Friends

We have led rather peripatetic lives, have lived for periods of years in five different countries and for shorter periods in several others. So we have been to a great many interesting places and met lots of interesting people. Which may sound exciting, and it has been – it certainly hasn’t been boring – but there is a downside: we have left good friends all over the world, many of whom we hardly ever see, and some of whom we will undoubtedly never see again. I’ve written about friends before (blog of Nov. 2010); this piece has a different slant on the subject.

 Brian, here with our daughter Sue, goes back to university days

 

 

 

 

Diana and I met when we were students at a South African university, and some of the best friends we ever made are from that era, 50 years ago. We were conventional people of our time and married and had kids when we were quite young: among the most durable of our friends were those we made when the kids were little, which in our case was in South Africa, and then in Scotland. At that time of life groups of young mothers, dealing with small children and their activities, meet regularly. The progress and problems of kids are matters of consuming mutual interest and there’s a very good chance that strong friendships will develop. These lead to socializing that includes husbands; in some cases couples find themselves compatible, leading to family friendship. In our case there were also, of course, professional friends, although from a family point of view these were more likely to stay in the category of acquaintances than become family friends. We're still in touch with some of the friends from that time, although it was all more than 40 years ago, but since we moved on contact has generally been reduced to Christmas cards (now heading for history as the Christmas letter circulated by e-mail takes over) and the occasional e-mail.

We moved from Scotland to England and were there for ten years, covering the main period of the kids’ schooling. The patterns of social contacts changed as everyone got older, but we still made some good friends. Then we went to Australia and had to start again: new schools for the kids, a new social milieu, new activities and professional friends. We were many years in Canberra, long enough to put down quite strong roots – we felt we belonged and there was time for friends to become ‘old friends’. We hadn’t intended to move when it was retirement time, but we did. There were good reasons for it, but that’s another story and the move had all the usual consequences: try to keep in touch with the friends you left behind; make new friends, adapt to a new social environment.

Looking back on all this it’s inevitable that I think about what constitutes good friends; what’s the difference between them and the countless acquaintances who have come and gone over the years. A great deal has been written about what friendship means, and its importance. Without getting too involved in psychology and philosophising, I would say that the basic criteria of real friendship are interest in the other person, enjoying their company, being prepared to accept inconvenience  - or even make significant sacrifices - for them, if necessary. The list could obviously be expanded, discussed and elaborated. At its best friendship is a kind of love, and has many faces. 

Where we live now, we're in an era of acquaintances, of friendly people but few real friends, a time of polite social interaction at dinner parties where conversation is often banal and we start watching the time half way through the evening, wondering when we can politely leave; of community activities and gatherings of various sorts where we go through the motions, share food and a few drinks and go home. Friends at the golf club really don’t matter in any basic, visceral sense – they’re just acquaintances. We meet some good, generous and public spirited people who would not hesitate to help anyone who needed it, but whether we really connect with them in a way that matters emotionally is another matter. That gets harder as the years go by.

Sune, from Sweden, and Dick, from Oregon; our friends across 30 years

I suppose it’s a very different story for people who stay in one place virtually all their lives, part of a stable community, socializing in adulthood with people they have known since they were all children together. This must be conducive to comfortable relationships; where there is a long shared history there is no need to explain allusions to people and events of the past. (There is a darker side to this, of course, and that’s the persistence of old feuds, and possibly hatreds. There are advantages in being able to leave unpleasant people and events behind!) An interesting question is: is the situation of old-established, relaxed and comfortable companionship, with its lack of novelty, long history of shared experience and possible underlying tensions, much better than our situation?

Probably. Those who have lived all (or most) of their lives in one place have a much better sense of place and of belonging. They know the community they belong to; in fact they probably seldom if ever think about it. Life goes along in its accustomed rhythms, with the well-known faces around. Strangers can be ignored – in old and conservative communities strangers may be treated with suspicion: they don’t fit in. One of the disadvantages of the peripatetic lifestyle is the feeling of rootlessness, of not really belonging anywhere. We have met hundreds – possibly thousands – of interesting people over the years, in various places, and have made many good and interesting friends but (as I said earlier), we’ve left most of them behind. If we travel to see them, or they come here, their company is as good as ever, but the opportunities are limited. We have also met many people who are amiable and pleasant, whose company we have enjoyed, but who have never come to mean a great deal to us. 

Diana with Auro, who came from Brazil, a friend of 20 years

Bu the question that keeps coming up, for those who have lived in various places, is: “where do we belong?” The answer depends on more than friends, although they are very important. Do we ‘belong’ where we live now, or is this another temporary stop? Few of our important friends live here – or near here. I think it’s fairly general, in fact fundamental to most people, that their sense of where they belong is anchored in the place they grew up, in childhood friends and neighbours who knew them, and so on. In our case going back to where we originally came from, to live the rest of our lives there, is not an option. The communities we grew up with are gone, those we knew are dead or scattered across the world. The countries we grew up in – Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and South Africa – have changed beyond recognition. 

