The Cooperative Society Newsletter January 2023, Issue 39 by E.G. Nadeau, Ph.D.
I recently took a two-week trip to Tunisia and Algeria. Here are my observations on the climate situations in the two countries, which are neighbors in North Africa along the Mediterranean Sea.
Despite its fall back into authoritarianism, Tunisia appears to be making a genuine effort to reduce its carbon emissions. There are solar panels spread throughout the country. The government is planning an additional 1.7 GW of solar construction projects in the next three years.
Tunisia is famous for its olive trees and date palms that are ubiquitous in the northeast and northern regions of the country. These plantations are not only important to the country’s economy but also to its sequestration of carbon.
In October 2021, the country increased its target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 41% by 2030 compared with 2010.
Date palms in Tunisia
A contrast in Algeria
Algeria, on the other hand, is on track to have a worse carbon emission record in 2030 than it did in 2015. Its 2015 climate plan sets a low goal of 27% of electricity generated from renewable sources by 2030, but its climate actions indicate that its performance will be far worse than that.
Algeria increased its oil and gas production during the Russian war on Ukraine in 2022, and accelerated its exploration for domestic gas and oil. In other words, Algeria is going backward rather than forward in its reduction of climate emissions.
These two countries account for a very small part of the world’s carbon emissions. But small percentages add up, especially in countries such as Algeria that are flaunting their disregard for the world’s clean energy initiatives.
A questionable sharing of energy
Algeria is far from alone in this category. Take Morocco, it’s neighbor to the west as another example. Much is being made of an agreement between Morocco and the United Kingdom in which electricity from solar and wind sources – enough to meet 8% of the UK’s electricity needs – is planned to be sent by undersea cable to the UK.
However, one doesn’t hear much about the Nigeria-Morocco gas pipeline project in which Morocco is planning to participate with Nigeria and a number of other West African countries to pipe large quantities of natural gas within the region. If my calculations are correct (and they may not be), the gas project would transport about twelve times as much energy per year as the electricity project. So much for transitioning to clean energy.
Dozens of countries aren’t taking the reduction of carbon emissions seriously, or worse, like Algeria, are actually undercutting the world’s carbon emission goals.
In the 2015 Paris Agreement, the UN helped countries negotiate a procedure to create “nationally determined contributions” (NDCs) in which each country would develop its own climate goals and modify them over the years. The big problem with this approach is that there are no required targets for country-level goals, and some are abusing the process by setting weak goals or by not making an effort to carry out their goals.
A Berber cave house in Tunisia, probably a few hundred years old. The Berbers used the insulation of the caves to stay warm in winter and cool in the summer.
Dealing with scofflaws
There are three ways the world community can deal with these scofflaws: apply economic sanctions, provide incentives, or both.
For example, the G20 countries are imposing a $60 per barrel limit on the price of Russian oil in the international market. The goal is to limit Russia’s revenue from oil sales.
Similar international sanctions could be put on countries, like Algeria, whose energy policies and actions are increasing climate change problems rather than reducing them.
Incentives can also be a powerful means for improving energy performance. There is currently a project in South Africa intended to wean the country off coal and carry out a major shift to renewable energy. The United States and European countries are helping to finance this project.
Whether by economic sanctions, incentives, or both, the NDCs need to be backed up by enforcement and/or economic and technical assistance.
What could happen if we let the current pattern of hollow promises or outright disregard of needed climate actions continue? We won’t meet our goal – agreed to through the United Nations – of keeping the world’s temperature below 1.5°C compared to preindustrial levels, and we will reap the consequences in terms of human-made environmental catastrophe.
The Cooperative Society Newsletter July 2022, Issue 36 by E.G. Nadeau, Ph.D.
Let’s start with a subtle series of quotes from William Barr referenced in a recent New Yorker article:
Bill Barr did not think much of Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. According to his videotaped testimony before the House select committee investigating how those lies resulted in the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, Trump’s former Attorney General told Trump this to his face. Among his choice words about various claims by the Trump legal team: “bullshit,” “completely bullshit,” “absolute rubbish,” “idiotic,” “bogus,” “stupid,” “crazy,” “crazy stuff,” “complete nonsense,” and “a great, great disservice to the country.” What’s more, Barr added, if Trump actually believed the garbage he was spewing about the election, then he had become dangerously “detached from reality.”
The hearings currently being conducted by the “Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol” may rival, or even exceed, the impact on the future of American democracy of the 1973 Senate Watergate Hearings. While the 1973 hearings played a pivotal role in bringing about President Nixon’s resignation by exposing his involvement in the Watergate break-in, the current hearings may reduce the likelihood of future coups and preserve democratic electoral processes in the United States for decades to come.
Some have questioned the political balance on the committee between Democrats and Republicans (seven of the former and two of the latter). However, the facts that the committee co-chair is Liz Cheney, a conservative Republican congresswoman from Wyoming, and that in the seven committee hearings held to-date, the majority of the testimony has been by Republicans with close links to the Trump administration, has dispelled some observers’ concerns about committee bias.
It’s too early to tell what impact these hearings will have on the perception of Trump’s involvement in the January 6 insurrection, or of his continuing “Stop the Steal” campaign of election lies. But, since the hearings began, a recent poll has shown a weakening in support for Trump as a 2024 presidential candidate.
So, kudos to the bipartisan January 6 committee! Congratulations have to be qualified, however, because we have yet to see the conclusions and recommendations of the committee’s final report, scheduled to be completed before the November midterm elections. Also, if the Democrats lose control of the House, the new Republican majority is likely to immediately terminate the committee and reject its recommendations. Similarly, if the Republicans win control of the Senate, any bills resulting from the committee’s work would hit a dead end there.
Despite these negative scenarios, the committee’s courageous work on behalf of American democracy will never be forgotten.
But, uh-oh, the threat to our democracy is not over yet
Not by a long shot.
Regardless of the persuasive evidence that the committee amasses and reports regarding the activities surrounding the January 6 coup attempt, that does that not mean that it will preclude future such attempts to steal elections in the United States. The unprecedented attempt to undermine the 2020 presidential election has unfortunately set the stage for more of the same in future elections.
A number of efforts are underway by Trump-assisted and inspired national, state, and local Republican officials and candidates and by the current conservative Supreme Court to disenfranchise voters in future elections. Four main strategies are being pursued:
Gerrymandering is ameans to change the boundaries of voting districts to unfairly benefit one party over the other. In recent years this sleazy technique has been used far more by Republicans than by Democrats. And, unfortunately, the Supreme Court has effectively sanctioned this practice, even in a case that was clearly racially motivated.
Voter suppression is an umbrella term covering dozens of electoral rules that make it more difficult for some groups of citizens to vote than others. A number of Republican-controlled state legislatures have enacted such rules in recent months. For example, requiring photo IDs tends to discourage voting by the elderly end the poor, who are less likely to have a drivers’ license than the rest of the adult population. Another example is reducing the number of polling places, which makes it more difficult for people without their own transportation to get to the polls. And on and on.
