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What we know with frightening certainty in this early spring of 2007 is that humanity and possibly the planet itself are in serious trouble. So much so in fact that a respected British scientist has not hesitated to predict that mankind had no more than a 50 per cent chance to make it to the 22nd century. That appears to be an excessively pessimistic prediction at this point in time but it did remind me of Albany’s prophecy in King Lear, Humanity must perforce prey on itself / Like monsters of the deep which, it is true, has a different connotation. The reality is that many things have dramatically improved since the great Bard’s time, but at a cost, and perhaps at a terrible cost. So let us not fool ourselves: it is very possible – especially if one agrees with Hobbes (as most people do), rather than with Rousseau (who believed in the inherent goodness of men) -- that humanity will in the end prove itself to be too greedy, too selfish, and, far worse, too stupid to do what it takes to save the species it belongs to, and the planet it lives on, from destruction. However, throwing in the towel and retiring on a desert island to wait quietly for the end not being exactly a constructive option, one has to participate in the perhaps futile or quixotic struggle to save mankind and the planet from annihilation. And, to be entirely honest, there are some encouraging signs that in that respect the pendulum may have stopped swinging in the wrong direction (that of thanatos), and may even have started, very timidly, to move in the right direction (that of eros).
20th March 07 - Dr Zeki Ergas ~ STWR Member
But, what does that mean, concretely and in practical terms, doing what it takes to save humanity and the planet from destruction? I believe, in the main, the following. Until now, in what I will call the Old Era, the economic and political dimensions of life -- that is, the production or output of goods and services -- had priority and were determinant; henceforward, in the New Era, the ecological and social dimensions -- that is, reaching and maintaining social and ecological balance or equilibrium -- will have precedence and be decisive. That does not mean, of course, that the economic and political dimensions of life will no longer be important, they will, of course, but not at the expense of the social and ecological dimensions. This revolutionary transformation of human society will obviously be difficult and gradual. But, ultimately, I will, as it has to, involve: one, a significant narrowing of the ‘great divide’ between the rich and the poor, including the eradication of extreme poverty; and two, the protection of the environment, or of Nature, or indeed, of the planet itself. So, in final analysis, the ultimate goal will be building a human civilisation based on peace, justice, solidarity and frugality. Will mankind succeed in its quest to meet this critical and crucial challenge? Will it, in other words, ‘win’ this essential and existential battle? There are, of course -- human beings being fallible and flawed -- no guarantees in human affairs; many things can go wrong, and they will, as they often have in the past. But, I believe, the odds are slightly in favour of mankind getting it right in the end, and saving itself and the planet, if only because the alternative is too awful to contemplate.
The Old Era: the Terrible Truth
The Old Era goes all the way back to the discovery of agriculture between the rivers of Tigris and Euphrates, in the Mesopotamian Crescent, perhaps some thirteen thousand years ago. Until the Industrial Revolution that began in the middle of the 18th century change was gradual and incremental. The rapid modernisation that accompanied it resulted in great social, economic and political progress and represents what the physicists call a quantum jump. But (and that is a very big but) that great progress was achieved at the cost of enormous human suffering, and injustice for the majority of the world’s population, benefiting mostly a relatively small minority of perhaps 20 per cent of the world’s population. And, in a world presently in thrall of neo-liberal globalisation, that suffering and injustice still go on. That certainly explains, in large part, the fierce resistance to it in many parts of the world, especially in Latin America.1
I – What the Philosophers of the Genocide Think 2
I have argued elsewhere that extreme poverty can be compared to a genocide by omission. 3 Below, I present some very hard observations and comments made by a number of philosophers who specialize on genocide (by commission):
‘Human beings are capable of great evil ... There is virtually no limit to human folly and lust for power.’
The main engine of modern industrial civilisation may be hell bent on self-destruction … Unchecked economism, rapacious exploitation, and the global industrialisation program … are unsustainable ... The dominance of the idea of unlimited growth (cancerous economics), the immiseration of the many for the sake of the few, the shameless excessive consumption of the privileged, all conspire against the establishment of a rational society in balance with nature, human requirements, and the individual pursuit of personal fulfilment ...
