Avuncular American

From Insecurity To Interdependence

"... from insecurity, to interdependence."

So ends the brief but eloquent "Declaration of Interdependence," written by Dr. David Suzuki and colleagues for the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit.

In the lead up to the 2009 Copenhagen summit, scientists, political leaders, and pundits are feverishly trying to set the stage, respectively issuing dire warnings of climactic disaster, or "managing expectations," shorthand for lowering hopes for definitive action.  Exhibit One: this weekend's APEC Summit.

Like the United States' own "Founding Fathers" seminal document, the Declaration of Independence, Suzuki's declaration tries to distill self-evident truths into language that Everyman and Everywoman can grasp - "This We Know" ("we are interconnected -- using, cleansing, sharing and replenishing the fundamental elements of life").  Or, looking at the glass half full, abusing, polluting, expropriating, and wasting the fundamental elements of life.

Thankfully, the eminent Canadian scientist labors from the optimistic premise of "a new politics of hope."  Remember, he wrote the Declaration of Interdependence in 1992, when even a President like George H.W. Bush could utter these words when signing the Framework Convention on Climate Change: " to sustain development, we must protect the environment; and to protect the environment, we must sustain development."

A decade after father Bush worried about leaving a legacy for his children, son George W. was castigated by environmental groups for not only ignoring Rio's 10th anniversary, but for actively siding with the polluters.  Bush Jr. is back in Texas, where his air conditioner is presumably turned down to an Arctic low, shutting out all evidence of rapidly rising temperatures.  Once in a bubble, always in a bubble.  Until it bursts.

Independence and Interdependence need not be mutually exclusive options.  When I see a country like Denmark, in the wake of the '70s oil crises, make a concerted effort toward energy independence through use of wind, solar, and other alternative resources, I see it as helping the rest of us.  One less EU country that has to face a cold sweat as Russia threatens another natural gas valve malfunction and plunges parts of Europe into a winter deep freeze.

And if countries as different as Nigeria and Vietnam can adopt sound agricultural practices that lead to greater food security, then the rest of the world also reaps the benefit.

The US Declaration of Independence referred to "the Laws of Nature" in its preamble, though we had to wait more than two centuries before Dr. David Suzuki enumerated how those same Laws militated for our global Interdependence.  The bubble that we live in, that little crust surrounded by a vulnerable atmosphere, is our shared environment.  If you live by zero sum arithmetic, then you might look at the drought-stricken starving East Africans and say "there but for the grace of God...".

But today's starving nomads are tomorrow's boat people refugees, or next year's terrorists.  Interdependence is not idealistic gibberish: at its very root is self-interest, where the self-interest is mutual.  John Dunne said it best:

No man is an island, entire of itself...any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

If that was a self-evident truth in the 17th century, when most people never traveled beyond their village, how much truer is that in our interconnected world of today?

Israel's Long Straw, Palestine's Trickle

The Biblical "land of milk and honey" and the "wilderness" of the holy book are one and the same.  There's the freshwater Sea of Galilee, the saltwater Dead Sea (getting deader by the minute), and the Jordan River in between.  There is rocky desert, chaparral, and the occasional verdant spring.

Until the rampant development of urban Israel, suburban Israeli settlements on occupied Arab land, and the increasing gerrymandering, walling off, and bypass-roading of what is left of "Palestine" thanks to the Oslo Accords, there was basically enough water.  Enough even to build a swimming pool in the then sleepy West Bank town of Ramallah, where I went in 1972 to dig its foundations out of solid rock.  Even during those early years of The Occupation, Israelis and Palestinians managed to share the region's precious water resources.

"Share" is a word that would be difficult to justify in the current circumstances.  Today's release by Amnesty International of its damning "Troubled Waters" report elicited a predictable official Israeli response, essentially saying "Water? ...what water problem?"  After denying there is a problem, the Israeli MFA, in a reaction that is remarkable for its brevity and chutzpah, goes on to say that if there is a problem, it's the Palestinians own fault.  For a more realistic account, see the BBC's report from Gaza.

