Harm de Blij
The Power of Place
Oxford University Press USA, 2008
304 Pages
ISBN 978-0195367706

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Former White House Press Secretary Bill Moyers once commented that “What Carl Sagan did for cosmology, Harm de Blij is doing for geography.” Lofty praise, to be sure, as Carl Sagan was widely acclaimed for his grasp on an impressive array of diverse subjects. Yet similar accolades continue to be showered on de Blij, a former editor at National Geographic and a distinguished professor of Geography at the University of Michigan, from the likes of development economist Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University to the editors of the journal Nature. Through his authorship of more than 30 books and dozens of peer-reviewed academic articles, de Blij has acquired a reputation as a well-versed and intellectually versatile macro thinker with a unique ability to uncover linkages between ostensibly unrelated events.

In The Power of Place, de Blij provides compelling evidence for the central role of geography in some of the most complex and divisive issues facing the world today. Seamlessly weaving his insights on wide range of disciplines from anthropology, to public health, economics, and religious history (among other subject areas), de Blij shows how uneven human and physical geography have dictated the emergence of the world as we know it. His examples, original and rich with interesting anecdotes, are always thought-provoking and, occasionally, unsettling. He reminds us that “it is human nature to assign to place of birth or upbringing a large measure of blame for failure and to credit personal virtues for success…for every self-made man there are thousands who were born in the right place at the right time.” Although other thinkers have highlighted the role of geographical factors in the evolution of society, such as Jared Diamond in his recent popular book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, de Blij persuasively argues that those individuals who are given a chance for upward mobility will remain in the minority.

Early in the book, de Blij¹s section on religion draws on historical sociology and a plethora of different religious texts in arguing that the current form of many religions can be traced back to their geographical roots. For example, he argues the great monotheistic religions all had their origins in centralized, hierarchical desert societies. Possessing few natural resources in their vicinity, these societies looked outward for not only the economic expansion of existing water, livestock, and fertile pasture supplies, but also political, social, and cultural conquest and, ultimately, the forceful assimilation of others into their way of life. Quite naturally, according to de Blij, this militant attitude laid the roots for the Crusades, hysterical evangelical conversions in the Americas, and, in recent times, the oft-discussed activities of decentralized, fundamentalist terrorist cells like al-Qaeda.

By contrast, polytheistic religions of the Amazon rain forest and Papua New Guinea both have strong geographical roots in biologically rich rainforest zones and so the inhabitants of these regions rarely felt the need to compete with other villagers. This led to the more egalitarian, pluralistic models that often characterize these areas, as opposed to the more hierarchical, monolithic models that characterize monotheistic religions. Women in these societies were expected to play an important contributing role in everyday life, and moreover these civilizations, unlike monotheistic societies, share an aversion to proselytizing, rarely if ever spreading promises of heavenly or hellish afterlives.

In a fascinating section titled “The rough topography of human Health”, de Blij goes on to explain the link between various health issues and geography. In these pages, de Blij thoroughly repudiates the still-lingering notion that societies at the global economic core are more industrious or hard working than those in the underprivileged, primarily non-industrialized regions of the so-called “Global South”, arguing instead that infectious diseases like dengue fever, cholera, and other Neglected Tropical Diseases (NRDs) play a determining role in keeping the West ahead of the developing world. Why, he asks, do the mosquitoes of Africa transmit a routinely lethal malaria so much more effectively than in other parts of the world? Again, one of the answers lies in an accident of geography, as African habitats accommodate a particularly dangerous mosquito with a tendency to transmit malaria to humans rather than animals.

To further reinforce his thesis on the centrality of geographical factors to modern social phenomena, de Blij touches on the transformative role of rising urbanization, internal divisions in both developed and developing countries, and persistent gender inequality. In sometimes excruciating detail, de Blij systematically lays out the formidable barriers to entry that women still face in attempting to crack the “glass ceiling” of gender subjugation, ranging from odious examples of sexual terror in some Asian and African societies to more subtle examples of employment exclusion and disenfranchisement in the West. He suggests an explanation for how these conditions arise, noting that the most advanced countries in terms of gender equality can trace their good fortune to favorable geography: these states (primarily in Europe’s Nordic region) hold the luxury of relative homogeneity, modest spatial dimensions, high GDP, and a general sense of societal well-being.

Notwithstanding de Blij’s insightfulness, readers may find his prose style bombastic and difficult to follow in places. He also occasionally oversteps the bounds of rational detachment in his arguments, betraying a clear but thinly substantiated personal bias toward atheism, and more than a touch of American chauvinism. Overall, though, de Blij¹s holistic analysis is refreshing. Researchers have proved de Blij’s thesis that barriers to entry into the upper strata of economics and politics remains, for the vast majority of the world¹s population, ignored or understated. With the increasing importance of climate change and innovation clustering, geographical location is arguably becoming ever more important. We continue to see leaders driven by the power of an irrationally exuberant ideology: a vision of a completely interconnected world that embraces the prevailing economic orthodoxy that freer and more efficient capital markets will invariably lead to collective success. Yet this dream is oblivious to the nearly immovable obstacles that stand in the way.