Humanity is engaged in a kind of systematic lunatic denial of what is actually happening. … Social and economic inequalities … continue to increase, not decrease or stop altogether, as the 21st century unfolds.
The shame which the just man experiences when confronted by a crime committed by another … is the shame of a bystander, who, instead of doing something to prevent a crime or to interrupt it, allows the crime to occur. We are diminished by having failed to act or by being the heirs or perhaps beneficiaries of such omissions … More realistic is self-accusation, or the accusation of having failed in terms of human solidarity. … There is another, vaster shame, the shame of the world. Citing John Donne, we live together and we are responsible one for another, “… every bell tolls for everyone”. Each of us is called to do what we can to care for the suffering and the hungry. There is an ocean of pain in the world.
One standard of failure is the standard of responsibility for the life and well-being of others, responsibility to care for the needy and aid the suffering. The problem remains that denouncing evil is a far cry from doing good. … We are the masters of the art of pretending not to know what we cannot help knowing. If we remain deaf to the endless cry, it means we are pretending not to hear.
But there are many people who are trying to stop the machine, or at least to slow it down so that the drivers can come to their senses … Are resisters a tiny and insignificant minority? Can we reverse the forces that now govern the world? We must believe that resistance is possible. Then we must make that belief the basis of our philosophy and our lives. … Not only are there many NGOs that do have deep commitments to humanitarian causes, but those organisations, along with many governmental ones, are staffed by individuals who often display immense courage, persistence and resilience in battling against war, injustice and greed.
Crucial needs include political, economic and educational aid – somewhat along the lines of a post-Second World War Marshall Plan – to defuse potentially genocidal situations.’
II Two Case Studies: Dubai and the Nigerian Delta 4
Dubai is no exception, of course. That oil-rich Persian Gulf (United Arab) Emirate is fairly representative of other states of the Gulf as well: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar, for example. Dubai has recently embarked on a number of development projects that a Swiss journalist has qualified as ‘pharaonique’ (‘worthy of a pharaoh’). Among projects already completed are: ‘The Palm Jumeirah’, a huge artificial island in the shape of a palm tree ‘whose fronds offer beach-front lots for 4,000 villas and apartments (which sell for $ 7 million to $ 30 million)’; the ‘Mall of the Emirates’, ‘a 2.4-million-square-foot behemoth (that) features an indoor ski slope’; and the Burj al Arab mega hotel where ‘diamond-encrusted cell phones do a brisk business at $10,000 apiece.’ At planning phase, or in construction, are: ‘The Palm Deira’ and ‘The Palm Jebel Ali’ (which are similar to ‘The Palm Jumeirah’, except that they are but much bigger); and ‘The World’, a ‘man-made archipelago’ which consists of 300 artificial islands which sell for an average of 30 million dollars each. Now the flip side, so to speak: ‘In squalid neighbourhoods tens of thousands of guest workers live. The labourers barracks stood among many battered, squat buildings along a dirt and gravel road littered with garbage … The average labourer makes about five dollars a day, working 12-hour shifts in scorching heat (Human Rights Watch reported nearly 900 construction deaths in 2004, including deaths from heat stroke.) … In the process … Dubai has killed coral, destroyed turtle nesting sites, and upset the marine ecology of the western Persian Gulf. And behind the glittering skyscrapers lies a late-night world of fleabag hotels and prostitutes, Indian and Russian mobsters, money launderers, and smugglers of everything from guns and diamonds to human beings. … (A)t the Cyclone Club, the prostitutes on hand hailed from Moldova, Russia, China, eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and various countries in East Africa. … Most of the city’s work is performed by foreigners, who now outnumber natives eight to one.’ 5