There's no point in whingeing about it, or feeling sorry for ourselves. A reality check is provided by thinking about the way refugees feel: we had options, none of which were bad, but, according to the UNHCR, there are currently about 16 million people in the world who are classed as refugees, fleeing violence, war and oppression, not to mention another 25 million so-called displaced persons. For most of them all the options were unpleasant. Every one of them would like to live in a safe and stable place, never mind where they grew up. For millions of children the growing up place is a squalid, crowded, camp. The implications are obvious and I could get seriously side-tracked here, but will leave it at that, just adding that the world’s exploding global human population is a significant factor among those causing all that misery.

And those who matter most - family.

Our wandering lifestyle has brought us great rewards and the friends we made were immensely valuable and remain valued. In periods when I feel down, I might wish that some things have been different, but they weren't. We made our choices and can only be grateful for the good things, and the good friends, we've had  - and still have, scattered across the world – and the good things that we have now.

Jottings about trees

Autumn in a Mount Wilson (NSW, Australia) garden: you can see (L to R) cyprus, birch, Japanese maple, eucalypts, deodar, cherry laurel

Most people take trees for granted: they’re those large plants with big hard stems and leafy tops. Even those who live in cities and virtually never see a tree except in parks, know that different types (species) vary enormously in size and structure. Also, everyone knows – vaguely, in some cases – that there are different forest types, although  most would be a bit pushed to name some, or to describe the basic characteristics of, for example, coniferous, tropical or temperate deciduous forests.  None of which is particularly important; lots of people have a very strong aesthetic appreciation of the beauty of trees and forests, and probably recognise, at least instinctively, that they are very important in the world, even if that recognition is confined to the knowledge that wood comes from trees and that paper is made from wood. And the modern world uses a great deal of paper.

Eucalyptus plantation in Brazil. A forest farming operation; the world uses a lot of paper.

Trees in African savannah

Trees and forests feature quite largely in poetry and literature. As kids we were probably absorbed by Grimm’s fairytales, which tend to feature dark forests (they were written in northern Europe where many of the forests are coniferous and dark). And of course dark forests feature in Nordic myths and legends, not to mention Robin Hood and Lord of the Rings. Then there was Enid Blyton’s “The Faraway Tree” and, in modern adult literature, Eucalyptus, by Murray Bail. Last Christmas my family gave me a book of beautiful photographs of, and comments on, Australia’s remarkable trees (Richard Allen and Kimball Baker): they range from the gnarled and twisted acacias surviving improbably in arid semi-deserts to towering, majestic karri in Western Australia and (the misnamed) Mountain Ash (Eucalyptus regnans) in Victoria and Tasmania. You could probably find references to trees in Shakespeare’s plays, but I have to confess that I’m not familiar enough with those to be able to say where, at least not ‘off the cuff’.

Big trees, when you think about it, are amazing. That whole massive structure consists of microscopic cells, of a range of specialist types doing different jobs: cells in leaves doing photosynthesis – breaking down CO₂ to produce the carbohydrates that underpin all (or nearly all) life on earth; nutrient absorbing cells in the roots; cells that transport nutrients and water up the trunk and structural cells that determine the shape and strength of the tree.

Across the road from my office I can see tall, straight eucalyptus trees in my neighbour’s garden. They’re about 30 m high, with slim white trunks. The branches and foliage are mostly in the top half – in fact mostly in the top 10 m, so when the wind is strong the force (drag) on all that material stuck up in the air is enormous. (I once spent several interesting weeks in a wind tunnel measuring the forces on trees and their foliage elements.) But, regardless of the technicalities, the practical result, for my tall neighbours, is that their tops swing through arcs that I estimate must be at least 5 m. It can be quite alarming: as gusts ease the tops swing back, to be driven out again by the next gust. And the trunks don’t break. It’s only in recent times that humans have been able to make materials (using carbon fibre technology) that would stand that amount of flexing.

Not that trees never break; they do, of course, and they also get uprooted in high winds. Breakage or uprooting happens when the frequency of the gusts matches the way the trees flex (their natural elasticity) so that the trunks swing more and more with each gust and eventually reach their limit. (This doesn’t just apply to trees; it can happen to tall man-made structures. An astonishing example was the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows suspension bridge in Washington State in 1940. The so-called structural frequency and elasticity of the bridge were freakishly matched by the gust frequency of a strong wind and the structure was spectacularly destroyed.

