What in the Hell is NATO? (It Will Even Take On Climate Change)

The US State Department's website explains the background and role of NATO(North Atlantic Treaty Organization). It states:

Formed in 1949 with the signing of the Washington Treaty, NATO is a security alliance of 28 countries from North America and Europe. NATO's fundamental goal is to safeguard the Allies' freedom and security by political and military means...Article 5 of the Washington Treaty -- that an attack against one Ally is an attack against all -- is at the core of the Alliance, a promise of collective defense. Article 4 of the treaty ensures consultations among Allies on security matters of common interest, which after 60 years have expanded from a narrowly defined Soviet threat to the critical mission in Afghanistan, as well as peacekeeping in Kosovo and new threats to security such as cyber attacks, and global threats such as terrorism and piracy that affect the Alliance and its global network of partners.

It is interesting how NATO has conveniently expanded its role over the last several decades. The raison d'etre of NATO is as stated in Article 5 "that an attack against one Ally is an attack against all -- is at the core of the Alliance." Currently,with the wave of a magic wand, NATO views Article 4's "security matters of common interest" to mean, literally,whatever it wants to make it mean. It echoes the essence of the statement by Former Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes that "the Constitution is what the judges say it is." In other words, NATO is what NATO says it is.

In 1999 NATO bombed Serbia due to the way it was dealing with it's internal conflict with Kosovo. A NATO member was not attacked. NATO decided it needed to intervene in the crisis regardless. Now, led by President Obama, NATO is involved in Libya's civil war (a significant distance away from the North Atlantic). What is the role of NATO?

I'm posting three short youtubes. One comes from a group promoting the "new" role of NATO. The two others are the opinions on the same topic by President Clinton's former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and President Obama's Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. What is noticeable is the blatant ambiguity of everything they are saying. There are no real concrete answers given.Madeleine Albright is even asked what role NATO has in dealing with climate change. NATO is now fighting wars dealing with environmental issues? The official NATO website has a most peculiar way of defining itself on the link "What is NATO?" It invites you to "Discover NATO." The viewer hears the sound of birds and forest water for a brief moment.There is a picture of teenagers jumping excitingly in the air. Juxtaposed to that picture is a couple laying down in the grass romantically. A computer animated flower is next to the guy. He stares at the girl while she is lazily reading. The definition reads:

We want to be sure that we can walk around freely in a safe and secure environment. Security in all areas of everyday life is key to our wellbeing, but it cannot be taken for granted.

Perhaps NATO will further expand by intervening in the global economic crisis? Would members be willing to bomb banks and send drones to assassinate corrupt CEOs? Even if such a surreal occurrence were to take place, in all likeliness, NATO would be on the other side of that war: "securing" markets. Or is that part of it's role already?

In a Greener World

Straight to the point, from Naomi Klein's "Copenhagen: Where Africa Took on Obama" (in The Nation):

The highlight of my first day at COP15 was a conversation with the extraordinary Nigerian poet and activist Nnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends of the Earth International. [...]

The solution for Bassey is not carbon trading or sinks but "serious emissions cuts at the source. Leave the oil in the ground, leave the coal in the hole, leave the tar sands in the land."

Change that first line to "oil in the soil" and Bassey's got something...and I recommend you read the rest.

Canada and Copenhagen

As you probably know, the UN Climate Change Conference begins next week, and you probably already know that it has been greeted with a pretty strong air of skepticism, especially because there is so much money changing hands to prevent any kind of meaningful action against climate change. What you probably don't know, unless you are a high level news consumer, is that Canada-- by that I mean the Canadian government, which is a minority government run by the conservatives-- is actively working to sabotage international measures to reduce carbon emissions.

Most people have a fairly to strongly positive view of Canada (here, unlike my other references, I am not talking about the Conservative government), and in many ways that is justified. But this positive view of Canada has masked all that the current government has done to prevent meaningful environmental protections in the name of 'jobs' (which means Harper's friends' jobs at the top of the corporate ladder).* The Copenhagen summit has brought forth some negative press, which means people are starting to notice how Canada's support of the tar sands is the wrong way toward the future. Instead of leading the effort in green technology, the conservative government seems to think turning the country into a petro-state with a single export economy is a great idea.

