FLGibsonJr in Quick Hits takes note of Public Citizen calling Obama's economic mixed-message "beyond surreal":
It was beyond surreal to hear President Barack Obama talk about the priority of creating U.S. jobs while saying nothing about on fixing our China trade debacle and calling on Congress to pass a NAFTA-style trade agreement with Korea that the government's own studies show will increase our trade deficit. The Korea pact is projected to cost another 159,000 U.S. jobs - with nine economic sectors, including high tech electronics, as losers.
There's a whole lot I could say in support of this observation--particularly since this sort of thing has been going on for decades now, with the same miserable results over and over again. As far back as the late 1990s, I reviewed a book by a couple of economic experts from Business Week, The Judas Economy: The Triumph of Capital and the Betrayal of Work, that warned of the degree to which the US was already loosing middle-class, professional, high-tech jobs to Asian competitors. Obama's response would have been incoherent and off-topic even way back then.
But rather than say more about Obama per se, I'd like to talk about a recent paper that goes after the underlying idea behind so-called "free trade" mania--the economic doctrine of comparative advantage. As is often the case in economics, there's a simple yet powerful idea here--but reality is often a whole lot more complicated. And when it is, reality suffers at the hands of economists. It's much easier for them that way.
"Dubious assumptions of the theory of comparative advantage" by Ian Fletcher, from issue 55 of the real-world economics review. First, he starts out explaining the basic logic of the theory, starting off with a more primitive idea--"absolute advantage"--and showing what's wrong with it, thus introducing us to the powerful logic of comparative advantage itself:
The concept of absolute advantage simply says that if some foreign nation is a more efficient producer of some product than we are, then free trade will cause us to import that product from them, and that this is good for both nations. It is good for us because we get the product for less money than it would have cost us to make it ourselves. It is good for the foreign nation because it gets a market for its goods. And it is good for the world economy as a whole because it causes production to come from the most efficient producer, maximizing world output.
Absolute advantage is thus a set of fairly obvious ideas. It is, unfortunately, also false. Under free trade, nations observably imports products of which they are the most efficient producer-which makes absolutely no sense by the standard of absolute advantage. This is why one must analyze trade in terms of not absolute but comparative advantage. Boiled down to its essence, the often-misunderstood theory simply says this:
Nations trade for the same reasons people do.
And the whole theory can be cracked open with one simple question:
Why don't pro football players mow their own lawns?
Why should this even be a question? Because the average footballer can almost certainly mow his lawn more efficiently than the average professional lawn mower. The average footballer is, after all, presumably stronger and more agile than the mediocre workforce attracted to a badly paid job like mowing lawns. Yet nobody finds it strange that he would "import" lawn-mowing services from a less efficient "producer." Why? Obviously, because he has better things to do with his time.
The theory says that it is advantageous for America, for example, to import some goods simply in order to free up its workforce to produce more-valuable goods instead.
Once you've had it explained like this, the logic seems fairly impeccable. But that's where the realworld problems arise, and start teasing out the hidden assumptions invovled. Fletcher analyzes seven of them. I'm going to quote enough of his analysis to convey the essence of the proble for each of the first six. I'll leave off the last, which is somewhat more technical. First is the problem of unsustainability, a personal favorite, as a life-long environmentalist (even though the issue goes far beyond the environment as commonly conceived):
Also participating, in keeping with the project's emphasis on 'voices from the field,' are two on-the-ground innovators from sub-Saharan Africa: Edward Mukiibi, co-founder and Project Coordinator of Developing Innovations in School Cultivation (DISC) in Uganda and Sithembile Ndema with the Food and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN) in South Africa. The DISC project instills greater environmental awareness and understanding of nutrition, indigenous vegetables, and food culture in Uganda's youth by establishing vegetable gardens at pre-school, day, and boarding schools. FANRPAN's Women Accessing Realigned Markets (WARM) project recently launched a series of Theatre for Policy Advocacy (TPA) campaigns in rural Malawi, using an interactive model to strengthen the ability of women farmers to advocate for appropriate agricultural policies and programs.
State of the World 2011 is full of similar stories of success and hope in sustainable agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa. The report draws from hundreds of case studies and first-person examples to offer solutions to reducing hunger and poverty. It's nearly a half-century since the Green Revolution, and yet a large share of the human family is still chronically hungry. Since the mid 1980s when agricultural funding was at its height, the share of global development aid has fallen from over 16 percent to just 4 percent today. Drawing from the world's leading agricultural experts and from hundreds of innovations that are already working on the ground, State of the World 2011 aims to help the funding and development community reverse this trend.