Geography, from its relation to the prevalence of lethargy-inducing chronic malaria to gaps in gender opportunities, is central to the debate over how best to address global inequality, and needs to be recognized as such. de Blij carefully shows that our cultural topography mirrors, to a disconcertingly large degree, that of the physical landscape ­ unequal, tough, and unlikely to change in the near future.

Joel Krupa graduated in 2010 with an MSc in Environmental Policy from Mansfield College, Oxford.

Tim Flannery
Here on Earth: A New Beginning
Allen Lane, 2011
316 Pages
£14.99
ISBN 978-1846143960

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Tim Flannery is a multi-talented man on an all-consuming mission against environmental fatalism, whose goal is to show that a sustainable future is possible through cooperation and environmental restoration—even for as many as nine billion of us. This outspoken and highly credible Australian environmental scientist, praised by Sir David Attenborough as “one of the greatest explorers [of scientific progress] of our times”, has become one of the world’s most outspoken advocates for climate change awareness and corporate social responsibility. Flannery, a long-time interdisciplinary researcher of Australasian zoology, has focused much of his current work on informing international policy to avoid global climate catastrophe and influencing major conglomerates like Siemens and Tata Group to reform their environmental governance structures and, in the process, reduce their environmental impact.

Flannery’s intellectually sprawling new book, the whirlwind tour de force Here on Earth: A New Beginning, keeps with his trail-blazing, activist mission, borrowing from a smorgasbord of scientific literature—ecology, the history of evolutionary biology, indigenous environmental history, the links between cultural and biological evolution—to argue that we need not write off humanity’s environmental future too quickly. Yet this is not your everyday science textbook, and Flannery stays far away from over-intellectualising and unnecessary verbosity by concisely conveying scientific principles in clear language. The book follows in the sizeable footsteps of physicist Carl Sagan, journalist Natalie Angier, and other great science writers in exploring science in unorthodox, exciting ways, yet it also breaks from the overwhelming pessimism of the environmental community by offering a cautious optimism. Flannery outlines an alternative vision—a compassionate, humanistic path—that seems attainable if we are able to appeal to our better selves. How we arrive at this end is open to debate. Flannery suggests a variety of different methods for realizing environmental regeneration, such as rethinking our increasing detachment from the Earth and considering the implications of E.O. Wilson’s “biophilia” concept that claims that man holds an innate sense of longing for the natural world. Although his more extreme suggestions are unlikely ever to be adopted, his proposed solutions are always rigourously scientific and, at least in theory, could render sustainable change.

Flannery, a quintessential ecologist, sees things holistically, and in the book elegantly outlines interconnections and interdependencies. He makes the natural world come alive, whether he is describing the crucial role played by sea cucumbers in maintaining biotic environments on the ocean floor or outlining the myriad dangers posed by persistent organic pollutants and radioactivity. Quite simply, Flannery’s rational exuberance and love of nature is contagious. Throughout Here on Earth, Flannery does not shy away from challenging the conventional ideologies of doom and gloom, taking particular aim at the “selfish gene” theories of celebrity academic Richard Dawkins, the grave warnings of imminent atmospheric catastrophe by former NASA atmospheric scientist James Hansen, and Peter Ward’s so-called Medea hypothesis that “life itself periodically brings about the destruction of life and…long-term ecological stability is impossible”.

One of the key scientific arguments backing Flannery’s central thesis is a controversial one, despite its solid footing in empirical science. It focuses on the homeostatic “Gaia” vision of UK scientist James Lovelock, who argues that Gaia is a living, self-regulating entity that tends toward equilibrium and, where possible, will take concrete measures to protect its environs. Although it has been dismissed by Dawkins and other prominent scientists as failing to account for natural selection and general evolutionary biology, Flannery nevertheless insists that it holds great promise for explaining and predicting future environmental trajectories. Flannery highlights fascinating new research—such as the ability of rainforest canopies to alter rainfall patterns in ways that seemed scientifically impossible—in arguing that we can reinforce Earth’s natural survival mechanisms to ensure the continued inhabitability of the planet.

In sometimes graphic detail, Flannery highlights the barbarism and cruelty that have blighted much of humanity’s past, arguing that we are beginning to outgrow our savagery. Ongoing social developments and interesting examples of altruism and compassion serve convincingly as arguments that we may be evolving toward a stronger awareness of the needs of the integrated whole, as opposed to focusing solely on our own narrow interests. In light of this theory, Flannery draws comparisons between the development of superorganisms like ant and termite colonies and the complex superorganism of globalised humanity. Consequently, he is largely dismissive of conventional economic orthodoxy, noting that “there is more than a passing similarity, incidentally, between neoclassical economics and Dawkins’ selfish gene theory…both describe idealised frameworks which can be powerfully explicatory; but when they become universally dogmatic, ideologies have the power to erode our capacity to value one another, and so threaten to destroy the common endeavour that is our global superorganism.”

