My two previous posts from the Summit are on OurKingdom: Lots of programs - but where are the progressives?
Want to feel good about the short term world outlook?
First a few random bits of converstion and observations...
With my taxi driver arriving at the conference. He was from Pakistan and skeptical about climate change. "It's true, and sea level rise will put a lot of Bangladesh under water," I said. "Ah! Le them come to Watford. They're welcome here ... but all those important people at the hotel: why do they come in so many big 4-wheel drives with 4.7 litre engines?" I didn't have an answer to the last point.
A french economist, member of the Gracques(http://www.lesgracques.fr/web/content/view/18/30/) --- the left liberal economists who hve been very influential in setting French economic policy, both left and right, for 20 years. Sarkozy has made a little bit of progress with the "regimes speciaux"---the privileges of the SNCF, EDF These are the "rentiers de gauche"---1960s labor privileges which no one has dismantled in France yet. But Sarkozy then went after the right's rentiers instead of concentrating his reforms on the left's. He tried to reform doctors, dentists and the taxi drivers. But that is attacking your base. Why not, as a president of the right, just keep on the left's entrenched interests? Attali---a Gracques who packed his commission with Gracques---was ambushed by the adminsitration which put into his report all the hyper-detailed proposals that they have wanted to get done; it also suffered a certain arrogance in its belief of the power it actually had. Sarkozy could turn things around ... France really needs internal liberalisation of its labor markets to make a dent in its unemployment. The right must pick apart the left's rentiers and wait for the left to pick apart the right's. There is a clear plan for France, the economist seemed to suggest, and there is enough work to be done by all political colors.
Bill Clinton explained why Americans have turned protectionist --- anti free trade. (He says that when he is working for "his candidate"---laughs all around---the policy of his she most has to distance herself from is NAFTA.). The wealth creation of the 90's, says Clinton, went into jobs and borad-based increase in standard of living; in the 00's, however, it went to the rich. No net jobs, tax breaks for the rich ... So no wonder America feels it has not benefited from NAFTA recently. (As Clinton spoke of wealth creation, I couldn't help but replay the morning news' revelation of the $110m that the couple had earned since 2000. They have given $10m to charity.)
There is a growing consensus that each human will have to be limited to 2 tonnes of Carbon dioxide emissions per year. The USA today consumes 20t, and China consumes 5t per capita. To put this number in a bit of context: flying 100,000 miles alone consumes about 20t of Co2. The average delegate today probably flew 3,000 miles with a group of 5 people. So that's 15,000 miles flown for that delegate, so just over 2t Co2. That's the annual carbon dioxide quota gone for that participants, then.
On the train back to London, the international civil servant from UNHCR. (Paraphrasing) "It was so good to feel the progressive vibe amongst the leaders ... That is what these summits are good for .... behind the scenes, understanding that we all understand each other and support each other's efforts ... Kevin Rudd knew about R2P, the acronym---now that says a lot."
R2P - the right to protection - is the controversial mandate that the UN has to protect individuals of member countries at risk, even if it is from the actions of their own governments. Javier Solano had mentioned it in the public meeting --- maybe this particualr moment of crisis, combining environmental awareness, catastrophic awareness, financial crisis, will lend itself to re-inforcing R2P at the expense of national sovereignty.
So back to Gordon Brown's three desiderata: an IMF that will be a real financial Early Warning System, a UN that will be a real resolver of conflict and a World Bank that will be a real promoter of the environment. The big global issues---war, economics and the planet---are well taken care of by world government, and we can attend to the task of defining Britishness.
There was a reassuring sense of the world order falling into place again. John Kufuor, President of Ghana, sounded a note of caution in reminding everyone that neither China, nor India, nor Russia nor the US were represented. Ellen Johnson-Sirleef, President of Liberia, pointed out against the free-trading consensus that China and India seemed to point towards much more managed paths to riches than the WTO likes to see.
David Milliband calls for Social Democracy and Liberalism to come together once again into a Progressive coalition. We hear repeatedly at the summit that equality is a precondition for liberty: without fair distributions, freedoms, and especially economic freedoms, will not be tolerated. This is the point about extending free trade and also about "sharing the burden" of environmental costs. Social Democracy is a condition of Liberalism.
But what if it really is the other way around: freedom is a condition of equality. The taxi driver cared more about equaltiy than freedom in complaining about the 4x4 vehicles: it was a request that there be genuine sharing, and not for any other end than equity. But if people are constrained to be equal, can they really be said to be equal at all? The burden of constraint does not fall equally. So equality is the desired outcome, but the hard part is that it should be arrived at freely. This is the niggling annoyance I felt at Bill Clinton's statements about inequality measured against his own earnings: he could have freely contributed to his desired equality, but instead his love of freedom trumped that.
This philosophical difference between freedom-lovers and equality-lovers always sooner or later creates tensions in the Progressive alignment.