In Kibera, Nairobi, the largest slum in Kenya, for example, more than 1,000 women farmers are growing "vertical" gardens in sacks full of dirt poked with holes, feeding their families and communities. These sacks have the potential to feed thousands of city dwellers while also providing a sustainable and easy-to-maintain source of income for urban farmers. With more than 60 percent of Africa's population projected to live in urban areas by 2050, such methods may be crucial to creating future food security. Currently, some 33 percent of Africans live in cities, and 14 million more migrate to urban areas each year. Worldwide, some 800 million people engage in urban agriculture, producing 15-20 percent of all food.
In 2007, some 6,000 women in The Gambia organized into the TRY Women's Oyster Harvesting producer association, creating a sustainable co-management plan for the local oyster fishery to prevent overharvesting and exploitation. Oysters and fish are an important, low-cost source of protein for the population, but current production levels have led to environmental degradation and to harmful land use changes over the last 30 years. The government is working with groups like TRY to promote less destructive methods and to expand credit facilities to low-income producers to stimulate investment in more-sustainable production.
State of the World 2011 provides new insight into the often overlooked innovations that are working right now on the ground to alleviate hunger and deserve more funding and attention. Its findings will be shared in over 20 languages with a wide range of global agricultural stakeholders, including government ministries, policymakers, farmer and community networks, and the increasingly influential nongovernmental environmental and development communities.
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Editor's Note: We're posting the Weekly Mulch on Thursday this week because of the holidays. It'll return to its regular Friday morning posting next week. Until then, Happy New Year!
by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium Blogger
2010 was a disappointing year for environmentalists.
This was the year Congress was supposed to pass climate change legislation, but each and every time Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid seemed on the verge of pushing the bill forward, the effort fell short. In April, off the coast of Louisiana, the Deepwater Horizon explosion led to one of the worst environmental disasters in the country's history, and in the aftermath, neither President Barack Obama nor Congress has pushed for the sort of strong regulations that would rein in the oil industry and the risk it poses to coastal ecosystems.
Meanwhile, a newly invigorated natural gas industry has been plowing forward with a controversial drilling technique called hydrofracking. Although the Environmental Protection Agency has committed to studying the environmental impacts of the practice, it's unclear at this point how much leeway the industry will be given to use techniques that have contaminated water and air across the country. Author and environmental activist Bill McKibben had trouble convincing the president to take the small symbolic act of reinstalling a solar panel on the White House roof. And in November, the country elected a group of lawmakers who are skeptical that climate change even exists.
Hope springs eternal
But the news was not all bad, as Change.org's Jess Leber reports. In California, green-minded voters defeated a proposition that would have rolled back the state's ambitious climate law. Coal-fired power plants are closing in states like Oregon and Colorado, and mountaintop removal coal mining is losing its funding. And cities like New York, Washington D.C., Denver and Minneapolis made it easier for their inhabitants to use bikes as a primary mode of transportation.
"All over the world, activists are fighting in their states, towns and cities to do right by the environment," Leber writes. "They are also moving to pressure the corporate world. So while, given the results of Election Day in the U.S., progress in Congress will be an uphill battle, I'm confident there will be even more victories to report this time next year."
A year can be a long time. Consider, for instance, Steph Larsen's reflections on her farm's first year. "I feel like I've lived a decade in the last 12 months," Larsen writes in Grist. Last year, her pasture did not exist, and the farm buildings on her land had sat unused for years. But in the past 12 months, she's grown cherries and tomatoes and squash, kept chickens and hunted for their eggs, and raised livestock that later became her dinner.
Larsen's goals for her farm are modest: "to grow food for her household and community." It can be hard sometimes to see how individual choices like hers can make a difference while global leaders cannot agree on how to reduce carbon emissions and industry continues to exploit and pollute the environment. But as Winslow Myers, the author of Living Beyond War, writes at Truthout, "the cause-and-effect relationship between what I do personally in my daily life and those planet-wide challenges has become infinitely clearer" over the past 50 years:
Now we can see how the two are connected - between my diet and the effect of industrial agriculture on the land, between my energy consumption and global climate change, between the chemicals in my laundry detergent and the health of the oceans - and between my political commitments and the world-destroying weapons built with my tax dollars....the reality is that I am so deeply connected to the whole entity that I am responsible for it, answerable to it.