George Monbiot has summarized Canada's actions in his article "The Most Urgent Threat to World Peace is...Canada." Why the title? There have been several reports that global catastrophe in the 21st century will be driven by climate change. Canada has already ignored its obligations to the Kyoto treaty, but it gets worse. As Monbiot writes,

After giving the finger to Kyoto, Canada then set out to prevent the other nations from striking a successor agreement. At the end of 2007 it single-handedly blocked a Commonwealth resolution to support binding targets for industrialised nations. After the climate talks in Poland in December 2008, it won the Fossil of the Year award, presented by environmental groups to the country which had done most to disrupt the talks. The climate change performance index, which assesses the efforts of the world’s 60 richest nations, was published in the same month. Saudi Arabia came 60th. Canada came 59th.

I don't often associate Canada with Saudi Arabia, because the latter certainly isn't a good neighbor. In fact, Canada's old friends aren't so sure they like who the big C has been hanging out with. At the recent Commonwealth summit (I swear, I am not used to this British empire talk) a proposal was introduced to exclude Canada from the Commonwealth.

In the past, the Commonwealth has suspended Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Nigeria and South Africa for electoral or human rights reasons. Now, The World Development Movement, the Polaris Institute in Canada and Greenpeace have called for Canada to be suspended from the Commonwealth over its climate change policies, the Guardian reports. [...]

"If the Commonwealth is serious about holding its members to account, then threatening the lives of millions of people in developing countries should lead to the suspension of Canada's membership immediately," says Saleemul Huq, a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change according to the newspaper.

Canada's greenhouse gas emissions are among the world's highest, and the country will not meet the cut required under the Kyoto protocol: by 2007 its emissions were 34% above its reduction target.

As an American I must drive my Canadian friends crazy because I continue to insist that the Conservatives are working hard on demolishing all the things that make Canada a decent place to live. The environment is one of these things. But if I sound too critical, let's take an op-ed from the Globe and Mail, no Marxist smarty-pants paper. Here's Jeffrey Simpson, who concludes,

The world has sized up the Harperites, studied their policies, noted the Prime Minister's lack of commitment, observed the government's exit ramps and is awaiting another shabby Canadian performance marked by spin at home and lack of substance abroad.

For those of you who take Monbiot or myself to be too strident, Simpson acknowledges that other countries haven't taken climate change and carbon reduction seriously either, but he doesn't allow that to get in the way of the hypocrisy of Harper's team. The difference between the US, China, Brazil and Harper's government, is that the Canadian public can confront or change the latter.


The lone footnote:
*Let's be fair though: petrodollars are so strong that the Liberals would pocket, rather than counter, such a currency.

California Inaction

For my friends in the Central Valley, or who are from there, Mother Jones has published an article by Josh Harkinson called "The New Dust Bowl." It focuses on the plight of migrant workers and undocumented immigrants, who are some of the least protected when an economy collapses:

The sudden collapse of the Central Valley's economy illustrates how climate change can push a fragile region over the edge. Already vulnerable from rampant housing speculation and a dependence on industrial agriculture, the valley never prepared for a prolonged spate of bad weather. In 2008, local bankruptcy filings jumped 74 percent—from about 15,300 to 27,000—a rate of increase twice the national average. Three of the valley's counties were among the nation's six worst for foreclosures, with nearly 85,000 houses lost. The drought is expected to dry up a billion dollars in income and 35,000 jobs, adding to a statewide unemployment rate that recently hit 11.9 percent—the highest since the eve of World War II.

I'm not sure this is the most appropriate place to bring it up, but there's not much the state can do about this, due to its greatly restricted budgetary process (For its effects on the CSU system see here, although it has been noted elsewhere that there have been cuts even during 'good years'). Part of the blame rests on Prop. 13 (see Paul Krugman's take) and various other measures that have screwed up the discretionary power of Sacramento, which while that can be a good thing sometimes, has largely contributed to a political 'culture' of passing the blame around to other people.

Of course, the Governator can't really deal with these problems, being that neither Democrats nor his own party take him seriously. So, aside from a statewide garage sale, and appeals to the federal government, what have his people been up to? From the Wall Street Journal:

As of July 2009, California's budget shortfall was 49.3% of its general funds. States have considered drastic options to fill such gaps.

"I looked as hard as I could at how states could declare bankruptcy," said Michael Genest, director of the California Department of Finance who is stepping down at the end of the year. "I literally looked at the federal constitution to see if there was a way for states to return to territory status."

Territory status for one of the world's largest economies? Now that's true California politics inaction.