On the Role of Business in a Societal or Global Catastrophe

While it is obvious that a business or industry can affect and be affected by its environment, such as by polluting a river and a hurricane, respectively, it is less well known that a business or an entire industry can cause or facilitate a societal or global crisis. Whereas polluting a river can be answered with government regulation, the very legitimacy (and thus ongoing operations) of a company or even an entire industry is arguably at risk in knowingly creating or significantly worsening a societal/global crisis. The latter role goes beyond the scope of government regulation and corporate social responsibility, although broadening or just enforcing anti-trust laws may be sufficient to deal with the lost legitimacy. That is to say, what I have in mind is another genre or type of problem.
For instance, Exxon funded its own scientific studies on the effects of the oil industry on the Earth’s climate as early as in the 1950s. Certainly by the 1970s, the company’s management knew that the ongoing release of CO2 into the atmosphere would cause severe climatic problems, and yet the company’s public-relations lied to the public that the company’s studies were not decisive. Given the industry’s clout/money with members of Congress and even presidents, the company could keep the government from legislating and regulating geared to an expected crisis. Exxon (and the entire industry) played a major role in causing global warming, which could result in the extinction of our species, not to mention reduce the production of food-stuffs and trigger mass-migrations and even wars such as over water-rights.
Business ethicists can be expected focus on the ethical principles violated lying and the related willingness to be a major contributor to a planetary crisis as regards habitability. In other words, what should Exxon have done? Scholars of business and societal culture focus on the incompatibility of corporate and societal cultural norms and values. Within that field of business and society, advocates of corporate social responsibility design company charitable programs oriented to specific societal problems, especially if the company had contributed to the ongoing (rather than crisis) problems. Operating a food bank for the poor is not like saving the planet, or our species. Political economists cover the legislative and regulatory capture by an industry and the resulting muted regulations. Systems theorists can explain how all of these parts work together—an entire system with a fatal flaw in its basic design and operation. The ability of business to cause or even greatly facilitate a societal or global crisis is perhaps so new in the twenty-first century that this sort of problem has not yet been studied.
In 2007-2008, mortgage producers and investment banks created sub-prime mortgages and made high-risk bonds based on the risky mortgages. Investment banks even sold insurance for holders of the bonds. The financial derivative and insurance markets became so large that when they collapsed, a financial crisis occurred. An industry had put the world’s financial system itself at risk of collapse. Financial regulation was not sufficient; a gigantic financial infusion from the Congress and the Federal Reserve was necessary. Unlike the banking crisis of 1907, more than a socially responsible J.P. Morgan would be needed. Society, through its government, had to step in both for the U.S. economy and the global economy. The crisis was that large. That the financial sector was culpable and yet could receive federal money without strings (so even bonuses could be paid!) suggests that the notion of a few large companies or an industry creating a major societal-level (e.g., the economy) crisis was new. Wall Street money as electoral campaign contributions doubtless played a role in the refusal of Congress and the U.S. president to break up the big banks, but the larger question of what to do when a business or industry creates a societal crisis rather than localized typical problems had not been considered in its own right.
To be sure, a government can enable a company to create a societal crisis. Take, for example, the public-health crisis during the coronavirus pandemic that began in 2020. In Phoenix, Arizona, the regional transit authority and the two subcontractor companies ignored local law requiring that masks be worn on the buses and light-rail. A significant proportion of bus drivers went maskless and/or allowed passengers to ride without wearing masks even when federal law required masks even of operators behind a plexiglass shield. A representative of TransDev, one of the subcontracting companies, said that the law didn’t matter because of the company’s policy, which permitted masks and presumably overrules federal regulations. A representative of Metro Valley, the regional authority, refused to enforce the federal regulation on the light rail as well as against the willful bus drivers (and passengers). A transit supervisor on the police force told me that the chief of police had told police employees not to enforce the federal regulation even though, according to the FBI, local law enforcement is regularly relied on to enforce federal law. “They are federal; we are state,” the police supervisor told me. He also told me that the governor had told the chief not to enforce the federal regulation. That federal money goes into the mass transit system in the Phoenix metropolitan area is apparently no reason to follow federal law on mass transit. One police employee told me that “bus drivers are state employees (which is false) so they are not bound by federal regulations. A second police patrol supervisor had told me that the only real law in Arizona is that which “goes through the state legislature.” All three men were not only sure that they could not be wrong, but were extremely rude and dismissive towards me. I concluded that Arizona is in need of federal oversight.
At the company level, TransDev has been knowingly misleading its bus drivers into thinking that they don’t have to wear a mask and that passengers need not either—in spite of the company’s own signs, “Per federal law, masks are required on the buses.” A representative from Metro Valley, the regional authority, told me to ignore the signs. This mentality within at least two organizations is itself a problem. In fact, with Arizona having the highest infection rate in the U.S. on at least November 3, 2021, the mentality and the resulting patchwork of masks on the local buses and light rail can be said to be a significant cause of the ongoing pandemic locally. At the very least, the positive correlation is troubling, though conveniently not to the governor, chief of police, regional transit authority, or TransDev company.  The brazenness alone is enough for informed minds to question the legitimacy of at least the local police department (which was being investigated by the FBI for having intimidated and stopped peaceful political protesters) and the TransDev company. The matter of the higher officials, including the governor, the mayor of Phoenix, and the city manager, is of course more political. I had spoken with the mayor’s office manager and had sent an email to the manager’s office (my request to speak with a managerial-level staffer resulted in a call from an intern). Besides the sheer willfulness, lack of respect for federal law, and ignorance all around, the culpability of a company (TransDev) in giving the ok for bus drivers and passengers to go maskless, and another company (Allied Security, backed up by Metro Valley) to allow security employees to go maskless and allow passengers to go maskless on the light rail when the state ranks highest in the pandemic-danger in the U.S. suggests that companies can create or severely worsen a crisis with impunity both within the companies themselves and in a corrupt and ignorant political culture. The question of legitimacy is in this case broader than just for a few companies.
Company managements are not always above lying to the public. The case of Boeing involves a management lying to its pilots, customers, and the public, resulting in preventable deaths, a significant decrease in the company’s reputational capital, and arguably even a societal-level crisis at an early stage regarding aviation. The company installed new software that could be influence by a sensor that could malfunction. Saving the company the cost of training the pilots, the company’s management did not inform those employees of the addition. The ethical dimension is pretty clear (consider Kant’s dicta about lying). What is less clear is the matter of a company being of such size in a market and the latter being so salient in society that the company can unilaterally cause a crisis at the societal level. Announcing a program in corporate social responsibility, such that helps children to keep up in school, wouldn’t suffice; the harm in a societal crisis is so much greater than are the societal problems to which CSR is geared. At the very least, the board and upper management could have been replaced by a law; the company’s response was to replace the CEO with the “Plan B” insider on the board. That is, playing a significant role in causing a societal crisis could justify the intervention of a government, rather than leaving it up to a company’s shareholders. Where the government is itself corrupt, such as in Arizona, the needed intervention can come from a federal government (e.g., U.S. and E.U.) or even other countries against both the government and the particular company involved. Corporate social responsibility and business ethics are geared to a lesser scale of harm. Causing a societal or global crisis does not reduce to unethical business and is not redressed by corporate social responsibility. Instead, society has more legitimacy to intervene and in a more drastic way, given the nature of a crisis.