Local leaders step into the breach
It's true that individual decisions to turn down the heat, or eat local food, or bike instead of drive cannot turn back global warming. But in aggregate, they do make an impact. And although nationally and internationally, politicians are finding it difficult to create strong policies on climate change, that would reduce emissions, not all lawmakers are avoiding the issues. Franke James' visual essay on climate change at Yes! Magazine puts it like this: "Don't be fooled by the global leaders loafing. Local leaders and cities are making plans to adapt to climate change (because it's affecting them NOW!) "
And ultimately, these sorts of decisions on local and individual levels do send a signal to leaders that their constituents care about keeping the planet healthy, care about preserving our environmental resources. To that end, check out these ideas for individual action from the staff and readers of Mother Jones.
And next year? Leaders like Bill McKibben are working to create a global movement around climate change, a people-driven movement that will convince legislators and negotiators that it is incumbent upon them to act. Look for them to start making lots of noise in 2011.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
The Obama administration finally agreed to assemble solar panels on the roof of the White House. It's encouraging news, considering that Congress was unable to pass climate change legislation this year.
While Congress may not get it, citizens across the country have committed to building green using energy-efficient guidelines such as LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), a rating system set out by the U.S. Green Building Council. Green buildings are no longer reserved for the wealthy or the province of distant countries. They are becoming a well-traveled path to a sustainable future.
Consideration of inward, rather than outward, urban development encourages major cities to be more self-contained and sustainable in the realms of energy and water usage. Inclusion of building features such as solar panels and energy-efficient window and wall insulation insure that energy is self-produced and not wasted.
The White House panels
Activist Bill McKibben and 350.org led the campaign to reinstall solar panels on the White House. McKibben and several college students began their road trip in Maine and delivered the panels on Sept. 10. The the solar panels were rejected at first because the administration did not want to "give the right another talking point comparing Obama to Jimmy Carter," writes Salon. But the Obama administration changed its stance and accepted the two panels Oct. 5. Beth Buczynski of Care2 has the story.
Setbacks
Although the installation of the solar panels is encouraging, it doesn't change the fact that Congress has not passed any substantial climate legislation this year. Furthermore, President Barack Obama faces an uphill battle with Congress regarding the regulation of carbon emissions, according to Agence France Presse in AlterNet.
At Grist, David Roberts claims that many senators have opposed climate legislation not only to align with their party, but because of ignorance. Roberts quotes a senate staffer:
"That fact is, he said, most senators, even the ones directly involved in the fight over climate policy, don't know the rudimentary facts about climate change or clean energy. They understand very little about the policies in question or how those policies will affect their constituents."
Green buildings
Yet sustainable development has gained momentum, despite a lack of congressional backing. Cities such as Portland and Seattle have championed self-sustaining, inward development, while Chicago is building its first pre-fab home this fall. LEED is a common, third-party evaluation of a building's environmental sustainability. The rating system measures carbon emissions, water conservation, energy efficiency and consciousness about materials and resources used for the project.
Additional building standards have also emerged. Architect Jason McLennan has created the "Living Building Challenge", which requires new structures be self-sustaining in regards to energy and water usage. Jonathon Hiskes of Grist writes that although the rating system is more strict than LEED, around 70 buildings have striven to meet the challenge.
"The point of our whole movement is to create abundance of life, and a healthy ecosystem for all future generations," McLennan told Hiskes. "We have a current industrial system where nobody knows what's in our materials, and there's no plan for where they go with those chemicals when their lifespan is over."
The rise of the eco-city
Congressional members and ecologically concerned citizens should look abroad for the best examples of sustainable building initiatives. Tianjin, China, the country's third largest industrial city, began construction of one of the country's first eco-cities. The proposed city, which would be 11.6 square miles, would house a population of 350,000 and include contributions of sustainable building material from Japanese company Hitachi and Dutch company Philips.
Tianjin's developers say the city "will serve as an ultra-efficient alternative to ill-planned and heavily polluting mega-cities not only elsewhere in the country, but around the world."
Siben Linden, a well-known German eco-village, is composed of straw buildings that serve as multi-family homes for around 80 adults and 30 children, according to Athena and Bill Steen of Chelsea Green. The village is agriculturally self-sustaining and is powered by photovoltaic systems. As a result, the total carbon emissions equal about 10 percent of the average German energy usage.
