spiritual crisis of modernity.” He has no doubt that, based on scientific studies; greenhouse gases released by human activity cause most of global warming. Therefore, these gases, especially coal, need to be “progressively replaced without delay.” And he bemoans the action taken so far to curb the use of these gases because: “Reducing greenhouse gases requires honesty, courage and responsibility, above all on the part of those countries which are more powerful and pollute the most.”

An example is right here in Australia where listening to its Prime Minister (till recently) , Tony Abbot , you would think that most of the world’s scientists and now Pope Francis are talking ‘crap’ when highlighting the dangers of climate change. Indeed, he once called all this talk of global warming as sheer ‘crap’. He wouldn’t use this word now but, worse, he called coal as ‘good for humanity’. Australia is the worst polluter per capita in the world. People like Tony Abbot and others of his ilk live in a different world that created the problem in the first place. One might wonder how Abbot, a staunch Catholic, would reconcile his love for coal with the encyclical of Pope Francis. And even politicians elsewhere in the world, who are not non-believers in the matter of climate change, find themselves constrained by political and a host of other considerations when it comes to concrete action.

Pope Francis finds an intrinsic connection between environmental degradation and ‘free market’ capitalism creating all sorts of anomalies and injustices. During

 a recent tour of some of the Latin American countries he made some of the sharpest critique of colonialism and capitalism. While in Bolivia, he urged the world’s poor to change the economic order, denouncing a “new colonialism” by agencies that impose austerity programs (on others) and calling for the poor to have the “sacred rights” of labour, lodging and land, three Ls. Drawing a connection between the cruelties of the Roman Catholic Church that accompanied/followed colonial occupation of the Americas, the Argentinian-born pope sought forgiveness for the sins of the church for its treatment of Native Americans during the “so-called conquest of America.” In other words, the church was an integral part of European colonialism. It is this colonialism that gave the control of colonial resources and markets that laid the basis for the growth of capitalism, which in the so-called post-colonial period was simply usurped by a rapacious form of capitalism/imperialism fostering/forcing regulatory processes for the so-called global free trade. And this is still playing havoc for the world’s poor.

Pope sought to link all this and much more when he recently said that, “ Let us not be afraid to say that: we want change, real change, structural change” in the system that “has imposed the mentality of profit at any price, with no concern for social exclusion or the destruction of nature.” Speaking in Bolivia, he condemned the system, “This system is now intolerable: farm workers find it intolerable, labourers find it intolerable, communities find it intolerable. The earth itself… finds it intolerable”, reduced to ‘a pile of filth’.

Last year, he made a sharp critique of the capitalist mode of production. He said, “In this [capitalist] system, which tends to devour everything that stands in the way of increased profits, whatever is fragile, like the environment, is defenceless before the interests of a deified market, which becomes the only rule.” Amplifying its destructiveness, he added, “Inequality [it fosters] eventually engenders a violence, which recourse to arms cannot and never will able to resolve.” Talking of globalization, he pointedly said that, “In this globalized world, we have fallen into globalized indifference.”

Pope Francis is no economist and that is precisely why he makes sense because he says it the way he observes without any attempt to refine it. He is speaking the language of the poor and helpless as they experience all this misery every day of their lives, waiting for crumbs of the system to fall their way, for the so-called ‘trickle down’ theory to work. And instead the concentration of greater and greater wealth among the few, to the exclusion of most, is increasing. And these few are insatiate further increasing their onslaught on our fragile environment. Pope is a religious figure but he certainly makes a lot of secular sense. One wishes more religious leaders of all descriptions will say things people can relate to. For any religion to be relevant, it has to be relevant to the concerns and needs of people without being cowed down by the rich and powerful of the world.  

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

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au   

A new cold war

S P SETH

In a world gone mad with conflicts of various descriptions and intensity, one that has the potential to be most deadly and apocalyptic is the ongoing civil war in Ukraine, with Russia and the NATO (US and its allies) ranged on opposite sides. Moscow is backing and apparently helping the rebels in eastern Ukraine to carve out virtual independence from the western-backed Kiev regime, which regards the rebels as terrorists. As they are considered terrorists, the Ukrainian government based in the capital Kiev, wouldn’t deal with them to discuss proposals for autonomy for the pro-Russian eastern region required under the Minsk 11 (Belarus) agreement. In other words, they want them to virtually surrender, as well as withdrawal of Russian weapons and ‘volunteers’, before taking the political process any further. Hence, the Minsk 11 agreement, like its predecessor Minsk 1, is in tatters with both sides fighting their civil war, drawing encouragement and support from their respective protagonists. As Russia is accused by the NATO countries of igniting and fueling the Ukrainian crisis, the US and its western allies have extended economic sanctions against Russia for another six months. It is part of the Western policy of mixing carrots with sticks to make Russia see sense and do what is expected/demanded of it in Ukraine and to desist from destabilizing any of its other neighbours bordering the country. Apparently, so far Moscow is not doing the US/EU bidding even if it is hurting its economy.

