VOX
www.clubofpep.org :: vox@clubofpep.org The Periodical of Politics, Economics and Philosophy May 2006 :: Volume 1 :: Issue 2 :: Summer Term 2006
Contents The Economics conflict
of
the
IRAQ 1-2
Why inequality is not so good: A response 2-3 A note on development
Taxation
in 4-5
Mr benn’s fancy dress
5-6
Inequality is good for nothing but climate change 7-8 Welcome to the second issue of VOX: The Periodical of Politics, Economics and Philosophy. I would like to thank Professor Hartley and Dr Jacoby, as well as Mr Griffiths, for their offerings and for setting a perfect precedent for future contributions from academics and guest writers. In keeping with VOX’s aims all five articles provide interesting and controversial insights into the three disciplines. We are excited to announce that this issue has been distributed to a number of British universities with the aim of making it a national publication. If you are interested in submitting an article, or responding to any of the arguments in this issue please send an email to vox@clubofpep.org. We are sure you will find the content both informative and thought-provoking. Frederic Kalinke Editor
THE ECONOMICS CONFLICT
OF
THE
IRAQ
Introduction: The Absence of Economics The UK’s decision to go to war with Iraq reflected a variety of political, legal, military and moral-ethical factors. Was there Parliamentary, electoral, legal
and United Nations support; was Iraq a threat to the UK and its national interests (as a rogue state and through beliefs that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction: WMD)? Was a war winnable with acceptable UK military casualties; and was it morally justified (e.g. to remove a dictator and introduce democracy to Iraq)? Economic considerations were ignored. This short article outlines the contribution of economics to assessing the Iraq conflict. Some economics of conflict Wars are costly and Iraq is no exception. Conflict involves scarce resources which have alternative uses (e.g. for schools; hospitals; roads). Conflict also differs from peaceful economic activity which is concerned with production and exchange designed to make people better-off. Wars use military force rather than prices and voluntary exchange to achieve a re-allocation of resources (e.g. invasion to ‘steal’ another nation’s natural resources of land, oil, water, minerals, or strategic positions). Wars also involve destructive rather than creative power: they destroy the participating nations’ human and physical resources (e.g. deaths, injury and the destruction of infrastructure and property). UK costs of the Iraq war Costs arise in various forms. The most obvious are military costs, but these embrace the direct costs of the conflict, the costs of peace-keeping and any indirect costs such as increased terrorist threats to the UK. Then there are costs to the UK civilian economy through such impacts as higher oil prices, possible recession effects and the need for higher defence spending which has to be financed through higher taxation or reduced public spending in other areas. Costs are also assessed both before and after the war (i.e. plans and outcomes) where planned and estimated costs are those which enter into the decision to go to war. Here, much of the debate about the Iraq war has been conducted with the benefit of hindsight (e.g. WMD), failing to recognise that the original choice -1-
to go to war had to be based on estimates and expectations in a world of uncertainty. Finally, a full and comprehensive cost analysis needs to consider the costs for the UK’s allies and the costs for Iraq. For economists, a key question is what do we know about the costs to the UK of the Iraq war? The Ministry of Defence (MoD) and HM Treasury (HMT) have published some estimated and actual cost figures for the military operation. In late 2002, before the war HMT estimated that the conflict would cost the UK £1 billion; my estimate was some £3.5 billion. By March 2003, the HMT estimate was £3 billion. MoD has published some data on the actual costs incurred in both the conflict and subsequent peacekeeping operations. These are the net additional costs incurred over and above the annual defence budget and they are financed from the Treasury Special Reserve. For the period 2002 to 2005, actual UK military costs for Iraq were some £3.1 billion, equivalent to the target cost for the Royal Navy’s two future aircraft carriers. There are further estimated costs of £1.1 billion for 2005/06. This gives a total UK military cost of some £4.2 billion to April 2006 at which point the UK will have about 7200 military personnel in Iraq. The actual conflict was estimated to cost about £1.5 billion (ie. £848 million plus an estimated £650 million