A unique hotel in Ecuadorian rainforest

It’s a sad fact that forests, particularly tropical forests, are being destroyed around the world – particularly in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, the Pacific islands and the Amazon Basin – at an alarming rate. The destruction is driven by human greed and short-sightedness (why are we not surprised!?) to provide hardwoods, land for palm oil plantations and soya bean production and ever more space for the encroachment of peasant farmers. This has huge implications for biodiversity, hydrology – affecting river flows and, when the clearance is on a large scale, local climates – and for the carbon balance of the world as a whole. Forests absorb enormous quantities of CO₂ and store massive amounts of carbon. When they are destroyed most of that carbon is released into the atmosphere, contributing to the increase in atmospheric CO₂ being driven by the combustion of fossil fuels.

So it’s worth getting political about trees and forests and trying to persuade politicians that they are important in the great scheme of things which, as far as I am concerned, means the health and beauty of the planet.

Okavango

Okavango

The Okavango Delta is formed by a river coming down from the Highlands of Angola, which disappears into the deserts of north-east of Botswana, creating an inland delta. There are a few other such deltas in the world, but the Okavango seems to be one of the most remarkable and best-known examples. Flows vary seasonally and the water is crystal clear, filtered by the huge areas of reeds, papyrus, sedges and grass, and waterlilies (water hyacinth), through which wind multiple channels, many made by hippos. The area, along its borders and on the numerous bush-covered island, is home to a wonderful range of African wildlife.

Impala rams watching a lion. Once they have spotted the predators they're pretty safe

Male cheetah

Not all the wildlife are large: Diana and chameleon

Botswana itself is widely regarded as the most successful African state, although it’s a very small country with only about 1.4 million inhabitants. However, it has a functioning democracy and a government which appears to govern for the good of the country and not just for the good of the members of the government, as is the case in most African states. The towns are extremely scruffy and untidy, with rubbish all over the place – their priorities are different from those of most westerners – but the country is moderately wealthy with important diamond mines, a major beef cattle industry and a thriving tourist industry. I don’t know much about tax structures and agreements between governments and extractive industries, but it’s clear that, unlike the oil industry in various countries, the diamond mines in Botswana pay enough to the country to benefit everyone and not just the companies doing the mining. Tourism is what’s called “low-volume”, which really means that Botswana is generally too expensive for student backpackers and young people on limited budgets, since it involves guided safari-type tours with small groups who may camp out – in reasonable comfort, but it is camping in the African bush - or who may lodge in safari camps.

Diana and I went to southern Botswana, to the Kalahari, a few years ago, and a few weeks ago we went to the Okavango, where we spent four days in two separate camps, one of which is fly-in access only. From the first camp, Khawai River, reached in about four hours across fairly rough roads from the town of Maun, we went on a number of game drives (the name tells you something!) in safari vehicles which bumped or crawled slowly along bush tracks in the area east of the Moremi Reserve. I must admit that we sometimes wondered about those tracks: the main, established ones are clearly identifiable, but although we were told that the guides – who were also the drivers – were not supposed to go into the bush they frequently did so, and when they did the vehicles created the beginnings of a new track. As a result the area, which is very wet at the moment, is criss-crossed by networks of minor tracks. This, over time, constitutes a lot of damage, but since the vehicles and guides responsible come from a number of companies, and the area is remote, it is very difficult to prevent.

Elephant at 10 metres

Safari vehicles  - generally long-wheel-base 4WD vehicles, open-backed with a couple of rows of tiered seats – are not comfortable, but they’re not too bad and ours were never crowded; a maximum of six people to a the vehicle that could carry nine. The guides were very experienced; experts at finding animals about which they generally knew a great deal. In a few days we saw hundreds of elephants, probably thousands of impala, a leopard (rare sight in daytime), lion, serval, cheetah, a couple brown hyenas, a hippo wandering around in broad daylight as well as a number of hippos in the rivers, zebra (with young), giraffe (also with young), kudu and various birds. Impala have black markings on their hindquarters that look a bit like the big M symbol of the Macdonalds fast food chain. Our guide observed that this was probably appropriate as the poor impala are on the menu of all the predators – lion,  leopard, cheetah, hyena (which can sometimes catch them at night). Fast food in every sense! We sometimes saw animals very close-up so the game drives were extremely satisfying and sometimes quite exciting.

Xaxaba Transit lounge

We flew in a small aircraft from Khawai River to Eagle Island. From there we went on several boat trips in flat-bottomed boats with outboard motors; again driven by guides who knew a great deal about the Delta and its fauna. Although the birdlife is not hugely prolific–you don’t see great flocks of birds–we saw fish eagles, Jacana, or lily trotters, otherwise known as Jesus birds because they appear to walk on water, and various sorts of duck and kingfisher. There were frequent sightings of hippo, usually submerged with just the eyes and nostrils sticking out of the water, sometimes half the head but occasionally, in  the evening, heaving themselves out of the water. At one point we had to pass quite close to a group of hippo in the main channel. Our guide, John, was wary of them as he knew that they may resent the boat and that they could be dangerous. He gunned the motor past the hippos and was proved to be correct when one of them set off after us, showing an astonishing turn of speed for such a huge animal. Hippos apparently do not swim so the hippo chasing the boat was presumably running in the water although he was lifted slightly out of it in doing so. You certainly would not have wanted to be in a canoe at that point.