However, the US and some of its western allies, particularly eastern European and Baltic countries, are not satisfied with just economic sanctions. They fear that if Moscow gets away with destabilizing Ukraine, it might be encouraged to do the same to its other neighbours that were once part of the Soviet Union, like the Baltic states, and eastern European countries once under its control. These countries have, after the collapse of the Soviet, become NATO members. And they are seeking some concrete expression from the US of its resolve to stand by them against a Russian threat. The Pentagon is responding to it by undertaking to pre-position troops and military equipment in some of these countries as a precautionary measure. The equipment reportedly would include about 160 M-1 tanks plus M-2 Bradley fighting vehicles and self-propelled howitzers. Such equipment would be pre-positioned, according to a Reuters report, variously in the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, and the eastern European states of Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and possibly Hungary. The US has been at pains to make it look harmless with Colonel Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, saying that, “This is purely positioning of equipment to better facilitate our ability to conduct training.” The question is: training for what?

Not surprisingly, Moscow has reacted strongly threatening counter measures. According to the Russian defence ministry, “If heavy military equipment, including tanks, artillery batteries and other equipment really does turn up in countries in eastern Europe and the Baltics, that will be the most aggressive step by the Pentagon and NATO since the Cold War.” According to General Yuri Yakubov of the Russian defence ministry, “Our [Russian] hands are completely free to organize retaliatory steps to strengthen our western frontiers.” And he said the Russian response was likely to include speeding up the deployment of Iskander missiles to Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave bordered by Poland and Lithuania, and beefing up Russian forces in Belarus. Which, in effect, would suggest the onset of a new Cold War.

When the Cold War ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union in the nineties, the US-led ‘free world’ was in ascendance. So much so that Francis Fukuyama, a US political analyst and scholar, pronounced this development as the end of history, being the last frontier for human development. To quote him from his book, The End of History and the Last Man, “… the liberal democracy [after the fall of communist Soviet Union] may constitute the ‘end point of mankind’s ideological evolution’ and the ‘final form of human government,’ and as such constituted the ‘end of history’”. However, as we have now seen over the last quarter of a century, Fukuyama and others like him were too starry-eyed suggesting that the US was now, in all senses of the world, the ultimate power, both ideologically and otherwise. That kind of self-congratulation and arrogance became an obstacle to creating a new and inclusive world order. For instance, an understanding between the Soviet leader Gorbachev and the then US administration to limit NATO frontiers, a relic of the Cold War, was soon observed rather in breach than compliance.

Russia’s place in the new US-dominated world order was one of accepting its sharply downgraded position, a constant reminder of its virtual defeat. The Boris Yeltsin presidency became more known for the division and plunder of state assets and resources among a handful of his cronies and advisers with their US and western connections. At times, it looked like Russia was for sale with its president Yeltsin more and more sinking into a state of perpetual drunkenness. And he decided to bring in Vladimir Putin as his prime minister, who later was elected the country’s president. And has been in this position, except for one term when the then prime minister Dmitri Medvedev and president Vadimir Putin exchanged their positions. This was done because of a constitutional requirement that prohibited an incumbent president (Putin) to consecutively hold more than two terms.

Russia’s 1998 financial crisis was not a good omen for Putin, as he became the country’s prime minister in 1999 and later its president. But a surge in oil and gas prices enabled Putin to become confident in the conduct of its relations with the US and its western allies. At home he was able to come on top of the Chechen rebellion with massive use of force. At the same time he got rid of Yeltsin’s erstwhile cronies, who had once recommended him to Yeltsin. They had thought that as someone without any political base, he would be easy to manipulate to advance their own interests. Putin seems to have outsmarted a lot of people who under-estimated him when he first came into power.

With his economic and political position strengthened, and as the old ‘free world’ was expanding NATO’s frontiers right to Russia’s borders, Putin decided to take a stand when Georgia, an erstwhile part of the Soviet Union, undertook to forcibly incorporate two rebellious provinces of Ossetia and Abkhazia, encouraged or else hoping that the US and its NATO allies would stand by it if Russia sought to intervene militarily. Georgia was also a hopeful candidate for NATO membership. But in the event Georgia found itself largely on its own, despite loud opposition to Russia’s virtual annexation of Ossetia and Abkhazia.

As we know that Ukraine became the next flashpoint when it sought to integrate with EU, which its pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych was not too keen on. A mix of political forces in Ukraine, egged on by the US and its western allies, managed to overthrow him, leading Russia to come on the side of the rebels in eastern Ukraine. Despite political initiatives like the Minsk accord 1&11, the situation remains unresolved in the midst of an ongoing civil war. So far, despite US and western economic sanctions that are hurting Russia, it remains steadfast in its support of the rebels seeking autonomy/independence from Kiev. The core issue here is that Russia is understandably worried about the expansion of NATO right to its borders, with Ukraine the likely next member. And unless the core issue is sorted out-- as would have been the case if an understanding to limit/roll back NATO frontiers had been adhered to-- the new cold war is likely to become a new fixture with a potentially serious eruption. Though Putin’s economic position is weak, his position at home is very strong with about 80 per cent approval rating in polls. He is, therefore, making the most of his nationalist card. 

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

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au