for equipment losses and replacements). There are two points about these costs. First, they illustrate that the actual conflict (a one-off cost) was only a part of the total UK military costs in Iraq with peacekeeping being the major component (about £1 billion per annum and a continuing cost). Second, the resources required in Iraq have alternative uses in the UK. For example, a one–off sum of £1.5 billion would buy, say, an increased child tax credit of £200+ for one year, or the building of 25 new hospitals (building costs only). US costs for Iraq Initial estimates for US military costs in Iraq were $100-$200 billion. The latest figures are over $330 billion to 2007, although it is difficult to ensure that estimates are on a comparable basis (eg. some include Iraq reconstruction costs as well as operations in Afghanistan and the global war on terrorism). For comparisons, the US military costs of the Vietnam conflict were some $495 billion (2002 prices). Estimates for both military and civilian economy costs for the USA due to the Iraq conflict have been given as slightly less than $1 trillion to over $2 trillion to 2010. These estimates include the
impact of higher oil prices, the economic costs of the deaths and injury to US military personnel, the effects on the military’s recruitment and retention problems and the lost US economic growth. On the basis of these estimates, it is concluded that the analysis of the benefits of the Iraq “… war was greatly flawed and that of its costs virtually absent” (Stiglitz, 2006). Conclusion: the Bribery Option Prior to the conflict there was an alternative solution. Fans of the film ‘The Godfather’ will recognise the philosophy: make him an offer he cannot refuse. For simplicity, assume that before the war, the USA was willing to spend $100 billion on the conflict. It could have made Saddam Hussein an offer he could not have refused. Saddam could have been offered $20 billion to leave Iraq; the Iraqi people could have been given a windfall sum of $50 billion; and the USA would have saved $30 billion. And these are costs against an estimate of $100 billion. If such a bribe had been accepted, the war, death and destruction would have been avoided and the UK would have also saved on its costs.
Professor Keith Hartley is the Director of the Centre for Defence Economics, University of York References: Stiglitz, J. (2006) ‘The high cost of the Iraq War’, Economists’ Voice, March, pp. 1-3. MoD (2006) Operations in Iraq: Key Facts and Figures, MoD web page: April.
Why inequality is not so good: a response In Volume 1 Issue 1 of VOX Christian Westerlind Wigstrom argues that the “wealth of the one is the wealth of many”. He does so by distinguishing between pecuniary and non-pecuniary wealth and then by applying a game-theoretical interpretation. His argument also presses the need for ‘equality of opportunity’ as a justification for inequality of wealth. This response intends to show that his tools fail to do the job that he wants them to do, and, furthermore, that they hint towards a completely different distributive pattern. The division of wealth into pecuniary and nonpecuniary categories takes pecuniary to be anything the individual possesses that can be valued in monetary terms, including things like business ideas. Non-pecuniary wealth is anything else that is valuable to the individual, including personality traits and interestingly, human rights. -2-
These types of wealth, Mr Wigstrom argues, can be dealt with by adopting a game-theoretical framework. The crucial realisation in his argument is that games of wealth are non-zero sum. Granted. Is this the theoretical workhorse that is needed for the task at hand? Clearly not. For, what it is that is required of a game to be non-zero sum is simply the trivial fact that the sums of the payoffs are non-zero; these could be negative or they could be positive. Furthermore, not even the latter case is sufficient for showing the positive externalities of wealth, for we must first assume that the payoffs of both players are positive. Unfortunately we are given no reason for believing that this is the general case and we can think of cases where the creation of wealth for player A, such as the selling of a firm’s capital assets, has immediate negative wealth effects on player B, such as the expenses involved with being unemployed and perhaps relocating to find a job. The second argument for the desirability of inequality is based on the premise that it is unavoidable. The idea seems to be that if equality of opportunity is granted, then inequality of wealth will not be a problem; everyone who wants to will be able to achieve the desired level of wealth. In this best of all possible worlds