Intruder in camp - or maybe we're the intruders

There was also some excitement in the very comfortable camp, where there was a large marula tree, a species that produces fruit highly attractive to elephants, especially when they (the fruit – not the elephant) are slightly fermented. A large bull elephant came to feed on the marulas on the couple of nights when we were there: on the second morning he was right next to the path between the huts. One of our group needed to walk past him to fetch something so  - as advised - he asked John to come with him to help him get past the elephant. We went along to see what happened. The elephant, apparently unhappy at the presence of a significant group of people, carried out a mock charge towards us. John had previously explained that, when you get very close to elephants, you can tell by their behavior and “ the look in their eyes” whether they're likely to be seriously dangerous or not. Well he proved his point, and his courage, but standing his ground, clapping his hands and shouting. You really needed to know it was a mock charge! For the inexperienced it looked serious enough to warrant a swift departure from the area, but the elephant wasn’t really serious – he pulled up a couple of metres from John, flapped his ears and waved his trunk and turned away.

A highlight of our stay at Eagle Island was a helicopter ride over the Delta; exhilarating as the doors were off the chopper and we sat on the edges of the back seats with our feet on the skids. The trip provided wonderful oversights of the ecological structure of islands and swamp, as well as views of animals from the air, including a herd of buffalo which we had not seen from the ground. We also saw hippos submerged in the channels that they make through the vegetation.

Aerial view of a large island, with buffalo

Overall it was a great way to spend a few days in a relatively unspoiled part of Africa. If you had to live anywhere in Africa, Botswana would be the place – although you can bet there would be unforeseen problems. For visitors, the travel to get there is slightly tedious and Johannesburg, which you have to go through, is not nowadays an attractive city. It's tense and dangerous and the residential areas look more like prison camps than suburbs, although residents would undoubtedly take exception to this description. However the new Gautrain, which runs from the airport into town is smooth and quiet and very efficient. The airport itself, greatly upgraded for the football world cup last year, is also modern and efficient. It’s just the government that seems to be running down.

Where do we go from here: 5

Political leadership

I have held forth, in the previous three posts, about the problems facing human societies in terms of conflict, our economic systems, human populations and food supplies, condensing into a few paragraphs discussion of issues that fill books and newspapers and magazine articles and blogs and endless media hours. Virtually every point I have made could be (and no doubt is) elaborated, developed and argued in all those media, but hopefully my condensed version will provide the basis for some constructive thoughts. But, whatever the arguments, the solution to all the problems considered must lie in political action, in decisions made by governments with the capacity to influence – or determine - the way societies function and the resources of countries are used.

Politics is the business of politicians who, in democracies, are elected by the people. There are all sorts of other political systems, some of which are not particularly salubrious, but let’s confine our attention to democracies and the role of democratically elected leaders. These people are vital to the success of their societies, by which I mean success in terms of the well-being of the whole population, and in terms of the natural environment. If that is destroyed, or even significantly degraded, the society can’t be considered successful and amount of economic effort and activity will serve to maintain living standards.

Most people in western countries are convinced that our systems of democratic government are as good as it gets – the apogee of political evolution.  But a vanishingly small number of our elected politicians are real leaders; for the most part they are public relations puppets, driven by polls that indicate to them what their constituencies want, regardless of the fact that most of the people who make up those constituencies are themselves driven by self-interest and the standard delusions about economics. A majority of people want ‘the good life’ – the houses and cars and consumer goods and holidays and entertainment – without wanting to consider the real costs. So society gets ever more ‘precious’, with endless whingeing about minor inconveniences, about price rises or the unavailability of things that there’s no good reason we should have, with controversies about trivia and the expenditure of huge amounts of effort and emotion arguing about things like the behaviour celebrities or matters that shouldn’t be in the public domain at all – like whether homosexual couples should be allowed to marry. And the brand of ugly adversarial politics that we currently have in western countries doesn’t help.