Given his deep knowledge of biology, ecology, and resource management, this stance might seem surprising, as one might presume that Flannery, who is all too aware of the political inertia and scientific ignorance that impede necessary reforms, would despair of our current environmental situation. Furthermore, many would approach his optimistic premise, which has assumed a notable outlier position in modern environmental assessments, with a certain degree of justified scepticism.

However, Flannery does not hesitate to rebuke those he considers irrational optimists, for example in conveying his dismay at the overwhelming political failure of the 2009 Copenhagen Summit. He repeatedly calls into question traditional economic assumptions and criticises the ongoing failures to account properly for environmental externalities in economic analyses. According to Flannery, it is undeniable that degradation is accelerating—acidifying oceans, melting ice caps, and deforestation are only the beginning of his list—and this book makes it clear that the problems are not insignificant. He also warns of the complex psychological reasons beyond environmental apathy, such as the all-too-human preference for current gratification at the expense of later hardship.

As one might expect, this occasionally simplified and optimistic perspective occasionally oversteps realistic boundaries. Sometimes Flannery’s proposals seem inherently counterintuitive or, occasionally, the stuff of dreams. For example, he decries at length the excesses of the rich and the excessive consumption that inevitably results from rising living standards. Yet, later, he argues that “the last few decades have seen the most astonishing progress in lifting the entrenched poor out of their misery, and our future depends on hastening the trend”—a troubling and ostensibly contradictory prescription in a resource-constrained world. He does not appear to fully grasp the enormity of the fiscal challenges that will be required to facilitate some of his more startling predictions, such as the contention that “I have no doubt that [in the near future] we will all use electric cars.” Flannery does admit that the smart grid development needed to enable this transition would “require over 400 billion dollars in financing in the United States alone”, but he remains silent on how the political will and private sector involvement needed to coordinate such a massive project would be catalysed. In this particular case, the additional grid restructuring, infrastructure investments, and massive new developments in energy generation would cost trillions of dollars worldwide. Such a voluntary transition seems highly unlikely, especially without some sort of major environmental catastrophe or political revolution that Flannery claims we can avoid.

These shortcomings aside, the ideas in Here on Earth are incredibly powerful. From superorganisms, to Gaia, to policy, there remain many paths to a better future for all generations. In one particularly stimulating section, Flannery describes a group of Western Australian researchers and displaced Pintupi hunters returning to the latter’s traditional Aboriginal lands. In eloquent detail, Flannery describes the crestfallen looks of the elders as they assess the utter lack of biodiversity and complete soil erosion decades after their departure—the inevitable outcomes of the abandonment of their sustainable controlled burning practices in favour of modern, “scientifically-sound” methods of environmental management. Without resorting to unnecessary idealisation of non-scientific knowledge, this example is instructive, and shows us that there must be another way besides the status quo.

Joel Krupa graduated in 2010 with an MSc in Environmental Policy from Mansfield College, Oxford.

David Leigh and Luke Harding
WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy
Guardian Books, 2011
352 Pages
£9.99
ISBN 978-0852652398

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This has been the year of Julian Assange. The American embassy cables disseminated by WikiLeaks have dominated headlines and backstories across the world, from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the Arab Spring. But what drives this enigmatic personality to risk his life and liberty to disclose some of the world’s most sensitive conversations? Is he a renegade anarchist who should be, as American conservative darling Sarah Palin put it, “pursued with the same urgency we pursue al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders”? Or is he a master of accountability, subjecting unwilling governments around the world to a glare of scrutiny unprecedented in its breadth?

In WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy, Guardian journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding recount with insight and rigour their time spent working directly with Assange and his eclectic mix of associates as they figured out how to report on and publish over 250,000 leaked diplomatic cables. As investigations editor and Moscow correspondent (respectively) at one of the five privileged news outlets that coordinated with Assange on the first round of cables, they were afforded an intimate, first-hand perspective on the documents’ trajectory from confidentiality to the public domain.

The leaks are political dynamite, and Leigh’s and Harding’s task is to trace the blast. Some of the memoranda are amusing; one describes French President Nicolas Sarkozy as a “short man with a Napoleon complex”. Others are mundane, providing extensive details on the endemic kleptocracies of Asia and Africa. Yet others offer revelations, for example that BP is effectively stealing Azerbaijan’s hydrocarbon reserves. Leigh and Harding draw extensively from existing media coverage and the original text of the cables themselves to provide thought-provoking, unique analysis and deeper explanations for recent geopolitical events.