Better yet, watch "Drying Up Palestine," the short documentary film on how Israel has been sucking on a long straw, digging deep under future Palestinian independent territory and depriving currently-occupied Palestinians and future "independent" Palestinians of one of the very requisites of statehood: water resources.  Maybe Peter Snowdon and Rima Essa's film (you can see a clip here) should be up on the Amnesty site.

Image: AppleWorks clip art.

Treading Water, Under the Radar: Maldives & Diego Garcia

Dots in the Indian Ocean (image: DuniyaLive.com)

The Maldives stand an average of 7ft above sea level, and the government says they face being wiped out if oceans rise.  The government of the Maldives has held a cabinet meeting about 16ft underwater to highlight the threat of global warming.

BBC, 17 October 2009

The island has an area of approximately 10.5 square miles with an average natural elevation of four feet above sea level.  The British wish you an enjoyable stay on Diego Garcia. Upon your arrival, please familiarize yourself with BIOT [British Indian Ocean Territory] regulations and try to preserve the island's ecology.

US Military Sealift Command (MSC) website briefing for US personnel

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How nice that the US Navy is concerned about the "island's ecology."  No such care was extended to the Island's human inhabitants, who were summarily exiled by an Anglo-American pact that denied their very existence (see my post about the long-suffering Chagos Islanders).

But the Maldives President's worries about being swamped under the rising tides of climate change are starting to have their impact in strategic circles.  Here's Senator John Kerry in September:

Diego Garcia Island in the Indian Ocean, a vital hub for our military operations across the Middle East, sits on an atoll just a few feet above sea level.

Kerry's concerns about the security impact of global warning (from the Boston Globe) were echoed weeks later by NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, speaking to an audience that probably cares more than most about catastrophic effects of global warming - Lloyd's of London:

Rising sea levels will have a clear effect on the ability of our armed forces to do their jobs.  Look at Diego Garcia.  It is an important logistical hub, including for this country; it is also only a few feet above sea level at its highest point.  A one metre rise in sea levels and most of it would be flooded.   We need to assess the impacts that these kinds of events would have.

Now, though it's gratifying that these two gentlemen are concerned about the planet's health and its defense, I wish that something other than the prospect of a B-52 runway getting flooded would galvanize them into action.

The upside for the Chagos Islanders, who have been quietly rotting away in distant Mauritius for upwards of forty years, is that their native Diego Garcia and other Chagos Archipelago islands might start taking water, and therefore send the US and UK scurrying for other lily pads (how about those in Central Asia?).

Maybe the Chagossians should team up with the Maldivians to drum up support for their respective causes.  With his underwater cabinet meeting stunt - "What else could I do to attract attention?" - the Maldives President appears to be on an effective public diplomacy strategy.

Journée Sans Voitures - No Car Day In Brussels

This is an experiment, attempting to do a post by email. I am cheating, because to insert this nice "No Car" sticker from the Boston bloggers "Choosing No Car," I had to log on to my Typepad account.

Okay, enough geeky detail. The important thing is this: for the nth time in recent years, Brussels, seat of the European Union, is turning itself into a carless capital. "La Journée Sans Voitures" is a joy for anyone who values fresher air, walking IN the streets, and peace and quiet.

Not that our leafy neighborhood is noisy, but this morning, going out for fresh bread, it was like the final scene (minus the scary post apocalyptic music) of the end of the world in "On The Beach." No sound, empty streets. That will have changed when we take the tram a little later; last year our tram could barely move for all the cyclists and pedestrians clogging the city's many cultural and historic venues.

Brussels, a city of only about a million people, can go carless thanks to its wonderful integrated public transport system, where one simple ticket gets you on to trams, buses, metros, and trains. We almost never go into city center by car. So, looking for inspiration for a post-Detroit future? Come to Brussels next September and savor what it's like to spend a day without The Car.

