Monday, January 24, 2005

Economy and scenarios, Bush trap.   Philanthropy.   An interesting time when there are so many initiatives on so many issues. Do these health initiatives strategically make sense? http://www.familiesusa.org/site/PageServer?pagename=Health_Action_2005_Conference_Registration&;JServ   Is there an unmet need for frameworks for strategic thinking?   Note the complexity here: is it an attempt to shift fruit to genetically modified varieties, or simply a market domination decision? That eating fruit is on the rise is however a good sign.   Monsanto to Buy Seed Company for $1 Bln January 24, 2005 05:46 PM ET KANSAS CITY, Mo. (Reuters) - Agriculture products company Monsanto Co. on Monday said it will buy Seminis Inc., the world's largest commercial fruit and vegetable seed company, for at least $1 billion from a private equity firm to capitalize on the trend toward healthier eating.    More...   More debt, or more wealth?   American Express Profits Rise 17 Pct January 24, 2005 04:44 PM ET NEW YORK (Reuters) - American Express Co. said on Monday fourth-quarter profits rose 17 percent, driven by increased use of its credit cards and strong travel-related sales.    More...   Nations Ranked as Protectors of the Environment By FELICITY BARRINGER. That Davos is doing this means pressure on policy makers in the US.   http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/24/science/24enviro.html?oref=login&;th     WASHINGTON, Jan. 23 - Countries from Northern and Central Europe and South America dominated the top spots in the 2005 index of environmental sustainability, which ranks nations on their success at such tasks as maintaining or improving air and water quality, maximizing biodiversity and cooperating with other countries on environmental problems.   Finland, Norway and Uruguay held the top three spots in the ranking, prepared by researchers at Yale and Columbia Universities. The United States ranked 45th of the 146 countries studied, behind such countries as Japan, Botswana and the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, and most of Western Europe.   The lowest-ranking country was North Korea. Among those near the bottom were Haiti, Taiwan, Iraq and Kuwait.   The index is the second produced in collaboration with the World Economic Forum, which meets in Davos, Switzerland, this week. The first complete index, in 2002, produced outrage and soul-searching in lower-ranking countries like Belgium and South Korea, said Daniel C. Esty, the director of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy and an author of the report.   The report is based on 75 measures, including the rate at which children die from respiratory diseases, fertility rates, water quality, overfishing, emission of heat-trapping gases and the export of sodium dioxide, a crucial component of acid rain.   In its opening chapter, the Environmental Sustainability Index report said: "Although imperfect, the E.S.I. helps to fill a long-existing gap in environmental performance evaluation. It offers a small step toward a more vigorous and quantitative approach to environmental decision making."   The report also cited a statistically significant correlation between high-ranking countries and countries with open political systems and effective governments.   The report's flaws stem largely from inadequate data, Mr. Esty said, adding that the ranking system is at best approximate, because some individual scores had to be imputed in many cases. But he said that data might improve in coming years.   He also said a system that rated Russia, whose populated western regions have undergone extraordinary environmental degradation, as having greater environmental sustainability than the United States had inherent weaknesses.   At 33, Russia's ranking, Mr. Esty said, is in large part a consequence of the country's vast size. While it "has terrible pollution problems" in the western industrial heartland, he said, its millions of unsettled or sparsely settled acres of Asian taiga mean "it has vast, untrammeled resources and more clean water than anywhere in the world." So, he added, "on average, Russia ends up looking better than it does to someone who lives in western Russia."   Because such differences make many countries inherently difficult to compare, he said, this report also analyzed seven clusters of similar countries; in this analysis, the United States ranked slightly below the halfway point among 24 members of the Organization of American States.   But further on scenarios of development, an interesting scenario report from the "National Intelligence Council". This is a CIA effort, and amazingly public. I was a participant in the creation of a previous set, in about 1998, called futures 2015.  I remember at the meeting, listening to a blue jacket tan pants rep tie fellow going on about the need to "take out the terrorists", and I finally took the floor and said "You can either be an architect or a fireman." What is striking is the tiny place in this new set, but a place, for attitudes: in this case, tradtionals vs post modernism as a world wide factor in future possibilities.   