The future may seem far away, but with regards to sustainable development, it's closer than we think. Congress just needs to realize it.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
The global community has been sent a series of wake-up calls lately: the environmental crisis spilling into the Gulf of Mexico, unprecedented droughts in China, and a report outlining the disastrous impacts of the world's collapsing biodiversity. If events like these still don't send the world into action, I have to wonder what kind of devastating catastrophe finally will. Our environment is an issue facing each and every one of us, thus it will require a proactive response from all corners of the world. Let's not miss the opportunity for these tragedies to serve as a call of action to both our country, and the global community, towards a focus on a safer, healthier, and stronger planet. We, along with our partner Rainforest Alliance, hope you will help in the fight to ensure that the recent environmental tragedies we've seen become a thing of the past.
It happens about this time every year. Suddenly you realize Mother's Day is just around the corner, and you have no idea what to get for dear old Mom. Well this year the Marion Institute is offering a unique alternative to the same old greeting card and flowers. Their Mastate Charitable Foundation is currently running a campaign for Mother's Day that not only gives you a great gift idea, but helps others as well.
Mastatal is a small community in rural Costa Rica about two and a half hours from San José, and the Mastate Charitable Foundation for has been working to improve the living conditions there for the past four years. Their most recent endeavor is to build a Community Learning and Sharing Center (CLSC), which aims to serve as a social center in the town, as well as a library and meeting place. That's where you come in.
The CLSC building in Mastatal will be naturally built using local labor and resources. In honor of Mother's Day, The Mastate Charitable Foundation is selling daub bricks that will be used in the construction of this building that will help so many families. Each brick is $4, and you can buy one (or as many as you like) for the CLSC in honor of your mother for an original and unique gift idea. It takes 5,000 bricks to build the entire CLSC, and the Mastate Charitable Foundation hopes to sell as many as possible to try to reach their goal.
Perhaps buying your mom some daub bricks wasn't the first thing that came to your mind when you thought about Mother's Day presents, but the reality is that it's a thoughtful and different gift that most moms would appreciate. The mothers in Mastatal are trying to give their community and their children the best opportunities they possibly can, so why not give your mother a gift that helps other mothers as well?
For more information, follow the Mastate Charitable Foundation on Facebook.
We all know that we need clean air and water to live. But what many of us DON'T realize is that there is another resource we depend on just as much to survive: dirt. Yes, that stuff you played in as a kid and obsessively clean off your car. Believe it or not, dirt is an essential element to our existence on Earth, and DIRT! The Movie aims to teach us all about it. This acclaimed documentary goes beyond preaching about the dangers of pollution, educating the viewer on why we need dirt to survive, how it affects our daily life, and what we can do to improve it.
Every person on Earth, regardless of age, race, or social status depends on healthy dirt to survive. However, it is one of the elements of our planet we take most for granted. DIRT! The Movie does a great job of mixing facts, personal anecdotes, and animation to create a film that educates as well as entertains. Experts from all over the world weigh in on just how important dirt is to us, and they do so in a way everyone can understand- no scientific mumbo jumbo. The animation is clever and cute while remaining relevant, and lets be honest, how could you NOT love little Digby? (If you don't get it, watch the movie)
Although the film does a great job describing why dirt is important to human kind, the real takeaway from this film is that everyone can help to restore it to a healthy state. The movie highlights people from all different ages and backgrounds. A young couple owns their own organic farm that provides vegetables to inner-city people. Children attend a sustainable school and learn about composting. Inmates learn the environmental and personal benefits of gardening. A woman in the Bronx creates her own green rooftop. The possibilities are endless and range from small lifestyle changes to huge worldwide movements. But it is clear after watching DIRT! The Movie that people from all walks of life can really make a difference.
It is that balance of teaching as well as motivating the viewer to take action that makes DIRT! The Movie unique and fun. In fact, that sense of involvement has been pushed beyond the movie into local communities with DIRT!'s program that sets up screenings all over the country. On the DIRT! The Movie website, it is simple and free to create your own screening to bring the movie to your own town or find a showing near you. These screenings make the dirty, fun, and relevant DIRT! The Movie available to people everywhere, and hopefully also creates an impact so that people can work toward restoring our dirt to a healthy state, and save the planet in the process.