Planet Earth: The Final Frontier

Yes, yes.  Happy 40th moon landing anniversary, NASA.  There are celebrations galore to mark the event, which I suppose is fine, given the general gloom prevailing.  But let's not get carried away.  There is nothing on the moon - or on Mars - that is nearly as important as there is on Earth.

Listening to all the Apollo nostalgia, you hear lots of stuff about not only exploring Mars, but colonizing it.  And some even see this as the ultimate escape from a dying Earth.  These people, I submit, have watched too many Star Trek episodes.

Even former astronaut Buzz Aldrin has succumbed to the mania, calling in today's Washington Post for "the first homestead in space: an American colony on a new world."  Oh my.

Climate change on a vast scale has reshaped Mars. With Earth in the throes of its own climate evolution, human outposts on Mars could be a virtual laboratory to study these vast planetary changes.

Well, Buzz, the real life laboratory is Earth in the here and now, and the goal has to be keeping Earth green and livable, not studying how Mars became the Red Planet.

Almost every day, there is a new dire report on how bad things have become so quickly, whether it's our seas becoming acidic, our glaciers melting, or the tropics heading north.  Doing the necessary on an urgent basis - drastically reducing greenhouse gases, protecting forests and wetlands, to name only a few priorities - will require effort that will dwarf that of the space program.

Do we want to divert precious resources from the fight to save Earth to mount a quixotic attempt to colonize a planet millions of miles away?  Talk about a distraction from Priority Number One.  Maybe we need a massive "place branding" campaign for the place that can't be replaced - Earth.

I'm no Luddite, and admit that research for space exploration has produced highly useful spinoffs in the battle to save planet Earth.  But we Earthlings cannot entertain notions of trashing our planet and finding refuge on Mars.  We can't just continue to pollute our way to the next pristine wilderness; there aren't any left.  It worked for a while - picture American pioneers heading ever Westward - but the trash builds up, if not in landfills, then in terms of carbon trash in the air and in our oceans.  The atmosphere - the ultimate bubble - holds it all in.

So honor those astronauts, engineers, and scientists who gave us the original Moon Walk, but harbor no illusions about Mars providing a home away from home.  And the next time you hear a politician go on about Mars exploration, bring him down to Earth.

(image: AppleWorks clipart)

Multilateralism, Sovereignty, and Homeowner Associations

In my Brussels apartment building (there are about 25 units, mostly owner-occupied), we have a homeowners association ("HOA").  I'm on the board this year, for my sins.  The board is a sort of pin-cushion, navigating the middle ground between cheapskate owners who want top-quality services but at bargain-basement fees, and the management firm that oversees maintenance, projects, etc.

It occurred to me that being in a condominium (where the "Nazis" aren't always those who you might expect) is a bit like a country belonging to a multilateral organization.  You have to sacrifice a bit of sovereignty, a bit of that freedom to do as you damn well please, in exchange for those things that are feasible in numbers.

For individuals, that might mean living in an urban or semi-urban setting, where there is intellectual stimulation and where you don't have to use a car to accomplish any task beyond mowing your lawn.  You don't always have to live in a condo or apartment complex to live this way, but there is a greater density of population, even for single-family dwelling urbanites.  You're going to get along with some of your neighbors, and some will never cease to be a pain in the neck.

When it comes to countries, some opt for the constraints of belonging to multilateral organizations because they see safety in numbers: tiny Luxembourg, hemmed in between France and Germany, was occupied (actually, annexed) by the latter in the two world wars.  For Luxembourg and other countries coming out of the 20th century's cycle of wars, surrendering a bit of sovereignty to organizations like NATO and the European Union was a bargain they were willing to strike.

Sure, there are downsides: in the UN, the US and other democracies have to listen to lectures on such things as human rights from countries to whom waterboarding is just a prelude to the really nasty stuff.  But, as the senior George Bush found when confronting Saddam Hussein in 1991 with much of the world standing behind him, there is strength in numbers.

In the many issues facing President Barack Obama, from climate change to universal health care to rekindling the economy, it's worthwhile to consider this trade off between public and private, between solidarity and individualism, between living in a condo vs. a MacMansion.  Just today, in the New York Times, you can read about how several American communities are thinking the unthinkable - "car-reduced communities," like they have in Germany.