So we probably get the political leaders we deserve. It would be wonderful if, at least occasionally, we got people standing for election who have clear and definite (and constructive) vision and who are prepared to pursue that vision regardless of the opinion polls and focus group findings and the pressure and bribes of lobbyists funded by powerful interest groups. Of course the way the political game is played now, people of vision and high principle probably wouldn’t get elected or, if they did, in a system like Australia’s where politics and parliament are dominated by political parties, the party machines would make sure they were kept under control, so they wouldn’t get much done. There is also the  problem that, quite frequently, people with vision and ‘fire in the belly’ are nutcases – think of the great leaders of the 20^th century, like Hitler or Mao Tse Tung or Stalin (hardly democratic leaders!). Even Churchill had some pretty peculiar ideas. In Australia Whitlam had ‘fire in the belly’ – and didn’t last long, but Bob Hawke, though a politician to his bootstraps, was undoubtedly a leader with convictions, and he did last. In Canada Pierre Trudeau, who led that country from 1968 to 1984 (with a brief interlude when he was out of power) was, by all reports, a man of vision and principle. But looking across the political landscape of the world right now, I don’t see anyone, in any country, who inspires much genuine respect and admiration. Obama looked hopeful – I think he is a person of high principles – but he hasn’t managed to struggle free of the constraints imposed by a completely negative, indeed destructive, Republican party that exploits the prejudices and ignorance of large chunks of the American electorate, and by the financial crisis brought on by the greed of the Wall Street traders etc. etc. The world is awash with words about it all.  All we can do is live in hope, but I’m not holding my breath.

I set out, when I started to write these things, to try to imagine how the world’s problems might be fixed, but I have ended with the conclusion, basically, that it’s not going to happen. Life in the rich, developed countries will go on apparently much as before for some time to come. Money and power and technology will (probably) insulate the populations of those countries from a great deal of unpleasantness for years to come. There will wars and rumours of wars and gradually accumulating environmental problems (I haven’t even mentioned climate change) and some nasty famines in faraway places. Well-meaning, and in many cases extraordinarily admirable, people will work hard to alleviate the problems, and in some cases and some places they will make progress, but overall we will not change our ways. Humanity is in trouble: the world we leave to our grandchildren is going to be a lot less pleasant than the one we live in now, unless they have so much money that they can totally insulate themselves from it all. All that isn’t very cheerful, but maybe my prognostications will be as wide of the mark as those of Nostradamus. Good luck; enjoy your life.

Where do we go from here: 4

People and food

No danger of starving here: Christmas in Australia

 
































My third major point (in the first of these posts) was concern about the rapidly-growing human population of the world and whether it was going to be able to feed itself. There are a couple of points in relation to this that need to be kept in mind: one is that most of the population growth is happening in poor countries that are already over-crowded; the other is that most people in the western countries eat too much. The major food problem in these is obesity. In general, they produce ample food for themselves, with enough for export. The difficulties at the moment arise from the logistics of distribution, and the economics of paying for and transporting large amounts of food from areas of plenty to areas of shortage. Right now, for the world as a whole, if food could be distributed rapidly and effectively from the high producing areas to those in need, there would be enough for everyone, not to eat as the privileged do, but to eat adequately, at least pro tem. But it’s unlikely that this will remain the case as populations continue to soar. In the not-too-distant future there is not going to be enough food to feed everyone.

There are blinkered technofreaks who maintain that, since Malthus warned in the late 18^th century of the problems that would be caused by ever-increasing human populations, technical solutions have always been found that have resulted in enough food being produced. This has been true up to now, but there are now new factors in the equation which mean that the argument is not going to hold for the future. One of these – which I wont go on about but which is very important for millions of people – is the world-wide crash in the populations of ocean fish, hunted to near extinction in many areas. But most food still comes from the land, and not only is virtually all the land suitable for arable agriculture already in use but, as I noted earlier, much of that land has been degraded: soil fertility is falling as a result of unsustainable farming practices, and soil erosion is taking a terrible toll. Maintaining high crop yields in modern, extensive agricultural systems involves the use of huge amounts of oil for the manufacture of herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers as well as directly for tractor power. We could make great progress if we were prepared to accept much more labour-intensive production systems, and eat a great deal less meat – producing livestock is a highly  inefficient way of converting plant material into food for humans. But as countries like China and India develop, their people are demanding better diets with increasing amounts of meat, so significantly changing market demand for food. And, of course, those countries have burgeoning human populations.

There are solutions – or partial solutions – which, if they can’t entirely solve the problems could improve matters enormously, particularly for the poor of the world. These involve technology, which includes better fertilization, the recycling of plant nutrients, more efficient use of water and animal manures, huge reductions in waste of food and the losses that affect peasant farmers so badly, pest control and plant breeding. Soil erosion and degradation are major problems across Africa, much of Asia and South America; these must be addressed. (There are also serious soil erosion problems in the United States.) The big problem in relation to the poorer, high population countries where the food problem is frequently severe and likely to get worse, is getting the knowledge and technology to the people who need them – a matter of education and resources. And who will pay for the resources needed? In the western countries, where there is no sign of food shortages, there could be huge environmental benefits from waste reduction. Heavy subsidies that encourage the conversion of maize into biofuels cause major distortions in production patterns and food prices and should be abandoned. It would also be good to see moves away from the horrible high-intensity systems of producing chickens and eggs, beef and pork. These are driven more by economics than fundamental necessity.