Legitimating the “independent state legislature” doctrine is an even more extreme tactic for disenfranchising voters. It involves a sketchy interpretation of the Constitution that argues that state legislatures should have the final say in approving or disapproving a set of electoral results. With the support of this doctrine by an extreme Supreme Court, a state legislature could arbitrarily decide that a set of election results were invalid, and substitute its own “victorious” candidate or slate of candidates, ignoring the will of the voters. A recent article in The Economist makes the case that the adoption of this anti-democratic doctrine is not so far-fetched given the current political orientation of some Republican-dominated state legislatures and the wacko majority on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Electing governors and secretaries of state who agree to reject “unfavorable” election results is an equally insidious means to steal elections. Trump and his loyalists attempted this type of approach in the 2020 presidential election, but were thwarted by ethical Republican officials at the state level. However, there is a concerted effort underway to elect secretaries of state and governors in 2022 who would be willing to overturn the results of free and fair elections by refusing to ratify them, and substituting slates of “fake” electors.
The need for future federal legislation that would preclude stealing presidential and other elections
Such legislation may be hard to come by in the near future, due to opposition by many currently serving Republican members of Congress.
How do we address this democracy-threatening problem?
A key first step would be a national mobilization of voters to preserve American democracy by electing officials at all levels who oppose the types of shenanigans outlined above.
After voting the rascals out and their ethical replacements of both parties in, pass federal legislation that guarantees voter rights and cannot be interpreted to allow for manipulation of vote counts at the local, state, or federal levels. Note that there is a bipartisan committee in the Senate that is planning to introduce legislation to preclude the kind of electoral shenanigans attempted by Trump and his loyalists in the 2020 presidential election and being planned for 2024.
As extreme rightwing members of the current Supreme Court retire, select future members who clearly and explicitly oppose the independent state-legislature doctrine and other ideologically based positions that would undercut free and fair elections in the United States. Part of this transition could be based on the passage of federal legislation that limits the tenure of Supreme Court justices to fixed terms, for example 10 years.
Conclusion
In its public hearings, the January 6 Committee is doing an excellent job of exposing in gripping detail the big lies pushed by Trump and his loyalists about a stolen presidential election and the many illegal actions that they and others have taken to launch a coup to install him as an illegitimate president.
However, the committee’s job, and indeed the job of the American people, of shoring up our democracy and ensuring that we will be safe from future such insurrection attempts is still in its early stages.
This article has outlined some of the threats to American democracy that are still very much unresolved. It has also presented key steps that we can take to counter these threats.
The Cooperative Society Newsletter March 2022, Issue 34 by E.G. Nadeau, Ph.D.
“The level of democracy enjoyed by the average global citizen in 2021 is down to 1989 levels. The last 30 years of democratic advances are now eradicated. Dictatorships are on the rise and harbor 70% of the . . . world population . . . .” Democracy Report 2022
Not exactly uplifting news for those of us who value “government of the people, by the people and for the people.” Other recent analyses have drawn similar conclusions about the erosion of democracy over the last decade or more.
And then along came Putin the Terrible‘s[1] invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. In addition to the deaths, destruction, suffering, and dislocation inflicted on Ukrainians by Russia’s ”special military operation,” there have been three major consequences not intended by Putin: strong, effective resistance by the Ukrainian government and its people to the invasion; an outpouring of support for Ukraine by democratic countries around the world; and a level of political, economic, and military cooperation among them that has not been seen since the end of World War II.
Thus, despite the gradual decline in democratic institutions in recent decades and the continuing tragedy of the war in Ukraine, the tone of this newsletter is optimistic about the future of democracy in the world. I will start out by reviewing the recent, mostly negative, trends related to democracy, then analyze the early reactions of many democratic countries to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and conclude by projecting a renewal of democratic growth in the years ahead.
Changes in Democracy Since World War II
Each year the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and Freedom House and other organizations publish reports on the current state of democracy in the world. For the past 16 years the EIU’s Democracy Index has been on a downward trend. The Freedom House index has shown a similar negative pattern for 17 years. That is, the countries of the world have become less democratic and more authoritarian during most of the 21st century to date.
Freedom in the World. The note in the lower-left corner reads: Note: Countries whose scores were unchanged are not included in this comparison. Freedom in the World assesses 195 countries and 15 territories.
There was a very different pattern that began during World War II, according to the Center for Systemic Peace. The world experienced an unprecedented flowering of democracy that continued through the remainder of the 20th century. According to the Center, the approximate number of democratic countries increased from 10 during World War II in the early 1940s to 80 in 2000, and autocratic rule declined from a peak of about 90 countries in the late 1970s to 30 in 2000.
What accounts for the rapid rise, then gradual decline of democracy since World War II? This is a complicated question. Following are some possible answers.
Much of the proliferation of new democracies after World War II resulted from the end of colonialism in Asia, Africa, and on islands in Oceania and the Caribbean from the late 1940s through the 1970s, and from the break-up of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia around 1990. As we have found out, however, one cannot just wave a magic wand and create a democracy.
In 1945, there were 74 sovereign states in the world. Today, there are 193 member states in the United Nations, representing almost every country in the world. That is approaching an almost three-fold increase in less than 80 years.
Many of the newly minted (or liberated) countries struggled to become democratically run – even if they were formed as nominal democracies. Major problems included:
The tendency of elected leaders to seek lifetime tenures rather than submit to periodic, fairly conducted elections
Traditional ethnic rivalries that degenerated into civil wars rather than developing into functioning democracies
The self-interested interference of former colonizers or other outsiders that undercut democracy
Military coups
There are a different, but overlapping, set of factors that have undercut long-established democracies in the early 21st century:
Self-serving politicians and political parties, often financed by wealthy individuals and corporations, that weakened the role of other parties in order to secure and maintain political control
Military coups
Inequality that undercuts balanced political participation
Political apathy
White supremacy
Taken together, these diverse factors have reduced the level of democracy around the world.
The reaction of democratic countries to Putin’s war The United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, NATO, the United Nations, and other democratic countries and institutions have denounced Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. They also quickly supported a range of economic sanctions on Russia and the provision of arms and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine, including support for refugees.
The current actions of democratic countries around the world echo their response to the German, Italian, and Japanese invasions of their neighbors in World War II. Democracy in the world was up against the wall in the early 1940s, but the allies prevailed in Europe, Asia, and Africa.
At the time, Russia was a key, but uneasy, part of this anti-fascist coalition. As was borne out in the following decades, Russia had a very different, long-term goal from its democratic allies – creation of an authoritarian Soviet empire rather than preservation and expansion of democracy.
Now, Russia is the autocratic aggressor against its democratic neighbor, Ukraine. And a world democratic alliance has rapidly formed to counter this aggression.
A resurgence of democracy, an unintended consequence of Putin’s war As Jennifer Rubin put it in a recent Washington Post opinion piece: “A renaissance of bipartisan, pro-democracy sentiment may be one of the many startling consequences of Russia’s invasion.”
As this newsletter is distributed in late March 2022, there is no way of knowing yet what the short- or long-term effects of Russia‘s invasion of Ukraine will be. Nor is it clear whether or not the heightened level of cooperation among democratic countries of the world will continue after the war is over. Another uncertainty is whether the current democratic upsurge will translate into transitions within countries that make them more democratic.
For example, will the current bipartisan support of Ukraine in the United States create a broader conciliatory relationship between the two political parties? Will support of Ukraine reduce the proliferation of some of the crazy conspiracy theories about the outcome of the last presidential election and set the stage for free and fair elections in 2022 and 2024?