European media have been intrigued by the possibility of an Obama Administration breakthrough on making health care available to most Americans - something that is a given here, just part of what it means to be a civilized democracy.

Yes, those "Condo Nazis" exist, but they can be tamed, and probably a worse enemy is the "condo dropout," the person who doesn't bother showing up at the annual meeting.  In this current situation of multiple world crises, no country can drop out from issues of mutual governance, where the problems are beyond the power of one country to solve.  It's good to see that the US is rejoining the "HOA."

The Day(s) After Earth Day - Go Plant a Tree

Bet you didn't know that the day after Earth Day was World Book and Copyright Day - here's the UNESCO page in its honor.  But that's already yesterday's news.  Today, you have your choice: either celebrate Global Youth Service Day or - if you're an Armenian (or a Turk with a guilty conscience) - the Day of Mourning and Commemoration, marking the massacre of Armenians in Anatolia close to a century ago.

But before all of the above, there was Arbor Day, begun in 1872.  Given the name of this blog, naturally I assumed that the last Friday in April was Arbor Day everywhere.  So culturally imperialistic of me.  It is celebrated in most - but not all - American states today.  The good people at the Arbor Day Foundation have provided an interactive map showing the dates where people plant trees as a public service throughout the world.

I have nothing against Earth Day.  If my chronological memory is right, I was an active participant in the very first Earth Day in 1970, as a high school senior in Ecology class, then a brand new and cutting edge course.  At the time, I was torn between preparing for a tree-planting life in the US Forest Service and a forest-destroying life of writing memos in the US Foreign Service.  I chose the latter, but have tried to make the most of paperless technology... by writing a blog!

Seriously, people actively marking Arbor Day are doing something, however individually small, for the good of the planet.  I daresay that much of the pious hype about Earth Day two long days ago was just that, as the eternally relevant Russell Baker said of the same event almost twenty years ago:

For or against Earth Day? What difference does it make? A few hours after Earth Day is over there will be something new, a New Thing, demanding everyone's attention.

The always ravenous media maw will insist upon it and public-relations people, who know how quickly we tire of yesterday's fantastic event, will create it for us: a brand new New Thing, rich in photo ops and feel-good potential.

Russell Baker, curmudgeonly critic of the NYT Editorial Page, was writing during the days of the Bush I succession to the Reagan feel-good era.  During the Dark Age of the Bush II ("W") succession, there indeed was a going-through-the-motions marking of Earth Day, by an emasculated Environmental Protection Agency that would have made the EPA of its founder (Richard Nixon!) want to change its name.  Compare the sparse Bush Administration site "EarthDay.gov" (significantly, last updated January 17, 2009, i.e., pre-inauguration) to the re-born EPA Earth Day page under President Obama.

In my Ecology Class days with Mr. Klavon (I was so loyal to him that I joined the HS wrestling team which he coached; my commitment to ecology has been longer lasting), we had a wider appreciation of the dangers of pollution in all its forms, even if we lacked a proper understanding of the overarching threat of CO_² and global warming.  Air pollution was to be fought (later, as a headhunter, I recruited "sanitary engineers" who installed smokestack "scrubbers" to filter out the dirty particles), but we were more concerned with the visible, smellable, and audible kinds of pollution.

This year I didn't plant any trees, but my wife and I did perform a semi-public service to our condo neighbors by going into the wooded lot in back of our building and filling two big trash bags with assorted junk.  In the US, civic-minded Scout troops, Rotary Clubs, and communities can "adopt" a road that their fellow citizens (plus maybe a few foreign tourists and "illegal aliens") have littered.  That's the way of the world.  Some people plant trees, others consume them.

Earth Day is every day.  Today, it's "Happy Arbor Day!"  But that doesn't stop you from doing that good civic/environmental deed tomorrow, or the day after...

