The Bigger Picture
Published on September 17th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
I had originally written a column for this week that discussed my impressions about the nationally televised speech on healthcare reform that I watched President Obama deliver to a joint session of the US Congress and the American public last week.
But at the end of the day I just couldn’t bring myself to submit it to my editor. Why? Because it wasn’t really an honest opinion column about what I heard and saw on TV last Wednesday night. Mind you I didn’t fabricate anything or express any opinions in that column that weren’t sincere. It wasn’t honest because I wasn’t acknowledging the things I had seen and heard that night which most disconcerted me. So today I deleted it.
As many of you are no doubt aware, I am a lifelong member of the United States Republican Party. I joined the Republican Party while I was still in high school; before I was even allowed to legally vote in a state or national election. Through the years I have raised money for and campaigned on behalf of numerous Republican Party candidates for local, state and national offices. I haven’t always liked or agreed with many of the positions taken by Republican politicians I have supported, but I have also never voted for a Republican candidate simply because they were a member of the party.
Like many of you and many of my fellow American citizens, I have always tried to put the needs of my state or country ahead of partisan politics. I take our freedom to vote for the people we want as our political and government leaders very seriously because many of our global brethren don’t have the same freedom to elect their leaders that we have. Our democratic freedoms aren’t rights; they are privileges! That is why we have both a duty to exercise our right to vote and a responsibility to vote for candidates we believe are best suited for the job, regardless of their political party affiliations.
My own personal sense of responsibility to vote for the person best suited for the political office is what has led me to support and vote for Democratic, Independent and 3rd Party political candidates from time to time. And although I was both an early and fervent supporter of Barack Obama when he became a candidate for US President on 10 February 2007, I didn’t actually vote for him in the 4 March 2008 Super Tuesday Texas state primary. I cast my absentee ballot for Senator John McCain on that day.
I did so because I am still a registered member of the Republican Party and as such, I had a duty to vote in the Republican primary and a responsibility to vote for the Republican candidate best suited for America’s highest elected office. I did so knowing that President Obama needed my vote more than Senator McCain because he was in a very tight race with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while Senator McCain had already clinched the Republican Party Presidential nomination. I did so because I had no intention of leaving the Republican Party even though I was campaigning for President Obama and would subsequently vote for him in the November 2008 General Election.
I have been a frequent and vocal critic of state and national Republican Party political office holders as well as many of the party’s political positions on foreign and domestic policies for some time now. But I have never been ashamed to acknowledge my Republican Party affiliation or the fact that I bear some responsibility for the mistakes Republican Party leaders made while they controlled the reins of political power in the US. I was part of the minority of Americans who voted Bush and Cheney into office back in 2000 and I was very pleased that the party was in control of the US Congress as well.
But for the first time in my life, last Wednesday night I was ashamed to acknowledge that I was a member of the Republican Party. Although I have been very upset with the Republican Party because it supported the decision to invade Iraq and it implemented fiscally irresponsible policies while it controlled Congress, I have never once shied away from the fact that I am also a lifelong member of it. Until now that is.
The reason why the original column that I had written for publication today wasn’t honest was because I had avoided any mention of this in it. But the real reason I wasn’t satisfied with the original column and never submitted it wasn’t because of my concern about being honest with my readers; it was because I couldn’t be honest with you until I first got honest with myself. And me being honest with me is easier said than done.
So what exactly happened last Wednesday night that caused me to initiate some serious soul searching as regards my long held political affiliation with the Republican Party? Well back in the states the news media has focused on an unseemly outburst by a Republican Congressional Representative from the great state of South Carolina. As you may or may not know, South Carolina is also the home state of an embattled Republican governor who has become more famous for his romantic prose than his political prose.
But I was watching President Obama speak when South Carolina Representative Joe Wilson began yelling “You lie!” at our President during his health care speech and the truth is, it didn’t really disturb me that much. While I do remember thinking that the outburst was rude and discourteous, I wasn’t exactly shocked by Representative Wilson’s behavior given the oft times contentious behavior I have seen displayed by other politicians both Republicans and Democrats.
President Obama handled it well too. He paused and calmly but firmly responded “No that isn’t true” and then resumed delivering his speech. No, it was something more subtle that led to my feelings of shame that I’ll discuss next week.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Goodbye Teddy Kennedy
The Bigger Picture
Published on September 10th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
Today I want to pick up where I left off last week and my discussion of the role that Ted Kennedy’s grandfathers played in his political education.
Whereas John and Robert Kennedy possessed formidable oratorical skills and relished political campaigning like their maternal grandfather, Honey Fitz, Ted was more like his grandfather P.J. While Ted also had excellent oratorical skills, he was much more comfortable dealing with people and politicians alike on a one to one basis than he was making lofty and inspiring speeches to crowds of supporters. His grandfathers schooled young Ted in the art of shaking hands and never forgetting a face but also taught him to remember he had a duty and responsibility to help those less fortunate than himself.
But it wasn’t until after he lost the 1980 Democratic Presidential nomination to President Jimmy Carter, that Ted Kennedy’s considerable talents as an able politician and true public servant became apparent. Ted Kennedy recruited and hired the best and brightest people for his legislative staff and they wanted to work for him because he also had a reputation for working with his political opponents to get things done. The list of Ted’s former staff members who serve in government reads like a Who’s Who of public servants from Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer to Obama Presidential advisors like Melody Barnes, President Obama's top domestic policy adviser and White House Counsel Gregory Craig, with nary a whiff of scandal touching any of Ted’s staffers.
But the real mark of Ted Kennedy as a man and as a true public servant was his common touch and willingness to always help those less fortunate than he. Most of the 70,000 people who stood in line for hours last week to say goodbye to him at the John F. Kennedy Memorial Library in Cambridge Massachusetts, were just ordinary people whose lives Ted had touched and enriched during his public life.
Among them was a man named Jud Fokum, a native of Cameroon who had once asked Ted for assistance while he was a student in the US. Jud’s dilemma was that his US college tuition and living expenses were tied up in red tape back in Cameroon, so he asked if Senator Ted Kennedy would be willing to help him even though he wasn’t a US citizen or a Massachusetts voter. A few days later, after Ted Kennedy had placed a phone call to the President of Cameroon, Jud received his long delayed university funds.
Imagine that, a wealthy and powerful politician taking the time to help someone, in this case a foreign national, anonymously and with absolutely no tangible political or financial benefit for himself in doing so. Jud Fokum’s story is only one of the hundreds about Ted Kennedy that I personally know of and rest assured there are thousands more like it that I haven’t heard or that the general public will never know about.
While I was opposed to more of Ted Kennedy’s political positions than I ever favoured, much like John McCain I have always regarded him as one of the most able politicians and admirable men ever elected to political office in America. But more than that, Ted Kennedy was also one of the most honorable and giving persons I have ever known. He had his faults and he made a lot of mistakes during the course of his lifetime, but then who of us doesn’t have some faults or hasn’t made any number of mistakes?
Getting his sons elected President was important to Joe Kennedy because of what he believed election to this office would mean for his sons, but also because of what their election would mean to him, his family and the general public’s image of his family. His son John was elected President and Robert could very well have also been elected but for his untimely assassination during his first Presidential campaign. But I am of the opinion that the most important legacy for the Kennedy family was the type of life that was led by the only son of Joe who was soundly defeated the one time he ran for US President.