At http://www.ifs.du.edu/ifs.aspx   The scenarios are well developed and here is the table of contents for them. At http://www.futurebrief.com/project2020.pdf   The Contradictions of Globalization An Expanding and Integrating Global Economy The Technology Revolution Lingering Social Inequalities Fictional Scenario: Davos World Rising Powers: The Changing Geopolitical Landscape Rising Asia Other Rising States? The “Aging” Powers Growing Demands for Energy US Unipolarity—How Long Can It Last? Fictional Scenario: Pax Americana New Challenges to Governance Halting Progress on Democratization Identity Politics Fictional Scenario: A New Caliphate Pervasive Insecurity Transmuting International Terrorism Intensifying Internal Conflicts Rising Powers: Tinder for Conflict? The WMD Factor Fictional Scenario: Cycle of Fear   Note that the alternatives are negative,  or market globalization. There is no other alternative considered. I recommend some study of this document.   Some thoughts on Bush and the Inaugural I wrote over the weekend.   Bush is a small man with a vision of being a Churchill or a Lincoln. But he fails to note that those strong leaders led on a crucial issue of historical significance and recognized as such by their contemporaries. Bush picks an issue with a schoolboy understanding, like a baseball team or oil company to invert in. A small staff left our from Reagan and Bush I provided him with military options, and 9/11, a crucial moment requiring great wisdom for a response, got his self-righteous bully judgment that we were at war rather than in the midst of a great world wide restlessness over deeper issues. The US. is at risk of letting itself get defined in world perception as a bully with the goal of being an arm of the tragically situated Israel, thus letting us be defined very narrowly  rather than in the broad and quiet ways appropriate to great power just at the moment in history we needed to show our capacity for rich and complex understanding and Subtly of nuanced action that fits the "reality party:  The one justification for Bush's approach is important to consider:  that governance has become increasingly difficult in a crowded technical age, and a simple posture is the only way to hold the country and the world together. Even if this is the intent, the way Bush is going about it is not simple, but divisive, throughout the world and within US national politics.   We are all in this trap. He is used by his own character, his party, his supporters, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, the fundamentalists, and there seeking short term financed gain in difficult economic times. And we are also abused by these intersections of ideology, posturing, manipulators and interests that are woven together by expediency in his Presidency.  His cookie cutter "I've read Churchill," leadership, merged with the power and wealth of the county, is carrying us on a powerful stream unleashed by his rather impoverished decisions, amidst an absence of a more realistic assessment, that has eaten away American "soft capital'; our perceived goodness and idealisms. The very deep significance for all of as in the word "freedom" is almost lost in the avalanche of its perverted use for private property rather than for individuals to be free from tyranny and fear at home so they can reason and have faith in dialog, .   Freedom for property and freedom for people are not the same. Bush is forcing them farther apart in his claim to be ready to fight one and all in his quest for "freedom and democracy" which is Bush double speak for a managed media market corporatist world of his kind of "globalization."   Analysis here is not made easy by the prevailing set of ideas that demand assent to the conclusion that under current trends everyone is doing better, both in the US and everywhere else, economically and politically. Part of the psychic force that supports this policy generating conclusion is that it is so hard to imagine a plausible alternative world politics. The 20th. century was filed with attempts to Sober the problem of wealth, power, status and governance. The left and right totalitarian more went were powerful alternator, and both Sides attracted Various kinds of idealism, but they led to terrible wars. Our leaders took us there and current ^ leaders are not looking the lessons learned. "Don't be an appeaser" is the standard the away. the problems of nations, markets, ambitions and fears are not explored. Parallels with Mussolini seem unexplored for lessons. The same forces that dominated the 20th Century and created its wars are still the same forces that are alive and well and needing very enlightened management, if we are of prevent yet another. Some people are already calling for a new world war but I think none are who prefer earth now. Those who prefer war or seek its energy are dead to other dimensions of human aliveness. (see Podhoretz In Commentary http://www.commentarymagazine.com/special/A11902025_1.html ) Posted by douglass carmichael 3:06:51 PM    comment []