In Hungary, will support of Ukraine lead to the electoral defeat of Prime Minister Victor Orban, who has turned the country into an oppressive, “illiberal democracy” during the past decade? Will President Erdogan of Turkey or Prime Minister Modi of India curb their autocratic tendencies in the face of popular support for democratic reforms? What impact will support of Ukraine have, If any, on China’s international relationships?
In sum, will there be a carryover from the heroic actions of millions of Ukrainians, and the support for these actions by hundreds of millions of people around the world and by the countries in which they live?
We don’t know the answer to these questions yet. But I’m betting on future reports from the Economist Intelligence Unit, Freedom House, and other analysts, showing increases in democracy around the world rather than the gradual decreases we have seen in recent years.
An edited version of this article first appeared in The Capital Times, a weekly newspaper published in Madison, Wisconsin, on Saturday, March 26, 2022.
[1] There are a number of parallels between Ivan the Terrible, the brutal tsar who ruled Russia in the mid-1500s, and Vladimir Putin. For example, “Ivan’s reign was characterised by Russia’s transformation from a medieval state to an empire … but at an immense cost to its people and its broader, long-term economy.”
Note: The Cooperative Society Project has been following trends in democracy since we began in 2015. You can read more in the second edition of The Cooperative Society – and in several articles. All can be accessed at our website.
The Cooperative Society Newsletter January 2022, Issue 33 by E.G. Nadeau, Ph.D.
I had planned to write about the resurrection of the Build Back Better legislation in the United States Congress, but as of this writing, it is stalled.
Instead, the big news I’d like to reflect on is what appears to be a plateauing of worldwide Covid cases, and significant declines in some countries. South Africa, where the Omicron variant originated, has one-sixth the number of cases that it had a month ago. The United Kingdom, the first European country hit hard by Omicron, has experienced an almost 50% decline in weekly cases since its peak level. The United States has begun a downward trend in just the past week.
New cases and deaths. Graphic from The New York Times.
Thus, it’s time to look back at the world’s almost two-year ordeal (so far) with the pandemic and to prepare for what comes next.
This is a fitting Cooperative Society topic because, if we’re going to shape a better world, we have to learn from the lessons of catastrophic events like the worldwide spread of the coronavirus and do a much better job when the next killer virus or other worldwide disaster comes along.
The five lessons and three predictions:
Lesson 1. Avoid complacency about potential future disasters
In many ways, international health organizations, governments, pharmaceutical companies, and the scientific community got caught with their pants down when Covid emerged in China in December 2019. There had been a lot of discussion in the early 2000s about creating a quick response system to address new viruses and other major international health threats. However, when Covid arrived, the world’s response capabilities were woefully inadequate and had to be cobbled together anew.
The lesson? After more than 5.5 million global Covid deaths and counting, let’s get serious this time. We need to create and maintain a worldwide readiness system.
Lesson 2. Act quickly and cooperatively when disaster strikes
This lesson builds directly on the previous one. It’s not enough to have a system in place to deal with potential worldwide health and other disasters. The system needs to be activated quickly, effectively, and universally. China dawdled, mostly in secrecy, when the country’s leaders became aware of the seriousness of a new virus that first emerged in Wuhan in mid-December 2019. China’s leaders were slow to warn the rest of the world about the potential threat of a pandemic. And when they did come clean, many of the world’s political leaders minimized the threat and/or were slow to act. For example, the infamous comment by then-President Trump on January 22, 2020: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. It’s going to be just fine.”
Lesson 3. Denial is the hobgoblin of little minds
Speaking of Trump, the United States, under his lack of leadership, became the world’s bastion of incompetence in limiting the spread of coronavirus cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in 2020. His denial mentality continued even after his presidency ended, carried on by other Republican leaders and followers. As a result, in January 2022, the U.S. still has the lowest vaccination rate among developed countries and the highest number of Covid deaths of all the countries in the world.
On the international stage, there were a number of other governmental leaders who exacerbated Covid deaths through their attempts to minimize the seriousness of the pandemic. For example: Modi in India, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Lukashenko in Belarus, and Lopez Obrador in Mexico.
The lesson? To avoid unnecessary suffering and death in pandemics and other health crises, governmental leaders should avoid political posturing and, instead, take actions based on science.
Lesson 4. We have the ability to solve complex problems
On the positive side of the Covid ledger, the world has an incredible ability to solve scientific and logistical problems. In the United States and in other countries, major funding was provided to pharmaceutical companies and scientific institutions to develop vaccines, tests, and other means to combat the pandemic. In an unprecedentedly short period of time, several effective vaccines were available for widespread use in some countries.
Lesson 5. The distribution of resources
We still need to learn how to distribute resources equitably when disaster strikes. Almost two years into the pandemic, only about 5% of people in low-income countries are fully vaccinated compared to an average of over 70% in high-income countries. And in some countries that have good access to the vaccines, there are groups of people – usually people of color, the poor, and those in rural communities – who were last in line to get vaccines and, in some cases, still haven’t received them.
Prediction 1. Covid and its variants will decline steeply soon
By early summer, people around the world will emerge from their Covid bunkers and become sociable again. Recent data suggest that the rapid International spike in Covid caused by the Omicron variant will soon be on a swift downturn. In addition, Pfizer announced in early January that it will be releasing a new vaccine beginning in March specifically targeted to protect against Omicron. What these events most probably mean is that life for many of us will almost return to normal by the end of June.
Prediction 2. Covid will become more effectively preventable and treatable by the fall
An extension of the previous prediction is that by the fall of 2022, Covid will cease to be a pandemic. Instead, it will be a nuisance virus like the flu, for which many of us will receive an annual, or possibly semi-annual, vaccination. Covid cases will still occur, and there may be incidents of troublesome mutations that cause temporary flareups and vaccine adjustments. But Covid will no longer be a major threat to world health.
Prediction 3. The lessons from Covid will provide a model for addressing future disasters
Our battle with Covid will make us better able to solve the climate change crisis and be better prepared for future worldwide disasters.
This is the iffiest of the three predictions. Will we really learn from all the suffering and death wrought by the coronavirus and our bumbling response to it? Or will we just saunter blithely along, forgetting about the international nightmare caused by the pandemic?
Despite our tendency as a species to ignore the lessons of the past, there is a real possibility that we will learn from the Covid pandemic, and apply that learning to other world disasters, such as global warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels; the gross inequality of people around the world not having adequate access to food, healthcare, and other necessities of life; or another killer virus.
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Videos, books, and downloads • We invite you to view a brief, informative video on community solar co-ops. It’s a summary of E.G.’s December 2021 presentation at the World Cooperative Congress in Seoul, Korea. E.G. describes the ease, affordability, and benefits of establishing a solar co-op.
• Also newly released is a video during which E.G.’s son, Luc, interviews E.G. about his 2021 book Strengthening the Cooperative Community.Luc is co-founder – with E.G. – of The Cooperative Society Project. The book is based on E.G.’s 50 years of international cooperative research and development experience. Of special interest are the 16 recommendations E.G. provides for realizing future cooperative development opportunities.
