Sounds like the U.S. has been playing silly buggers with oil production forecasts.
From a senior figure at the International Energy Agency, who has now left but is unwilling to give his name:
We have [already] entered the ‘peak oil’ zone. I think that the situation is really bad.
It’s worth listening to the audio in the above linked article too.
Labour (UK) have had twelve years to do this:
A fierce debate within the government on how to tackle entrenched wealth inequality … is to be ignited by a report ordered by Harriet Harman, the Labour deputy leader and the minister responsible for equalities.
Infographic comparing relative spending of various multi-billion-dollar budgets. Keep it in mind next time you consider voting for any of the major political entities that have helped create such a world.
(via Daring Fireball)
Andrew Clark writing for The Guardian: “Rupert Murdoch said quality journalism is not cheap and so he intends to charge for all his websites,” including the Times, The Sun and the News of the World.
Two comments.
Costa Rica is the greenest and happiest country in the world, according to a new list that ranks nations by combining measures of their ecological footprint with the happiness of their citizens.1
And, surprise surprise, unlike places like Britain and the U.S. (which figure low on the index) Costa Rica is run by left-wingers not self-serving right-wingers, it has a strong welfare state, it uses proportional representation to elect its politician, not first past the post, and as opposed to sending its youth off to die in illegal wars for the benefit of a wealthy elite Costa Rica abolished its army back in 1948.
But you keep voting for right-wing war-mongering plonkers if that makes you feel better…2
HPI report on Costa Rica:
Notes:With the highest levels of reported life satisfaction, and the highest happy life years – Costa Rica stands out in the HPI even before considering its ecological footprint. It has the fifth-lowest human poverty index in the developing world, and the proportion of people living on less than $2-a-day is lower than in Romania – an EU member. What makes these results even more remarkable is that it achieves this with a quarter of the footprint of the USA. This is no matter of chance. Costa Rica, a haven of democracy and peace in turbulent Central America, has taken very deliberate steps to reduce its environmental impact. Unique in the world for having combined its ministries of energy and the environment back in the 1970s, a staggering 99 per cent of its energy comes from renewable sources. In 1997, a carbon tax was introduced on emissions – with the funds gained being used to pay indigenous communities to protect their surrounding forests. Deforestation has been reversed, and forests cover twice as much land as 20 years ago. In 2007, the Costa Rican Government declared that it intended to become carbon neutral by 2021. As a result of these huge steps, Costa Rica has risen up the ranks of Yale University’s Environmental Performance Indicator, from 15th in the world in 2006 to 5th in 2008, the highest position outside Europe. Professor Mariano Rojas, a Costa Rican economist at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences in Mexico, is unsurprised by his country’s performance and adds a few further explanations:
- The abolition of the country’s army in 1949, freeing up government money to spend on social programmes.
- Solid social networks of friends, families and neighbourhoods, allowed by a sensible work-life balance.
- Rich natural capital.
- Equal treatment of women.
- Strong political participation.
Costa Rica is not heaven. Its welfare state, one of the most developed outside Scandinavia, must deal with an economic system that produces high levels of inequality, and almost 10 per cent of the population live on under $2-a-day. Clean water and adult literacy are almost universal, but not quite. And, whilst we wait with bated breath to see if Costa Rica really does move towards being carbon neutral in forthcoming HPIs, its current ecological footprint is still eight per cent above the one-planet living threshold.
Landon Thomas Jr. in the New York Times:
Norway is … a major oil exporter [and] Even though prices have sharply declined, the government is not particularly worried. That is because Norway avoided the usual trap that plagues many energy-rich countries.
Instead of spending its riches lavishly, it passed legislation ensuring that oil revenue went straight into its sovereign wealth fund, state money that is used to make investments around the world. Now its sovereign wealth fund is close to being the largest in the world …
Norway’s relative frugality stands in stark contrast to Britain, which spent most of its North Sea oil revenue — and more — during the boom years. Government spending rose to 47 percent of G.D.P., from 42 percent in 2003. By comparison, public spending in Norway fell to 40 percent from 48 percent of G.D.P.
“The U.S. and the U.K. have no sense of guilt,” said Anders Aslund, an expert on Scandinavia at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.
Eirik Wekre, an economist … describes Norwegians’ feelings about debt this way: “We cannot spend this money now; it would be stealing from future generations.”
Two things stand out as New Labour’s legacy: war of aggression (the “supreme” war crime) and the worst inequality of incomes since records began (another supreme crime considering the damage it inflicts on everybody).
Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and their conspirators are little more than wolves in sheep’s clothing and they’ve had much of the Labour Party and its supporters hoodwinked for all these years.
Polly Toynbee — one of the hoodwinked—may stamp her feet now but all she ends up doing is laying bare how dysfunctional Britain’s quasi-democracy is.
Because the UK is still stuck in the dark ages of plurality voting (and New Labour broke its manifesto pledge of electoral reform) control of Britain will simply pass from one wolf to another.
What I find so great about the findings in The Spirit Level is that they completely change the rules of the debate on income equality.
No longer does one need rely on grounds of fairness and justice, which fall on the deaf ears of a world succumbed to the fallacies of social Darwinism, or “survival of the fittest,” and the idea of “wealth creators.”
Now, given the deluge of data, it’s a practical question of whether you want to live in a society with low rates of social problems or high rates of social problems. A no-brainer as they say.
The Spirit Level has opened my eyes to a couple of things too. One is the importance of poor countries to get richer. Wealth has a huge role to play in raising living standards in poor countries. I used to think developing countries had something we didn’t and that they would lose this something as they became richer. What I now realise is that it’s not wealth that takes this something away but inequality.
The other thing it’s opened my eyes to is the different way in which some countries have acheived greater income equality. Sweden, for example, gets its greater equality through redistribution, through taxes and benefits, and public services provided by a big state. In contrast, Japan has a greater equality of incomes before redistribution. Differences in Japanese earnings are smaller even before taxes and benefits. Check out the Equality Trust’s ‘Remedies’ webpage for more.
Boris Frankel in Melbourne’s The Age:
Here is some good news. Just as the Great Depression inspired significant social reforms, so the current “great world recession” is producing a spate of overdue reform proposals. Some of these proposals have emerged in Britain, one of the most unequal societies in the developed world. While Australia ranks as the fourth most unequal developed society after the US, Portugal and Britain, there is widespread delusion among Australians that we are an egalitarian society. By contrast, 80 per cent of people in British surveys believe that class division — or birth not worth — determines a child’s life chances.
I think there’s probably widespread delusion among New Zealanders too when it comes to seeing their society as egalitarian. It used to be for sure, but since the Labour and National party usered in free-market fundamentalism in the 80s New Zealand, too, has become one of the most unequal developed societies in the world. One more reason not to vote for Labour or National.
External links:
Marina Hyde on New Labour’s relationship with money:
It is difficult to think of a more perfect testament to New Labour’s intellectual shallows. On the eve of the most deadly serious budget in decades, Gordon Brown posts a YouTube video in which he announces he has scheduled some inquiry — pre-empting debate about MPs’ expenses. It might as well have been captioned “I can haz bathplug?”.
MPs’ expenses are a cross-party blight, of course. But when historians come to assess this edifying period for our democracy, they may well remark upon what a pity it was that certain members who were so fastidious about their personal outgoings were so profligate and laissez-faire with the public purse. Olympic overspends, a couple of wars – they waved through the lot while perusing the John Lewis electricals catalogue.
New Labour just looked like … well, small-time crooks is the expression … And in the end, it’s the smallness of these people that you can’t get away from.