Ted Kennedy accepted this defeat with grace and dignity and then went on to have a decidedly positive impact on the lives of millions of Americans. During the course of his 47 years as a legislator, Ted Kennedy introduced 2,500 bills and saw more than 550 of them enacted into law. Nor was he content to just get his name on a law and then move on to new legislation. He was always open to revisiting laws he had already passed and revising or improving them because he believed that lasting progress only comes in half steps. He spent his life fighting for universal healthcare and although he didn’t accomplish this goal he was able to make some headway with his program for pregnant women and new mothers that now covers 8.7 million working class women and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which now covers more than 7 million children.
As for the Kennedy family legacy, as the sole surviving male, Ted served as the family’s patriarch and as a surrogate father to his fatherless nieces and nephews for over 40 years. The fact that virtually all of Joe Kennedy’s 30 grandchildren are currently involved in some form of public service work is both a reflection of the example Ted set as the Kennedy family’s patriarch and the values he helped instill in those grandchildren. That Ted Kennedy’s funeral attracted the kind of media attention that only attends those who have served as America’s President is a testament to Ted’s life of service to those less fortunate than him. I will end this column with a limerick I wrote about Ted;
The Kennedy children numbered one less than ten,
Their parents instilled a duty to serve in them.
But of all of their children who answered this call,
Ted’s service to others was the greatest of all.
Published on September 10th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
Today I want to pick up where I left off last week and my discussion of the role that Ted Kennedy’s grandfathers played in his political education.
Whereas John and Robert Kennedy possessed formidable oratorical skills and relished political campaigning like their maternal grandfather, Honey Fitz, Ted was more like his grandfather P.J. While Ted also had excellent oratorical skills, he was much more comfortable dealing with people and politicians alike on a one to one basis than he was making lofty and inspiring speeches to crowds of supporters. His grandfathers schooled young Ted in the art of shaking hands and never forgetting a face but also taught him to remember he had a duty and responsibility to help those less fortunate than himself.
But it wasn’t until after he lost the 1980 Democratic Presidential nomination to President Jimmy Carter, that Ted Kennedy’s considerable talents as an able politician and true public servant became apparent. Ted Kennedy recruited and hired the best and brightest people for his legislative staff and they wanted to work for him because he also had a reputation for working with his political opponents to get things done. The list of Ted’s former staff members who serve in government reads like a Who’s Who of public servants from Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer to Obama Presidential advisors like Melody Barnes, President Obama's top domestic policy adviser and White House Counsel Gregory Craig, with nary a whiff of scandal touching any of Ted’s staffers.
But the real mark of Ted Kennedy as a man and as a true public servant was his common touch and willingness to always help those less fortunate than he. Most of the 70,000 people who stood in line for hours last week to say goodbye to him at the John F. Kennedy Memorial Library in Cambridge Massachusetts, were just ordinary people whose lives Ted had touched and enriched during his public life.
Among them was a man named Jud Fokum, a native of Cameroon who had once asked Ted for assistance while he was a student in the US. Jud’s dilemma was that his US college tuition and living expenses were tied up in red tape back in Cameroon, so he asked if Senator Ted Kennedy would be willing to help him even though he wasn’t a US citizen or a Massachusetts voter. A few days later, after Ted Kennedy had placed a phone call to the President of Cameroon, Jud received his long delayed university funds.
Imagine that, a wealthy and powerful politician taking the time to help someone, in this case a foreign national, anonymously and with absolutely no tangible political or financial benefit for himself in doing so. Jud Fokum’s story is only one of the hundreds about Ted Kennedy that I personally know of and rest assured there are thousands more like it that I haven’t heard or that the general public will never know about.
While I was opposed to more of Ted Kennedy’s political positions than I ever favoured, much like John McCain I have always regarded him as one of the most able politicians and admirable men ever elected to political office in America. But more than that, Ted Kennedy was also one of the most honorable and giving persons I have ever known. He had his faults and he made a lot of mistakes during the course of his lifetime, but then who of us doesn’t have some faults or hasn’t made any number of mistakes?
Getting his sons elected President was important to Joe Kennedy because of what he believed election to this office would mean for his sons, but also because of what their election would mean to him, his family and the general public’s image of his family. His son John was elected President and Robert could very well have also been elected but for his untimely assassination during his first Presidential campaign. But I am of the opinion that the most important legacy for the Kennedy family was the type of life that was led by the only son of Joe who was soundly defeated the one time he ran for US President.
Ted Kennedy accepted this defeat with grace and dignity and then went on to have a decidedly positive impact on the lives of millions of Americans. During the course of his 47 years as a legislator, Ted Kennedy introduced 2,500 bills and saw more than 550 of them enacted into law. Nor was he content to just get his name on a law and then move on to new legislation. He was always open to revisiting laws he had already passed and revising or improving them because he believed that lasting progress only comes in half steps. He spent his life fighting for universal healthcare and although he didn’t accomplish this goal he was able to make some headway with his program for pregnant women and new mothers that now covers 8.7 million working class women and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which now covers more than 7 million children.
As for the Kennedy family legacy, as the sole surviving male, Ted served as the family’s patriarch and as a surrogate father to his fatherless nieces and nephews for over 40 years. The fact that virtually all of Joe Kennedy’s 30 grandchildren are currently involved in some form of public service work is both a reflection of the example Ted set as the Kennedy family’s patriarch and the values he helped instill in those grandchildren. That Ted Kennedy’s funeral attracted the kind of media attention that only attends those who have served as America’s President is a testament to Ted’s life of service to those less fortunate than him. I will end this column with a limerick I wrote about Ted;
The Kennedy children numbered one less than ten,
Their parents instilled a duty to serve in them.
But of all of their children who answered this call,
Ted’s service to others was the greatest of all.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Ted Kennedy's passing
The Bigger Picture
Published on September 3rd in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
Have you ever planned to do, or maybe write, about something and then something happens that makes what you were planning to do or write about seem insignificant? Well that is exactly what happened to me this week. I’d like to say the column I planned to write for today will appear next week instead, but I can’t say for certain. Truth be known, it is entirely possible that column will never get written.
Why? Because as I write this an American political icon, Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy, the “Last Lion in the Senate”, is being laid to rest near the graves of his brothers, Robert and John at Arlington National Cemetery. But the man who gave Ted this moniker during last year’s heated Presidential contest, wasn’t President Obama, it was Republican Presidential candidate John McCain. McCain said Kennedy was the “last lion in the Senate because he remains the single most effective member of the Senate.”
Ted was also the lone surviving son of Joseph (Joe) P. Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald, but he learned more about the art of politics from his two grandfathers, East Boston “backroom” political boss P. J. Kennedy and Boston Mayor John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald, than he did from his powerful and politically connected father. But in order to understand the role that Ted Kennedy has played in America’s recent political history, its equally important that one understands the history of America’s most famous family.
P.J. Kennedy and “Honey Fitz” were both sons of Irish immigrants who left Ireland during the potato famine and immigrated to America. Honey Fitz got involved in Democratic Party politics shortly after he dropped out of Harvard Medical School. Honey Fitz was a stylish showman with a gift of gab and warmth of character that in turn led to his nickname, Honey Fitz. In other words, Honey Fitz was a natural politician, so it wasn’t long before he became the most recognizable Irish-American on Boston’s North End. Honey Fitz also loved to make speeches that were often referred to as “Fitzblarney” and that got him elected Boston’s mayor 3 times around the turn of the twentieth century.