Strengthening the Cooperative Community is available as a free PDF and as a print book through Amazon and local booksellers. Shown below are some comments E.G. received about the book:
“Anyone interested in concrete ideas for reducing inequality domestically or internationally should read this book,…”—Dave Grace, Managing Partner, Dave Grace and Associates
“Thank you for this lively, agile, and accessible introduction to the cooperative world…”—Gianluca Salvatori, CEO, Euricse
“E.G. has made a major contribution to the history and future impact of cooperative enterprise…I hope the 16 recommendations in this narrative will be given serious consideration by cooperative leadership at the global, regional, national and local levels across all sectors.”—Dr. Martin Lowery, Executive Vice President Emeritus, National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, International Cooperative Alliance board member and Chair, ICA Cooperative Identity Committee
And we remind you that E.G’s book The Cooperative Solution is available on our website as a free download. Published in 2012, EG’s points about making both economic democracy and political democracy the foundations of American society continue to be very relevant today.
The nations of the world tried to kick the climate change ball down the road.
Let’s not let that happen.
The Cooperative Society Newsletter November 2021, Issue 32 by E.G. Nadeau, Ph.D.
This is the last in a four-part series of newsletter articles on the impact of the pandemic on major issues affecting progress toward a more cooperative society. The May articlefocused on economic concentration and wealth inequality. The July articlewas about conflict and democracy. The September article analyzed the impact of COVID-19 on global population trends and the quality of life around the world.
This article looks at where we are in addressing the planet’s climate crisis.
What about climate change in the future?
Are we on the verge of dooming ourselves and our planet to an overheated, catastrophe-laden climate in the second half of the 21st century and beyond?
This article first addresses the impacts of COVID-19 on climate change. It then reviews the trajectory, and the major consequences, of the world’s projected temperature increase through the end of the 21st century. The conclusion presents several actions that can be taken to avoid the extreme negative consequences likely to occur as anticipated by current projections.
Minor impact of COVID-19
Unlike the six other issues reviewed in this series of newsletters, COVID-19 has had a relatively minor impact on climate change. There was a short-term reduction in carbon dioxide emissions in 2020. However, “Despite a world economy that slowed significantly because of COVID-19, the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reached a new record.” In addition, “Global CO2 emissions rebound[ed] by nearly 5% in 2021, approaching the 2018-2019 peak.”
The bad news
The 2021 UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, held in the first half of November 2021, was intended to forge agreements by the UN’s 198 members to prevent this calamity. It failed to do so.
As summarized by Climate Analytics, “To achieve the Paris Agreement Temperature Goal [1.5°C above preindustrial levels], net zero CO2 emissions need to be achieved globally around mid-century and net zero emissions of all greenhouse gases shortly thereafter. In the near term, global greenhouse gas emissions need to be halved by 2030.”
The Climate Action Tracker provides a detailed analysis of the “lip service” on climate action emerging from the Glasgow conference:
“With all target pledges, including those made in Glasgow, global greenhouse gas emissions in 2030 will still be around twice as high as necessary for the 1.5°C limit.
“Stalled momentum from leaders and governments on their short-term targets has narrowed the 2030 emissions gap by only 15-17% over the last year.
“With 2030 pledges alone – without longer-term targets – global temperature increase will be at 2.4°C in 2100.
“The projected warming from current policies (not proposals) – what countries are actually doing – is even higher, at 2.7°C with only a 0.2°C improvement over the last year and nearly one degree above the net-zero announcements governments have made.
“Since the April 2021 Biden Leaders’ Summit, the CAT’s standard “pledges and targets” scenario temperature estimate of all NDCs and binding long-term targets has dropped by 0.3°C to 2.1°C, primarily down to the inclusion of the U.S. and China’s net zero targets, now formalised in their long-term strategies submitted to the UNFCCC.
“While the projected warming from all net zero announcements, if fully implemented – the CAT’s ‘optimistic scenario’ – is down to 1.8°C by 2100, this estimate is far from positive news, given the quality of the net zero goals and the massive ambition and action gap in 2030.
“This ‘optimistic’ pathway is a long way from the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C limit, with peak 21st century warming of 1.9°C and about a 16% chance of exceeding a warming of 2.4°C.”
We are already experiencing an increase in extreme weather events due to rising temperatures, even though the average world temperature in 2020 was “only” 1.1°C above preindustrial levels. So, in reality, rising temperatures – primarily caused by humans burning fossil fuels – result in a continuum of increasing disasters, which have already begun.
The major culprits
According to a recent New York Times article, “The world’s four biggest emitters – China, the United States, the European Union and India – are responsible for just over half of global greenhouse gas output . . . . “
But these data don’t tell the whole story. For example, Australia, followed closely by Indonesia, are the world’s largest coal exporters; Saudi Arabia leads the world in crude oil exports; Russia is, by far, the world’s largest natural gas exporter. To curb future greenhouse gas emissions, it is important to look at both the sources of fossil fuel production as well as where it is consumed.
Some positive opportunities
The current, anemic greenhouse gas emission goals set by most countries don’t yet mean we’re doomed to exceed the 1.5°C target. There is still time to strengthen the world’s commitment to drastic reductions in emissions by 2030, and to net zero emissions by 2050, that would keep the 1.5°C target in reach at the end of the 21st century.
Following are five major ways in which the world could get on track during the remainder of this decade to save itself from catastrophe. Some of these positive approaches are already underway and should be ramped up in 2022 and beyond. The others should begin in 2022 and expand in future years.
1. Strengthening country-level greenhouse gas emissions goals
Despite the inadequate goals set by many countries at the Glasgow conference, the meeting concluded by strongly encouraging countries with weak goals to strengthen them by November 2022, when the next climate change conference is scheduled. There are a number of factors, discussed below, that should influence these countries to get more serious about their commitments to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Thus far, many developed countries have pledged funds to assist developing countries to reduce carbon emissions and to protect themselves from the ravages of climate change (for example, the effects of rising sea levels on island nations). At Glasgow, there was a renewed commitment by many developed countries to make good on these pledges.
One important example of a new agreement reached at the conference is an $8.5 billion pledge by the European Union, the UK, and the U.S. to help South Africa transition away from coal to renewable energy.
2. Improved measurement, enforcement, and incentive mechanisms
One of the shortcomings of the current International climate change measurement system is that countries are essentially monitoring and policing their own performance. This has created an overestimation of carbon dioxide reductions in some countries. For example, Malaysia claims to be sequestering a huge amount of carbon in forests, but there is no scientific support for this assertion.
Satellite technology related to climate change has improved dramatically in the past few years and is now able to detect carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gas emissions emanating from specific countries. This technology and other measurement approaches can be used in the future to create a “third-party” verification of whether or not specific countries are achieving or misrepresenting their climate change impacts.
3. Carbon border taxes
Carbon border adjustment taxes are being proposed by the European Union and under discussion in the United States. These taxes would be based on calculations of carbon dioxide emitted by imported fossil fuels and the amount of carbon dioxide emitted in the production of proposed import goods. For example, potential coal imports from Australia or steel imports from China would be subject to carbon taxes based on their climate change impacts. This would have two main effects: creating incentives for exporting countries to reduce the carbon impact of exported products, and protecting the producers of low-carbon products in importing countries.
4. Increased private sector leadership on achieving carbon reduction goals
There are a number of large corporations that are taking actions to reduce their carbon footprints and produce green energy products. For example, Fortescue, a large Australian company, has ambitious plans to develop and export green hydrogen (produced by renewable energy). There are also a consortia of corporations that are making net zero carbon commitments and focusing their investments on clean energy companies.