the question of the distribution of wealth becomes moot; it is a question of distributing opportunities equally. Then what determines opportunity? A part of the answer lies with externally provided services, such as primary education and rule of law, things we already have today and that Mr Wigstrom mentions. But surely non-pecuniary wealth such as personality, friends and disposition towards risk also matters? Equally, and perhaps to a greater extent, the same could be said for one’s financial situation; for it is easier to invest one’s own money than to get a loan, and it is easier to get through tertiary education without having to worry about fees and costs. So it would seem that to have equality of opportunity, we would need to have equality of wealth. Since it seems implausible to redistribute non-pecuniary wealth, not only for practical reasons, but also with regards to inalienable human rights, we seem to have reached a position where Mr Wigstrom’s own argument disposes us to consider the case for equality of wealth, at least in an initial state. The astute reader will have noticed a temporal aspect of these arguments. We talked about immediate effects in our wealth games and about equality of wealth in an initial state - the former because we implicitly assumed a simultaneous game and the latter because we assumed opportunity is a fixed endowment provided once in
the life-span. Both of these assumptions are problematic and we will consider them in turn. That a game is simultaneous means that both players act at the same time, these games are more likely to give economically efficient results. Let us consider a game that is sequential, in which, like in a Stackelberg game, one player is the leader and acts first, and the second player follows. The general result in such a game is that the leader will be able to maximise whatever he wants (generally profits) at the expense of the follower. If we take the case of a wealth game, the leader’s choice of wealth might be such that his actions destroy wealth of others; the speculative trader being a good example, or that he destroys the opportunities of others. Also, the follower might be a player acting several years in the future, thus further adding to the indeterminacy of wealth game outcomes. This all amounts to a reason to suspect that inequality might breed inequality, at least if leadership is given from one’s level of pecuniary wealth. The second point with regards to temporality is one concerning opportunities. Reasonably, if opportunities are going to make any real difference then access to them should be provided over the life-span. With regards to wealth, and pecuniary such in particular, this has the consequence of indicating the inadequacy of arguments suggesting that inequality is good, and perhaps also indicating the need for redistributive measures over the lifespan. Thus we have seen that we have compelling reasons, while working within the rationaleconomic framework that Mr Wigstrom proposes, to think that inequality is not so good, and further to expect that some redistribution of wealth is necessary to propel society forward.
Philip Pärnamets is a second year PEP student at the University of York If you are interested in writing for the next issue or would like to comment on the articles please write to vox@clubofpep.org
PEPtalk Last term The Club of PEP held its second, highly successful Spring Ball in aid of charity. Hundreds attended the event and helped raise £1253 for the Stop AIDS Campaign. The money was presented -3-
to the National Director of the Stop AIDS Campaign at a talk and debate on the issue of AIDS in Africa this month. Following the triumph of last year’s Finance Fair (success that we hope will be repeated in Week 3 of the coming Autumn term), preparations for an alternative careers fair are under way. The Club has written to 130 firms from seven different industry sectors: legal, consultancy, teaching, the civil service, PR, think tanks, and NGOs. The Club hopes to ensure that talks on journalism, work in local and national government, and development agencies will form part of a university careers week, to be held in conjunction with the Finance Fair in October.
At the core of this agenda was the notion that, to quote Ronald Reagan, ‘Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem.’ And so the argument ran as follows: if businesses were to be attracted to developing countries bringing with them employment and economic growth, government and costs to business had to be rolled back as far as possible. The best tax policy was a no tax policy. However, taxation is not an unambiguous cost, it is a redistributive mechanism. A simple supply and demand diagram makes this point.