WikiLeaks goes beyond a simple account of the contents and publication of the cables, delving into Assange’s troubled past. Assange’s blazing intelligence, his occasional paranoia, his recurring sense of self-aggrandisement, his overt and sexually predatory behaviour toward women, his intense dedication to his cause—Leigh and Harding cover the remarkable spectrum of Assange’s character qualities to allow the reader to grasp some of the intricacies of this strange man. It becomes clear that he is unpredictable, prone to the exigencies (real or contrived) of a given situation, and deeply suspicious of anything that represents what he calls the MSM (MainStream Media).
 This psychological investigation allows them to transcend accepted coverage of the organisation, dissecting its figurehead’s overwhelming influence on its formation and on its dialogue with the targets of its struggle for transparency.

For New York Times editor Bill Keller, the leaked cables advance our knowledge of the world not in great leaps, but rather by small degrees. Yet although many of the disclosed facts—from the alcohol-fueled Saudi Arabian princes’ sex parties to the appalling US-led murders of innocent civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan—have long been suspected or readily acknowledged by foreign policy experts, their open publication grants them undeniable authenticity. It is now proven rather than merely conjectured, for example, that energy giant Shell Oil purposefully inserts employees into every major Nigerian state department to ensure political expediency and compliant regulatory oversight. States clearly feel threatened by the validation of what they willingly tolerate as rumours. Harding himself was denied entry to Russia following his WikiLeaks-sourced delineation of the complex web of Russian corruption, implicating legislators, public servants, and criminal elements, with the entirety directly overseen by the mayor of Moscow.

These accounts are only the tip of iceberg. Leigh and Harding were also afforded access to the cables in non-redacted form, the versions that included ultra-sensitive information. It is frustrating not to find their contents here, for they surely provide the details of covert US operatives and contain embarrassingly frank assessments on the competency of global leaders. We are left to wonder about the level of censorship, but the policy is understandable, for the dissemination of such information would gravely endanger the intelligence personnel involved.

While unveiling the murky practices of purportedly democratic states is unobjectionable, Assange’s unshakeable moral certainty is unsettling; as Leigh and Harding note, WikiLeaks has already had unpredictable consequences. Will the pillars of power be shaken by the threat of potential publication of unsavoury, unethical, or illegal acts? Or will governments remain determined to fight transparency and proceed with business as usual, devising new punishments to mete out to those who attempt to challenge the established order? It seems inevitable, according to Leigh and Harding, that we will see an erosion of the impunity with which despots and corporate entities have acted in the past. They argue that this process of greater accountability is still evolving, but it is undeniable that WikiLeaks will continue to shape, in a strongly positive way, the methods used by corporations and governments to run the world as we know it. Accountability is here to stay.

Joel Krupa graduated in 2010 with an MSc in Environmental Policy from Mansfield College, Oxford.

California  State Senator Fran Pavley (D-Santa Monica) is one of the most progressive environmental legislators in America. Her notable accomplishments include authoring AB 1493 (a bill that made California the first state to drastically mandate the reduction of tailpipe greenhouse gas emissions) and AB 32 (a bill that requires, among other things, electric utilities to produce 33% of their power through renewables and mandates a cap-and-trade programme for emissions). These pioneering climate change laws have subsequently been adopted in other jurisdictions in the United States and within several provinces in Canada.

How dangerous is the lack of a comprehensive federal energy and climate change policy to America’s long-term economic prosperity?

This ongoing process is both dangerous and short-sighted. I think that we need Washington to reframe the debate away from climate change and energy security as “Sierra Club issues” and move toward encouraging the public to think of these sorts of issues as national security risks and economic liabilities. Business as usual is infeasible and will present a growing economic challenge to the world in coming years. Fortunately, it seems that lots of non-traditional proponents of better policy are emerging. For example, I have held focus sessions with senior military commanders at major bases in the western United States. These individuals, all of whom vary across the spectrum of political backgrounds, clearly iterated to me in our talks that there are substantiated links between climate change, energy security, and fossil fuel sources. Remember, these military leaders know that 60% of all our oil comes from foreign sources – and many of these countries do not have our best interests in mind.

Given that the United States’s aging grid infrastructure is poorly suited to handling decentralized renewable energy generation and that fossil fuel industries are often resistant to the development of alternative energy technologies, what role do you envision for renewable energy in the United States’s long-term energy mix?

It must be part of the energy mix, there is no question about that. It is only a matter of how much. We want a clean and secure energy future for California and the country as a whole, but we do not want to pick a winner or favour a particular resource for subsidies/support. There are progressive policy measures that can be implemented to compensate for some of the inhibiting factors that you mentioned in the question. For example, we currently have a renewable energy portfolio standard that requires that utilities purchase 20% of their energy from clean energy sources by 2020. AB 32, a bill that I was heavily involved in, ramps it up to 33% in the near future and engages the California Public Utilities Commission and the California Air Resources Board – an integrated approach that is essential. I think that there are serious challenges, so clever policy backing will be needed if renewables are to realize their potential.