Cooperative businesses are particularly well suited to several types of economic activity that can reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For example, community solar cooperatives can address the electricity and clean cooking needs of tens of millions of people in developing countries. Sustainable forestry and agricultural cooperatives can increase the amount of carbon sequestered in the forests and land of their members in both developed and developing countries.
5. Grassroots action around the world supporting climate goals and protesting against climate laggards
There were thousands of people who participated in marches in Glasgow and around the world to protest the weak outcomes of the recent climate change conference. Popular pressure can continue to have an impact on moving countries and corporations toward more serious commitments to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and increasing the likelihood of keeping the earth’s temperature at or below 1.5°C above preindustrial levels.
Conclusion
So, are we heading to more “blah, blah, blah” for the remainder of the decade, or was Glasgow the beginning of a serious and urgent series of actions that will put the world on course for a livable climate at the end of the century? The jury is still out. But we are all on that jury. The way we conduct our own lives, influence the behavior of those around us, and vote can help bend the curve toward lower carbon emissions and a more habitable planet.
COVID-19 is disrupting more than 70 years of population trends and setting back poverty alleviation by more than a decade.
The Cooperative Society Newsletter September 2021, Issue 31 by E.G. Nadeau, Ph.D.
This is the third in a four-part series of newsletter articles on the impact of the pandemic on major issues affecting progress toward a more cooperative society. The May article focused on economic concentration and wealth inequality. The July article was about conflict and democracy. The November article will look at the effects of the pandemic on the climate crisis.
This issue analyzes the impact of COVID-19 on global population trends and the quality of life around the world during the past year and a half.
Population
COVID-19 is affecting the world’s population in several major ways. It is lowering the average lifespan, decreasing the birth rate, and slowing current and projected population growth.
Let’s take a look at each of these demographic changes.
Life expectancy
The number of deaths worldwide from COVID-19 is expected to exceed 5 million sometime in October. This is probably an undercount, because some countries are attributing coronavirus deaths to other causes.
In the United States, there were almost 350,000 COVID deaths in 2020, and another 350,000 by the end of September or early October 2021. Deaths from the coronavirus are estimated to have reduced the average life expectancy of Americans by one and a half years in 2020, the biggest single-year decline in life expectancy since World War II. This reduction in average life expectancy does not include the effects of the 2021 death toll. COVID deaths among Blacks and Hispanics are substantially higher than among Whites in the U.S.
Life expectancy in many other countries has not been as dramatically affected by the coronavirus as it has been in the United States. ”It is impossible to look at these findings and not see a reflection of the systemic racism in the U.S.,” Leslie Curtis, chair of the Department of Population Health Sciences at Duke University School of Medicine, told NPR. “The range of factors that play into this include income inequality, the social safety net, as well as racial inequality and access to health care,” Curtis said.
Birth rate
The global birth rate has been declining each year since 1964. It is projected to drop off somewhat more sharply in the United States in 2021, and to a lesser extent, in a number of other countries as a result of the pandemic. According to a recent article in New Security Beat, “The pandemic has caused many young people to delay major life events, such as marriage. This delay will likely manifest in lower birthrates in the years to come. Likewise, pandemic-related unemployment and financial insecurity, particularly among young people, women, and marginalized groups, may cause further decline.”
The impact of the pandemic on lowered birth rates may continue for several years as the world economy gradually gets back on track.
Long-term demographic trends
In the remainder of the 21st century, the effect of COVID-19 on population change is likely to be a minor, but painful, blip. Longevity very probably will continue to increase gradually after the brief, virus-related, downward spike. The lower birth rate, however, may have a longer lasting, if modest, impact.
Independent of COVID, however, a group of analysts, writing in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet, recently projected a more rapid deceleration and then a downturn in world population growth in the remainder of this century:
Our findings suggest that continued trends in female educational attainment and access to contraception will hasten declines in fertility and slow population growth. A sustained TFR [total fertility rate] lower than the replacement level in many countries, including China and India, would have economic, social, environmental, and geopolitical consequences. Policy options to adapt to continued low fertility, while sustaining and enhancing female reproductive health, will be crucial in the years to come.
Primarily due to the effect of this projected lower birth rate, world population (now at 7.8 billion) is expected to peak at about 9.7 billion in 2064, and then decline to around 8.8 billion by 2100. This pattern of population growth and decline is likely to occur unevenly across the world, with some countries experiencing significant reductions in population, and others, especially many low-income countries, continuing to grow through most of the rest of the century. (The author will not go into an in-depth analysis or discuss the policy implications of these trends here, but will address them in future articles and the next edition of The Cooperative Society.)
Quality of life
There has been a recent slowdown in accomplishing the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including those directly related to the quality of life of poor people around the world, that began before the coronavirus. The slowdown appears to be the result of reduced commitment by some UN members, an overly ambitious agenda by the UN, and the magnitude of the climate-change crisis overshadowing other SDGs.
The first two sustainable development goals are, “End poverty in all its forms everywhere” and “End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture.” This section of the newsletter focuses on the impact of COVID-19 on these two goals of ending poverty and hunger by 2030.
Poverty
Extreme poverty, defined as, “Living below the international poverty line of $1.90 a day,” rose for the first time in over 20 years in 2020 as approximately 100 million people were pushed back into extreme poverty, bringing the total number of the world’s population in this category to about 730 million. Even though the World Bank recently projected that there will be a decrease of about 20 million people in extreme poverty in 2021, it will take several years to get poverty reduction back on its pre-COVID track. Despite the overall upward trend in 2021, many low-income countries in Africa will continue to experience an increase in extreme poverty this year, and thus suffer through a longer time period before they return to pre-COVID trends of extreme-poverty reduction.
Despite these grim data on COVID-related poverty around the world, there was actually a decrease in poverty in the United States in 2020. A headline in The New York Timesrecently reported that, “Poverty in U.S. declined last year as government aid made up for lost jobs.” The percentage of people living below the poverty line dropped from 11.8% in 2019 to 9.1% in 2020. This decline in poverty may not continue in the coming years if Congress doesn’t pass several anti-poverty measures this fall.
Hunger
The COVID-related story for world hunger is much the same as that for poverty. According to the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations:
The number of people in the world affected by hunger continued to increase in 2020 under the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic. After remaining virtually unchanged from 2014 to 2019, the PoU [prevalence of under nourishment*] increased from 8.4 percent to around 9.9 percent between 2019 and 2020, heightening the challenge of achieving the Zero Hunger target in 2030.
The above percentages mean that about 120 million more people were undernourished in 2020 than in 2019, bringing the world total to about 768 million. More than 80% of undernourished people live in Asia and Africa.
The conclusion that the FAO draws related to world hunger applies equally well to extreme poverty:
With less than a decade to 2030, the world is not on track to ending world hunger and malnutrition; and in the case of world hunger, we are moving in the wrong direction. This report has shown that economic downturns as a consequence of COVID-19 containment measures all over the world have contributed to one of the largest increases in world hunger in decades, which has affected almost all low- and middle-income countries, and can reverse gains made in nutrition. The COVID-19 pandemic is just the tip of the iceberg, more alarmingly, the pandemic has exposed the vulnerabilities forming in our food systems over recent years as a result of major drivers such as conflict, climate variability and extremes, and economic slowdowns and downturns. These major drivers are increasingly occurring simultaneously in countries, with interactions that seriously undermine food security and nutrition.