The story of the Nigerian Delta is even worse: ‘After 50 years of oil, Port Harcourt in southern Nigeria still looks and smells like a shantytown. Smoke from a slaughterhouse drifts over shops thrown up on a riverbank. … Oil fouls everything in southern Nigeria. It spills from the pipelines, poisoning soil and water ... Dense, garbage-heaped slums stretch for miles … Streets are cratered with potholes and ruts. Vicious gangs roam the school grounds. Peddlers and beggars rush up to vehicles stalled in gas lines. This is Port Harcourt, Nigeria’s oil hub, capital of Rivers State, smack-dab in the middle of oil reserves bigger than the United States’ and Mexico’s combined. … Beyond the city, within a labyrinth of creeks, rivers and pipeline channels that vein the delta; … villages and towns cling to the banks, little more than heaps of mud-walled huts and rusty shacks. Groups of hungry, half-naked children and sullen, idle adults wander dirt paths. There is no electricity, no clean water, no medicine, no schools. Fishing nets hang dry; dugout canoes sit unused on muddy banks. Decades of oil spills, acid rain from gas flares … have killed the fish. … Corruption siphons off as much as 70 per cent of annual oil revenues … Blame for the lack of development lie with the international oil firms and the government, partners in onshore operations. … Fighters with MEND (Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta) brandish weapons near their camp. Insurgents vow to shut off the oil if calls for local control of resources aren’t met. … It stains the hands of the politicians and generals, who siphon off its profits … When the oil curse began …Nigeria was still a British colony. Independence (came) in 1960 … In subsequent decades, the oil companies, led by five multinational firms – Royal Dutch Shell, Total, Italy’s Agip, and Exxon Mobil and Chevron from the U.S. – transformed a remote, nearly inaccessible wetland into industrial wilderness. The imprint: 4,500 miles of pipelines, 159 oil fields, and 275 flow stations, their gas flares visible day and night from miles away. Shell and the other multinationals (earned) record profits in 2006 … The deepwater fields are attracting aggressive new investors as well. China, India and South Korea, … (are) buying stakes in Nigeria’s offshore blocks. What has not changed is what an International Crisis Group calls a ‘cancer of corruption’… ‘the institutionalised looting of national wealth. … The cataclysm is upon the delta. … No solution seems in sight for the Niger Delta.
III – A Plutocracy to Run the World?
Last year’s list of the 400 richest Americans revealed that for the first time in 2006 a minimum of $ 1 billion was needed to make it into the most exclusive club in the United States. 6 The exact number European billionaires is not known because, unlike their American counterparts, they dislike to flaunt their wealth; however, their number can be conservatively estimated to more than 200 (there are 55 in Germany alone according to Forbes Magazine). There may be an additional 150 billionaires in the so-called BRIC countries – Brazil, Russia (53) China and India; which leaves some 200 for the rest of the world, including Japan, Canada, Australia and the oil-rich Persian Gulf. The total number of billionaires in 2006, according to Forbes is 946. My personal guess is that there are probably more than a thousand because: one, their number is growing very fast; and two, the extremely rich are very good at concealing some of their wealth (thanks to offshore banking and the banking secrecy laws). Moreover, that number is expected to double in the next ten years or so, perhaps earlier. That said, the more than a thousand billionaires in the world are only the tip of the iceberg, far more numerous are the multi-millionaires whose wealth is between, say, $ 50 million and $ 1 billion. The multi-millionaires are the billionaires of the future.
How are the billions made? A brief incursion into the ‘rotten kingdom’ of extraordinary greed.
More or less legitimate ways (under the current system): Billions can be inherited, of course. They can also be made by producing goods and services that are more or less useful – foodstuffs, retailing, steel, oil, aircraft, cars, insurance, transportation, hotel chains, hospital chains, cable systems and satellites, and so on. These days, IPOs (initial public offerings) are a most effective way of making billions; it goes like this: a young entrepreneur (or two) has an idea, sees an opportunity, starts a company, builds it up, and then ‘goes public’. The valuation of the new company will depend on its profit potential: millions of new shares will be ‘floated’ most of which will end up owned by the founders of the new company, and by the small number of ‘venture capitalists’ who had the good idea of investing in it in the early days when the founders were desperately searching for funds. Many Silicon valley billionaires belong to that category.