On the Impact of Political Rhetoric: From “Global Warming” to “Climate Change”

Words matter in politics. The side that can frame a question by definitively naming it in the public mind enjoys a subtle though often decisive advantage in the debate and thus in any resulting public policy as well. For example, “pro-choice”privileges the pregnant woman, while “pro-life” defines the abortion debate around the fetus. Similarly, “global warming” implies a human impact, whereas“climate change” defines the issue around nature. Even though the shift from“global warming” to “climate change” is more in keeping with the evolving science and won’t be bumped off by a cold winter, political players have been the driving force—language hardly being immune to ideological pressure.

Regarding the weather shifting popular perception on the issue, research published in Public Opinion Quarterly in 2011 claimed that a bad winter can indeed discredit the “global warming” label.[1] The Washington Policy Center claimed two years later that the heavy snowfall during the latest winter had led to “climate change” replacing “global warming.”[2] The cold refusing to relent in March of 2013 and hitting North America hard in January of 2019 seemed to undercut or repudiate the scientific “global warming” hypothesis even though meteorology, a empirical science,  always demands long-term data.

However, in looking back at the name-change, we must consider the influence of political actors, who are prone to manipulate the public's perception in part by using words to frame the debate. In 2002, for example, Frank Luntz wrote a confidential memo to the Republican Party suggesting that because the Bush administration was vulnerable on the climate issue. The White House should abandon the phrase “global warming,” he wrote, in favor of “climate change.”[3] As if by magic, although “global warming” appeared frequently in President Bush’s speeches in 2001, “climate change” populated the president’s speeches on the topic by 2002.[4] In other words, the president’s political vulnerability on the issue was answered by changing the label to reframe the debate. Not missing a beat, critics charged that the motive was political in downplaying the possibility that carbon emissions were a contributing factor.[5] Both Bush and Cheney had ties to the oil and gas industry. In fact, Cheney's through Halliburton may have played a role in the administration's advocacy in favor of invading Iraq under the subterfuge that it had been involved in the attack on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center in 2001. 

The Obama administration likely went with “climate change” rather than "global warming" because the former was less controversial. The corporate Democrat tended to hold to the center politically; after all, Goldman Sachs had contributed a million dollars to his first presidential campaign in 2008. In September 2011, the White House decided to replace the term “global warming” with “global climate disruption.”[6] The administration subsequently annulled its own decision. 
So much attention on the matter of a mere label indicates that just how important what you call something is to its outcome. Labels are not always neutral. For instance, the term "African American," was making inroads whereas "Black American" was hardly ever heard. "African" slips in ethnicity whereas "Black," or negroid, refers to race. Changing the axis on which the controversy had hinged was in favor of the race-now-ethnicity. Meanwhile, the American public didn't notice the artful conflation of ethnicity (i.e., culture) and race. Obama used the ethnic term and applied it to himself even though his mother was Caucasian. He also claimed Illinois as his home state even though he moved to Chicago after college. He could benefit politically from the support of Black Americans and Illinoisans. 
Similarly, Obama could benefit politically from adopting "climage change." As the academic journal Public Opinion Quarterly reported in 2011, “Republicans are far more skeptical of ‘global warming’ than of ‘climate change.’” Whereas the vast majority of Democrats were indifferent to the label being used.[7] With “global warming” carrying “a stronger connotation of human causation, which has long been questioned by conservatives,” Obama stood to gain some republican support simply by changing how he refers to the issue.[8] That support was part of the president's ability to straddle the center in American politics. 
Given the effort that has gone into labels, it is amazing that more time in the Congress has not gone into debating labels. I am also curious why the American people did not realize that they were being manipulated by the choice of label. If "climate change" allows for the contention that human-sourced carbon emissions into that atmosphere have not been a cause of the warming of the oceans and air, then it is possible that the very survival of the species could be in jeopardy because of  the choice of a label for short-term economic and political reasons.