The United Nations recently held a world summit on food systems, in which, “. . . more than 150 countries made commitments to transform their food systems, while championing greater participation and equity, especially amongst farmers, women, youth and indigenous groups.”
But the summit was not without controversy. For example, in an article entitled, “The UN summit on food systems took two years to plan. It’s offered nothing to help feed families,” Michael Fakhri, UN special rapporteur on the right to food, made the following comment:
The Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted what we have known for decades – hunger, malnutrition and famine are not caused by inadequate amounts of food. They are caused by the political failures that restrict people’s access to adequate food.
Conclusion
COVID-19 has significantly contributed to a global reduction in longevity and the birth rate. It has also increased poverty and hunger around the world. The effects of these negative impacts are projected to last for a number of years. In particular, poor people, especially in Africa and Asia, will continue to experience economic hardship and undernourishment well beyond 2021. The optimistic UN goals of ”No poverty” and “Zero hunger” by 2030 will almost certainly not be realized.
It would be a mistake, however, to throw up our hands in despair at these recent setbacks. Since the UN Millennium Development Goals , the predecessors to the sustainable development goals, were first established in 2000, there have been dramatic improvements in the social, health-related, economic, and environmental well-being of hundreds of millions of people around the world.
The recent setbacks related to COVID-19 and other factors mentioned above can be overcome, especially through universal access to coronavirus vaccines, and a recommitment to the 17 sustainable development goals by the international community.
__________
* Prevalence of undernourishment is “an estimate of the proportion of the population whose habitual food consumption is insufficient to provide the dietary energy levels that are required to maintain a normal active and healthy life.”
The Cooperative Society Newsletter August 2021, Issue 30 by E.G. Nadeau, Ph.D.
A simple dictionary definition of a “long con” is: “An elaborate confidence game that develops in several stages over an extended period of time.”
For a long con to work, there have to be gullible people susceptible to it. Sad to say, we have an overabundance of them in the United States today.
“There’s a sucker born every minute.” Often attributed to P.T. Barnum of circus fame, the origin of this aphorism is disputed. But the meaning and usage are not. The phrase has long been used by confidence tricksters to explain their success in defrauding unwitting victims.
Most of you have already figured out where this article is headed. Donald Trump, the previous (and in his pronouncements, the current) president of the United States, is perpetrating one of the biggest and most dangerous long cons in history.
And, so far, it’s going very well for him. Looking at just one indicator, his political action committee has raised over $100 million since he started pretending that he won the election.
This is a very dangerous game. As many commentators have pointed out, our very democracy is at stake.
It’s one thing to fleece investors in Atlantic City casinos; undiscerning enrollees in Trump University; the victims of dozens of other scams perpetrated by Trump since the late 1960s; or, U.S. taxpayers as a result of his, allegedly, fraudulent avoidance of hundreds of millions of dollars in tax payments.
It’s quite another to falsely claim massive election fraud in November 2020, and, in pushing this bogus narrative, set the stage for actual, massive election fraud in the 2024 presidential election.
Here are the key elements of Trump’s long con:
“The big lie” about the stolen election
The repetition of this big lie ever since Trump’s loss in November 2020 – and, in fact, the teeing up of this lie with the mantra of “massive fraud” through much of 2020
More than 60 baseless legal challenges and other nefarious actions in states in which he lost the election by relatively small margins (e.g. trying to strong-arm the secretary of state of Georgia to “just find 11,780 votes,” and the over-the-top, prolonged, bogus audit of Maricopa County election returns in Arizona)
The attempted January 6 coup – an attack on the U.S. Capitol that has seen hundreds of arrests so far, is the subject of congressional hearings, and may result in criminal charges filed against legislators and members of the Trump White House
The enactment of new laws in 18 states between January 1 and July 14 that restrict voter participation in elections
The legalization of “election subversion,” already on the books in Georgia and under consideration in other states, that attempts to give state legislatures the power to overturn “fraudulent” election results from their states and reassign them to the presidential candidate of their choice – potentially, the most dangerous of all the long con components
Gerrymandering, soon to come to your state or one near you using the 2020 census results as a pretext
And the financial part of the con mentioned above, the amassing of Trump’s and other right wing zealots’ political war chests, largely donated by low- and moderate-income dupes
We should remember that this anti-democratic long con is not just Trump’s creation. It is aided and abetted by other Republican federal, state, and local leaders, and various other right wing nut jobs.
For example, as I write this, there are at least three Republican governors who are eager to compete with Trump on the 2024 Republican presidential ticket – Ron DeSantis of Florida, Greg Abbott* of Texas, and Kristi Noem of South Dakota. In addition to flaunting their purported loyalty to Trump, they are also trying to outdo each other in their opposition to mask-wearing and their lackluster support for vaccines. They apparently see this championing of suffering and death as part of a strategy to win the White House.
Perhaps the best way to conclude this article is to cite another famous Barnum quote, this one really his. In order to accelerate the flow of people through his museum in New York (and money into his pockets), he had signs put up saying, “This way to the egress”. Egress is a fancy word for exit. And that’s exactly where we should be ushering Trump, his shills, enablers, and wannabes before their long con destroys our democracy.
The Cooperative Society Newsletter July 2021, Issue 29 by E.G. Nadeau, Ph.D.
This is the second of a four-part series of newsletter articles on the impact of the pandemic on major issues affecting progress toward a more cooperative society. The May article focused on economic concentration and wealth inequality. Upcoming articles will look at effects on population change, quality of life, and the climate crisis.
An overview of conflict and democracy
During the course of the 20th century, we made significant progress in reducing conflict and increasing democracy. There has been a dramatic reduction in deaths from war-related violence since the end of World War II and a rapid increase in the number of democratic governments beginning about the same time. Historical data also indicate that the rate of homicides has been decreasing for centuries.
But in the past 15-20 years, these positive trends have faltered. This has been especially true in the erosion of democracy in some countries; an increasing incidence of wars, within-country violence, and terrorist activities; and a wide divergence in homicide rates from country to country. These patterns are chronicled in our book, The Cooperative Society(2nd edition, 2018), and “The Cooperative Society 2020 Report.”
How has violence been affected by the pandemic in 2020 and 2021?
The simple answer is that there has been a mixed pattern of violence in the past year and a half.
ACLED, an international organization that monitors global violence, reports a small decrease in fatalities caused by violent events between 2019 and 2020, and then an upsurge in the first half of 2021 that returned the death rate to the 2019 level. These data suggest a temporary reduction in conflict deaths caused by the virus, but a return to “business as usual” in 2021.
An example of peaceful protests accelerated in the early months of the pandemic, resulting from George Floyd’s murder by Derek Chauvin, a Minneapolis police officer in May 2020. Under the banner of “Black Lives Matter,” Floyd’s death sparked protests across the United States and in many other countries. According to the Washington Post, over 96% of protest marches in the U.S. were peaceful. The reaction to Floyd’s death and the conviction of Chauvin for murder appear to have initiated a broad movement to decrease violence by police against Blacks and other minorities.