The Club looks forward to holding its annual Summer BBQ later in the term. information For more www.clubofpep.org
A note on development
please
Taxation
visit
in
I feel I should start this piece with something of a confession. This is an article about tax. But please, don’t let that put you off. Specifically, it focuses upon the absolutely critical but perennially overlooked role of taxation policy in the process of development for the world’s poorest countries. At first glance, tax policy seems, at best, an issue of peripheral importance when compared with those of aid, trade and debt relief. Indeed, this approximates the stance taken by the International Financial Institutions (IFIs), such as the IMF and the World Bank. It is the contention of this article, however, that tax reform is at least as important as these other policy areas, and perhaps even more so. Tax reform offers to developing countries a relatively cheap way to raise revenue, redistribute income and reduce their reliance upon the conditionalities attached to loans and grants from the IFIs. Tax reform is therefore a critical step that developing countries must take if they are to secure both economic and human development. Why, though, has the issue of tax reform rarely featured large upon the agenda of IFIs? In keeping with the prevailing political consensus on both sides of the Atlantic, the 1980s and 1990s saw the IMF in particular pushing a neoliberal agenda upon developing countries. The price which developing countries had to pay to secure loans was domestic reorganisation to create an atmosphere more attractive to business and foreign direct investment.
The imposition of a tax on the sale of an item, like a rise in a firm’s costs, shifts the supply curve of the firm up from S1 to S2. However, unlike a rise in costs which would reduce the consumer surplus significantly, the welfare loss here is only that given by the triangle T. Put simply, although the price of the good rises for consumers, they are not necessarily worse off given that the additional government revenue may well be channelled back to them in the form of education or healthcare. The assumption that the best tax policy is a no tax policy has been further questioned by Development Economists such as Sanjaya Lall who make the point that Multinational Companies, when deciding where to invest, look for those countries which offer a healthy and educated workforce as well as viable infrastructure, particularly roads and telecommunications. If developing countries are perpetually encouraged by IFIs to reduce their tax rates, with the result that the government can offer little in the way of public services, the consequence may be an economic environment which is less attractive to international investment as well as, more significantly, a society characterised by lower levels of human development. The stigma attached to taxation in developing countries by the IMF throughout the 1980s and 1990s therefore needs to be overcome.
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Raising additional tax revenue in developing countries is not, however, as simple as pushing up the tax rate. The tax base – those individuals and firms who actually pay tax – tends to be very small within developing countries. The majority of economic activity takes place in the ‘informal’, i.e. non-taxpaying, economy, especially in rural areas. Increasing tax revenues has therefore been achieved by hitting the small section of society who do pay tax with ever higher tax rates, creating significant incentives for tax avoidance. The answer, if revenues are to increase and become more stable, lies in expanding the tax base to bring more individuals into the formal economy. Improved infrastructure can go some way toward achieving this, with road and communication networks allow nationwide markets to develop. Research also suggests that Value Added Taxes on consumption offer a more efficient, less distortionary means of raising revenue. In addition, the cultivation of what some economists have imaginatively termed a ‘taxation culture’, where tax is understood not simply a terrible burden to be avoided, but actually a contribution to the collective good, may be the most important step in widening the tax base. The consequences of a more stable and productive tax regime go beyond the contribution which the tax revenues can make toward economic and human development, they can also enhance democratic forces in two principal ways. First, by taxing their domestic population, developing countries become less reliant upon the conditional loans offered by the IFIs. As a consequence, governments need not implement policies which will satisfy bureaucrats in Washington D.C., but those which are in the best interests of their people. Second, experience suggests that taxation enhances demands of the domestic population for governmental accountability. When the population observe that it is their money being spent, rather than that of IFIs, they become more concerned to see that it is spent wisely. Government need not be the problem therefore, and can be an important part of the solution. The most helpful steps the IFIs could take would be to plant the seeds of financial independence within developing countries by helping them to build up and modernise their tax collection agencies, broaden their tax base by closing loopholes and clamping down on avoidance by the wealthy and by contributing to the creation of a ‘tax culture’ by jettisoning their stale commitment to the notion that a no tax policy is the best tax policy.