California’s Proposition 23, often referred to as the “dirty oil proposition” for its rollback of AB 32, was recently defeated by California voters. It was financed heavily by wealthy out-of-state fossil fuel interests which tried to tell voters that they should not concern themselves with environmental policy in the midst of a major recession. Is this result an isolated California phenomenon, or does it have broader applicability to future US energy policy by clearly showing that Americans are getting serious about reducing energy dependency and fossil fuel-related  environmental degradation?

Well, a clean energy future is certain to spur economic advances, so let me say that any emphasis on the recession from the out-of-state interests was likely misplaced. Incredible innovators and entrepreneurs from across California are proving that it is possible to develop strong alternative energy capacity here that encourages innovation, provides jobs, and gives us cleaner air.  Thousands of new businesses and job opportunities will be created in the emerging green sector, from weatherizing to research to engineering. Economic growth and environmental sustainability are not necessarily contradictory and people recognize that, as evidenced in this result. In California, pretty much everyone is onboard with letting the market decide about the best decisions for energy, with state support to level the playing field with fossil fuels. This is contrasted with some federal decisions, such as the incredible subsidies currently offered to corn ethanol (politically popular in certain parts of the country but not necessarily the most environmentally benign). We are seeing conflicting signals, so there is no consensus on what this result means outside of California.

But as the “Saudi Arabia of coal”, the United States possesses vast fossil fuel sources. At this key inflection point, how should these resources be developed? Should the country focus on its domestic energy strengths, regardless of the environmental toll?

One of the most difficult things facing the US is the transition period. These resources will inevitably be at least partially extracted, so we need to find cost-effective and environmentally benign solutions in the short-term and long-term. We have lots of states that are very reliant on fossil fuel industries and it isn’t possible to just abandon them altogether. Here in California, we don’t have coal-fired plants and we passed a law a number of years ago that prohibits us from buying coal from nearby sources. There isn’t huge support for offshore oil here either. Yet it is a tough question – how do we reduce dependence on coal and other fossil fuels while simultaneously ramping up renewable deployment? In particular, I am largely focused on, and interested in, energy efficiency. We are already at a good place in this hugely important area, as California uses less energy per capita than virtually any other state. We have learned in California that investing in energy efficiency is far less expensive than bringing new generation onboard.

Other countries are interested in coordination and sharing of ideas and we are willing to share it. In particular, we are going to experiment with new policy mechanisms in the future – feed-in tariffs, distributed generation from clean sources like the run of the river hydro in British Columbia (Canada) – so I think that there are alternatives to business as usual and domestic fossil fuel resources are not always the best option.

Joel Krupa graduated in 2010 with an MSc in Environmental Policy from Mansfield College, Oxford.

Robert Bateman is one of the world’s premier wildlife artists, naturalists, and environmentalists. His works have been presented at venues including the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, the Tryon Gallery in London, and the Russian State Museum in St Petersburg, and he has the distinction of holding the longest running exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution for any living artist. Bateman, an officer of the Order of Canada, has won countless awards and has received a dozen honorary doctorates. A passionate conservationist, he sat down with Joel Krupa to discuss tips for would-be environmental advocates and how to bridge the growing disconnect between the modern and the natural world.

You are generally regarded as a leading international voice for biodiversity preservation and climate change advocacy. What role do you envision for artists of all persuasions—visual, writing, film, fashion, and others—in creating a more environmentally conscious society and, in particular, a more environmentally conscious next generation of youth?

I think that all of the arts have a place to play in this transition. Of the arts, film is perhaps the most important. Films like Sir David Attenborough’s Life and Planet Earth are the most valuable and are educating millions, while current environmental affairs documentaries by people like David Suzuki are also extremely important for keeping people apprised of ongoing situations. However, all the arts are essential and each will need to find a unique niche in an increasingly nature deficient society.

Nature-deficit disorder is one of your favourite causes. First coined by Richard Louv in Last Child in the Woods, it describes the various behavioural problems among young people that result from limited engagement with the outdoors. It is an increasingly popular term among educators and others that interact with children on a day-to-day basis and see the disorder’s pervasive symptoms. Do you think kids’ disinterest in the natural world is as serious as Louv contends?

I consider this epidemic even more serious than Richard Louv states. In fact, it could have serious implications for the future of humankind. I know this sounds unnecessarily dire, but humankind’s fate is inextricably linked with nature. I am reminded of a cartoon I once saw of two young boys sitting on a step. One says to the other, “What are you going to be, if you grow up?” Obviously this is amusing, but it is not funny. That young boy may not live to a ripe old age for a variety of reasons, including depression, suicide, drug abuse, early onset diabetes, or self-inflicted accidents. Even if he does reach senior age, his brain will have been rewired through endless hours staring mindlessly at screens. He might be in his 50s, but his brain will be much younger. The questions begin to pile up. What kind of parent will he be? What kind of voter will be, especially when it comes to environmental issues? Will he even care about natural places, now that his sense of place is virtual? What sorts of stories will he tell his grandchildren—Grand Theft Auto ones? This technologically obsessed environment for young people is a juggernaut rolling over an entire generation.