Homicides and domestic violenceappear to have increased during the pandemic.Some analysts have concluded that economic disruptions and restrictions imposed to slow the spread of the coronavirus increased these kinds of violence. More data on these kinds of violence will be forthcoming in the next year or so.
Has democracy eroded at a faster pace during the pandemic?
Two well-known, annual reports on the state of democracy in the world conclude that there was a significant decline in democracy in 2020.
Democracy was dealt a major blow in 2020. Almost 70% of countries covered by the Index … recorded a decline in their overall score, as country after country locked down to protect lives from a novel coronavirus. The global average score fell to its lowest level since the index began in 2006.
As a lethal pandemic, economic and physical insecurity, and violent conflict ravaged the world in 2020, democracy’s defenders sustained heavy new losses in their struggle against authoritarian foes, shifting the international balance in favor of tyranny. Incumbent leaders increasingly used force to crush opponents and settle scores, sometimes in the name of public health, while beleaguered activists—lacking effective international support—faced heavy jail sentences, torture, or murder in many settings.
These withering blows marked the 15th consecutive year of decline in global freedom. The countries experiencing deterioration outnumbered those with improvements by the largest margin recorded since the negative trend began in 2006.
As both of the excerpts from these reports indicate, part of the increase in anti-democratic tendencies during the pandemic may be temporary. That is, government efforts to enforce mask wearing, social distancing, and other actions to reduce the coronavirus infection rate limit freedom of action in the short term but may not signal a long-term increase in repression. Thus, in the latter half of 2021 and beyond, freedom of action may very well show a rebound.
Not all of democracy’s troubles in 2020 and the first half of 2021 can be attributed to the pandemic. For one thing, both of the above reports indicate a long-term trend in the weakening of democracy going back to 2006. The pandemic may have exacerbated anti-democratic tendencies, but the gradual erosion of democracy around the world has been occurring for well over a decade.
Democracy is under threat in the United States, not primarily because of COVID-19, but because of the anti-democratic words and actions of Donald Trump and his followers. In particular, he, many Republican elected officials at state and federal levels, and some rank-and-file GOP members have refused to acknowledge the reality of his loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. Trump’s continued promotion of “the big lie” led to the January 6 insurrection in Washington, D.C., in which over 500 rioters have been arrested so far.
As part of this Trump and Republican-led effort to undermine democracy in the U.S., more than 20 state laws have been passed as of May of this year that make it harder for Americans to vote. President Biden and others have excoriated these and other proposed voting restrictions as the biggest threat to American democracy since the Civil War.
What changes should we expect?
What changes should we expect in conflict and democracy in the next couple of years?
It is difficult to predict future changes in conflict levels. The number of deaths from violent events around the world will depend on reforms in international and national policies and actions related to these events. At this time, there are no apparent trends, either positive or negative, that are likely to cause a significant change from the status quo.
Future trends in homicide are also unclear. On the one hand, there appears to be pent-up anger and frustration caused by the pandemic that have raised the worldwide level of homicides and assaults. On the other hand, as we gain more control over the pandemic, these sources of violence may subside. One hopeful note may be that in the United States and possibly in other countries, police violence against minorities may be reduced as a result of strong public protests against such violence. However, continued easy access to guns in the United States and gang activity in Central and South America are likely to increase homicides in the near future.
As stated above, some of the reduction in democratic freedom during the pandemic may disappear as restrictive measures intended to curb the spread of the coronavirus are eliminated. But this change is a separate issue from the erosion of democracy during the past 15 years or so. Future trends in this long-term pattern are not readily predictable.
Then there is the anti-democratic cult of Trump and his sycophants in the Republican party. What will happen in the U.S. between now and the 2022 elections? Will we restore democratic norms or move increasingly toward authoritarianism?
Stay tuned. Or, better yet, play an active role in exposing “the big lie” and championing free and fair elections.
The Cooperative Society Newsletter May 2021, Issue 28 by E.G. Nadeau, Ph.D.
We have been writing about whether or not humans have been moving toward or away from a more cooperative society since 2016. The pandemic, which began in December 2019, has had a profound effect not only on our health and mortality, but on the world’s economy, political landscape, social well-being, and the environment. That impact is continuing in 2021, and very probably will have significant consequences in subsequent years.
We will talk about the effects of Covid-19 on our lives in three installments of The Cooperative Society Newsletter, beginning with this May issue and continuing in July and September.
First, a little background on The Cooperative Society Project.
There are three core premises to the Project:
We have reached a point in human history at which there are adequate resources for all human beings to experience a decent quality of life. Similarly, humans are now able to establish and maintain a sustainable relationship with nature. The problem is: We are not yet achieving these goals.
It is important to measure the extent to which we humans are moving toward a sustainable quality of life for all and a sustainable environment, and, when we are falling short, to take corrective action.
Achieving these goals does not depend on forces outside of our control. We have the power to shape the conditions of our lives and those of future generations. We are the agents of history, not its powerless subjects.
Following is an update on the first two of these variables – economic power and wealth distribution. The other five measures will be addressed in the next two newsletters.
Economic Power
Key questions To what extent has the pandemic affected the concentration of corporate and country-related domination of the world’s economy in 2020 and so far in 2021? Are checks and balances, along with alternative forms of business, being applied and planned to reduce the negative consequences of this concentration?
Importance of this measure As long as economic decision-making is dominated by the few, the rest of us are dependent on the choices that they make. This concentrated economic power is the primary cause of periodic, large-scale disruptions to the economy (for example the Great Recession of 2008-2010). It also has a significant impact on how we deal with crises such as those precipitated by the pandemic and global warming.
Major trends in economic concentration in 2020 and 2021:
The largest, publicly traded corporations in the world increased their combined market value by 47% between mid-April 2000 and mid-April 2021 – from $54 trillion to $80 trillion.
The United States and China are headquarters for the world’s corporations with the largest combined market values. As of April 2021, the U.S. accounted for 35% and China 7% of the market value of the top 100 corporations in the world.
Due to the pandemic, the world gross product (WGP) – the combined value of the goods and services produced by all countries – declined by a little over 4% in 2020. The only other time in the last 50 years there has been a decline in WGP was in 2009 during the Great Recession, and the drop that year was only .1%.
123RF.com: Fabian Plock
Analysis
These data indicate that the world’s most powerful corporations and the countries in which they are located became even more powerful during the pandemic. This was at a time when the rest of the world economy made a significant downturn.
Corrective action
The biggest factors that would reduce the power of these corporations are changes in the policies of International bodies such as the United Nations and the world’s most developed countries toward them. Tighter international anti-trust policies and enforcement of these policies, concerted efforts to thwart tax evasion by large companies, and progressive corporate taxation systems could reduce their inordinate influence on the world economy. Taking actions to strengthen small- and medium-size businesses, and including cooperatives and social enterprises, would also make a huge difference. These approaches to creating a fairer world economy in the post-pandemic era are increasingly being discussed by world leaders, including President Biden, but so far, there has been little action.
Wealth distribution
Key question Is the distribution of wealth becoming more or less unequal around the globe?
Importance of this measure The concentration of wealth has consequences for everyone’s economic and social well-being. Large differences in wealth and income mean that many of us earn less, receive fewer social benefits, and have less influence over the political decision-making that affects our day-to-day lives than we would have in a more equitable society. Inequality also leads to social unrest and conflict.