On the other hand, P. J. Kennedy’s involvement in politics came much later in his career because he had been forced to leave school at the age of 14 to support his widowed mother and sisters as a dockworker. P. J. then used the money he saved from this job to buy a saloon on Haymarket Square and launch his career in the liquor business. Before he was thirty his liquor importing business, P.J. Kennedy and Co. was the largest in Boston.
P.J. also had a reputation for giving money and advice to less fortunate Irish emigrants, which made him very popular and respected in the East Boston ward where he lived and worked. This popularity and respect led to P.J.’s involvement in politics and he was subsequently elected to 5 terms in the Massachusetts House of Representatives and 3 more terms in the Massachusetts Senate.
But in contrast to Honey Fitz, P.J. Kennedy didn’t really like all the campaigning and speech making required of politicians. P.J. was much more at home with the backroom wheeling and dealing of ward politics so after he left the Massachusetts Senate in 1896, he spent the remainder of his political career as the Democratic political boss of Boston’s Ward 2 and in appointed positions as elections and fire commissioner.
Joseph Kennedy was P.J.’s eldest child and only son and thanks to P.J.’s business success, Joe was able to get the education that P.J. never had an opportunity to get. Although Joe never started a business from scratch like his father did, Joe nonetheless proved to be a savvy business entrepreneur and financial investor with a keen eye for value. Joe first used his financial expertise and insider information to make a small fortune for him and his Irish-American colleagues during the 1920’s stock market boom. Then, unlike most other wealthy Americans, Joe vastly increased the Kennedy family’s wealth during the Depression years through his investments in real estate.
Joe was a friend and prominent supporter of President Franklin Roosevelt but cut short his own political career when, as America’s British Ambassador, he advocated negotiating with Hitler and disparaged Britain’s fight against the Nazi’s by telling the Boston Globe that “Democracy is finished in England. It may be here.” A political pariah, Joe subsequently devoted himself and his fortune to promoting the political career of his eldest son, Joe Jr. But after Joe Jr.’s untimely death during World War II, Joe Sr. only became more determined to see both of his remaining eldest sons, John and Robert become President of the United States. As a result, Joe’s youngest son Ted spent most of his time learning about politics from his grandfathers, rather than his Dad and brothers.
When Ted’s father, Joe, married his mother, Rose, the eldest daughter of Boston’s most recognizable politician in 1914, the marriage also resulted in the merging of Boston’s two most powerful political families. While this Boston political union and the influence of Irish-American politicians in Chicago, New York, Pittsburg, Philadelphia and New Jersey coupled with Joe Sr.’s considerable financial resources definitely aided John and Robert in their respective bids to become US President, it was Joe Sr.’s often overlooked youngest son, Ted, who I believe benefitted most from his two grandfathers accumulated wisdom borne of their many years of political experience.
The funeral is about to begin so I must now take my leave and join millions of my fellow Americans who will say goodbye to a true statesmen and one of the greatest American legislators of all time. Some of these Americans are the poor he tried to help while others are wealthy or famous, but most of them are just ordinary American citizens, a testament to Ted Kennedy’s common touch. I will conclude my thoughts about Ted Kennedy, his legacy and America’s most famous family in next week’s column.
Published on September 3rd in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
Have you ever planned to do, or maybe write, about something and then something happens that makes what you were planning to do or write about seem insignificant? Well that is exactly what happened to me this week. I’d like to say the column I planned to write for today will appear next week instead, but I can’t say for certain. Truth be known, it is entirely possible that column will never get written.
Why? Because as I write this an American political icon, Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy, the “Last Lion in the Senate”, is being laid to rest near the graves of his brothers, Robert and John at Arlington National Cemetery. But the man who gave Ted this moniker during last year’s heated Presidential contest, wasn’t President Obama, it was Republican Presidential candidate John McCain. McCain said Kennedy was the “last lion in the Senate because he remains the single most effective member of the Senate.”
Ted was also the lone surviving son of Joseph (Joe) P. Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald, but he learned more about the art of politics from his two grandfathers, East Boston “backroom” political boss P. J. Kennedy and Boston Mayor John “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald, than he did from his powerful and politically connected father. But in order to understand the role that Ted Kennedy has played in America’s recent political history, its equally important that one understands the history of America’s most famous family.
P.J. Kennedy and “Honey Fitz” were both sons of Irish immigrants who left Ireland during the potato famine and immigrated to America. Honey Fitz got involved in Democratic Party politics shortly after he dropped out of Harvard Medical School. Honey Fitz was a stylish showman with a gift of gab and warmth of character that in turn led to his nickname, Honey Fitz. In other words, Honey Fitz was a natural politician, so it wasn’t long before he became the most recognizable Irish-American on Boston’s North End. Honey Fitz also loved to make speeches that were often referred to as “Fitzblarney” and that got him elected Boston’s mayor 3 times around the turn of the twentieth century.
On the other hand, P. J. Kennedy’s involvement in politics came much later in his career because he had been forced to leave school at the age of 14 to support his widowed mother and sisters as a dockworker. P. J. then used the money he saved from this job to buy a saloon on Haymarket Square and launch his career in the liquor business. Before he was thirty his liquor importing business, P.J. Kennedy and Co. was the largest in Boston.
P.J. also had a reputation for giving money and advice to less fortunate Irish emigrants, which made him very popular and respected in the East Boston ward where he lived and worked. This popularity and respect led to P.J.’s involvement in politics and he was subsequently elected to 5 terms in the Massachusetts House of Representatives and 3 more terms in the Massachusetts Senate.
But in contrast to Honey Fitz, P.J. Kennedy didn’t really like all the campaigning and speech making required of politicians. P.J. was much more at home with the backroom wheeling and dealing of ward politics so after he left the Massachusetts Senate in 1896, he spent the remainder of his political career as the Democratic political boss of Boston’s Ward 2 and in appointed positions as elections and fire commissioner.
Joseph Kennedy was P.J.’s eldest child and only son and thanks to P.J.’s business success, Joe was able to get the education that P.J. never had an opportunity to get. Although Joe never started a business from scratch like his father did, Joe nonetheless proved to be a savvy business entrepreneur and financial investor with a keen eye for value. Joe first used his financial expertise and insider information to make a small fortune for him and his Irish-American colleagues during the 1920’s stock market boom. Then, unlike most other wealthy Americans, Joe vastly increased the Kennedy family’s wealth during the Depression years through his investments in real estate.
Joe was a friend and prominent supporter of President Franklin Roosevelt but cut short his own political career when, as America’s British Ambassador, he advocated negotiating with Hitler and disparaged Britain’s fight against the Nazi’s by telling the Boston Globe that “Democracy is finished in England. It may be here.” A political pariah, Joe subsequently devoted himself and his fortune to promoting the political career of his eldest son, Joe Jr. But after Joe Jr.’s untimely death during World War II, Joe Sr. only became more determined to see both of his remaining eldest sons, John and Robert become President of the United States. As a result, Joe’s youngest son Ted spent most of his time learning about politics from his grandfathers, rather than his Dad and brothers.
