4 ANALYSIS & FEATURE
Could recession save the planet?
The more mess we make of the Earth, the more money can be made clearing it up
By Chris Williams
As Ban Ki-moon announced
that the U.N. climate change
summit “has given fresh impe-
tus to efforts to tackle global
warming,” there were seeming-
ly miraculous reports about de-
cline in carbon emissions. But
these were not a response to
global security problems. The
cause is global recession.
The annual report of the
International Energy Agency,
the “World Energy Outlook,” to
be published in November, is
likely to show that there has
been the biggest annual reduc-
tion in carbon dioxide emissions
in 40 years, 2 percent in 2009.
This is probably bigger than the
reduction during the recession
at the start of the 1980s.
The IEA estimates that only a
quarter of this is due to new po-
lices, such as improved car fuel
use in the U.S. The rest is due to
a slowdown in economic activi-
ties because of the recession, in-
cluding reduced investment in
new fossil fuel plants.
China now creates the most
carbon dioxide, 6,017.69 million
tons in 2006, in comparison
with America’s 5,902.75 million
tons. But if that figure is pre-
sented per capita, the picture is
different. China produces just
4.58 tons per person, compared
with the United States at 19.78,
and this figure excludes the U.S.
Virgin Isles, at a staggering
118.35.
Comparing national per capi-
ta emissions suggests that low
GDP is related to low emissions.
The obvious, if uncomfortable,
example is that whilst South
Korea produces 10.53 tons per
capita, the figure for North
Korea is 3.36. Elsewhere in
Asia, Laos creates 0.09,
Cambodia 0.05, and
Afghanistan just 0.03.
Like it or not, low GDP ap-
pears to be good for the planet,
and economic slowdowns seem
to help.
But from a broader perspec-
tive of human wellbeing, the
picture is not so simple. The
countries with the lowest car-
bon dioxide emissions also in-
clude some with the most prob-
lematic political systems — DR
Congo (0.04), Burma (0.27) and
Sudan (0.32).
It is also argued by writers
such as Dalip Singh Wasan that
“Poverty breeds pollution,” with
the implication that wealth is
needed to create the high-tech
solutions for a less polluting
world.
But then how do we explain
that the wealthiest countries in
the world, those in the oil rich
Gulf, are among the worst pol-
luters — Bahrain (38.44), the
UAE (35.05), Kuwait (30.92),
and Qatar with a profligate fig-
ure of 61.19. The Gulf example
also raises a question about why
the ethic of saving humanity
seems to be ignored by non-sec-
Big quakes can trigger
tremors miles away
PARIS (AFP) — Huge earth-
quakes can weaken seismic
faults on the other side of the
world, scientists in California
said on Wednesday.
Their study coincided with a
major 8.0-magnitude quake in
the Pacific, unleashing a tsuna-
mi that killed scores of people
in the Samoan islands and
Tonga.
Seismologists led by Taka’aki
Taira of the University of
California at Berkeley found
that the 9.1 monster that struck
west of Sumatra in December
2004 weakened a closely-moni-
tored segment on California’s
San Andreas fault, 8,000 kilo-
meters distant.
Their investigation is based
on a scan of 22 years of data
from the Parkfield area, a dis-
trict so studded with borehole
seismometers and other gauges
that it has been dubbed “the
earthquake capital of the
world.”
The monitors found that ar-
eas of fluid-filled fractures lie
within this section of the fault.
Driven by seismic pressure,
the fluid migrates along the
fault like spidery veins in mar-
ble, acting as a lubricant that
enables shocks to pry open the
rock, they believe.
Chris Williams
● Chris Williams is based at the
Center for International
Education and Research,
University of Birmingham,
United Kingdom.
● He can be reached at
chrisunula@yahoo.com
ular governments.
As a Buddhist would suggest,
the “middle path” seems the
most positive. The world aver-
age per capita emission is 4.48
tons. Countries reflecting this
mean include Uzbekistan (4.43),
Romania (4.42), Chile (4.01) and
Croatia (4.77). Like others in
this middle range, these coun-
tries are not bad places to live.
In parallel with the climate
change debate, other recent pol-
icy changes seem to contribute
to a safer planet. The announce-
ment that the U.S. missile de-
fense system, based in Poland
and the Czech Republic, would
be scrapped challenges those
who claim that we are returning
to a new Cold War.
Like carbon emissions, this is
probably not unrelated to eco-
nomic problems. The alterna-
tive to the Europe-based U.S.
defense system was justified by
U.S. President Obama as being
a “proven, cost-effective” sys-
tem.
The proposal from Britain to
reduce its Trident nuclear
armed submarines from four to
three seems similar. Britain has
already cut the number of nu-
clear warheads from 200 to 160.