Is all this going to happen? Well, I don’t think so. Globally, food shortages are going to get worse and will contribute to the increasing pressures on the people of high population countries to emigrate to those where they can expect a better standard of living. There are already serious problems in this respect – every time there’s some sort of crisis they get worse – and they are not going to go away. They may not lead directly to war, but they will lead to ever-stronger calls for restrictive border policies, over-riding humanitarian considerations. The only way to avoid that would seem to be for the rich countries to put ever-increasing effort and resources into improving life in the poor ones in all the obvious areas like education, sanitation and hygiene, food production and (sustainable) transport systems. Whether they will do that is doubtful. Developed countries say they aim to allocate 0.7% of their Gross Domestic Product to aid to underdeveloped countries, but very few do so. There is a strong human tendency to postpone action on inconvenient matters as long as possible, particularly if there is significant uncertainty about the problem facing us and if we ourselves are somewhat insulated against the consequences of the postponement. The rich countries, in general can insulate themselves against food shortages, tighten border controls against the indigent masses and maintain reasonable standards of living. But in the poor, high population countries life will get progressively worse and there will be increasing starvation over the next 25 years. And in the process the natural environment will be destroyed.

Where do we go from here: 3

Economics

This is post number 3 in my little series; you need to read the first two for the background to this one.

Turning to economics, I made the comment that, at least in the so-called advanced western countries, continuous economic growth is assumed to be the normal and necessary condition for modern societies if they are to thrive. There are some incipient problems in terms of the stability of financial systems because of trade imbalances and of the stability of our economic system because of its dependence on oil, which is starting to run short and will get progressively more expensive.

Whether the financial market system is stable is arguable. I said (going boldly where angels fear to tread!) that there has to be a high probability that it’s not. There are innumerable articles, and a number of erudite and economically sophisticated books about the 2008 market crash, and I have no intention of getting into any detail about all that, except to say that the point that emerges most strongly is that the crash was caused by the greed and hubris of Wall Street traders and bankers, and the lack of any effective regulation of the market. All that is still there, but my assertion is based on general considerations, like the increasing prices of oil and food, the trade imbalances between China and the United States and the fundamentally fragile nature of our economic systems dependent, as they are, on continual growth, fuelled by the manufacture and marketing of endless junk and by service industries that, in many cases, depend heavily on tourism. (What happens to them when the oil runs out?)

At the level of the economics of individual countries, the principle of non-interference that I mentioned earlier can be extended to the use of economic as well as military power by strong nations or large multinational companies. Economic power could, conceptually, be used by powerful countries or companies to the benefit of the weak, rather than as a tool of exploitation. There is a history of commercial exploitation of weak or undeveloped nations by such companies, for example exploitation of oilfields in Nigeria and (until their nationalisation by President Chávez), Venezuela. Demand by rich countries causes distortions in the production patterns and economies of small ones which, desperate to earn foreign exchange, may focus their agriculture on cash crops, often produced by foreign companies using extensive production methods so that the benefits to local societies are minimal. We may also see the destruction of ecosystems brought about, for example, by destructive logging of tropical forests for hardwoods by countries like Japan and South Korea, with no interest in the forests themselves, or the conversion of large tracts of tropical forest into soy-bean (in the Amazon) or oil palm (in Indonesia) production.

Not the kind of house most of us want? A 'hotel' in Ecuadorian cloud forest

Both diplomacy and business should be guided by principles analogous to the philosophical idea of utilitarianism: every action must be assessed in terms of its impact on those affected by it. So, in an ideal world, countries should negotiate not only to maximize their own benefits, but also those of others involved. Business should take account of the well-being of anyone affected by its activities, and organize itself to optimize that well-being, as far as possible, taking into account the capacity of the people concerned to benefit from the projected actions. The principles that should be followed are obvious and could clearly be developed at length. The problem is implementation of those principles.