(Image from AppleWorks Clip Art)

Summit Island

Back in blog land after a week in France (more on that later).  Today's news about the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad - and some grumbling from the host citizenry about being cut off from their own country - brought forth this brain wave: let's designate a nice island, somewhere in the world, as "Summit Island."

"Summit Island" - Mont Saint Michel (photo above left) on the Norman/Breton coast probably won't do - would be a secure, sunny, standardized summit venue for all such groups: Summit of the Americas, G-20, G-8 (if they insist on maintaining that outdated group), NATO, climate change, UN, OPEC, AU, and EU.  All of them.

Ideally, the island would be leased long-term from a needy developing country - Cape Verde in the Atlantic off the African coast might have an available uninhabited island, though water supply and port/runway might have to be arranged.  They would be paid handsomely for supplying experienced, vetted, and multilingual personnel from their existing tourism industry.  There are plenty of "private islands" too.

Local citizens, instead of being walled off from their usual shopping districts (see NATO Summit in Strasbourg), would simply be over the horizon.  No fear of disruption by the usual assortment of anarchists or other professional protesters, who seem to sniff out every such summit and are duly filmed by the news media for their efforts.  Landing rights would be for official parties, period.

This move would only confirm what is already a common practice among national hosts.  George W. Bush, playing host to the 2004 G-8 Summit, chose Sea Island Georgia (inhabited mostly by wealthy Republicans) as his venue.  Seal off a couple of bridges to the mainland and you're in business.  The place already is a resort.

The US has other offshore islands - here's lovely Catalina Island ("Santa Catalina, 26 miles across the sea") in the Pacific off Los Angeles.  Again, the Catalina Chamber of Commerce probably could supply plenty of willing workers in these days of rising unemployment.

But I do think that the wealth should be spread around, and why not to those deserving Chagos Islanders, the "Ilois" who were (and remain) exiled from Diego Garcia and the other islands in the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) when the US Navy turned the place into "The Footprint of Freedom."  They certainly need the work, and the place is about the most secure site I can imagine for permanent summiteering.

Sherpas and others charged with preparing summits might tire of endless trips to the same island, and someone is bound to criticize the choice of venue ("politicians sun themselves on Alcatraz Island"), but we'd all eventually get used to it.  Carbon miles would be minimized, and fresh fruit and vegetables could be flown in the Air Force One cargo hold.  Local livestock could be raised on the sunny uplands of St. Helena.  The possibilities are endless.

That Different Kind of Car Company? It's In China

Last Saturday, Thomas Friedman finally gave up on Detroit.  Not the city, but the American auto industry headquartered there.  Me too.  I give up.  How in their right minds can they throw this away:

Saturn's dealers, with laid-back salesmen and no-haggle pricing, often match luxury brands' scores in independent customer satisfaction surveys. Their locations could be a ready retail network for a foreign automaker to come to the U.S.*

Customer satisfaction - isn't that what building and maintaining a brand is all about?  I've written about Saturn before, and having owned two of them during stints in Washington, I was proud that the American car industry was capable of making such nice, affordable, and environmentally-sound cars.  But just like it showed when killing the electric car, Detroit's penchant for self-inflicted wounds is undiminished by the current economic crisis.

*Business Week wrote about the brand last week in "Saturn Seeks Another Carmaker as GM Casts It Aside," by Tom Krisher:

GM started Saturn in 1990 as a small-car answer to Japanese automakers and billed it as a "different kind of car company." Its new factory in Spring Hill, Tenn., had more flexible work rules than traditional GM plants and more autonomy for those who built the cars...

"More flexible work rules" may be interpreted as lower wages and fewer benefits than GM's other United Auto Workers (UAW) employees.  A lot of good that appears to have done the Saturn workers.  Note to the UAW negotiators: GM used their Saturn "autonomy" to make the brand so inconspicuous that they're now getting rid of it.  Trading away their wages and benefits appears to have purchased the Saturn workers absolutely zero employment stability.