Robert Griffiths studies PPE at St. Anne’s College, University of Oxford
Mr benn’s fancy dress As part of the launch of the government’s new White Paper on International Development, Hilary Benn, Secretary of State for International Development, has given a number of speeches in which he has called for the input of the general public in policymaking. In one of the most important of these, delivered to the United Nations in January of this year, he deals with the topic of humanitarian response to conflict and natural disasters. The full transcript can be found at:
http://www.dfid.gov.uk/news/files/Speeches/wp20 06-speeches/humanitarian230106.asp
He concluded this speech by saying “Now, that’s what I think. What do you think?” In general, I think that Mr Benn’s speech is a disingenuous and self-congratulatory effort to obscure the true causes of humanitarian emergencies while attempting to ingratiate himself and his department with as many elements of his audience as possible. The figures he presents at the beginning of his address (an increase in global aid of $50 billion, with $25 billion to go to Africa by 2010), drawn from last year’s G8 summit, are mere conjecture. Although he calls them an achievement, they are, in fact, simply words. All have yet to be delivered and none, given the well-established history of the G8 reneging on previous promises, can be relied upon. Despite this, Mr Benn pretends that the G8’s pronouncements, and by implication his own efforts, represent “a tide of humankind calling for justice”. Such sentiment, he continues, is embodied in the United Nations which apparently needs to be made “stronger and more effective” if we are “to achieve peace and security”. This is, of course, the same United Nations and the same peace and security that Mr Benn and Her Majesty’s Government set aside in order to invade Iraq – a project which has so far cost five-times Britain’s annual humanitarian relief budget (so lauded by Mr Benn in this speech) of $650 million. Undeterred, Mr Benn continues by asking, when are we going to apply the UN Charter to the people of Dafur and others similarly visited by “the scourge of war”? Given the fact that Mr Benn and his government are directly responsible for bringing the scourge of war to a wide range of people whose leaders had failed to comply with the British administration’s wishes (Serbian, Afghani and Iraqi -5-
citizens have had to be maimed and killed because of the foreign policy objectives Mr Benn shares with his Cabinet), it is surely more pertinent to ask, when is the UK going to apply the UN Charter to itself? Will, for example, the recently convened Peacebuilding Commission, which Mr Benn so vaunts in this speech, include a full investigation into the legality of the bombing of Belgrade? Will it inquire as to how, precisely, the Pashtun peasants of the Afgani countryside were responsible for the attacks on Washington and New York of 2001? Will it seek to apply the conventions of war to British private security contractors and to the reveal the truth of how the Iraqi detainees, Radu Nu'ma, Baha Musa and Ah Salim, died in the custody of British forces? Or will it, as Mr Benn goes on to suggest, focus on small-arm proliferation – the primary means of resisting Mr Benn and his government’s vision of a “peaceful” order conducive to their interests – while conveniently overlooking the use of uranium and napalm (deployed by the USAF in Iraq for the first time since Vietnam)? Perhaps then, Mr Benn’s call for the nongovernment sector to work more closely with the military in humanitarian disasters should be seen as a way of, firstly, neutering disquiet from the aid sector (already so subjugated by their reliance on his department for funds) and of, secondly, forming a force-multiplier with which his colleagues in the Ministry of Defence can pursue local hearts and minds. These objectives would certainly seem to feature strongly in American thinking where freedom of information legislation, combined with an acknowledgement of the redundancy of the kind of mythologising favoured by Mr Benn in this speech, has produced a much more transparent presentation of policy. Mr Benn’s representation of non-military humanitarian emergencies is similarly illusory. To propose that national governments are responsible for natural disasters is ridiculous. It ignores a quarter of a century of neo-liberal macro-economic reforms – supported and extended by Mr Benn and his government. Writers from all political persuasions are agreed that these have deliberately and systemically eroded public sector capabilities in order to promote opportunities for foreign direct investment. Aid-recipient governments are thus being obliged to accept ever-greater Western capital penetration in place of state-funded social services, while also being told that they are to blame for failures in responding to crises.
