Articles by Jon Rynn

The beginnings of a continentalized global economy

Your faithful blogger was surprised to find himself representing part of the environmental blogosphere in a New York Times article on Sunday, "Shipping Costs Start to Crimp Globalization." It's very much worth reading, and prior to writing the article the reporter, Larry Rohter, talked with me about my first installment in this series, "Globalization death watch, Part I."

In his article, after noting the recent collapse of global trade talks, Rohter writes:

Some critics of globalization are encouraged by those developments, which they see as a welcome check on the process. On environmentalist blogs, some are even gleefully promoting a "globalization death watch."

Now, look at the dictionary.com definition of "gleeful":

full of exultant joy; merry; delighted.

Well, maybe the births of my sons called forth such feeling, but I'm not usually full of exultant joy, particularly when I think about global crises.

However, Larry Rohter may be forgiven his choice of words, considering the title of the blog post. I and, if I may be so bold as to speak for some other environmental bloggers, others think that the decline, even death of globalization would be a good thing. But just as the rise of globalization led to much suffering, so will its decline, and that's certainly not something to be "gleeful" about. To paraphrase Barack Obama's pithy phrase about getting out of Iraq, "we've got to be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in."

I'd like to go over some of the points Rohter highlights, and then explain later in the post why there is a better alternative to globalization.

Notable quotable

"The military-industrial complex needs enemies."

-- Brian Williams, news anchor of NBC, on The Daily Show with John Stewart, July 31, 2008.

Five Gore steps to carbon-free electricity and electrified transportation

On Tuesday, I had the opportunity to comment about Al Gore's next step on Earthbeat Radio, a syndicated, weekly, hour-long environmental program, and speaking with me was long-time anti-nuclear, environmental, and political activist Harvey Wasserman, author of "Solartopia! Our Green Powered Earth." The show is co-hosted by Daphne Wysham, global environmental activist from the Institute for Policy Studies. Our segment [mp3] is a little more than halfway through.

Our conversation got me to thinking about what a set of five "Gore" steps might look like. Gore has put forth the first and second steps, so now we can pitch in and propose a few more. Here are mine:

From fossil fuels to manufacturing for wind and solar energy

A couple of years ago, Al Gore made the case, in a film called An Inconvenient Truth, that we have a big problem called global warming. But the film was not effective at pointing to a solution. Humans evolved to consider a crisis as a challenge, as long as a solution is readily available. Otherwise, panic or resignation sets in.

Now, Gore has moved a significant step further by arguing that all sources of electricity should be carbon-free -- in other words, all of our electricity should be generated using wind, solar, or geothermal power, instead of coal, natural gas, or oil.

The next step should be to explain how we move to a fossil fuel-free electrical system. Gore continues to advocate a revenue-neutral carbon tax, but it feels like he's searching for something else, something that would be part of the effort to clean up the energy system.

He might consider the idea that rebuilding the manufacturing economy by building solar and wind equipment would not only lead to a carbon-free system, but also would revive the national economy and the middle class.