1. Tom Jacobs, “Wording Change Softens Global Warming Skeptics,” Pacific Standard, March 2, 2011. 

2. Washington Policy Center, “Climate Change: Where the Rhetoric Defines the Science,” March 8, 2011.

3. Oliver Burkeman, “Memo Exposes Bush’s New Green Strategy,” The Guardian, March 3, 2003.

4. Ibid.

5. Washington Policy Center, “Climate Change: Where the Rhetoric Defines the Science,” March 8, 2011.

6. Erik Hayden, “Republicans Believe in ‘Climate Change,’ Not ‘Global Warming’,” The Atlantic Wire, March 3, 2011.

7. Tom Jacobs, “Wording Change Softens Global Warming Skeptics,” Pacific Standard, March 2, 2011.

8. Ibid.

Climate Change: An Outsider in Democracies

The U.S. House of Representatives was created in part as an outlet for the immediacy of a people’s passions; other governmental institutions at the federal level provide a check. The term of a House representative is only 2 years, whereas that of a U.S. senator is 6 years and that of the U.S. president is four. So presumably societal  or even global  problems requiring immediate action find pressing representation in the House, whereas the perspectives of U.S. senators and presidents, being limited to six and four years respectively, are not long-term-oriented enough for problems that could blow up in decades. To register in the crowded minds of House representatives, a long-term problem yet in need of immediate attention must trigger the immediate passions of the constituents unless the representatives value principled leadership (i.e., acting in the best interests of the constituents and the country). Yet passions demanding immediate action tend, I submit, to involve anger. Climate change is thus excluded, and the long-term forecasts do little to impress upon a people how urgent rectifying action really is. Even if the scientific reports of current conditions emphasize extant dramatic changes (not to mention future forecasts with disastrous implications for humanity generally and particular regions, immediate passion is not sufficiently stirred for the U.S. House at least to prioritize addressing the problem.

A report published in January, 2019 indicates that the world’s oceans were then already 40% warmer than a U.N. panel had projected in 2014.[1] Although the data was not yet in to be included in the report, 2018 was expected to the warmest on record for ocean temperatures.

Considering that the oceans had been providing “a critical buffer” in having “slowed the effects of climate change [in the atmosphere] by absorbing 93% of the heat trapped by the greenhouse gases” that were from human uses (presumably including the methane released as the permafrost melts), the reported acceleration of ocean warming should have sounded over the lands as a clarion call for immediate action.[2] The most important implication from the report is that the oceans would absorb far less of the extra heat from the atmosphere if the oceans’ temperatures get high enough, which likely would come sooner than projected, the atmosphere would then show more and more of the immediately noticeable increased heat in the atmosphere. Although losing much or all of the “absorption drainage” by virtue of the seas would likely register very starkly into immediate effect as people spend time in the atmosphere—and thus likely trigger immediate governmental action, awareness of the implication before that point is likely too indirect to register on the awareness of constituents.

Even though Thomas Jefferson and John Adams agreed in retirement—long after they had sparred like dogs—they agreed that a viable republic (and we could add climate) requires an educated and virtuous citizenry (as it elects the elected government officials in a representative democracy). So universities in the U.S., unlike the E.U. and Asian countries, require that students wanting to become a lawyer or physician first get a degree in another school of knowledge, such as in the Liberal Arts and Sciences. To be sure, such a broad education admittedly helps in being able to make inferences, such as that when the oceans cut back drastically in what the amount of the extra atmospheric heat they can absorb, the atmosphere will warm up rather quickly. Still this is not enough to result in a “wake-up call,” for the proportion of college-educated adults in a given population has not been high enough. In other words, too many voters are not likely to connect such dots and thus will only be motivated to urge immediate governmental or global action with enforcement powers when the atmosphere has gone into “hyperdrive” in terms of warming that can be dramatically felt. Pain, it seems, like anger, can register as an immediate passion of the people whose representatives in at least short-termed offices will be motivated to act upon.
In a general sense, even designing one governmental institution, such as the U.S. House of Representatives, to give immediate passions influence in government is not enough for problems such as climate change to be treated as priorities. The fault extends ultimately down to human nature—how our brains are hard-wired and socially conditioned—so it may be said that the design at least of the U.S. Government is faulty with respect to human nature. In the U.S., a culture wherein the instant gratification of consumerism and quarterly earnings reports are given undue influence at the expense of self-restraint and a longer-term perspective and motivation, a problem like climate change wherein the immediate baleful effects are mitigated by the oceans falls between the cracks. This, I contend, is a major flaw in that the constitutional design has a gaping hole into which problems that are dramatic primarily in the future fall. Both in business and government, systemic design should be redesigned to give due emphasis—and even more so as to counter both the short-term-oriented American culture and human nature—to problems whose immediate effects mask the disaster coming in the future. It is as if an earthquake were reported and yet officials in cities on a coast would not recognize the obvious implication that a tsunami could come so an alarm should sound immediately rather than when the gigantic waves could be seen.  

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1 Lijing Cheng et al, “How Fast Are the Oceans Warming?” Science 363 (no. 6423), January 11, 2019.

2. Kendra Pierre-Louis, “Ocean Warming Is Accelerating Faster Than Thought, New Research Finds,” The New York Times, January 10, 2019.