So is time spent in nature during one’s formative years key to personal development?

Absolutely. An accumulating body of research in America, Britain, and continental Europe points to the fact that playing outside in nature during children’s formative years has a salutatory effect on all of the issues I mentioned in the previous question.

You have said that “My life has always been immersed in nature. It has been inspiring, adventurous and fun. I have been thrilled by everything from gorillas in the rainforests of the Congo to the penguins of the Antarctic. But none of these spectacular experiences has been any more enchanting than the nature I discovered as a young boy in the ravine below our backyard [in Toronto].” How can we make seemingly routine natural settings as engaging to individuals as some of the aforementioned breathtaking environs?

That is the most serious problem facing us. The idea that nature can be very exciting and cool only in certain areas is flawed. The appreciation of nature is slow, gradual, and subtle. It has very little sizzle. We seem to be increasingly producing a species of young people that requires sizzle and instant gratification, which is quite literally the antithesis of nature. Their world is louder, faster, and flashier. They are engrained into this world from the earliest childhood stages, starting with seemingly innocuous daily cartoons. It makes it much more difficult for them to do these subtle things without getting bored. Learning about nature doesn’t take skill or practice—it is completely natural—but if the brain has been rewired for high speed, individuals cannot get excited about it. We need to teach kids to enjoy the subtle.

A recent New York Times article stated that “Students have always faced distractions and time-wasters. But computers and cellphones, and the constant stream of stimuli they offer, pose a profound new challenge to focusing and learning.  Researchers say the lure of these technologies, while it affects adults too, is particularly powerful for young people. The risk, they say, is that developing brains can become more easily habituated than adult brains to constantly switching tasks — and less able to sustain attention.” What implications does this rewiring have for future environmental efforts, and how can it be reversed?

I should start by saying that there are marked advantages to being able to think and react quickly. Most of the skills can likely be harnessed for good causes. However, true and deep appreciation takes time and patience. My experience has shown that when children are exposed to experiential learning, they will naturally achieve a deeper understanding. So I believe that we just need to provide the right opportunities and facilities to make this switch happen. We also need to consider pedagogical shifts. For example, a PhD candidate recently asked me if we should be teaching environmental problems to young people. But I say absolutely not. This will get in the way of teaching about the sheer beauty of nature. We need to get away from a situation in which children know more about the Amazonian rainforest than they do about a nearby park or street—children need to learn about the natural elements of their neighbourhood in the same way in which they would grow to know the names of their friends.

Interestingly, the aforementioned New York Times article also mentions that educators, including organizations like your Get to Know programme, are intensifying efforts to use technology in the classroom, seeing it as a way to connect with students and give them essential skills. Across the country, schools are equipping themselves with computers, Internet access, and mobile devices so they can teach on the students’ technological territory. Is it possible to use technology effectively to reconnect kids with the natural world?

It has been said that “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!” This argument has merit in that sense. It is definitely better than nothing and these efforts are key. Still, experiential learning in the field and living with nature in the real world is still of utmost importance. Developing that heart-based connection is essential.

Given the seemingly endless array of problems facing young people’s environmental future, what would you say to those who feel that it is tempting to give up and simply despair?

Nothing is ever final. Worry and despair about these issues, or any other world problem for that matter, is unproductive and senseless. I like to look to the future and I believe that there are more terrific young people nowadays than I have ever seen. They are not part of this growing majority of electronic device addicts and they are accomplishing many positive things. In fact, they use new-fangled things like social networking to achieve their admirable ends. In addition, nature-deficit disorder is such a huge problem that we need to extend beyond schools and tackle it from all angles—parks, governments, and especially parents. This stuff isn’t rocket science—going for a hike in nature every weekend just makes sense. Invite the friends. Invite the friend’s parents. Everyone can benefit. The average 14 year old in North America spends almost 7.5 hours per day, 7 per week, looking at an electronic screen. Surely, taking a hike for a few hours is not a big problem.

Any advice for up-and-coming or current environmental advocates?

In his book Biophilia, E.O. Wilson says that we should “fall in love with other living things”. If people develop a place for nature, all else will follow. Once you have this love, it is easy to begin a lifetime of being immersed in the natural world. If you can do something, do it. After you are done, step back and enjoy this wonderful world.

Joel Krupa graduated in 2010 with an MSc in Environmental Policy from Mansfield College, Oxford.

As I shuffled through the hordes of screaming Dutch fans and delirious Spaniards on 11 July 2010, I couldn’t help but feel like I was a part of history. It was a chilly winter night in Johannesburg and the sky was lit by an impressive array of stars. Despite having never attended a football game of any kind before, I was now about to enter Soccer City—the vaunted venue for the 2010 World Cup Final. This monolithic stadium, looming high over Nobel laureate and liberator President Nelson Mandela’s former township of Soweto, is designed to resemble an African pot streaked by flames. On this particular night, it was conveying its designer’s intent admirably: a glowing beacon of hope and celebration.