When Ted’s father, Joe, married his mother, Rose, the eldest daughter of Boston’s most recognizable politician in 1914, the marriage also resulted in the merging of Boston’s two most powerful political families. While this Boston political union and the influence of Irish-American politicians in Chicago, New York, Pittsburg, Philadelphia and New Jersey coupled with Joe Sr.’s considerable financial resources definitely aided John and Robert in their respective bids to become US President, it was Joe Sr.’s often overlooked youngest son, Ted, who I believe benefitted most from his two grandfathers accumulated wisdom borne of their many years of political experience.
The funeral is about to begin so I must now take my leave and join millions of my fellow Americans who will say goodbye to a true statesmen and one of the greatest American legislators of all time. Some of these Americans are the poor he tried to help while others are wealthy or famous, but most of them are just ordinary American citizens, a testament to Ted Kennedy’s common touch. I will conclude my thoughts about Ted Kennedy, his legacy and America’s most famous family in next week’s column.
What we can and should do as individual citizens
The Bigger Picture
Published on August 27th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
Today I want to bring a temporary end to my dialogue about climate change by discussing what steps we and our political leaders should be taking to try to avert the worst consequences of this looming environmental catastrophe.
Make no mistake; while I know some skeptics still remain out there, the world is already beginning to suffer the ill effects of climate change due to rising global temperatures. The only real question is how long we as consumers as well as our political leaders will wait until we take action to avert the most catastrophic environmental and economic consequences of climate change.
Both we, as individuals, and our governments must make some difficult choices in the coming years. We can either continue to avoid voluntary steps to conserve energy and government policies that raise the price of fossil fuel derived products like petrol, electricity and plastics; or we can be forced to implement even more draconian measures a decade or so from now. Since I rather like the idea of having the freedom to choose what to do for relatively little additional cost, rather than being forced to do something at a much higher price later, here are a few suggestions for us and our political leaders.
1) Park the car and use public transport whenever and wherever possible.
While not all citizens have public transportation options like buses and trains available to them, it is completely irresponsible for those that do have such options to continue to use cars or SUVs to get to school or work. Sell that second or third car you own and start sharing the use of the family car. Plan your errands so that you make a single trip to multiple stores every few days. Sure it may be a bit inconvenient at times, but you can also console yourself by thinking about how much money you are saving every week by doing so. Then make sure you vote and campaign for politicians who want to invest more money in public transport.
I have a car but I only use it to drive out of the city and or to places where public transport is scant or unavailable. I plan trips into town so that I do my shopping in conjunction other errands thus minimizing the number of days I use my bus pass.
2) Push political leaders to change the way annual motor taxes are computed.
Since vehicles with larger engines usually use more petrol per kilometer traveled, a motor tax based on a vehicle’s engine size is a step in the right direction, but is at best only a half measure in terms of cutting carbon emissions. While this tax basis does encourage people to purchase more fuel efficient cars with smaller engines, it doesn’t provide all drivers with an incentive to cut down the number of kilometers they drive. But if the motor tax was computed based on the estimated carbon emissions per kilometer of a particular car engine and the number of kilometers travelled the previous year, then every car owner would have an incentive to reduce the kilometers they drive each year. If a person lives in an area without access to public transport, then they should receive a credit that will reduce their motor tax. But if someone living in a city with access to public transport elects to continue driving, why should we pay for the costs of environmental consequences associated with their carbon emissions?
3) Conserve electricity and get ready to pay more for what you do use.
It isn’t a matter of if we will start paying carbon taxes for the fossil fuel energy we use, only when and how much. Driving less reduces our petrol costs and the carbon taxes that will be placed on petrol. But since most of our carbon emissions are the result of electricity generated by coal, oil and gas; one should expect that carbon taxes will impact our costs for electricity as much, if not more, than petrol. Turning off lights and computers or buying more energy efficient appliances is a start; but what about that dishwasher and TV? Since dishwashers and TVs are the biggest users of electricity in most homes, what is wrong with families learning how to use the dishwasher less and sharing the use of one or two less TV sets?
4) Push politicians to base any carbon taxes on calculations of the minimum electricity needed to maintain an average household of 2, 4, 6 and 8 adults.
Pensioners and households that hold their use below these thresholds would get an energy credit, while those who live in large mansions and use lots of energy will pay more per kilowatt in carbon taxes for using more electricity than the minimum they need. This gives everyone an incentive to conserve energy but only financially penalizes those who continue to waste electricity.
5) Use less paper and plastic and recycle what you do use.
Pulp and paper producers are responsible for most of the carbon emissions due to the tropical deforestation which is occurring in Southeast Asia. But you can reduce demand for paper through recycling and many companies will pay you to stop sending you their bills by mail. Manufacturing plastics adds to global carbon emissions so making consumers pay for plastic shopping bags is a step in the right direction. But we also need to expand this tax to all plastic bottles or containers and get much better at recycling plastics so we can reduce production of them.
6) Eat more fresh vegetables and consume less meat.
Clearing tropical rainforests in favor of grazing land for cattle or for growing soybeans that are used for cattle feed and producing biofuel is a huge contributor to carbon emissions from the Amazon region of South America. I save money and eat healthier by consuming more veggies and reducing my meat expenditures.
Now ask yourself; “What actions will I tell my children I took to prevent climate change”?
Published on August 27th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
Today I want to bring a temporary end to my dialogue about climate change by discussing what steps we and our political leaders should be taking to try to avert the worst consequences of this looming environmental catastrophe.
Make no mistake; while I know some skeptics still remain out there, the world is already beginning to suffer the ill effects of climate change due to rising global temperatures. The only real question is how long we as consumers as well as our political leaders will wait until we take action to avert the most catastrophic environmental and economic consequences of climate change.
Both we, as individuals, and our governments must make some difficult choices in the coming years. We can either continue to avoid voluntary steps to conserve energy and government policies that raise the price of fossil fuel derived products like petrol, electricity and plastics; or we can be forced to implement even more draconian measures a decade or so from now. Since I rather like the idea of having the freedom to choose what to do for relatively little additional cost, rather than being forced to do something at a much higher price later, here are a few suggestions for us and our political leaders.
1) Park the car and use public transport whenever and wherever possible.
While not all citizens have public transportation options like buses and trains available to them, it is completely irresponsible for those that do have such options to continue to use cars or SUVs to get to school or work. Sell that second or third car you own and start sharing the use of the family car. Plan your errands so that you make a single trip to multiple stores every few days. Sure it may be a bit inconvenient at times, but you can also console yourself by thinking about how much money you are saving every week by doing so. Then make sure you vote and campaign for politicians who want to invest more money in public transport.
I have a car but I only use it to drive out of the city and or to places where public transport is scant or unavailable. I plan trips into town so that I do my shopping in conjunction other errands thus minimizing the number of days I use my bus pass.
2) Push political leaders to change the way annual motor taxes are computed.
Since vehicles with larger engines usually use more petrol per kilometer traveled, a motor tax based on a vehicle’s engine size is a step in the right direction, but is at best only a half measure in terms of cutting carbon emissions. While this tax basis does encourage people to purchase more fuel efficient cars with smaller engines, it doesn’t provide all drivers with an incentive to cut down the number of kilometers they drive. But if the motor tax was computed based on the estimated carbon emissions per kilometer of a particular car engine and the number of kilometers travelled the previous year, then every car owner would have an incentive to reduce the kilometers they drive each year. If a person lives in an area without access to public transport, then they should receive a credit that will reduce their motor tax. But if someone living in a city with access to public transport elects to continue driving, why should we pay for the costs of environmental consequences associated with their carbon emissions?
