November 20, 2012
Amitav Ghosh: Products of Folly
An interview with Emily Mkrtichian:
Guernica: In a recent speech for the European Cultural Foundation, you addressed migration and climate change as factors contributing to the “crisis” and “catastrophe” our earth is now facing. You also said, “Nationalism is indeed one of the most pernicious threads in this helix of disaster.” How does nationalism contribute to our current situation? Is this the same patriotism that Captain Mukheriji spit in the face of?
Amitav Ghosh: Yes, I think it is in many ways a perfect example of that. If you take two examples, the US and Australia, both have made perfectly clear that they will make no move on climate change. At all costs they want to preserve their own standard of living if it be at the expense of destroying the whole world. It is nationalism carried to its greatest and most absurd extreme. Essentially what we are seeing is an absolute refusal to address any of the issues, to reach any kind of compromise geared toward the world community and absolute insistence on maintaining their own standards of living which are unbelievably wasteful and which have really essentially created the problem in the first place.
Guernica: Right. We know that if everybody in in the world were to live by the same environmental standards as people in the United States or Australia, it would be completely unsustainable. You mentioned in your speech that collective ideals and sacrifice for the greater good are values that have really disappeared from the US or Australia in that sense.
Amitav Ghosh: The US and Australia are good examples—what happened was that European populations arrived in continents that were relatively underpopulated and had enormous resources. Basically, they created these extremely wealthy, but also extremely spend-thrift civilizations that are just big predators; just sucking everything up. There has been incredible resource extraction, to a point where now their own ecosystems are collapsing. Most of all in the US, where the aquifers have been drained and they are no longer able to sustain agriculture. It all grew out of this idea that everyone should pursue their own profit at all costs and no value is attached to the common good. The common good is a principle that literally doesn’t exist in the US discourse anymore.
Posted by Robin Varghese at 02:29 PM | Permalink
Comments
"If you take two examples, the US and Australia, both have made perfectly clear that they will make no move on climate change. At all costs they want to preserve their own standard of living if it be at the expense of destroying the whole world."
This statement is completely spurious in regard to Australia. Australia, much like the rest of the world, has taken its time to get moving on climate change and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Ghosh is wrong when he argues that Australia "will make no move on climate change", there is currently, a carbon pricing regime in Australia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_pricing_in_Australia
The Australian carbon pricing regime has been held up as a model to follow in many other countries that are still considering whether they 'will move on climate change'. Australia has had 23 years of continual economic growth and energy consumption usually goes hand in hand. This year for the first time in recent history energy consumption fell by 3%.
In comparison to Australia, Ghosh also says "I think that the EU, and I have said this for a long time, really shows us a different model, a different possibility in which you do consider the common good".
Australia currently prices carbon at 2 and a half times the rate of the European Union. The carbon pricing regimes of the EU and Australia will in fact link up in a few years time.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-08-28/combet-announcement-on-carbon-floor-price/4228260
Posted by: Troy | Nov 20, 2012 7:05:18 PM
@Troy, Ghosh cannot be taken seriously because:
He confidently asserts that "underpopulation" and "natural resources" account for US prosperity. He seems unaware (or uninterested) in a large body of evidence that finds no relation (some people even claim that natural resources are a "curse" but that is going too far in my view).
My advice to Ghosh: Get an education.
Posted by: Sundar | Nov 22, 2012 10:46:38 AM
And I nearly fell out of my chair when I saw this:
"Most of all in the US, where the aquifers have been drained and they are no longer able to sustain agriculture. It all grew out of this idea that everyone should pursue their own profit at all costs and no value is attached to the common good. The common good is a principle that literally doesn’t exist in the US discourse anymore."
The US no longer able to sustain agriculture?
I had to reread to see if I missed some context. Has he been misquoted? Is Ghosh parodying the environmentalist left? Please tell me I have misunderstood him.
Posted by: Sundar | Nov 22, 2012 10:54:34 AM
Sundar, I have read some of his writings before but I found his argument very sloppy on this occasion and a little sensationalist. His post-colonial driven thesis that settler societies such as the US and Oz are infinitely more selfish when tackling global environmental problems simply doesn't hold enough weight. I take on board his assertion that nationalism promotes selfishness (or more accurately a zero-sum mindset) when tackling communal problems but he seems to invent the facts (Australia has made no move on climate change) to qualify his overall thesis.
With regard to people of the US and Australia having an "absolute insistence on maintaining their own standards of living which are unbelievably wasteful and which have really essentially created the problem in the first place", Ghosh misses the fundamental problem. I'm not arguing against the US in particular being extremely wasteful, and the industrialized nations have caused much of the problem, but the current and future problems are going to predominantly come from the burgeoning middle class in China and the Sub-continent. In all recent global climate change forums, the key argument from Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC economies), which represents almost half of the globes population, is why shouldn't they be able to industrialize like the West in order to support a large middle class. Whether western states begin to reverse wasteful ways of living will probably be moot, when 3 billion people in rising economies aspire to middle class standards of living.
Posted by: Troy | Nov 22, 2012 6:56:21 PM
If the rising classes in Brazil, Russia, India, and China are to be persuaded toward more refined and sustainable notions of middle-class values then the U.S. and Australia will need to be the negative example rather than the model to aspire to. Best to see the point of the message here before one attacks its fuzzier details. Good luck to any of you who think you can parse the full and absolute truth in sound bites and good luck persuading half the globe toward vital but unpopular ideological reforms without relying on broad sweeping statements.
Posted by: Christopher Holvenstot | Nov 25, 2012 7:02:13 AM
@Holvenstot: The proper response to climate change (and other environmental problems) is not clear. They must be debated openly.
What we don't need are "ideological reforms" justified by wild scare stories.
Its almost as if environmental problems are merely an excuse to foist your favorite "ideological reforms"....
Posted by: Sundar | Nov 25, 2012 10:03:23 AM
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