When Partisanship Takes on Science on Global Warming: The Part before the Whole

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams concurred on the following preference—namely, a natural aristocracy of virtue and talent over the artificial sort of birth and wealth. Talent here is not merely skill, but also knowledge. Hence the two former U.S. presidents agreed that citizens ought to be given a broad basic education in free schools. The corollary is that as a citizenry lapses in virtue and knowledge, decadence will show up in public discourse and consequently public policy. If kept unchecked, the tendency is for the republic to fall.
Therefore, as governor of Virginia, Jefferson proposed a Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge in 1779. His rationale was that because even “those entrusted with power” who seek to protect individual rights can become tyrants, popular education is necessary to render a republic secure. Jefferson’s hope was that by teaching “the people at large” examples of despots in history, the electorate would be more likely to recognize despots in their own time and throw the bastards out on their noses. As for those whom voters put in public offices, Jefferson believed that “laws will be wisely formed, and honestly administered, in proportion as those who form and administer them are wise and honest.” Hence, “those persons, whom nature hath endowed with genius and virtue, should be rendered by liberal education worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights of their fellow citizens.” This is why, beginning at around 1900, law schools in the American states began to admit applicants to the undergraduate degree in law (LL.B. or J.D.) who had already earned an undergraduate degree in the liberal arts and sciences. It was not as though the undergraduate degree in law had been promoted to graduate status.
Having had largely self-governing, popularly-elected colonial legislatures for much of the seventeenth century, the nascent American republics would stand on the two pillars of virtue and talent (including knowledge) instilled in the self-governing peoples themselves as well as their elected and appointed public officials. It is said that the only constant is change, as in the extent to which an electorate is virtuous and generally knowledgeable, as well as in the related rise and fall of republics. One notable example is ancient Rome, which went from being a republic to a dictatorship under the purported exigencies of war. Lest the rise and fall of republics seems a bit too dramatic to be considered realistic, I offer the more modest thesis that a decline in virtue and knowledge among an electorate renders the public policy increasingly deficient in dealing with contemporary problems. The matter of climate change is a case in point.

According to a study at Yale in April 2013, Americans’ conviction that global warming was happening had dropped by seven percentage-points over the preceding six months to 63 percent. The unusually cold March—quite a reversal from the previous March—explains the drop, according to the poll’s authors. The cold may actually have resulted from a loosening in the artic jet-stream southward—like a rubber-band whose elasticity has been compromised—due to more open water in the arctic ocean and thus less temperature differential in the air. Even so, only 49% of Americans believed that human activities were contributing to global warming. In fact, only 42% of Americans believed at the time that most scientists had concluded that global warming is really happening. Thirty-three percent of Americans were convinced that “widespread disagreement” exists among scientists.
In actuality, a study showed of more than 4,000 articles touching on human-sourced climate change, 97% of the scientists having written the articles conclude that human-caused change was already happening. Less than 3% either rejected the notion or remained undecided. “There is a gaping chasm between the actual consensus and the public perception,” one of the study’s authors remarked. “It’s staggering given the evidence for consensus that less than half of the general public think scientists agree that humans are causing global warming. This is significant,” the author concludes, “because when people understand that scientists agree on global warming, they’re more likely to support policies that take action on it.” Going back to Jefferson and Adams, ignorance among the electorate in a republic can be sufficient to divert enough political will that legislation needed to fix a societal (or global) problem is sufficiently thwarted.
Perhaps some of the apparent ignorance on global warming in 2013 could actually have been partisan angst. If President Obama favored policies predicated on the assumption that human-sourced global warming was then already underway, just his support alone could have been enough for some Republicans to hold firm in their denial of even other-sourced global warming. In holding knowledge hostage to score cheap partisan points, citizens and their representatives do not demonstrate much respect for knowledge as well as virtue; the vice of partisanship subdues the good of the whole in preference for the good of a part.
If Jefferson and Adams were correct that a virtuous and knowledgeable citizenry is vital to the continuance of a republic, the extent of ignorance and partisan vice related to global warming in spite of the nearly unanimous scientific conclusion and the huge stakes involved may suggest that the American republics and the grand republic of the Union may be on borrowed time (and money). Moreover, that the ignorance and vice pertains to global warming enlarges the implications to include the continuance of the species. That is to say, a virtuous and educated species may be necessary for its very survival.

See this PSA on global warming: http://www.thewordenreport.blogspot.com/2013/05/global-warming-psa.html


Academic Sources:

Philip Costopoulos, “Jefferson, Adams, and the Natural Aristocracy,” First Things, May 1990.

Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, “Americans’ Global Warming Beliefs and Attitudes in April 2013,” Yale School of Forestry and Environomental Studies, 2013.

John Cook, Dana Nuccitelli, Mark Richardson, et al, “Quantifying the Consensus on Ahthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature,” Environmental Research Letters, 8 (2013) (2), pp.

Press Source:

Tom Zeller, “Scientists Agree (Again): Climate Change Is Happening,” The Huffington Post, May 16, 2013.

On Leaving Coal Emissions to the States: Implications for American Federalism

With the transportation (i.e., fuel) and power (i.e., coal) sectors accounting for a majority of the carbon emissions in the U.S., according to the EPA, the Trump administration’s moves to freeze his predecessor’s fuel efficiency standards and relax pollution rules for power plants needing renovation put at risk the declining trend of emissions in 2018. The implications for climate change (e.g., hotter summers) were stark, according to Janet McCabe, who had been Obama’s EPA air chief.[1] The Trump administration’s proposal to allow the states, including West Virginia, to set their own rules for regulating coal was, according to the New York Times, “the administration’s strongest and broadest effort yet to address what the president has long described as a regulatory ‘war on coal’.”[2] An implication is that carbon emissions from coal in the U.S. would likely increase as a result, even though large states like California and New York could be expected to tighten the rules. The interesting point about turning the regulations to the states revolves around federalism. Constitutionally speaking, should the states regulate the carbon emissions from coal?

The Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution enumerates the powers of the federal government. Regulating interstate commerce is one such power. Does a power plant emitting carbon emissions in West Virginia, for instance, constitute interstate commerce—even if the carbon eventually crosses state lines? I submit that buying of the coal from outside the state does constitute interstate commerce, whereas the use of said coal within the state does not. Regulations on the burning of the coal, including whether pollution-abatement equipment shall be required, would according to this view be the state’s prerogative. To claim that the burning of the coal is interstate because carbon emissions float over other states is problematic.

To claim that anything that affects another state is thereby interstate leaves open the possibility that virtually anything—even a farmer growing wheat for his own consumption—can be counted as interstate. Furthermore, that no commerce is actually involved may be overlooked or dismissed—or assumed because of an effect, even indirect, on commerce. Coal emissions from West Virginia could float over Canada—would this justify Canada in regulating West Virginia? Even the foreign policy angle seemingly justifying U.S. regulation at the federal level seems weak to me.

Least it be argued that the states should not be semi-sovereign, the U.S. Constitution, as per Madison’s Notes, relies in part on the state governments’ power being sufficient to act as a check on encroachments or even tyranny at the federal level. Expansively “interpreting” interstate and commerce is just one nail in the coffin of American federalism—a system already stymied from being seriously out of balance.

If my analysis here is correct, then the point of judgement for the American electorate—the popular sovereign over both the U.S. Government and the state governments—involves the tradeoff between invigorating federalism and risking more emissions, and thus warming of the planet. Such a judgment, I submit, is one that an electorate can make, yet we should not forget that Jefferson and Adams agreed that a virtuous and educated electorate is necessary for a republic—or republic of republics—to be sustained.

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[1] Lisa Friedman, “Trump’s Plan for Coal Emissions: Let Coal States Regulate Them,” The New York Times, August 18, 2018.

[2] Ibid.

Was U.S. President Obama the Antichrist?

In the twentieth century, Christian apocalypticism thought it saw the end of days in the midst of baleful signs, including historical biblical criticism, the return of the Jews to the Holy Land, evolutionary science, and the United Nations. In the United States, the consolidation of power in the federal government at the expense of federalism (and, theoretically, liberty as well) was apocalyptically taken as a precursor to the end. According to Matt Sutton, “As the government grew in response to industrialization, fundamentalists concluded that the rapture was approaching.” The trajectory, in other words, was viewed as headed toward a global super-state under the thumb of a seemingly benevolent ruler. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “consolidation of power across more than three terms in the White House, his efforts to undermine the autonomy of the Supreme Court, his dream of a global United Nations and especially his rapid expansion of the government confirmed what many fundamentalists had feared: the United States was lining up with Europe in preparation for a new world dictator. This “leader would ultimately prove to be the Antichrist, who, after the so-called rapture of true saints to heaven, would lead humanity through a great tribulation culminating in the second coming and Armageddon.”

Thanks to Obamacare and the Dodd-Frank financial regulation law of 2010, some of the anti-state apocalyptic voters viewed Barak Obama during his first few years as president as possibly being the antichrist. Questions about Obama’s birth only fueled the speculation. According to Sutton, the “specious theories about his place of birth, his internationalist tendencies, his measured support for Israel and his Nobel Peace Prize fit their long-held expectations about the Antichrist. So does his commitment to expanding the reach of government in areas like health care. In 2008, the campaign of Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee, presciently tapped into evangelicals’ apocalyptic fears by producing an ad, ‘The One,’ that sarcastically heralded Mr. Obama as a messiah.” On the Fox News network, one host regularly referred to Obama as “the anointed one.” This reference was not lost on evangelical apocalyptic voters.  

Analysis:

The sheer paradigmatic distance between twenty-first century secularists and evangelical apocalyptics may go a long way in explaining the blockages between the U.S. House Republicans and the U.S. Senate Democrats (and the president). In other words, the voters represented by the two parties are not only on different pages—the two groups are reading different books. Indeed, beyond having radically different theological assumptions and beliefs, the two groups may differ even on whether religion is legitimate. For example, a modernist secular voter might characterize the apocalyptics as superstitious. The voter could point to the failure of the world to end in the twentieth century in spite of all the signs of the impending rapture and period of tribulation. Indeed, “the sky is falling” Christian reading goes back to the pre-Constantine persecutions. 

In spite of the problems with the apocalyptic interpretation (which seems to have been applied in any decadent or disruptive period in the history of Christianity), definite trends can be identified, such as the U.S. Government’s increase of power at the expense of the several states. Furthermore, increasing global interdependence—such as in regard to health, nuclear weapons, and climate—has indeed increased pressure on politicians to increase the power of the U.N. The proliferation of empire-scale federal unions beyond that of the U.S.—as evinced by the E.U. and even the A.U.—can also be viewed as a trend toward globalized governance (i.e., a federation of regional federations, which themselves are made up of kingdom-level states).

How such trends are interpreted is what triggers the gulf between the apocalyptics and the secularists (and even the mainline churches). My main point is that political intransience can be expected with such divergent views of social reality and its basis. For instance, does society (and government) result from a social contract (e.g. Hobbes, Locke, Kant) or a divine decree (e.g., Augustine and Aquinas)? Is increasing statism a sign of the Antichrist or simply a response to problems of industrialization? The interpretations go beyond whether the trends are good or bad. Accordingly, discourse itself can be expected to be extremely difficult. It is not, however, impossible, and solutions are possible.

