Protected: Chapter 16. Governance: Tackling Unanticipated Consequences
Chapter Summary
People in small preagricultural hunter-gatherer groups were governed by decisions of elders or by group consensus, with disputes settled by devices ranging from gift exchange or dissidents simply moving elsewhere to the killing of disruptive members of society. But the shift from small groups to gigantic groups and occupation of the entire planet has required the creation of much more complex systems of governance. Moving away or punishing unruly individuals won’t solve problems such as climate disruption and novel pandemics. Indeed, today’s global problems cannot be solved by the actions of a single nation.
International trade is not much greater in volume relative to the scale of economies than it was a century ago, but the speed of movement of both information and goods is so much more rapid that the world’s economy is becoming highly integrated, moving toward jobs, labor, and resources being treated as a common pool, often to the disadvantage of the less powerful. Global trade has allowed the human population to reach an unprecedented size, since few countries have enough resources to fuel their population growth without inputs from elsewhere. But, although the efficiency of global integration has benefited many, it has often exacerbated problems for the world’s poor people. The poorest nations, for example, are often said to do best by specializing at extracting and exporting natural resources or manufacturing certain mass-produced goods (e.g., sneakers). This can have highly negative environmental consequences borne largely by poor populations locally; in essence, rich countries have outsourced their pollution. While this has improved the standard of living for many of the poor, it has also widened the rich-poor gap, and the rich nations have benefited more.
By increasing the overall scale of human activities, Homo sapiens has globalized many environmental problems. Burning gasoline in American cars and coal in Chinese power plants can cause climate disruption that hurts people the world over. A significant proportion of the previously destitute have improved their lot sufficiently to form a growing group called the “new consumers,” who are adding to humanity’s aggregate problems of overconsumption and environmental degradation.
Globalization and the increasing scale of both environmental problems and the economy have presented serious problems of governance. In the United States, for example, the government has periodically been heavily responsive to monied and other potent special interest groups that have campaigned hard to maintain temporarily profitable “business-as-usual” trends rather than make the changes necessary to cope with civilization’s predicament. In the past, there have been countermovements to partially rein in such interests, but the latter’s influence has increased with corporate-owned mass media and the resultant need of politicians for vast sums of money to buy TV and radio time to compete in elections. One result is that the fossil fuel industries for decades have blocked any progress on limiting greenhouse gas emissions. An obvious cure for this would be for the government to fund elections and eliminate flows of corporate and private money into the process, but such a change is strongly opposed by the interests it would aim to control. Still, if even a relatively small portion of the population could be mobilized into an “issue public”—a critical mass of people who care deeply and are willing to donate effort and money—such a change might be made.
A number of policy changes could help remove some of the barriers to solutions. Among these are stopping gerrymandering; increasing disclosure of the activities of both Congress and administrative agencies; delegating congressional authority in order to partially isolate dealing with environmental issues from immediate reelection concerns; increasing funding of science and education; and increasing independence of federal agencies such as the EPA. Perhaps even more important would be examining corporations’ status as legal fictions and finding ways to bring their behavior under tighter control of citizens and communities.
Having a better ability both to predict future behavior of the global system and to alter it in beneficial ways is an important responsibility of governments. In the U.S. government, there is very little foresight capability. It is common practice in economic activities to discount the future, as, for example, in establishing interest rates. The general view is that a dollar promised in a year is less valuable than one promised tomorrow—after all, you might not live to spend the one next year. Deciding how much less valuable it is, however, can involve difficult calculations. Similar problems are encountered when one tries to determine how much to spend today to avoid costs that will be incurred by future generations—how much, say, to limit greenhouse gas emissions now to make climate change less disruptive in the future. That depends on estimating many uncertain factors, such as how large future damages are likely to be, and how wealthy (able to pay to repair or prevent the damage) future society is likely to be.
There have been recent attempts to improve international foresight capability in the face of global challenges, in particular through the activities of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. The latter painted a rather dismal picture of the state of humanity’s life-support systems, but it did not generate the wide public discussion it deserved.
The need for strengthened international cooperation on issues related to the environment, poverty, and equity has never been clearer. The United Nations does much good in the world, but its capabilities for strengthening international agreements, reducing the likelihood of wars over resources, and coping with potential catastrophic climate disruptions seldom go beyond friendly persuasion. The UN Millennium Development Goals to ameliorate poverty and improve environmental conditions around the world are attainable in theory, but nations have not gotten behind them financially.
There has been some progress in such improvements as developing more sustainable agricultural practices and more fuel-efficient vehicles. Important as such changes are, they are but drops in the bucket relative to what is needed.
Scientists now know a great deal about environmental processes, though of course there’s still much that can be learned. But far less is known about the social and political behaviors that are driving us toward ruin and, most important, how they can be effectively changed. We have suggested launching a Millennium Assessment of Human Behavior (MAHB) to expose the global society to the perils it faces from current trends and behaviors and to generate a discussion that might lead to the required political and social reforms for achieving sustainability. We share the view of many scientists and others that Homo sapiens must move quickly to deal with the classic problem of the limits to growth, made worse by the issues of the limits to inequity. Humanity has completely changed the globe, now it must see if it can change its mind.
Key Terms
- Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ)
- Discount rates
- Environmental justice
- Export dumping
- Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
- Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA)
- Gerrymandering
- Globalization
- International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
- International Court of Justice (World Court)
- International Monetary Fund (IMF)
- Issue public
- Kyoto Protocol
- Microloans
- Millennium Assessment of Human Behavior (MAHB)
- Millennium Development Goals
- Precautionary principle
- Social discount rate
- Transnational corporations
- United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
- United Nations Security Council
- World Trade Organization (WTO)
Discussion Questions
- What is globalization, and what are its major dimensions?
- Discuss what makes us global citizens whether we like it or not.
- How much regulation of markets is sensible or ethical?
- Describe what is meant by a “discount rate” as it applies to thinking about actions we should take now with respect to the environment.
Further Study
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