3) Conserve electricity and get ready to pay more for what you do use.
It isn’t a matter of if we will start paying carbon taxes for the fossil fuel energy we use, only when and how much. Driving less reduces our petrol costs and the carbon taxes that will be placed on petrol. But since most of our carbon emissions are the result of electricity generated by coal, oil and gas; one should expect that carbon taxes will impact our costs for electricity as much, if not more, than petrol. Turning off lights and computers or buying more energy efficient appliances is a start; but what about that dishwasher and TV? Since dishwashers and TVs are the biggest users of electricity in most homes, what is wrong with families learning how to use the dishwasher less and sharing the use of one or two less TV sets?
4) Push politicians to base any carbon taxes on calculations of the minimum electricity needed to maintain an average household of 2, 4, 6 and 8 adults.
Pensioners and households that hold their use below these thresholds would get an energy credit, while those who live in large mansions and use lots of energy will pay more per kilowatt in carbon taxes for using more electricity than the minimum they need. This gives everyone an incentive to conserve energy but only financially penalizes those who continue to waste electricity.
5) Use less paper and plastic and recycle what you do use.
Pulp and paper producers are responsible for most of the carbon emissions due to the tropical deforestation which is occurring in Southeast Asia. But you can reduce demand for paper through recycling and many companies will pay you to stop sending you their bills by mail. Manufacturing plastics adds to global carbon emissions so making consumers pay for plastic shopping bags is a step in the right direction. But we also need to expand this tax to all plastic bottles or containers and get much better at recycling plastics so we can reduce production of them.
6) Eat more fresh vegetables and consume less meat.
Clearing tropical rainforests in favor of grazing land for cattle or for growing soybeans that are used for cattle feed and producing biofuel is a huge contributor to carbon emissions from the Amazon region of South America. I save money and eat healthier by consuming more veggies and reducing my meat expenditures.
Now ask yourself; “What actions will I tell my children I took to prevent climate change”?
Why do we act so surprised when we were warned
The Bigger Picture
Published on August 20th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
Given the fact that I don’t believe the citizens of the EU or America are sufficiently alarmed about the consequences of climate change to sanction paying developing countries money in order to avoid them, I think the prospects for a meaningful global agreement to cut carbon emissions is still a long ways off.
I have come to this conclusion based on my experience dealing with problems and my research regarding how difficult it is to get political leaders into action addressing their countries domestic difficulties, much less any issues that are of global concern. Government leaders outside of America would have us believe that the current economic recession could not have been anticipated and that it is all America’s fault anyway, while politicians in the US blame greedy Wall Street bankers. Poppycock!
In 2005 economists in America were warning us that our easy access to mortgage financing and the consequent ever upward trajectory of housing prices was creating a “housing bubble” that was bound to burst sooner or later. These same economists were also warning American consumers that they were spending too much on non-essential luxuries with their credit cards and not saving enough money to sustain their finances in the event of another recession. Economists also warned us that we were putting too much faith in investment portfolios that were based on inflated stock market values.
The US Comptroller General was warning us in 2003 that our healthcare expenses were gobbling up an increasing percentage of our disposable income and that the US Congress could not afford to provide Americans with a prescription healthcare benefit. He pointed out that this new benefit was unfunded and would only further add to America’s Iraq War induced budget deficit. The US Comptroller also warned us that our Medicare and Social Security entitlement programs were underfunded and would collapse unless we raised the retirement age, raised taxes and or cut benefits. Did most American consumers listen? NO! Did most of America’s politicians listen? NO!
Closer to home here in Ireland, economists warned that the housing market was overheated back in 2005. Economists here also decried the rise in both public sector employment and wage agreements because these actions were based on government revenues that ballooned thanks to stamp duties from that same overheated housing market. Economist also noted that healthcare and pension costs were rising at unsustainable rates unless action was taken to restrict benefits or raise taxes. Did most Irish consumers listen? NO! Did most of Ireland’s politicians listen? NO!
Is America, and it’s very lose regulation of Wall Street and American financial institutions, a culprit in the current global economic recession? Yes it is! But America had many willing accomplices around the globe. Without the contributions of those accomplices, consumers as well as government officials in other countries, this recession would not have been such a global affair. If we want to avoid a repeat of the current economic nastiness, we need to first look at our own behaviour and contributions to this mess before we go off pointing fingers at others for what they did or didn’t do!
Unfortunately, what I see and hear in America, Ireland and in other countries, is a complete lack of any sense of personal responsibility or accountability on the part of individual citizens, much less their political leaders. But we can not avoid repeating the same mistakes again unless we first acknowledge that we played a part in them. Only then can we begin to learn from them so we don’t find ourselves repeating these same mistakes again in 15 or 20 years. I wish I saw more evidence of this; but frankly I don’t!
The truth is; most of the time consumers and their political leaders in all countries see what they want to see and hear only what they want to hear. Economists and others who are warning us to conserve or change our spendthrift ways when our economies are booming; are routinely ignored or treated as economic Cassandra’s and criticized for their “pessimistic” perspectives. Then when the crisis they warned us would happen is upon us we ask “How could this happen?” Then we begin playing the blame game.
The issue of climate change due to carbon emission fueled global warming represents a similar conundrum for the world’s consumers and politicians. Instead of respected economists warning us about our borrowing and spending habits, we have respected climate scientist warning us about the consequences of not reducing our carbon emissions. But while there has always been some level of disagreement among economists about the economic consequences of consumer and government profligacy, there is virtually no such disagreement among the world’s climate experts.
The fact that a composite of various climate change scenarios suggests severe environmental consequences, which will disrupt the lives of all living species, should make effectively dealing with this problem our number one policy issue. Mind you these scientific models are not the worst-case scenarios, but rather the most likely results of a catastrophic rise in global temperatures based on our present carbon emissions levels.
But, unfortunately for us and future generations, both consumers and politicians tend to respond and demand policy changes only when they find themselves in the middle of a crisis, such as the recent global economic meltdown. Climate change is more insidious because it is a creeping threat and the full dimensions of the crisis won’t be apparent for many years. But by the time rising temperatures and sea levels have become so obvious that even the most skeptical observers have been silenced, it will be too late to avert the catastrophic environmental and economic consequences of climate change.
The world won’t be facing several years of economic consequences like falling house prices or rising unemployment that governments can attempt to address with economic stimulus measures. Unless we act now, it will take decades to reverse the environmental consequences that await us and, more importantly, our children. Next week, I’ll discuss what we can do now.
Published on August 20th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
Given the fact that I don’t believe the citizens of the EU or America are sufficiently alarmed about the consequences of climate change to sanction paying developing countries money in order to avoid them, I think the prospects for a meaningful global agreement to cut carbon emissions is still a long ways off.
I have come to this conclusion based on my experience dealing with problems and my research regarding how difficult it is to get political leaders into action addressing their countries domestic difficulties, much less any issues that are of global concern. Government leaders outside of America would have us believe that the current economic recession could not have been anticipated and that it is all America’s fault anyway, while politicians in the US blame greedy Wall Street bankers. Poppycock!