For example, federalism can accommodate such divergent views as long as the federal units have enough autonomy from the general government. The E.U. is in a better condition in this respect than is the U.S., though the European Union risks dissolution (e.g., the state debt crisis) because the E.U. Government does not have enough competencies to effectively manage the integration already accomplished.  However, federalism should not be viewed as a panacea. It is possible that the fundamentally disparate differences between the apocalyptics and the secularists regarding the role of government are such that political separation is the only suitable solution. This may be why Texas under Rick Perry flirted with succession in Obama’s early years. In any case, as difficult as discourse between the representatives of the two groups may be, being in political union demands tolerance and discussion, which in turn require humility (including a recognition that one can be wrong). Yet even here, Biblical inerrancy throws in a wrench, making discourse tortuous for both sides.

The distance between the parties is indeed formidable and perhaps even intractable. Even deciding whether to separate would be daunting. A union containing a very deep cleft is thus what we Americans suffer to manage amid political paralysis, finger-pointing, and shouting. God must surely be diverting his eyes in utter disgust and ultimately sadness—not about the signs or trends necessarily, but, rather, concerning the sheer anger being evinced in such tight quarters. Were there any adults willing to come to the fore, a secular voter might lightheartedly proffer in generosity, God shines His light on this city on a hill. Otherwise, we are together in quite another place.

Source:

Matthew A. Sutton, “Why the Antichrist Matters in Politics,” The New York Times, September 25, 2011. 

The U.S. Goes after Executives at Volkswagen: A Deterrent?

Oliver Schmidt, a Volkswagen executive who had been head of the company’s environmental and engineering center in Michigan, pleaded guilty on August 4, 2017 to two federal charges in the United States: conspiracy to defraud the federal government and violating the Clean Air Act. He “admitted conspiring with other Volkswagen employees to mislead and defraud the United States in 2015 by failing to disclose that thousands of diesel cars were rigged to evade detection of excess emissions levels. He also admitted filing fraudulent emissions reports to regulators.”[1] He faced possible fines and time in prison. James Liang, another of the company’s executives who had been charged, had already pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy and violating the Clean Air Act. The other executives charged were in the E.U. state of Germany, which does not extradite its residents. Given the power of the auto industry in that state, such accountability applied to executives for the same fraud in the E.U. may have been too difficult to achieve. Nevertheless, for the sake of business ethics alone, prosecuting executives personally rather than just companies is in general important as a deterrent.

Prior to Schmidt’s admission of guilt, Volkswagen had agreed to pay $4.3 billion in civil and criminal penalties, which in turn were part of $22 billion in settlements and fines in connection with “the cheating scandal and the sale of vehicles that emit harmful levels of pollution.”[2] Yet with revenues of $228.5 billion in 2016, the question of whether 10% of one year’s revenues for a company that had nearly $431 billion in assets at the end of that year could reasonably be expected to act as a deterrent.[3] I submit that prison time for executives is the way to get not only their attention, but that of the company itself, including its current and future management personnel. As wealthy as executives typically are, not even fining them would be of a sufficient deterrent; their quality of life must be significantly thwarted for a significant amount of time for the message to get through. Given the massive lapses in holding Wall Street executives accountable for their role in producing and/or selling sub-prime mortgage-based bonds and the high probability that resumed excessive risk-taking held secret even from clients and stockholders could trigger yet another financial crisis, the U.S. Justice Department was on a prudent path in going after the executives at Volkswagen rather than only the legal person (i.e., the company itself). Yet a pattern of prosecuting executives, even of financial institutions based in the U.S., would be necessary for the deterrent to work going forward.

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[1] Bill Vlasic, “Volkswagen Executive Pleads Guilty in Diesel Emissions Case,” The New York Times, August 4, 2017.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Volkswagen’s 2016 financial statements. 

Young Japanese: An Early Verdict on Climate Change

Is the verdict in, and have we, mankind, lost our own self-inflicted climate battle? Is this what Japanese millennials were saying in 2016 when, according to a government survey, only 75 percent expressed interest in climate change, whereas close to 90 percent of the same age group (18-29) had expressed interest just a few years earlier?[1] Their intuition may have been the proverbial canary in the coal mine.

Midori Aoyagi, a principal researcher at the National Institute for Environmental Studies in Japan, reports that the young people in her focus groups “always felt a kind of hopelessness” toward their daily lives, their jobs, and social issues.[2] She suggests the pessimism might be “a result of having grown up during a prolonged period of economic stagnation known as the lost decades,” but this would not account for the drop from 90% to 75% in just a few years.[3] Interviews with Japanese aged 22 to 26 elicited a similar attitude. “These young people cited the huge scale and timeline of the problem, a feeling of powerlessness, silence from the media and preoccupation with more important issues.”[4] I want to unpack this revealing piece of evidence.

The huge scale and silence of the media, combined with the political power of the extant energy sector, whose financial benefits are grounded in the status quo, suggests that nothing short of sustained effort aimed at transitioning to clean energy could possibly suffice to obviate the worst of climate change in the decades to come. Not sensing such effort, as per the silence of the media, the young people may have intuited that their time would be more usefully spent on other societal problems, which still had a chance of being solved. To be sure, unforeseen technological developments could at least in theory still redeem the species in spite of its self-destructive urge for instant gratification. Yet without a hint of promise from the species' unique tool-making ability, the young people could not but sense a slipping away of the window for solving the climate-change problem. Indeed, because they could live to see the worst of climate change as it unfolds, the sense of hopelessness makes sense. So it is particularly telling for the rest of us that more of them were moving on to tackle other, more solvable societal problems.