Not so legitimate ways (excessive profits): Any ‘self-respecting’ large multinational corporation (MNC) – in the energy, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, banking, etc. fields – must now produce annually superprofits in the billions of dollars, or else it will be ‘punished’ by the ‘market’ where its shares will plunge. For example, the world’s largest MNC, Exxon Mobil, taking advantage of soaring petroleum prices, made some $ 35 billion in superprofits last year; UBS made some $12 billion, and Novartis 8.5 billion. I asked myself if Socrates were alive today, would he ask the top managers of these companies: Why do you have to make so many billions in superprofits? And, I believe, he would not be convinced by their standard explanations: that they need it for research, to pay dividends, taxes and create jobs. Let me give one example, that of the pharmaceutical companies: Socrates, I think, would discover a number of unpleasant truths about them, such as: top-of-the line medecines are being sold at prohibitive prices (it is not unusual for a cancer treatment to cost $ 40,000 a year) when in the poor countries millions of people are dying of malaria, AIDS and tuberculosis; additionally the top managers of the companies are making many millions in salaries and bonuses.
Mostly illegitimate ways (ethically speaking): These are (largely) speculative activities whose raison d’être is making large amounts of money (in the jargon of the cognoscenti, ‘serious money’; ‘big bucks’ being passé). They include: hedge funds, ‘Mergers and Acquisitions’ (M&A), and ‘trading’ in foreign exchange, options (calls and puts) and futures. These are called globally ‘alternative’ investments, as opposed to the more traditional investments in ‘assets’ and ‘investment fund’ ‘management’. I will now concentrate, as a case study, on the activities and modus operandi of the private equity firms which have been in the last two-and-a-half decades the main engine of alternative investments. Private equity firms raise capital from rich investors and then they ‘leverage’, that is, obtain four times as much credit from the banks, that is why their main ‘business’ is called ‘leveraged buyouts’. Mainly the private equity firms try to identify companies that are undervalued because they are badly managed. They buy them cheaply, and then ‘restructure’ them – replacing the top management and ‘letting go’ part of the work force --, before selling them, in whole or in parts, making in the process, superprofits. Blackstone is the leading private equity firm in New York. Recently it made waves by acquiring Equity Office Properties (the owner of 540 office buildings all over the United States) for a ‘cool’ $ 39 billions (the record for such transactions). Immediately, it sold some of these buildings for $ 13 billions to pay back debts. I wonder if Socrates would not ask these people: Where is the good for society in these operations? Or: What has this ‘deal’ produced for the American economy -- except perhaps hundreds of millions for the partners of the Blackstone firm? 7 The big danger in this is that pension funds now provide half of the capital raised by the private equity firms.
Socrates would also have been shocked, I believe, by the recent The New York Times report that the ‘best fund managers in the United States make $250 million a year.’ And, that in 1973, daily foreign exchange trading amounted to about $ 20 billion; 23 years later, in 1996, it was more than $ 1,200 billion …
All those billions, to do what? A brief incursion into the realm of extraordinary ambition and privilege:
Luxurious living: Here is a passage from a recent report in the ‘Style’ section of the IHT: ‘(E)xtreme luxury comes in many forms; a Gulfstream private jet; a Euro 29,500 Gucci crocodile bomber jacket with fox fur collar; custom-made Cartier perfume; a Euro 160,000 Louis Vuitton Minaudière evening purse in white gold …’. At the ‘Millionaire Fair’ of Moscow, a diamond-studded cellphone sold for $ 1.27 million (by Swiss firm which also sold less expensive ‘GoldVish’ cellphones for $ 18.000 to $ 150,000). At the last Cannes Yacht Show, the ‘spokesman’ of a famous yacht builder declared that there was a three-year waiting list for the biggest luxury yachts, $ 40 million and more, and that, for the first time, the firm had sold a luxury yacht worth $ 110 million.