Britain’s planned 20-year
Trident program would cost at
least $33 billion, and the coun-
try currently has the largest na-
Proof of this suspicion came
with the finding that repetitive
background quakes became
smaller and smaller during pe-
riods of fluid shift — in other
words, as the fault slowly weak-
ened, less energy was needed to
shake it.
But the most remarkable
finding was unexpected impacts
from two big, distant quakes —
a 7.3-magnitude shake near the
Californian town of Landers in
1992 and the 2004 Sumatra be-
hemoth that unleashed the
Indian Ocean tsunami.
Almost five days after
Sumatra event — one of the
biggest quakes in recorded his-
tory — sensors noted dynamic
stress on the Parkfield fault at a
depth of 5 kilometers.
The study, published by the
British weekly science journal
Nature, provides compelling
support for a novel theory that
very big quakes can have a cas-
cade effect elsewhere, some-
times months afterwards, say
the researchers.
“The long-range influence of
the 2004 Sumatra-Andaman
earthquake on this patch of the
San Andreas fault suggests that
many of the world’s active faults
were affected in the same way,
thus bringing a significant num-
tional debt since World War II.
So it is perhaps not a coinci-
dence that this cost-cutting in
military spheres will help to
make good the debits of the re-
cession.
But again, it is not so simple.
The advocates of “military
Keynesianism” argue that war
can be good for the economy, at
least in the short term.
Proponents of this approach
W hilst economic problems give governments a political excuse for
reduced carbon emissions and military expenditure,these two
things need not be linked. R ecession might make the planet safer,
but we don’t need a recession to make the planet safer?
show that the production of
weapons creates jobs and gener-
ates other consumer spending
on nonmilitary goods and ser-
vices. A large military reduces
unemployment, and provides
useful training for low skilled
workers. Military research cre-
ates innovations which are of
benefit to all, for example the in-
ternet.
Of course this conveniently
overlooks the argument that
much the same effect could be
achieved with a large-scale
hospital or school building pro-
gram. As I explained previous-
Students run near a collapsed university building after an earth-
quake hit Padang on Indonesia’s Sumatra island, Thursday.
ber of them to failure,” the study
says.
“This hypothesis appears to
be supported by the unusually
high number of quakes of mag-
nitude eight or above occurring
in the three years” after the
2004 event, it said.
“No other large earthquake,
of magnitude eight or more,
since 1900 was followed by as
many for a comparable period,”
it observed.
The team hopes their work
will yield a technique for assess-
ing the strength of a seismic
fault — testing whether it has
the strength to resist a shock or
rip apart and threaten human
life.
ly in The Korea Herald, the
restoration of rivers as part of
Korea’s Green Growth initia-
tive is predicted to have both
economic and environmental
benefits. Those who advocate
the military interpretation of
Keynesian economics also ig-
nore the point that if they
were correct, one of the na-
tions with the best GDP, and
most enviable lifestyles, would
be North Korea.
Perhaps the arms industry is
aware that things are changing
and many countries are taking
a longer term view. During the
Annual Defense Systems and
Equipment International exhi-
bition, held in Britain earlier
this month, Alex Dorian, the
CEO of one of the major defense
traders, Thales UK, provided
some astonishingly defensive
rhetoric.
Dorian argued that the arms
trade “is in fact a really ethical
business. We have to take away
the arms trade image and think
Reuters-Yonhap News
Discreet changes in the seis-
mic wave, corresponding to peri-
ods when the numbers of small
earthquakes intensifies, can be
quantified into a means of pin-
pointing faults that are likely to
fail, Taira believes.
Predicting when earth-
quakes will strike remains an
over-the-horizon prospect, al-
though strides have been made
into assessing how stress
builds up in a fault deep un-
derground.
“Earthquakes are caused
when a fault fails, either be-
cause of the buildup of stress or
because of a weakening of the
fault,” said Taira in a press re-
lease.
instead about the U.K. export-
ing technology and creating a
huge number of jobs, which
makes us a force for good.” The
bizarre nature of the argument
seems likely to make investors
in the arms trade run for cover
in businesses with a more as-
tute grasp of public perceptions.
It is not hard to reformat the
“military Keynesianism” as “en-
vironmental Keynesianism.” In
simplistic terms, the more mess
we make of the planet, the more
money can be made clearing it
up.
While we use a global ac-
counting system, GDP/GNP,
global economics will remain at
the level of a delusion. In GDP
terms, crashing your car “im-
proves” the economy, because of
the cash that resultantly moves
around the system paying for
repairs, legal fees, medical ex-
penses and so on.
A more honest alternative can
be termed “loss costs,” for exam-
ple the loss of a child’s memory
Asia-Pacific disasters leave
trail of death and destruction
HONG KONG (AFP) —
Nature’s destructive power was
bared to deadly effect this week
with massive flooding in
Southeast Asia, tsunamis that
deluged the Samoan islands
and a huge earthquake on
Sumatra island.
Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos
were the latest countries to be
lashed by Typhoon Ketsana as it
continued a rampage that be-
gan in the Philippines, killing
over 330 people and forcing mil-
lions to flee their submerged
homes.
As outside powers geared up
to help, disaster struck again
further east when a powerful
8.0-magnitude undersea quake
unleashed tsunamis on the vul-
nerable Pacific islands of
Samoa, American Samoa and
Tonga.
At least 113 people were
killed, including foreigners from
Australia, Britain and South
Korea, as waves 7.5 meters high
wiped out villages, flattened
tourist resorts and sent people
scurrying for high ground.
Samoa’s Prime Minister
Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi
said he was “shocked beyond be-
lief.”
“So much has gone. So many
FRIDAY OCTOBER 2, 2009
resulting from mercury or lead
poisoning. German philosopher
Kant provided the basis for this
approach when he created the
distinction between things that
have “value,” which can be re-
placed simply by spending more
money, and things that have
“dignity” which cannot be re-
placed with dollar bills.
If this ethic is not clear, think
about whether it is O.K. for your
child to be killed by a bullet or a
tsunami, because the insurance
will pay out. Or consider
whether, in the guise of a mod-
ern King Canute, advancing sea
level rises might be remedied by
trying to buy-off the impending
deluge with a file-full of carbon
trading contracts. There is no
such thing as a free trade-off.
An underlying message in the
IEA report is that the recession
demonstrates that reducing
emissions may be much easier
in practice than governments
and industrialists claim. We
might apply the same principle
to reducing weapons.
Whilst economic problems
give governments a political ex-
cuse for reduced carbon emis-
sions and military expenditure,
these two things need not be
linked. Recession might make
the planet safer, but we don’t
need a recession to make the
planet safer?
people are gone,” he told the
Australian news agency AAP.
U.S. President Barack
Obama called the incident in
the outlying U.S. territory of
American Samoa a “major dis-
aster” and offered Samoans his
“deepest sympathies.”
He also dispatched troops for
the aid effort in the Philippines,
a former American colony.
With the Philippines reeling
from once-in-a-lifetime floods
that have inundated Manila, of-
ficials in the mainly Catholic
country urged people to pray for
deliverance from a new menace
lurking to the east, Typhoon
Parma.
Yet more disaster hit in
Indonesia Wednesday, when a
7.6-magnitude quake rocked the
island of Sumatra, killing at
least 75 people and trapping
thousands under rubble.
Large buildings including
hospitals and hotels caved in,
while fires raged in the coastal
city of Padang, home to nearly a
million people, and outside res-
cuers struggled to reach the
scene.
The early death toll looked set
to rise dramatically, said offi-
cials.
“Maybe more than 1,000... be-
As delegates gather for the
follow-up to the New York sum-
mit this week, the Bangkok cli-
mate change talks, a report
from the Hadley Centre propos-
es that global warming has been
underestimated. Temperatures
may exceed four degrees by the
end of the century, and many
people alive now will suffer.
Climate prediction is an impre-
cise science, but over the past
five years one trend is indis-
putable. Most reports show that
the speed and magnitude of the
impact has been underestimat-
ed.
The red dust storm in
Australia this week shows that
the impact will be complex.
The storm is an indication of
climate change. But the red
dust might contain carcino-
genic uranium particles from a
mine in the South Australian
desert, which has fueled a nu-
clear industry that many see
as a way to address climate
change.
The soup of self-destruction
that we are cooking is being
served in a poisoned chalice.
Before the decline of humanity
becomes irreversible, let’s hope
our politicians remember a
Chinese saying — “You can al-
ways make fish soup from fish,
but you can never make a fish
from fish soup.”
cause so many buildings and
houses have been damaged,”
said Health Ministry Crisis
Centre head Rustam Pakaya.
Rescue teams and doctors
sent overland were expected in
the city on Thursday morning,
Pakaya said.
Frightened office workers
streamed out into the streets as
tremors were felt in Jakarta,
940 kilometers away, and in the
Malaysian capital Kuala
Lumpur.
As Washington grappled with
a situation in American Samoa
that evoked memories of
Hurricane Katrina, the string of
Asia-Pacific disasters highlight-
ed pitiful defenses in some na-
tions and underlying worries
about global warming.
In flood-hit Vietnam, the head
of the Red Cross in the city of
Danang, Phan Nhu Nghia, de-
scribed aid efforts as “very, very
difficult, even with a greater
mobilization from the soldiers
and the police, because the scale
of the flooding is too vast and we
lack equipment.”
“We have not received any
support from local authorities,” a
28-year-old mother of twin tod-
dlers complained to AFP in
Vietnam’s Quang Nam province.