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[1] Tatiana Schlossberg, “Japan Is Obsessed with Climate Change. Young People Don’t Get It,” The New York Times, December 5, 2016.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

Springtime for China's Coal Industry: Is China Too Big to Swerve Enough to Avoid the Climatic Iceberg Ahead?

Even as Chinese government officials “called on the United States to recognize established science and to work with other countries to reduce dependence on dirty fuels like coal and oil,” China was “scrambling to mine and burn more coal.”[1] Notably, short-terms concerns were dominant. “A lack of stockpiles and worries about electricity blackouts” were “spurring Chinese officials to reverse curbs that [had] once helped reduce coal production.”[2] By December, 2016, coal mines were reopening, and with them coal miners were returning to work. The renewed activity would of course make it more difficult for China and the world to meet CO2 emissions targets, “as Chinese coal is the world’s largest single source of carbon emissions from human activities.”[3] In fact, China’s use of coal results in more emissions “than all the oil, coal, and gas consumed in the United States.”[4] The implications for being able to contain the global rise in temperature within 2 degrees C are not bright from this real-life scenario. It is important, therefore, to grasp the underlying dynamics behind China’s plight.

Even as 2014 had brought “the autumn of coal,” and 2015 and early 2016 instantiated the winter, the new spring later in 2016 came during what would be the hottest year for the planet since record-keeping began. The cyclical pattern evinced here does not fit with the maximizing nature of global warming.

The Chinese government was not adjusting fast enough, given the climatic toll even by the closing months of 2016. The sheer scale involved is likely the main culprit—China’s population being over a billion. Despite ambitious hydroelectric-dam projects and “the world’s largest program to install solar panels and build wind turbines,” coal still produced almost three-quarters of the country’s electricity.[5] Even with conservation measures on the use of electricity—which, by the way, are practically non-existent in sunbelt republics like Florida and Arizona—a billion people must necessarily consume a lot of energy cumulatively. Even with the one-child policy, the sheer size of China’s population was something the government could not ignore.

The dynamic I have in mind is that of the Titanic, the largest ship of its day (1912) and yet with a rudder that was too small, given the size of the ship, to turn it sufficiently in time to avoid the upcoming iceberg. By analogy, a climatic “iceberg” was approaching Earth so fast and was so close even by the end of 2016 that the governments of large, empire-scale, countries like China and India would need larger rudders in order to steer close enough to alternative energy sources to have even a chance of avoiding a collision with full-blown climate change. The culprit, in other words, lies not only in the proclivity of human nature to privilege instant gratification backed up by short-term politics and thinking; our ships of state are outmoded, given how large we’ve allowed our species to become. The problem is thus not in China’s rough transition from central-planning to a government-regulated free market.

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[1] Keith Bradsher, “Despite Climate Vow, China Scrambles for Coal,” The New York Times, November 30, 2016.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

California Passes Stricter Pollution Targets: Bringing Business Around

California’s legislature approved a bill (SB 32) in August, 2016 that extends the climate targets from reducing greenhouse-gas emissions from 1990 levels by 2020 (the former target) to just 40 percent of 1990 levels by 2030.[1] A second law, which includes increased legislative oversight of California regulators and targets refineries in poor areas, passed as well. Diane Regas of the Environmental Defense Fund pointed to California’s climate leadership. “As major economies work under the Paris Agreement to strengthen their plans to cut pollution and boost clean energy, California, once again, is setting a new standard for climate leadership worldwide.”[2] At first glance, it would seem that the legislature had freed itself from big business to pass the bills, but the sector itself was split. I submit the anticipation of a refreshed “cap and trade” program as an alternative (or mitigating factor) to stricter regulations played a role. Simply put, using the market mechanism in government regulation makes the stricter targets more palatable to market-based enterprises.

To be sure, oil companies and some manufacturers fought the bills hard. Of the higher costs and out-of-control regulators supposed or at least advertised by big oil, Governor Brown labeled the lobbying campaign a “brazen deception.”[3] Given the companies’ vested commercial interests, that lobbying effort could have been flagged as a conflict-of-interest situation. Accordingly, that campaign’s credibility should have been hard won, with Californians applying strict scrutiny to the “information.” Sadly, it is not uncommon for regulators to cast aside such a conflict because they are fine with relying on information provided by the very companies being regulated. 

That big oil did not dominate the debate may be due in part to Governor Brown’s use of the market mechanism to appeal to business in spite of the higher target in the legislation. Specifically, the legislation increased the government’s leverage in getting wayward polluting companies to participate in the cap and trade program, which requires companies to buy permits in order to release greenhouse gas emissions. According to Governor Brown, the passage of SB32 would increase the leverage that the government has to “reach an elusive deal with businesses that would prefer a flexible program like cap and trade instead of more stringent requirements to slash pollution.”[4] Business managers prefer flexible programs, and bringing in the market mechanism provides a sense of familiar ground.

Therefore, it is possible that the anticipation of a renewed, fuller utilization of the market-based method increased support for the bills from the business sector, or at least mitigated possible opposition, such that big oil and the climate-denying stalwarts in manufacturing could not dominate the lobbying. Put another way, incorporating the market mechanism either directly or indirectly as an alternative to tougher regulations applied across the board is a political strategy that can split the business vote such that the sector itself does not dominate lobbying campaigns in one direction and thus thwart the voters’ judgments, which should consider the arguments of both sides of a proposal.  