It also fundamentally misunderstands the nature of disasters. There is nothing intrinsically dangerous about earthquakes, big waves, volcanoes and so on. One might experience a mega-quake of Richter 9 or more while walking in open fields, a tsunami from behind mangroves or an eruption away from lava flows and come to no harm. What makes these “natural” phenomena dangerous is the sociology of human habitation – where and how people build their homes. Given that the technology to live safely in all these areas is widely available in rich countries (as the comparatively limited impact of the huge earthquakes in Los Angeles and Kobe testify), Mr Benn’s primary concern should be to ensure that this knowledge is disseminated and implemented throughout poor countries vulnerable to natural hazards – and to take responsibility for his own department’s failure to do so. This would seem like a much more sensible and effective way to proceed than to introduce evergreater levels of new public management into the aid sector through the “common humanitarian action plan” proposed in this speech. Would such an organ really be committed to increasing public accountability or would it merely facilitate greater profit taking for rich countries investing in disasteraffected countries (as Condolezza Rice put it last year, the Asian tsunami represents a “wonderful opportunity” likely to pay “great dividends” to the West)? Here, perhaps, Mr Benn is thinking of his colleagues in the World Bank which has, through its investments in poor countries, returned to the American tax-payer 10 dollars in the form of procurement ties and trading advantages for every dollar s/he has contributed to the Bank since its inception in 1945. Indeed, Mr Benn’s own department has also presided over considerable levels of carpet bagging. Dfid helped to pressure Croatia into the liquidation of state properties at bargain-basement prices in the late 1990s and succeeded in diluting Kosovan attempts to protect labour rights in 2001. Whatever the long-term impact of such an action plan, it should perhaps begin by considering the West’s own response to humanitarian disasters. In this regard, Mr Benn is very ill-advised to conclude his presentation by asking his audience to consider the implications of a major disaster at home in the United States. The idea that an American reaction to such an event should be impoverished, chaotic and partial is, he suggests, “ridiculous” in today’s world of rapid communication and logistical capacity. In reality, through, it is Mr Benn who is ridiculous. His patent ignorance of the social impact of Hurricane Katrina is astonishing and could have been pointed out to him by any Afro-American -6-
inhabitant of New Orleans – had any been invited to his address. Pointing this out to Mr Benn, however, is not so straightforward. Although he concludes his talk with the words ‘now, that’s what I think... [w]hat do you think’, the questions which he supplies are, perhaps unsurprisingly given the frailty of his ethical position, unwaveringly anodyne (http://www.dfid.gov.uk/news/files/wp2006questions2.asp). They all assume that the international system is a benign and philanthropic force which only needs to be reformed in order to foment progressive social change. Nowhere is there scope for respondents to offer a more fundamental analysis of Dfid policy unencumbered by obligatory endorsements and approving premises. There is, in other words, no acknowledgement of the context in which Dfid’s “humanitarianism” operates. Equally, there is no possibility to point out that humanitarianism is a small part of total aid transfers as well as a minute element in overall financial transactions between rich and poor countries and thus an unlikely vehicle through which to pursue social objectives beyond mitigating the immediate and basic results of immiseration.
Dr Tim Jacoby is a Senior Lecturer in Conflict Studies at the Institute for Development Policy and Management at the University of Manchester.