In 2005 economists in America were warning us that our easy access to mortgage financing and the consequent ever upward trajectory of housing prices was creating a “housing bubble” that was bound to burst sooner or later. These same economists were also warning American consumers that they were spending too much on non-essential luxuries with their credit cards and not saving enough money to sustain their finances in the event of another recession. Economists also warned us that we were putting too much faith in investment portfolios that were based on inflated stock market values.
The US Comptroller General was warning us in 2003 that our healthcare expenses were gobbling up an increasing percentage of our disposable income and that the US Congress could not afford to provide Americans with a prescription healthcare benefit. He pointed out that this new benefit was unfunded and would only further add to America’s Iraq War induced budget deficit. The US Comptroller also warned us that our Medicare and Social Security entitlement programs were underfunded and would collapse unless we raised the retirement age, raised taxes and or cut benefits. Did most American consumers listen? NO! Did most of America’s politicians listen? NO!
Closer to home here in Ireland, economists warned that the housing market was overheated back in 2005. Economists here also decried the rise in both public sector employment and wage agreements because these actions were based on government revenues that ballooned thanks to stamp duties from that same overheated housing market. Economist also noted that healthcare and pension costs were rising at unsustainable rates unless action was taken to restrict benefits or raise taxes. Did most Irish consumers listen? NO! Did most of Ireland’s politicians listen? NO!
Is America, and it’s very lose regulation of Wall Street and American financial institutions, a culprit in the current global economic recession? Yes it is! But America had many willing accomplices around the globe. Without the contributions of those accomplices, consumers as well as government officials in other countries, this recession would not have been such a global affair. If we want to avoid a repeat of the current economic nastiness, we need to first look at our own behaviour and contributions to this mess before we go off pointing fingers at others for what they did or didn’t do!
Unfortunately, what I see and hear in America, Ireland and in other countries, is a complete lack of any sense of personal responsibility or accountability on the part of individual citizens, much less their political leaders. But we can not avoid repeating the same mistakes again unless we first acknowledge that we played a part in them. Only then can we begin to learn from them so we don’t find ourselves repeating these same mistakes again in 15 or 20 years. I wish I saw more evidence of this; but frankly I don’t!
The truth is; most of the time consumers and their political leaders in all countries see what they want to see and hear only what they want to hear. Economists and others who are warning us to conserve or change our spendthrift ways when our economies are booming; are routinely ignored or treated as economic Cassandra’s and criticized for their “pessimistic” perspectives. Then when the crisis they warned us would happen is upon us we ask “How could this happen?” Then we begin playing the blame game.
The issue of climate change due to carbon emission fueled global warming represents a similar conundrum for the world’s consumers and politicians. Instead of respected economists warning us about our borrowing and spending habits, we have respected climate scientist warning us about the consequences of not reducing our carbon emissions. But while there has always been some level of disagreement among economists about the economic consequences of consumer and government profligacy, there is virtually no such disagreement among the world’s climate experts.
The fact that a composite of various climate change scenarios suggests severe environmental consequences, which will disrupt the lives of all living species, should make effectively dealing with this problem our number one policy issue. Mind you these scientific models are not the worst-case scenarios, but rather the most likely results of a catastrophic rise in global temperatures based on our present carbon emissions levels.
But, unfortunately for us and future generations, both consumers and politicians tend to respond and demand policy changes only when they find themselves in the middle of a crisis, such as the recent global economic meltdown. Climate change is more insidious because it is a creeping threat and the full dimensions of the crisis won’t be apparent for many years. But by the time rising temperatures and sea levels have become so obvious that even the most skeptical observers have been silenced, it will be too late to avert the catastrophic environmental and economic consequences of climate change.
The world won’t be facing several years of economic consequences like falling house prices or rising unemployment that governments can attempt to address with economic stimulus measures. Unless we act now, it will take decades to reverse the environmental consequences that await us and, more importantly, our children. Next week, I’ll discuss what we can do now.
What will happen in Copenhagen this December
The Bigger Picture
Published on August 13th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
Even though I still plan to attend this year’s UN Global Climate Change Conference from 7-18 December in Copenhagen, I do not realistically expect a truly effective treaty or even a relatively toothless agreement to cut global carbon emissions to emerge from these negotiations. While the current global recession is being blamed by many politicians for a lack of progress on this global environmental issue, I believe the situation would be basically the same even if the global economy was booming.
Why do I feel this way? Well there are several loosely related factors that have led me to draw this somewhat pessimistic conclusion. It would be easy to blame various different politicians and political leaders but I think doing so is just an easy cop out for most of us. While many of them do bear some measure of responsibility for the current impasse on reducing carbon emissions, I think the lack of leadership many of them have demonstrated thus far is really a reflection of their constituents. Our politicians’ lack of political will to deal with the problem is due to the lack of urgency felt by citizens.
The reality of politics around the globe is that truly gifted political leaders like Barack Obama, with the ability to inspire people and marshal popular support from the general public for economically painful solutions to their countries problems, only come along once in a generation. The rest of the time our democratic political leaders tend to be people who attain their positions of power by using divide and conquer schemes to outwit their opponents and or manipulate public opinion. They aren’t inspiring natural leaders.
Authoritarian rulers also get to the top of their nations’ political heaps using the same methods that their democratic counter-parts use except they only have to contend with their countries’ business and social élites. They have an easier time of it than democratic leaders do, in terms of pushing unpopular policies on the general public, because they don’t have to worry about winning popular elections in the future.
But outside of a few extremely repressive regimes, even the most gifted and or authoritarian political leaders still have to be able to deal effectively with popular opposition to their policies if they want to maintain their grip on the reins of power.
President Obama is a gifted political leader who won election with a substantial majority of the popular and electoral vote. But he still has to grapple with winning the legislative support of Democratic members of Congress for his policy prescriptions, many of whom won election by only the barest of margins. Those legislators are worried about their prospects for winning re-election if their constituents or the business and social elites who fund their re-election campaigns decide they don’t like those policies.
As a result, the Climate Change bill that barely squeaked through the US Congress at the end of June was at best a very weak prescription for dealing with an ailment that is rapidly worsening. The good news is that the US Congress finally agreed to cut America’s carbon emissions, but the bad news is America will only cut them by 17% come the year 2020. Instead of a cap-and-trade system where credits for carbon emissions are sold to the highest bidders in order to provide money to offset increasing energy bills, the US will give 85% of them away to America’s biggest polluters for free.
While I agree with environmental NGOs that this bill fits the description of being “too little, too late”, I still can’t understand why Greenpeace actually came out against it. It has only taken the US Congress twenty years to get to the point where it was finally willing to play ball and cut America’s carbon emissions, so Greenpeace’s response, that no bill that cuts carbon emissions is preferable to a weak one, strikes me as disingenuous.
I am all for much stronger carbon reduction measures but please, let’s be a bit more realistic. A flawed climate change bill can still be tightened and strengthened in future years while some progress is made in the meantime; but no climate change legislation means no progress whatsoever until the political will exists for stronger measures. It is precisely this kind of thinking, on the part of some environmentalists, that leads many of their opponents to conclude that there is no point in negotiating with them.