It’s easy to make disparaging remarks about economics and the boring focus on it that we have to endure in the news media and from the commentariat. But even the greenest, ‘back-to-nature’ ideology has to accept that economics are very important. They reflect, and provide a measure of, our material well-being so we’re bound to be interested in them. The problem is partly one of emphasis: the news media – certainly in Australia, which is notorious for this – focus obsessively on economic news, so that almost every event is interpreted in terms of what it will cost, or be worth. Our obsession with economics has the result that decisions are frequently made, or at least assessed, in economic terms, which can distort real values. For example, state governments will, almost invariably, yield to pressure from miners and developers to allow things like open cut coal mining, or underground gas  extraction in agricultural areas, regardless of the environmental damage that may result; they put resources into ever-more roads – with ever-more big trucks – and shut down rail routes that are ‘uneconomic’; they bow to the wishes of the off-shore fishing industry not to declare ‘no catch’ zones in the sea to allow fish populations to recover.  Current attempts to solve the urgent and serious problems afflicting Australia’s major water catchments – the Murray-Darling Basin – are being undermined by hysterical assertions that reduction in water allocations for irrigation will destroy communities. They won’t, but rational, science-based debate isn’t getting much of a hearing. And the idea of a (federal) tax on carbon to ensure that the polluter pays generates such screams of protest that you would think the businesses affected were going to be destroyed. All anyone has to do is cry ‘jobs’ and/or ‘the bottom line’ and the pollies fall over themselves to implement the short-term fixes, generally ignoring long-term  environmental implications. Of course people need jobs, and of course human societies are not going to tolerate focus on the environment to their own detriment and disadvantage, but we need some balance. In the long term, if humans are going to survive and live decent, pleasant lives, we have to do better than we are now.

To actually fix things in our societies we have to accept some short-term pain: we have to pay for the research needed to bring alternative energy sources on-line;  we have to pay to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; we have to walk away from our love affair with petrol or diesel-driven cars, and move over to electric vehicles or vehicles powered by fuel cells (still electricity, but different from batteries); we have to subsidise solar panels on roofs to provide some part of household power requirements, and legislate to ensure power savings and efficiency in buildings. We have to develop efficient water distribution infrastructure and accept the need to use water more efficiently. In Australia we have to get over our irrational paranoia about nuclear power, and get started building the reactors. We also have to cut back enormously on our profligate waste of resources and energy, and massively increase recycling and re-use of paper, plastics, glass, domestic waste and water (there was all sorts of hysterical nonsense about that a few years ago, and we don’t do much of it). All this – and all the other stuff of the same type that I haven’t mentioned – might cost in the short-term, but in the long term it will contribute to a more sustainable life style and reduced resource use. And, heresy of heresies, we will have to reduce our standards of living. That doesn’t mean we all revert to the level that millions of poor people have to tolerate because they have no option, but it does mean some quite radical changes.

We have to do something about the paradox caused by increasing automation of all sorts of activities and processes. Technical developments increasingly reduce the need for labour, but we have increasing numbers of people who need jobs to provide the money they need to live. So it’s difficult to see that things can go on as they are now. People in developed countries are addicted to stuff, things – a huge range of goods of every description, most of which are of limited use or real value. But the manufacture and marketing of all that stuff keeps people in jobs and provides them with incomes; those activities keep economies growing, and without growth the system grinds to a halt. We frequently hear the health of the economy assessed in terms of consumer spending. This is bizarre, but what’s the answer? If we all buy less stuff, the economy slows, businesses close, people lose their jobs, and the whole process triggers a downward (in economic terms) cycle. But that’s what is going to happen. Somewhere along the line the economic structure of societies has to change, but how this will happen, and what form it will take, is impossible (for me anyway) to say.

One thing seems certain: the blind irrational faith in untrammeled free markets as the solution to all problems has to be abandoned. Markets fail, as the recent financial crisis demonstrated, and will continue to fail in the absence of regulation to control greed and the exploitation of the weak and vulnerable. The consequences of this can be seen in the large and growing disparity between the incomes of bankers and financiers, successful stock market speculators and the CEOs of big business, and most of the rest of the population. These disparities are particularly marked in the US but are developing in rapidly in Britain, Australia and (although I have not seen data), probably Canada. The solution to the problem must lie, at least conceptually, with more regulation, although this is anathema to the free market fundamentalists. In America free markets are equated to individual freedom: government intervention is totally unacceptable. But we need regulation by enlightened governments to control the greed, exploitation of people and the environment and all the other excesses of capitalism. We need, dare I say it, more socialistic systems.

I can hear the screams of protest and abuse: this is back to communism (which failed); it will inhibit initiative, and (guess what) financial growth. And so on. There’s no point here in digressing into details of how it might work, or drafting answers to the arguments and protests that would follow if this idea was taken up by anyone in a position of influence. The point is that change is necessary. It may not take the form of systems that have been used in the past but it could, in principle, be achieved by enlightened political leadership and government, coupled to good will in the community. There’s no way the whole system could be changed immediately; change would have to be a step-by-step evolutionary process aimed at optimising the lives of people AND outcomes for the environment. Optimisation in terms of the well-being of people and the environment will mean having evaluation systems in place to assess how policies are working, and being prepared to change when necessary. Economic change can’t be divorced from political change; politicians would have to be driven less by ideology and more by pragmatism. The guiding principle would have to be the need to get the system right in terms of the well-being of people and the environment. Unfortunately, at the present time, the whole world is  hooked on western life-styles and economic paradigms there doesn’t seem to be much chance that radical changes are likely to happen any time soon.