inequality is good for nothing but climate change? In Ludvig Holberg’s play of 1723, ‘Erasmus Montanus’, the eponymous character convinces his mother that she is a stone by using a cunning logic: ‘a stone cannot fly, mother cannot fly, ergo mother is a stone’. ‘Erasmus Montanus’ was a popular parody on the supposedly learned logic and rhetoric that teachers practised to maintain their self-esteem and to earn their students’ respect. The message of this almost three-hundred-year-old comedy is still pertinent. Maybe more than ever. The argument that ‘inequality is good’ (VOX, Feb. 06) is an example of such logic. Whether you agree with the author or not, the argument itself does not escape Holberg’s critique. A response to this argument is not the object of this article, but read through it again and ask yourself how ‘personal wealth’ can be separated from material circumstance (a point the author concedes himself) and it should become obvious that this wealth is created by a much wider range of factors than the article admits, and that structural inequalities
cannot be left out of the equation. The fundamental climate of one-up-manship inherent in this logic perpetuates the kind of competition in social relations that facilities an illusion of infinite growth, which, considering the demands it places on finite natural resources, is absurd. This demonstrates exactly why we are failing to tackle a problem that will have untold consequences for our species and the natural world. The argument is trivial at best (‘we are all different and that is good’) but is in essence quite harmful – it justifies the status quo, which is certainly one of inequality. We need an extraordinary effort by civil society if we are ever to confront the challenges of a changing climate. Therefore we need to start questioning the social relations we have entered into and ask how we can help change the future of our planet for the better. It is difficult to comprehend quite what climate change entails. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted a rise in global temperatures of between 1.4 and 5.8 degrees centigrade in this century (2001 estimate). That doesn’t sound too bad you might think – avoid the cold winters and stay in Britain for the summer holidays… what’s the problem? In 2004 a team of scientists at Reading University reported that a 2.7oC rise in temperatures will cause the Greenland glacier to melt away, leading to dangerous global sea-level rise. The Hadley Centre reports that if temperatures rise by 4 oC tropical forests will be replaced by desert. Regrettably even the 2001 IPCC estimate may prove to be conservative. The problem with such estimates is that it is difficult to see how changes in global temperatures are linked to our lives, and the whole debate surrounding climate change suffers from this. One way to relate to the reality of climate change is the extreme weather we have been observing – a change in global temperature is not going to come as a per year average. It will also manifest itself as extreme weather like floods, droughts and hurricanes. Meteorologists have estimated the odds against the 2003 heatwave in Europe being ‘no more than a hot spell’ as three hundred thousand to one. Thirty thousand people died of hyperthermia that summer. The international scientific community (and, have recently, the Bush administration) acknowledged that man-made global warming is taking place and will change the face of our Earth dramatically within the next century. Some processes (such as soil respiration) are likely to amplify climate change by positive feedback – higher temperatures leading to yet higher -7-
temperatures. We are looking at an environmental catastrophe that might mean the end to civilisation as we know it, indeed James Lovelock, a leading expert on climate change, has said we have already passed the point of no return towards a ‘dead’ planet. The causes of climate change are many. Some are natural fluctuations of green house gasses in the atmosphere. Others, however, are due to our energy-intensive way of life (and let us not forget the material inequalities that exist between societies in this matter). In this way there is a direct link between climate change and the way you live your life; how much water you use in the kettle to make a cup of tea, how many times you board an aircraft each year and how often you use your car. That said, even if energy consumption by all households in Britain was reduced to the bare minimum we would still be emitting too much carbon dioxide to halt the rising temperature. We
are looking at the greatest challenge the human race has ever faced. Are we worried? The information is out there: ask yourself about energy production; about what economic growth means; about melting ice caps, about global dimming; about your lifestyle; about ethics and about humanity. We have to start thinking responsibly and practically and leave ideology aside. We have to work together and start co-operating as one species instead of competing as individuals. The logic of Erasmus Montanus only obscures the problems we are facing. Let us reject that ‘it’s good that we are different, being unequal is being different, ergo inequality is good’. You are equal by virtue of your being; those who tell you otherwise have a hidden agenda. In reality, the generation of wealth by a few individuals too often causes the destruction of our environment.
Jeppe Graugaard is a second year PEP student at the University of York
www.clubofpep.org VOX, The Club of PEP, Derwent College, The University of York, York, YO10 5DD It should be noted that the views expressed in VOX are not necessarily those of the Club or its sponsors but of the authors. This issue of VOX was compiled by Alex Fenton, Nicolas Jones, Frederic Kalinke, Jessica Levy, and Michael Nicolaides. VOX would like to thank Reprotech Studios who sponsored this issue. If you are interested in sponsoring this publication contact vox@clubofpep.org
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