As world nations meet in Poznan, Poland, to continue negotiations on a
new climate treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol in 2012, serious
questions are being raised about the possibility of slashing global
carbon emissions by the necessary minimum of 50% by 2050.
It is true that Bush II has severely harmed the interests of those who
own and run society, one reason why he has come under such intense
criticism within the mainstream. But it has hardly been a lethal blow, argues Noam Chomsky.
Fighting
against the imbalance in the world, in his book the ‘Hatred of the West'
Jean Ziegler calls for a new social contract based on global solidarity
and dialogue between the South and the West. Interview conducted by Cathy Ceiba.
The European Union response to increasing numbers of desperate migrants attempting to enter its borders has been to tighten security and close its borders. Would a better solution be to analyse the factors that made them move in the first place? By Susan George.
The global financial crisis exposes anew the flaws of a British polity that
resists democratic modernisation, illustrating that the United Kingdom remains 'unfit for purpose'. We now need a new approach to the state that ends the fusion between money and politics, say Anthony Barnett and Gerry Hassan.
The Group of 20 Declaration following a recent high level summit in Washington missed a crucial opportunity to address the real weaknesses in our economic system: those of debt, executive excess and inherently unfair trade rules, argues Robert Weissman.
After the failure of mainstream strategies to combat the unprecedented financial crisis, rising food prices, climate change and growing inequities, the abandoned principles of social justice and a rights-based approach to development are an essential component of any solution, says a new report by Social Watch.
For twenty years the green climate agenda has embraced orthodoxies rooted in market fundamentalism, resulting in political failure and skyrocketing emissions. It is time to focus solutions on public
investment and making clean
energy affordable, argues Ted Nordhaus and Michael Schellenberger.
Transitioning to a
sustainable and just economic system is the ultimate challenge of the 21st
century.
As the work
of E.F Schumacher argues, history will no doubt judge our generation by
how well we acknowledge, embrace and take up this challenge, says John
Fullerton.
Privatisation and deregulation in the financial sector laid the groundwork for economic turmoil. Far
from being confined to the rich world, agencies of the World Bank played a key role in pushing these policies in
emerging markets, exposing them to the fallout of the financial crisis, writes Paulo dos Santos.