Major trends in wealth inequality during the pandemic:
We could face the greatest rise in inequality since records began, with the pandemic increasing economic inequality in almost every country at once.
It could take more than a decade for billions of the world’s poorest people to recover from the economic hit of the pandemic while the 1,000 richest people recouped their COVID-19 losses within just nine months.
Just 10 people – the world’s richest billionaires, all men – have seen their combined wealth skyrocket by half a trillion dollars since the pandemic began. That’s more than enough to pay for a COVID-19 vaccine for everyone and to prevent the pandemic from pushing anyone into poverty.
The World Bank estimates that the number of people living in extreme poverty – defined as $1.90 per day or less – increased by between $119 and $124 million in 2020 because of the pandemic. This is the first increase in extreme poverty in 20 years.
The World Food Programme estimates that the total number of acutely food-insecure people increased to 272 million in 2020, compared to 149 million people in 2019.
According to the United Nations, the pandemic could force almost a billion people into destitution by 2030 “unless nations introduce energy, food and climate reforms.”
123RF.com: takkuu
Analysis
The above data clearly indicate that the pandemic has “made the rich richer and the poor poorer.” Although there has been a long-term pattern of increasing concentration of wealth around the world, the level of extreme poverty had been dropping dramatically during the two decades prior to 2020. But the pandemic reversed the long-term trend in the decrease of extreme poverty.
Corrective action
This projection of widening inequality in the decade ahead is not a foregone conclusion. It can be addressed in two primary ways: by increasing taxes on the wealthy, and by implementing reforms to drive down the poverty rate.
Along with an increase in corporate taxes, President Biden is proposing more progressive taxes on individuals and families that would particularly focus on the very wealthy. Other developed countries have instituted such tax reforms, or are considering doing so.
International economic reforms could get the world back on track in reducing extreme poverty between now and 2030. According to the United Nations Development Programme,
“These measures include investments aimed at changing patterns of food, energy, and water consumption and increasing internet access as well as supporting low-carbon economies.
Rich nations also face calls to look beyond their own economic woes and support developing countries by increasing foreign aid, cancelling debt, and financing affordable vaccines.”
123RF.com: Herman Lumanog
Conclusion
Both the trends of increasing economic power of large corporations and increasing inequality between the wealthy and the rest of us accelerated as a result of the pandemic in 2020 and the first half of 2021. In addition, the progress that had been made in reducing extreme poverty during the past 20 years suffered a significant reversal.
But, progressive policies during the next decade can reduce the power of large corporations and decrease the wealth gap between the rich and the poor.
The Cooperative Society Newsletter January 2021, Issue 26 by E.G. Nadeau, Ph.D.
“The quality of ideas seems to play a minor role in mass movement leadership. What counts is the arrogant gesture, the complete disregard of the opinion of others, the singlehanded defiance of the world.” Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements
Hoffer could easily have been talking about Donald Trump, except that he wrote these words 70 years ago.
The purpose of this article is to understand why so many Americans became true believers in Trump’s skewed view of the world during the past five years, and how some of them may get back in touch with reality prior to the 2022 elections.
Why?
The “why” issue is a tricky one. There are many paths to becoming a true believer, defined as, “One who sticks to one’s dogma … irrespective of the facts.”
Some people are more susceptible than others to putting their preconceptions of the world ahead of reality. This predisposition itself requires a rationale, one for which I have an incomplete explanation.
Some people who feel angry, alienated, oppressed, and/or beaten down by the world around them turn to faith in something or someone that gives them hope, purpose, and a sense of belonging. This transformation is often accompanied by finding like-minded groups of people who share and reinforce the same fervor of distrust, hatred, and/or shared belief in a cause.
Who?
Regardless of an incomplete understanding of the “why,” these true believers need a “who” to pin their hopes and aspirations on. Along came presidential candidate Donald Trump to fill this role of validator of their discontent.
Trump’s true believers don’t need to share the same detailed set of beliefs to swear their fealty to him. Some see him warding off the waves of migrating brown people from Latin America. Some identify with his antipathy to Muslims and/or Blacks. Some are reinforced by his promise to drain the swamp of deep-state politicians and bureaucrats in Washington. Some identify with his disdain for the scientists involved in battling COVID-19 or climate change. In any case, they coalesce around his promise to vanquish these “others” whom they distrust, fear, and hate.
In the unfettered world of social media, Trump and his followers find “enablers” who reinforce their beliefs regardless of the lack of facts supporting them. Lies repeated often enough become the truth, particularly for those who seek information only from sources with which they agree. Trump, his disciples, and their enablers in social media use the term “fake news” to characterize mainstream (“lame stream”) media in an Orwellian disparagement of factual information.
Another crucial set of enablers has been Republican leaders, particularly in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, who, for the most part, have kowtowed to Trump, despite his false and often bizarre pronouncements and actions. (Remember his musings on injecting bleach to cure COVID-19?)
The Washington Post’s mind-numbing chronicling of Trump’s 30,000-plus lies during his four years in office have affected his true believers like water off a duck’s back.
So, back to one of the original questions of this article: Can Trump’s true believers see the light of reason by 2022?
Recovering Trumpaholics
More than 70 million Americans voted for Trump on November 3, 2020. Most of these voters continue to believe that Trump won the election. They hold this belief in the face of overwhelming evidence that he lost by a significant margin.
Trump’s false claims about election fraud began in April 2020, more than six months before the election. He publicly repeated these claims more than 150 times before November 3. The expectation of a stolen election that he instilled in his followers culminated in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
But this time, his egging on of violent protesters received condemnation by most people across the country and resulted in his unprecedented second impeachment. As a result, he ended his presidency with his highest disapproval rating since taking office.
Even many of the Proud Boys and QAnon fanatics have disavowed him.
Will this erosion of support continue? There are several indications that it will. Trump has lost much of his access to social media. He is now shunned by many of his previous business donors.
Trump’s true believers seeing the light of reason won’t happen all at once. And it won’t happen to all of them. Perhaps 40 million or so of Trump’s true believers will see the light of reason in time to put America’s democracy back on a solid track in the next two years. Many will not suddenly become moderates or liberals, but they have the potential to improve their ability to differentiate truth from lies, and to keep their political beliefs and actions within the bounds of a democratic society.
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Announcing a new book from The Cooperative Society Project
I’m pleased to announce that Strengthening the Cooperative Community will be available starting Monday, March 1, as a free PDF on this website and as a print book through Amazon and local booksellers. Many of the case studies and recommendations in the book are based on my 50 years of international cooperative research and development experience.
Some comments on the advance review copy include these perspectives:
“Anyone interested in concrete ideas for reducing inequality domestically or internationally should read this book, . . . —Dave Grace, Managing Partner, Dave Grace and Associates
“Thank you for this lively, agile, and accessible introduction to the cooperative world, . . . ”— Gianluca Salvatori, CEO, Euricse
“E.G. has made a major contribution to the history and future impact of cooperative enterprise . . . I hope the 16 recommendations in this narrative will be given serious consideration by cooperative leadership at the global, regional, national and local levels across all sectors.”—Dr. Martin Lowery, Executive Vice President Emeritus, National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, International Cooperative Alliance board member and Chair, ICA Cooperative Identity Committee