Looking ahead to the UN Climate Change conference this December there are seven major entities that will be involved in negotiating a carbon emissions treaty to replace the ineffective Kyoto Protocol. The EU has the most political will to negotiate meaningful cuts in global carbon emissions, largely because a more educated citizenry that elects its leaders is more concerned about the consequences of climate change. Weak though it may be, there is at least some political will to address the problem of climate change due to global warming in America.
But what about the political will of China’s authoritarian regime? Or India’s democratically elected political leaders? Or the political will of Putin and Russia’s quasi-democratic political regime? These three countries are the largest sources of industrial carbon emissions outside of America and the EU and their combined emissions exceed those of the EU and America. Then we have the democratic governments of Brazil and Indonesia which have been unable to halt the illegal logging and clearing of their tropical rainforests even though they have designated them as “protected” national forests.
These seven entities account for approximately 70% of global carbon emissions, but the wealthier EU and America emit much more carbon per person than the denizens of the other five nations. The core of these countries collective position towards the EU and America is; that we need to “pay” them to reduce their emissions. Unfortunately for our global climate, I don’t see much evidence that the citizens of the EU or America are sufficiently alarmed about the consequences to be willing to pay to avoid them.
Published on August 13th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
Even though I still plan to attend this year’s UN Global Climate Change Conference from 7-18 December in Copenhagen, I do not realistically expect a truly effective treaty or even a relatively toothless agreement to cut global carbon emissions to emerge from these negotiations. While the current global recession is being blamed by many politicians for a lack of progress on this global environmental issue, I believe the situation would be basically the same even if the global economy was booming.
Why do I feel this way? Well there are several loosely related factors that have led me to draw this somewhat pessimistic conclusion. It would be easy to blame various different politicians and political leaders but I think doing so is just an easy cop out for most of us. While many of them do bear some measure of responsibility for the current impasse on reducing carbon emissions, I think the lack of leadership many of them have demonstrated thus far is really a reflection of their constituents. Our politicians’ lack of political will to deal with the problem is due to the lack of urgency felt by citizens.
The reality of politics around the globe is that truly gifted political leaders like Barack Obama, with the ability to inspire people and marshal popular support from the general public for economically painful solutions to their countries problems, only come along once in a generation. The rest of the time our democratic political leaders tend to be people who attain their positions of power by using divide and conquer schemes to outwit their opponents and or manipulate public opinion. They aren’t inspiring natural leaders.
Authoritarian rulers also get to the top of their nations’ political heaps using the same methods that their democratic counter-parts use except they only have to contend with their countries’ business and social élites. They have an easier time of it than democratic leaders do, in terms of pushing unpopular policies on the general public, because they don’t have to worry about winning popular elections in the future.
But outside of a few extremely repressive regimes, even the most gifted and or authoritarian political leaders still have to be able to deal effectively with popular opposition to their policies if they want to maintain their grip on the reins of power.
President Obama is a gifted political leader who won election with a substantial majority of the popular and electoral vote. But he still has to grapple with winning the legislative support of Democratic members of Congress for his policy prescriptions, many of whom won election by only the barest of margins. Those legislators are worried about their prospects for winning re-election if their constituents or the business and social elites who fund their re-election campaigns decide they don’t like those policies.
As a result, the Climate Change bill that barely squeaked through the US Congress at the end of June was at best a very weak prescription for dealing with an ailment that is rapidly worsening. The good news is that the US Congress finally agreed to cut America’s carbon emissions, but the bad news is America will only cut them by 17% come the year 2020. Instead of a cap-and-trade system where credits for carbon emissions are sold to the highest bidders in order to provide money to offset increasing energy bills, the US will give 85% of them away to America’s biggest polluters for free.
While I agree with environmental NGOs that this bill fits the description of being “too little, too late”, I still can’t understand why Greenpeace actually came out against it. It has only taken the US Congress twenty years to get to the point where it was finally willing to play ball and cut America’s carbon emissions, so Greenpeace’s response, that no bill that cuts carbon emissions is preferable to a weak one, strikes me as disingenuous.
I am all for much stronger carbon reduction measures but please, let’s be a bit more realistic. A flawed climate change bill can still be tightened and strengthened in future years while some progress is made in the meantime; but no climate change legislation means no progress whatsoever until the political will exists for stronger measures. It is precisely this kind of thinking, on the part of some environmentalists, that leads many of their opponents to conclude that there is no point in negotiating with them.
Looking ahead to the UN Climate Change conference this December there are seven major entities that will be involved in negotiating a carbon emissions treaty to replace the ineffective Kyoto Protocol. The EU has the most political will to negotiate meaningful cuts in global carbon emissions, largely because a more educated citizenry that elects its leaders is more concerned about the consequences of climate change. Weak though it may be, there is at least some political will to address the problem of climate change due to global warming in America.
But what about the political will of China’s authoritarian regime? Or India’s democratically elected political leaders? Or the political will of Putin and Russia’s quasi-democratic political regime? These three countries are the largest sources of industrial carbon emissions outside of America and the EU and their combined emissions exceed those of the EU and America. Then we have the democratic governments of Brazil and Indonesia which have been unable to halt the illegal logging and clearing of their tropical rainforests even though they have designated them as “protected” national forests.
These seven entities account for approximately 70% of global carbon emissions, but the wealthier EU and America emit much more carbon per person than the denizens of the other five nations. The core of these countries collective position towards the EU and America is; that we need to “pay” them to reduce their emissions. Unfortunately for our global climate, I don’t see much evidence that the citizens of the EU or America are sufficiently alarmed about the consequences to be willing to pay to avoid them.
The role Chimerzilia must play
The Bigger Picture
Published on August 6th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
In my previous columns I have discussed some of the reasons why we must take more individual responsibility and action to address climate change due to global warming. But I am also painfully aware that there is only so much that we can do as individuals to reduce global carbon emissions. The world’s governments and their political leaders must do more as well but there is also one group of countries that is more important than all of the other countries in the world. I call them Chimerzilia.
Chimerzilia is the G5 of carbon emitters. Without their agreement to do more, and I mean a whole lot more, to reduce their countries’ carbon emissions there will be little, if any, reduction in global warming and the resultant climate change we will all experience.
Chimerzilia represents an amalgam of the names of the five countries (China, America, Brazil, Indonesia and India) that are the world’s largest carbon emitters and they are collectively responsible for more than 50% of global carbon emissions. Although the EU and Russia are also big carbon emitters and are responsible for more than 20% of global carbon emissions between them, the future depends on the G5 aka Chimerzilia. The G5 are also the 5 most populous countries in the world and, except Indonesia, among the world’s 7 largest nations by land area along with Australia, Canada and Russia.
Surprisingly, the reason why less industrialized countries like Brazil and Indonesia are in the top 5, instead of the more industrialized countries of the EU and Russia, is because of the amount of carbon that enters the earth’s atmosphere due to deforestation. While many of you may have also seen satellite photos of the smog blanketing Southeast Asia that was caused by fires in Indonesia a few years ago, what you may not know is that research shows that 70% to 90% of the fires were set by large, officially sanctioned companies to clear land for timber, oil-palm, and rubber plantations.
In Brazil tropical rainforest fires are set illegally in order to clear land for cattle grazing and agricultural uses after the best trees have been logged. But as a consequence of this activity the Amazon rainforest is losing its ability to stay green year round because the combination of deforestation and drought make it dangerously flammable. Scientists believe that as much as 50 percent of the Amazon could someday go up in smoke if these land clearing fires continue due to the lowering of the Amazon’s humidity levels.