There’s not much point in going on about all this. None of it’s new; people like David Suzuki have been saying these things, eloquently and in detail, for years. Books have been written, impassioned speeches made. But the human race has a high inertia and a strong tendency to self-indulgence. We also have, in most countries (I’m tempted to say ‘all countries’, but hopefully that would not be true), pretty low-grade politicians, which matters because a lot of what needs to happen has to happen at the political level. We need visionary, open-minded leadership and constructive legislation.

Where do we go from here: 2

Could we solve our problems?

In the first blog of this series I made a quick assessment of some of the problems facing the modern world: can we live in peace; will our economic systems keep working in the foreseeable future, and will the world be able to feed its exploding populations? My idea is to assess whether the answers to these questions are likely to be positive. Is there cause for optimism?

Living in peace

Peaceful togetherness. Marine iguanas in the Galapogos

Taking them in order, the first is the matter of living in peace. If we look at humanity as a whole we have to admit that this is an unattainable goal. Humans are aggressive, argumentative and very prone to violence. But we could do better (that’s what I used to get on my school reports). Article 2 of the charter of the United Nations says  that ‘All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.’ If all nations adhered to that, in good faith, it would be a good start. In that respect  we have to note that one of the worst offenders is the United States, where there is a persistent belief that, in the long term, democracy is the only viable political system and a ‘uniquely American realism’ teaches that ‘it is America’s job to change the world, and in it’s own image’[1]. This breathtaking arrogance, based in neo-conservative rhetoric and evangelical Protestant beliefs, has been behind US military interventions in various countries (the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Panama (they pick their victims!) Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan – and  perhaps Pakistan. Vietnam was slightly different: the rationale in that case was to prevent its take-over by Communism, a position fuelled by Cold War paranoia and the idea that Communism was a homogeneous monster intent on world domination.

Military interventions, far from introducing the American version of democracy, have frequently generated strong local resistance, in some cases dragging the US into drawn-out conflicts in which there is no prospect of victory in any conventional sense. This was certainly the case in Vietnam, whatever the reason for intervention there, as well as in Iraq and Afghanistan – where they’re still involved. The tendency to attack other countries has been reinforced by the idea that violence is a reasonable solution to anything that is contrary (or appears to be contrary) to perceived interests of the US. So we have the ill-advised and poorly conceived ‘war on terror’  in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks which led, for highly dubious reasons, to the second Iraq war and the current war in Afghanistan.

Picking on the US isn’t a matter of bias; the size and importance of that nation makes it’s behaviour central to the problem. For the world as a whole there’s not much chance of any sort of progress towards real and lasting peace unless nations genuinely respect the charter of the UN, and refrain from interfering with, or exploiting, each other. In other words, mind their own business. In the case of the US, this means that the country should abandon the idea of military intervention in countries that are not particularly friendly to them; it should dismantle the world-wide system of military bases that it maintains and make a serious move towards nuclear disarmament, which would entail a willingness to destroy – or at least radically reduce – its own nuclear arsenal. In the case of China, the question has to be asked: ‘What is your current massive military build up for?” The country would be regarded with much less suspicion if it wasn’t doing that. And so we could go on. Other threats to peace are Israel and the Arabs, Iran, North Korea… and then, of course, there’s the possibility that fundamentalist Muslims, fanatically committed to jihad and the destruction of the infidel west, might get hold of a nuclear weapon.

Questions also arise about interventions in countries experiencing civil unrest. There are UN rules that govern these interventions; they don’t work very well (note the failure in Rwanda, the mess in the Congo and Darfur), but one would have to argue that it would be better to work on and through these procedures and get them right, which would require more enthusiastic and  unbiased support from countries like the US, China and Russia than they give now. Not much chance, I guess. As I write this Libya is  in a state of upheaval and Gaddafi is killing Libyans by the thousand in his determination to hold onto power. It’s going to end in tears.

So, taken overall, I don’t expect harmony, altruism and peace to break out all over. My guess (for the little it’s worth) is that domestic upheavals in various countries will go on and Israel will probably have another go at Hizbollah in Lebanon which, since that organization is  strongly supported by Iran may turn out even uglier than usual. There will be wars and violent upheavals triggered by terrorism, disputes over water, or oil or living space, but we will probably be spared another major war – one that will have large, direct effects on the western countries – for the foreseeable future (let’s say, the next 25 years). Most of us will be able to ignore those and go about our lives – as we like to do.

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[1] Condoleezza Rice. ‘Rethinking the national interest’. Foreign Affairs. July- Aug. 2008.