For the next 150 minutes, I enjoyed up-close and personal interactions with some of the finest footballers in the world, culminating in a hotly contested 1-0 decision for Spain. The final whistle marked not only the end of an international sporting match, but a historic, triumphant moment in Africa’s troubled history. On a continent known more for its failed states than for its miracle moments, the first World Cup/Olympics on African soil meant a great deal to South Africa. For a month, a starkly divided nation coalesced and put on an incredible show for the world. South Africans of all walks of life—rich and poor, young and old—came together to celebrate their shared dreams of a better life.

There is no single sporting event that captures the global imagination in quite the same way as the World Cup. Its heroes, its venues, its advertisers—countless hours are spent debating and dissecting even the most ostensibly mundane topics. We collectively marvel at the beautiful stadiums built for a few matches and gasp at the vast expenditures assumed by the host country. Regardless of their sporting affiliations or country of origin, it seems like everyone has an opinion on at least one aspect of the games.

This year, the bulk of the commentary was reserved for discussions surrounding the choice of South Africa as host nation. Football fans fretted and feared the worst. Could South Africa, still recovering from the scourge of apartheid, overcome its sometimes chaotic governance structures and successfully pull off enormous logistical and construction challenges in time? Was it possible for this long-suffering nation, with one of the world’s highest per-capita murder and rape rates, to protect massive influxes of tourists, players, and its own citizens? How could a country justify spending billions on sport when so many of its citizens lived in dire poverty?

Of course, we now know that South Africa performed admirably and exceeded even the rosiest of expectations. The games went off virtually mistake-free, tourists marvelled at the natural beauty of the countryside, and South Africans were congratulated for their stunning hospitality. Crime plunged significantly and foreign visitors were able to travel safely and efficiently. Nearly everyone left impressed by the progress and hopeful for the future of Africa’s biggest economy and only G20 member.

Yet such positive results partially mask the tremendous work that still needs to be done. For example, South Africa has the dubious distinction of being one of the most unequal and dangerous places on Earth, even though its robust constitution has provided admirable rights on a normative level for all of its citizens. A sizable gap remains between discussion and implementation as the country is marred in a vicious cycle of inequality. According to the Gini coefficient index (a well-respected metric for measuring the levels of inequality in a society), South Africa is ranked 129th in human development (12th overall in Africa), and is beset by sprawling crime-ridden areas in urban centres like Johannesburg and Cape Town.

Racial tensions are another potentially explosive issue that came to the forefront in the multi-ethnic glow of the World Cup. The legacy of apartheid, with its dictates on the supremacy of whites and the systemic oppression of non-white South Africans, is still palpable. Julius Malema, the controversial populist head of the dominant African National Congress’s youth movement and an important political figurehead, has grown increasingly antagonistic. He recently led chants of “shoot the boer” (an anti-apartheid song about murdering white Afrikaans people) and openly calls for the nationalisation of mines to free South Africa from its white oppressors. The hatred festers both ways, with many white people openly spreading thinly veiled racist views. Eugene Terre’Blanche, an unrepentant white supremacist and a key political opposition leader, was murdered in his home last spring, bringing the racial issue to the fore again right before the cup.

The country is a struggling democracy, with a seemingly endless array of issues to resolve. HIV/AIDS, rampant xenophobic attacks against desperate foreigners from countries like Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and stunningly high levels of unemployment hovering around 40% threaten to derail the progress that has been made in other areas. The Republic of South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma has called 2010 “the most important year in our history since 1994”, the year in which South Africa held its first fully democratic elections. The World Cup, with its emphasis on inclusion and its multi-ethnic feel, certainly made a wonderful contribution to this new democratic spirit; however, even the most ardent optimist can see that South Africa still has a long way to go before it can fully realize its promise. The light from Soccer City will only continue to burn bright if it doesn’t blind the world to the country’s existing problems first.

Joel Krupa is reading for an MSc in Environmental Policy at Mansfield College, Oxford.

Michael Lewis
The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine
Allen Lane, 2010
288 Pages
£25
ISBN 978-1846142574

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An account of the collapse of the American subprime mortgage securities market may sound more like a sleep aid than a New York Times bestseller. Yet American author Michael Lewis has managed to tell the story of the subprime collapse by combining history, finance, and biography into what is surely one of this year’s most entertaining books. Lewis, a former bond trader and Princeton graduate, is well-known for his eminently readable accounts of the booms and busts of Wall Street and financial markets; his inaugural novel Liar’s Poker (1989), another New York Times bestseller, chronicled the rise and fall of legendary investment bank Salomon Brothers and the company’s curious assortment of eccentric and egomaniacal characters. His latest book, The Big Short, is a uniquely accessible and thought-provoking look at systemic problems in American finance. Lewis deftly weaves the unbelievable but true stories of several prescient people who made enormous sums of money by “shorting” (that is, anticipating a drop in value) the subprime mortgage market in 2005-2008, even as the global economy faltered and other investors and banks around the world saw their portfolios evaporate.