Political power: Wealth has always been converted into political power (the opposite is also true, of course, especially in the poor countries, where political power is ‘the mother’ of grand corruption). In America, Big Business dominated by wealthy ‘captains of industry’, or tycoons, has always had an enormous influence on government. Nevertheless, what is happening today in American politics goes way beyond that. An invisible threshold has been crossed, allowing wealth to become the determinant factor or element in deciding the fate of an election. These days, from impressionistic evidence (there is no serious research that I am aware of) it seems that the most important political offices – the presidency, governorships, the Senate -- in America are increasingly occupied by wealthy and extremely wealthy people using their own millions to win elections.
Philanthropy: What we are witnessing today in America – where huge wealth is poured into the ‘foundations (topped by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which will have far more than $ 80 billion in the future, thanks to Warren Buffet’s donation of $ 41 billion) is the privatisation of the ODA (Overseas Development Assistance). This is, of course, part of a strategy that supports neo-liberal globalisation.
The New Era: Notes on a ‘Virtuous’ Future
I – Notes About ‘Virtuous’ Income and Wealth
In Aristotle’s ‘Doctrine of the Mean’ (or of the ‘Golden Mean’, as it later came to be known) the ‘Mean’ ‘determines Virtue’ which is to be found between the two extremes of ‘Excess’ and ‘Deficiency’. Thus, the virtue of Courage will be somewhere between Rashness and Cowardice; that of Temperance, between Licentiousness and Insensibility; that of Magnificence, between Pettiness and Vulgarity; that of Magnanimity, between Pusillanimity and Vanity; and so on. So where would be ‘Virtuous’ wealth? Somewhere between ‘Deficiency’ and ‘Excess’ of wealth. Deficiency of wealth can be described as extreme poverty, and Excess of wealth, as extreme wealth. As for Deficiency of income, it has been defined in a very poor country, as having less than a dollar a day to survive. And Excess of income? Well, nobody wants to know. Is it a thousand times a dollar a day? Or ten thousand times that? Or a million times that? And where does Excess of wealth begin, at $ 10 milion, $ 100 million, or $ 1 billion? I cannot, of course, answer all these questions in this short essay. They need some serious research that I hope some day will be undertaken. I will limit myself, very tentatively, to a statement – largely based to instinctive or intuitive intelliegence (if that is the word) that ‘Virtuous’ income should not exceed $ 1 million a year, and that ‘Virtuous’ wealth ought to be, at a maximum, twenty times that, $ 20 million.
II -The Ecological Revolution 8
The Kyoto Protocol, the essential facts are: it was signed in 1997; its implementation began five years later, in 2002; it will end in 2012; and, its objectives are extremely modest, to achieve a 5 to 6 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2012.
Two things happened in 2006 and 2007 that put the issue of climate change / global warming at the top of the world’s ‘agenda’: one, Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth; and two, the publication of the Stern and the IPCC reports.
What is that ‘agenda’?
The consequences of climate change / global warming could be truly catastrophic by the year 2100, if not earlier, if what it needs to be done is not done. According to the Stern Report, ‘It is no longer possible to prevent the climate change that will take place in the next two to three decades … the world is already on course for a rise of 2 degrees Celsius (C), and would pass through 3 degrees Celsius with massive loss of life unless urgent action was taken today.’ The Report further explains that, for the catastrophy to be avoided: ‘The current level (which) is 430 ppm (parts per million) of CO2-e (carbon dioxide equivalent), (which is) rising at more than 2 ppm a year,’ must be stabilised at ‘between 450 ppm and 550 ppm of CO2-e’. That ‘would require emissions to be at least 25 per cent below the current levels by 2050, perhaps much more … (U)ltimately stabilisation – at whatever level – requires that annual emissions be brought down to more than 80 per cent below current levels.’ (the IPCC report says that ‘We need to decrease on CO2 emissions by 70 per cent by 2050.’)
What happens if the limit of 550 ppm of CO2-e in the atmosphere is exceeded?
The IPCC estimates that (assuming that there is no radical change) there is a 90 per cent chance that the world’s temperature will rise between 2 and 4.5 degrees C by 2100. After a rise of 3 degrees C there is serious risk that the ‘melting of snow and ice at the Arctic and Antarctic poles may lead to a 4 to 6 metres rise of the sea and ocean levels,’ causing the flooding of low-lying lands where hundreds of millions of people are living.