Automotive writer Steven Cole Smith in the Orlando Sentinel put his finger on the problem:

Too bad... the Saturn products are caught up in GM's financial crisis.  There has long been the philosophy in the auto business that if you build good products, you will succeed. Saturn's woes suggest that is no longer a given.

Enter BYD.  Well, perhaps not (they didn't return Business Week's calls about possible interest in Saturn).  This Chinese company has its own product lineup of plug-in electric hybrids, which transformed the normally staid BBC business commentator Peter Day into an enthusiast - and he's apparently not alone:

In September [2008] there was a remarkable endorsement of BYD when even as global stock markets were plunging, the canniest American investor of them all, Warren Buffet of Omaha, Nebraska, paid $230 million for a 10% stake in the Chinese company.

Mr Buffett is a quite notorious investor for the long-term, not the quick buck, so he must recognise something in those initials BYD.

The company says they stand for "Build Your Dream."

I'm sorry that the American automotive dream has long since appeared to have gotten outsourced, but hell, that's what happens when Japanese and now apparently Chinese car makers successfully pick up on ideas that American car makers ignore.

President Obama believes that "the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it."  Perhaps.  But unless and until Detroit stops shooting itself in the foot pedal, Americans will drive away from GM dealerships in droves.  I wish Saturn well.  Maybe it will be "adopted" by a wiser investor than its soon-to-be-former owner, where people like "Mr. Horsepower" are finally leaving.

Maybe when Detroit lionizes a "Ms. Fuel Efficiency" we'll know things have changed.

Young Greens "Deconstruct" Obama

This week members of the "Ecolo-J" - the youth wing of Belgium's francophone Green Party - at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) organized an evening devoted to "deconstructing" (in the analytical, though not quite Woody Allen sense) Barack Obama's first month as President of the United States.

They invited two of their professors (American expat and political science expert Katya Long and Francois Heinderyckx, communications analyst), Hubert Bedoret, Green Party deputy political director, plus me, representing Democrats Abroad Belgium (DAB) and addressing how the Obama campaign used Democratic Party rules to best advantage and created its own fundraising network of local activists.

NDLR: Pour les francophones, voici le texte de mes remarques - sans accents: Download Deconstructing Obama majuscules.

Apart from a few questioners on the far left of what is already a progressive party, the audience appeared to share the panel's realistic assessment of a Presidency that offers America's best chance at solving a collection of seemingly insurmountable problems.

A roomful of environmentalists naturally focused on prospects for change in the climate change arena after the "negationist" Bush years, and while the United States has much further to go to make up for lost time, Obama's appointment of scientists to key positions shows that he means business.

Francois Heinderyckx underscored the enormous, almost "grotesque" expectations accompanying Obama's election, and described a communications strategy that not only has to manage expectations but has to manage inevitable disappointment.  For a campaign that stressed openness and solicited input from voters, right up through the Transition ("Change.gov"), the Obama Administration's first month has shown a rather sparse "controlled transparency" (the "13 Questions" press conference).  Finally, Heinderyckx expressed reservations about "Public Diplomacy 2.0" degenerating into a kind of "Propaganda 2.0."

Panel and audience shared an appreciation of the historic nature of Obama's election in a country with such a fraught racial history, though a sense remained of the surprising closeness of the results given the utter failure on all fronts of Bush and his Republican Presidency.  Europeans continue to be fascinated by what appears to be the insurgent power of the Obama campaign and its ability to rally support in unexpected areas of the nation, in part through use of modern means of communication.

Not wanting to dampen their enthusiasm, I warned about the dangers of the American "permanent campaign," where no sooner do we inaugurate a new president than we cast our eyes towards the next election cycle, in this case Congressional elections of 2010 - next year!  Europeans, with election seasons that last 5-6 weeks max, conduct campaigns that are like 90-minute soccer matches.  Kick the ball back and forth, score 2 or 3 goals, and it's basically over.  Form your government.

Europe, please do copy Obama's astute use of networks and citizen involvement, but please do not try and import American Superbowl political campaigns, which last way longer than the Superbowl Pre-Game show and cost billions more.  Political campaigning - keep it short, and simple.