President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize today for his accomplishments in international diplomacy, climate change and attempts to curb nuclear proliferation. The Nobel Committee praised Obama for his "constructive role in meeting the great climatic challenges the world is confronting," but, Richard Kim of The Nation wonders if the award comes too soon, as Obama has not yet committed to attending the international climate summit at Copenhagen.
Hopes of passing climate change legislation before the climate summit in Copenhagen are quickly dissipating, as Rachel Morris reports in Mother Jones. It seems unlikely that any major action will be taken before the December meeting. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) originally expected all six Senate committees to allocate cap-and-trade pollution permits by September 10, and later extended the deadline to September 28. But on Wednesday, Reid signaled that the legislation might be delayed until next year. Why is climate change taking the backseat? Simply, passing a health care bill and wrestling the economy back into shape have sapped lawmakers' energy for climate change.
International climate negotiations are currently bogged down in smog. Many countries are in disagreement about the best way to go about reducing emissions and curbing climate change. Some, like the U.S. and Great Britain, are working together to cut carbon emissions; while others say it's their way or the highway. Until the air clears, it will be difficult to determine which global leaders are making the most effective choices-or even what the best path to a cleaner earth will be.
Last week, Wal-Mart, ExxonMobil and the American Automobile Association (AAA) announced new programs that promote sustainability and a cleaner planet. The three corporations may have turned over a new leaf, but their efforts may actually be a case of corporate greenwashing. In today's economic climate, many companies are taking advantage of consumers that don't have the funds to be choosy about the environmental-friendliness of their purchases.
I am happy to announce that beginning today I will be working as a Fellow and blogger with Campaign for America's Future. This post introduces the areas I will be pursuing.
The economy is terrible. There aren't enough jobs. Most of the jobs that are still there are not paying enough for people to keep up, and people are afraid they could lose them tomorrow. So we all have too much debt. We have too little health care. We have too much stress. And in the bigger picture we have too little power to do anything about it.
They say we're reaching a "bottom" and that there are "green shoots." But I am afraid that this isn't your father's recession. I'm afraid this economy isn't a pendulum that has swing too far in one direction, ready to be pulled by natural forces back to the other side. I am afraid that this isn't a "business cycle" pattern with a fall, then a bottom, then a recovery where all the shoppers return to the stores, all the jobs come back and growth picks up where it left off. Even "green shoot" optimists admit there will be few new jobs if there is any recovery.
It may be that we are not in a period of waiting for things to "get back to normal." Many people think that this economic collapse IS the return to normal.
My style is more Birkenstock than Birkin bag, so Fashion Week doesn't do much for me. You knowthe Shopocalypse has arrived when designers go dumpster diving for shoulder pads in the Dynasty/Dallas dustbin. Padded assets in this Grapes of Graft depression? Dust Bowl duds, à la the Waltons, would be more fitting for the hard times ahead.
But the John Patrick Organic fashion show managed to bypass both eighties excess and seventies scarcity and find fertile ground in "Green Acres," the sixties spoof starring Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor as neophyte homesteaders. I knew this wouldn't be a run-of-the-mill runway show because (a) it featured a "young farmer bake sale," and (b) the invite came from Greenhorns director Severine Von Tscharner Fleming.
President Obama's got an awful lot on his plate. Sadly, it's all lousy leftovers from the previous administration: rotten bailouts, curdled wars, moldy policies. Is there any room for grass-fed, grassroots-led reform?
The eat-better-brigade's hoping our new Commander in Chief will be "the prize delivery guy...delivering fresh, steaming change in 30 minutes or less" as Raj Patel put it in a speech last Friday at the Farming For The Future conference in Pennsylvania. Patel bemoaned the monocrop monarchy that rules from our school cafeterias to our diners and dining rooms. He ended with the rousing declaration that we are "not consumers of democracy, we are its proprietors."
Who's minding the store, though? Will Obama even attempt to emancipate eaters from the military industrial complex cabal that helped Big Ag give small farms the boot? Our government's policies have played a scandalously large role in exiling wholesome, unprocessed, uncontaminated foods to the fringes of our culture.
Even our most progressive presidents can be addled by Agribiz propaganda. President-elect Obama--thanks to his corn-fed constituents, we presume--is regrettably fond of ethanol, unlike his rival, John McCain. And McCain's not the only Republican who slams the grain-for-gas scam. Arch conservative P.J. O'Rourke airs his aggravation with industrial ag in the current Weekly Standard:
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