But while the smoke and smog inducing carbon emissions that result from fires in the rainforests of Indonesia and Brazil causes problems for those suffering from breathing problems, all of the world’s citizens pay a price in the longer term. That’s because deforestation releases carbon stored in tropical peat and rainforests into the air while also reducing the earth’s ability to absorb existing levels of carbon in the atmosphere.
So the importance of the G5, aka Chimerzilia, is this; while China, America and India must agree to cut the 50% of the world’s carbon they are emitting, Brazil and Indonesia must also cut their own carbon emissions by reducing or eliminating deforestation, which is simultaneously eating up our global sponge for carbon emissions. Doing one or the other but not both is simply not an option if we want to avoid even more catastrophic consequences from climate change than the ones we are currently facing.
Both individually and collectively, the nations that compose the EU have done much more than most other countries around the world to address the problem of man-made global warming. I applaud the EU for their actions to reduce carbon emissions and hope that the EU will continue to push other countries like Russia to follow its lead.
But I am also a realist. Without the Chimerzilia G5, I see no hope for an effective global agreement to replace the largely ineffective Kyoto Protocol and address the causes of climate change. I hope that the political leaders of the EU will come to the same conclusion and not raise too big of a ruckus when America starts bilateral negotiations with the other members of the Chimerzilia G5. Like it or not, those negations have already begun albeit privately not publically. Yet!
While the EU is China’s largest trading partner, America is a close second and China is also the world’s largest holder of American debt securities. America is also the world’s largest economy and importer of foreign goods. America is also the world’s only true superpower notwithstanding the fact that China envisions becoming a superpower itself in the very near future. Indonesia’s largest trading partner is America but it is also the largest member of the 10 nation ASEAN which is China’s 3rd largest trading partner. India and Brazil’s largest trading partners are also China and America.
Is the picture I’m trying to paint here starting to emerge yet? The Chimerzilia G5 has a vested interest in maintaining these lucrative trade relationships among themselves as well as their trading relationships with the EU. But America has not been as aggressive as the EU when it comes to reducing carbon emissions, so the other members of Chimerzilia have decided that their own economic interests will be better served by any carbon emission reduction agreements that they can negotiate bilaterally with America.
I may be wrong, but I believe an effective post-Kyoto global climate change treaty will be one based on bilateral environmental agreements between and among the member states of the Chimerzilia G5. While the consequent global treaty won’t be the kind of agreement the world truly needs to stave off global warming, it may set the stage and provide a framework for later negotiations that will lead to much more aggressive action.
This, incidentally, is my most optimistic scenario for how the world’s political leaders might actually begin to deal with the issue of climate change. I will offer a much more realistic assessment next week.
Published on August 6th in Metro Éireann By Charles Laffiteau
In my previous columns I have discussed some of the reasons why we must take more individual responsibility and action to address climate change due to global warming. But I am also painfully aware that there is only so much that we can do as individuals to reduce global carbon emissions. The world’s governments and their political leaders must do more as well but there is also one group of countries that is more important than all of the other countries in the world. I call them Chimerzilia.
Chimerzilia is the G5 of carbon emitters. Without their agreement to do more, and I mean a whole lot more, to reduce their countries’ carbon emissions there will be little, if any, reduction in global warming and the resultant climate change we will all experience.
Chimerzilia represents an amalgam of the names of the five countries (China, America, Brazil, Indonesia and India) that are the world’s largest carbon emitters and they are collectively responsible for more than 50% of global carbon emissions. Although the EU and Russia are also big carbon emitters and are responsible for more than 20% of global carbon emissions between them, the future depends on the G5 aka Chimerzilia. The G5 are also the 5 most populous countries in the world and, except Indonesia, among the world’s 7 largest nations by land area along with Australia, Canada and Russia.
Surprisingly, the reason why less industrialized countries like Brazil and Indonesia are in the top 5, instead of the more industrialized countries of the EU and Russia, is because of the amount of carbon that enters the earth’s atmosphere due to deforestation. While many of you may have also seen satellite photos of the smog blanketing Southeast Asia that was caused by fires in Indonesia a few years ago, what you may not know is that research shows that 70% to 90% of the fires were set by large, officially sanctioned companies to clear land for timber, oil-palm, and rubber plantations.
In Brazil tropical rainforest fires are set illegally in order to clear land for cattle grazing and agricultural uses after the best trees have been logged. But as a consequence of this activity the Amazon rainforest is losing its ability to stay green year round because the combination of deforestation and drought make it dangerously flammable. Scientists believe that as much as 50 percent of the Amazon could someday go up in smoke if these land clearing fires continue due to the lowering of the Amazon’s humidity levels.
But while the smoke and smog inducing carbon emissions that result from fires in the rainforests of Indonesia and Brazil causes problems for those suffering from breathing problems, all of the world’s citizens pay a price in the longer term. That’s because deforestation releases carbon stored in tropical peat and rainforests into the air while also reducing the earth’s ability to absorb existing levels of carbon in the atmosphere.
So the importance of the G5, aka Chimerzilia, is this; while China, America and India must agree to cut the 50% of the world’s carbon they are emitting, Brazil and Indonesia must also cut their own carbon emissions by reducing or eliminating deforestation, which is simultaneously eating up our global sponge for carbon emissions. Doing one or the other but not both is simply not an option if we want to avoid even more catastrophic consequences from climate change than the ones we are currently facing.
Both individually and collectively, the nations that compose the EU have done much more than most other countries around the world to address the problem of man-made global warming. I applaud the EU for their actions to reduce carbon emissions and hope that the EU will continue to push other countries like Russia to follow its lead.
But I am also a realist. Without the Chimerzilia G5, I see no hope for an effective global agreement to replace the largely ineffective Kyoto Protocol and address the causes of climate change. I hope that the political leaders of the EU will come to the same conclusion and not raise too big of a ruckus when America starts bilateral negotiations with the other members of the Chimerzilia G5. Like it or not, those negations have already begun albeit privately not publically. Yet!
While the EU is China’s largest trading partner, America is a close second and China is also the world’s largest holder of American debt securities. America is also the world’s largest economy and importer of foreign goods. America is also the world’s only true superpower notwithstanding the fact that China envisions becoming a superpower itself in the very near future. Indonesia’s largest trading partner is America but it is also the largest member of the 10 nation ASEAN which is China’s 3rd largest trading partner. India and Brazil’s largest trading partners are also China and America.
Is the picture I’m trying to paint here starting to emerge yet? The Chimerzilia G5 has a vested interest in maintaining these lucrative trade relationships among themselves as well as their trading relationships with the EU. But America has not been as aggressive as the EU when it comes to reducing carbon emissions, so the other members of Chimerzilia have decided that their own economic interests will be better served by any carbon emission reduction agreements that they can negotiate bilaterally with America.
I may be wrong, but I believe an effective post-Kyoto global climate change treaty will be one based on bilateral environmental agreements between and among the member states of the Chimerzilia G5. While the consequent global treaty won’t be the kind of agreement the world truly needs to stave off global warming, it may set the stage and provide a framework for later negotiations that will lead to much more aggressive action.
This, incidentally, is my most optimistic scenario for how the world’s political leaders might actually begin to deal with the issue of climate change. I will offer a much more realistic assessment next week.
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