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[1] Chris Megerian, “’A Real Commitment Backed Up by Real Power’: Gov. Jerry Brown to Sign Sweeping New Climate legislation,” Los Angeles Times, August 25, 2016.

[2] “Landmark Climate Bill Passed by California Legislature,” August 26, 2016.

[3] “Landmark Climate Bill Passed by California Legislature,” August 26, 2016.

[4] Megerian, “A Real Commitment.”

On the Southwest American Drought: Looking to China

Lake Mead, a reservoir outside Las Vegas serving 40 million people in Nevada, Arizona, Southern California, and Northern Mexico, was at its lowest level (i.e., below 1,080 feet) in April 2015 since it was formed with the Hoover Dam.[1] Particularly for California, whose snow-melt would again be minimal, the continued drought was quickly turning dire. With a surplus of rain-water coming down on western Washington and Oregon, the U.S. Government could have dusted off FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) to activate the long-term unemployed (and the imprisoned) to assist the Army’s Corps of Engineers in constructing aqueducts and digging canals that would hook up with the extant canals running from the delta area north of Sacramento to southern California. It is not as though the Oregonians and Washingtonians would miss the water, and the Californian farmers could see to it that their best produce finds itself up north. Yet as easy as such a large-scale governmental project seems, the devil is in the details, which can actually be rather huge in themselves. China provides a useful case study that the Americans could, conceivably at least, benefit from—should they endeavor on a truly large-scale governmental project.

By April 2015, the Chinese central government had spent 308 billion yuan ($50 billion) on the South-North Water Transfer Project.[2] It’s sheer size is not for the faint-at-heart. The project “takes water from the Yangtze River and channels it across a half-dozen provinces and more than 1,700 culverts, aqueducts and other man-made structures.”[3] More than 400,000 people had been relocated. In spite of all of this effort, many towns in need of the water were continuing to pump up ground-water—causing the ground to sink even more. The shortage of water in Northern China had prompted cities to over-rely on their respective wells. Unfortunately, getting water that way was cheaper for the cities than from the transferred water via the project’s massive canals. Adding still more incentive to stay with the status quo, the cities in need of water had to build related infrastructure, including pumping stations and processing plants, in order to have access to the water from the project. Leaving this last bit to the city governments was not the smartest move by the project’s planners.

The lapse is particularly sad, given all the credit the Chinese government is due for having thought of and embarked on such a large-scale project capable of solving such a potentially devastating problem. At the time, Californians would have been aware of just how dire a water-shortage can be, yet the government of California was merely constructing more reserve-basins and ordering municipal water utilities to cut water-use by 25 percent. With all the surplus rain-water along the coast and western mountain-range in Oregon and Washington, why the U.S. Government had not stepped in to construct a massive Northwest system of massive canals taking the surfeit runoff to California is baffling to me.

The academic literature of international political economy may provide an answer. To explain why the Asian countries like Taiwan and South Korean have developed economically whereas Latin-American countries such as Panama have not, the literature distinguishes between strong- and weak-state countries. A strong state, or government, is able to resist pressure from society to consume governmental revenue. A strong state, for example, can say no to corporate welfare, for example—not just to spending more tax revenue on food-stamps!—whereas a weak state succumbs to corporate and other lobbying. The U.S. Government is a weak state because of the influence that defense-contractors, Wall Street, and corporate America have on members of Congress and the president. Put another way, after having spent roughly $4 trillion on the U.S. military in Afghanistan and Iraq, and trillions more in fiscal and monetary policy in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, spending tens of billions more on a water-transport system linking the northwest with the southwest (including Arizona) was not even on the radar screen.

The difference here between China and the United States is not merely one of priorities; the Chinese government is stronger with respect to fending off powerful interests in China who want money from the government. The difference, in other words, is not between democracy and dictatorship; rather, plutocracy is a weak-state form of government (e.g., the U.S.). To be sure, dictatorship brings with it a myriad of problems, but that of being a weak-state incapable of large-scale infrastructure projects is not one of them. In the literature, democracy is associated with weak-states in Latin America—the electorate being able to vote for candidates promising more consumption of government resources at the expense of the sort of investment in infrastructure that could bring in foreign-direct-investment (i.e., multinational corporations). Similarly, we can add plutocracy to the weak-state side of the ledger. Whereas plutocracy is inherently weak from the standpoint of a government being able to resist pressure from private wealth, democracy is not so, as a citizenry can vote in candidates who campaign on resisting corporate welfare, whether to Wall Street or Lockheed Martin.

In short, for all the credit that the Chinese central government deserves in having gotten the huge canals built—and why were not the governments of California, Oregon, Washington, and the U.S. talking in similar terms?—a mammoth project must be designed beforehand with everything covered—from the intake of the water to the flow into municipal pipes. Otherwise, the entire project can falter. “Water, water all around, but not a drop to drink” could otherwise apply. Were the U.S. Government to contemplate such a massive project to solve the water-shortage in the Southwest, the planning should include an analysis of the financial incentives and disincentives that every actor along the process, including at the end-point, would have. Water flows downhill, and the incentives must likewise. Otherwise, a dam could pop up that keeps any of the water from reaching the end-users.

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[1] Reuters, “Lake Mead on Track for Record Low Water Level Amid Drought,” The Huffington Post, April 24, 2015.

[2] Te-Ping Chen, “China Water Project Leaves Some Cities Dry,” The New York Times, April 24, 2015.

[3] Ibid.