Some blood-curdling statistics and remarks:
The total CO2 discharge to the atmosphere was, in 1999, 1,500 million tons for the United States, and 600 million tons for China; one gallon of gasoline produces 9 kgs of CO2 (that is so because one molecule of carbon joins with two of oxygen to form carbon dioxide); ‘Globalisation is a huge producer of unnecessary greenhouse gases’; ‘China is building one coal-fired power plant a year.’; ‘Climate change is the greatest market failure the world has ever seen.’; ‘(T)he probability of extinction (of the human species) is 0.1 per cent a year’. There are those shills -- like their counterparts hired by the big tobacco companies not so long ago (some of them are the same people) -- who accuse the authors of the Stern and the IPPC Reports of being Cassandra-like exaggerators. We all know that No one listens to Cassandra unless Troy is on fire, and Troy is not on fire. Yet. But these people do not mind playing with matches, especially if they are to gain from it. The fact is (to continue with the same metaphor) that Troy is under siege, and if it is (God forbid) once more conquered (this time by the greedy pushers of globalisation) it will burn.
Conclusion
This is no time to prevaricate, or to drag one’s feet. Let us do what it takes to save the world: firstly, close the gap between the rich and the poor, and eradicate extreme poverty; and secondly, protect the planet we live on – it is the only one we have. Only a truly worldwide Global Marshall Plan that has global social and ecological dimensions can accomplish both objectives. There are signs that that is beginning to happen. Everybody wants to go ‘green’: The European Community wants to reduce carbon in the atmosphere by 20 per cent (and even 30 per cent) by 2020; the United Kingdom, by 50 per cent, by 2050. These are worthy beginnings. Let us continue in that direction and build a human civilisation based on peace, justice, solidarity and frugality.
Zeki Ergas, a writer and a scholar, is Secretary General of PEN International’s Swiss Romand Center (www.penromand.ch), the founder of Millennium Solidarity Geneva Group (www.millennium-solidarity.net) and a member of the Latin American group of social activists, Enlazando Alternativas (www.enlazandoalternativas.ch).
NOTES
1 The IMF’s lending in Latin America to the region has fallen to a paltry $ 50 million, or less than 1 per cent of its global portfolio, compared with … 80 per cent in 2005. Cf. Bloomberg News.
2 John Roth, Ed., Genocide and Human Rights. A Philosophical Guide (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). Two dozen philosophers contributed. Among the important essays in it are: Franz Baerman Steiner, ‘On the Process of Civilisation’; Stephen D. Davis, ‘Genocide, Despair and Religious Hope: An Essay on Human Nature’; James R. Watson, ‘Beyond the Affectations of Philosophy’; Patrick Hayden, ‘Repudiating Inhumanity: Cosmopolitan Justice and the Obligation to prosecute Human Rights Atrocities’; Roger S. Gottlieb, ‘”The Human Material is too Weak”’; and Michael L. Morgan, ‘Shame, the Holocaust, and Dark Times’
3 Extreme Poverty: Genocide by Omission? A Tentative Analysis, in: www.stwr.org, www.globalmarshallplan.org, and www.peacejournalism.com
4 Dubai : The World’s Hottest Property and Curse of the Black Gold: Hope and Betrayal in the Niger Delta, in National Geographic, January and February 2007.
5 The latest news is that Halliburton (the giant American multinational based in Houston, Texas, that provides services related to oil exploration and production whose CEO was Dick Cheney) has decided to move
6 The famous annual lists compiled by Fortune magazine.
7 Blackstone is one of the ‘Big Four’ private equity firms in America; the other three are: Carlyle, Texas Pacific Group and KKR (Kravis, Kohlberg & Roberts.
8 WMO (World Meteorological Organisation) and UNEP (United Nations Environmental Program), Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Fourth Assessment Report (Paris, February 2007); and the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change (London: October 2006)
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