The most memorable of the investors chronicled in the book is Steve Eisman, a brusque and highly critical investment manager who “held a picture of the financial world in his head that was radically different from, and less flattering than, the financial world’s self-portrait.” A typical analysis from Eisman was peppered with profanity and decidedly harsh – his reports featured such acerbic gems as, “The Lomas Financial Corporation is a perfectly hedged financial institution: it loses money in every conceivable interest rate environment.” With people skills that consist largely of “a talent for offending people”, Eisman continually struggles to find clients. His fortunes change when Greg Lippmann, a Deutsche Bank trader later recognised as one of the first to fully understand the seriousness of sub-prime mortgage securitisation, approaches him with a proposition—to bet against the subprime mortgage market with abandon. At this point, Eisman had done significant research into subprime mortgages and was already convinced that the market was fundamentally flawed. When Lippman provided him with a way of betting against the market, Eisman saw it as a sure thing.

Another unusual protagonist in The Big Short began to make a name for himself by posting investment insight and stock picks online during the dot-com stock market boom while studying full-time as a neurology resident at Stanford University. Michael Burry’s astoundingly accurate advice drew the attention of several well-known investors, some of whom ultimately invited him to invest millions of dollars on their behalf. He used their money to start a hedge fund called Scion Capital, which went on to earn excellent returns for its investors. Few knew that Burry was completely blind in one eye or that he had Asperger’s syndrome, as his profound social awkwardness meant he preferred to interact with his new clients over the Internet. But his results spoke for themselves. Lewis describes how having Asperger’s worked to Burry’s advantage as he became obsessed with analysing the minutiae of mortgage agreements, a Herculean task that requires high levels of concentration and long hours of solitary confinement (trademarks of many people with Asperger’s).

Burry, Eisman, and the other investment managers profiled by Lewis all saw that the subprime mortgage market was bound to collapse and each found a way of setting themselves up to earn huge amounts of money. The protagonists are repeatedly contrasted with the surprising incompetence of day traders and investment managers at established Wall Street institutions. As their stories unfold, the protagonists discover incompetence (not to mention complacency) at every level—from desk traders all the way up to Ken Lewis, CEO of the Bank of America, and Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the US Federal Reserve. Steve Eisman recounts his thoughts while listening to Ken Lewis speak: “I said to myself, ‘Oh, my God, he’s dumb!’ A lightbulb went off. The guy running one of the biggest banks in the world is dumb!”

The book’s greatest pleasure is in the experience of seeing the financial world through the eyes of the protagonists. Independently, they come to realise that they are not missing something or losing their mind. It emerges that virtually everyone else involved with subprime mortgages, from the much-maligned ratings agencies to the firms like AIG that assumed virtually limitless risk, is frighteningly incompetent, deluded, ignorant, or simply apathetic. The reader can experience the excitement as the characters evolve from curiosity to epiphany to self-doubt to gamble, and ultimately to an unrivalled payoff.

Of course, the picture is not as simple as Lewis might have you believe. It is tempting to gleefully lionise the traders—individuals who held the financial system to account for ruthless and reckless behaviour and managed to profit handsomely for their “admirable” behaviour. Yet an uncomfortable truth remains; namely, that individuals like The Big Short’s heroes were driving demand for so-called synthetic investments. For example, when Eisman unequivocally finds out that he is driving this demand, he tells Lippmann “Whatever that guy [a smug major investment manager named Wing Chau] is buying, I want to short it.” Lippmann took it as a joke, but Eisman was completely serious. “Greg, I want to short his paper. Sight unseen.” Without anyone like these “heroes” shorting the subprime mortgage market with such abandon, it arguably could not have grown to become leveraged far beyond reason, and its implosion might not have had such far-reaching consequences.

Lewis’s first book was intended to be a precautionary tale for undergraduates considering a career in banking, as Lewis later commented that he hoped that all bright young undergraduates would “spurn the job offer from Goldman Sachs” and take up careers elsewhere. His first book did not fully accomplish its intended goal; indeed, the prologue to The Big Short describes how many undergraduates in the 1990s wrote to Lewis to ask if he had additional tips for making it big in finance. And the trends appear to continue unabated. According to Harvard financial historian Niall Ferguson, 20% of the men in Harvard’s 2007 graduating class still expected their jobs to be at banks. Perhaps in light of the recent recession, Lewis’s latest attempt to demonstrate the often rotten underbelly of the overly glamourised world of international finance might just convince a promising student or two to bypass the City or Wall Street for other sectors.

Joel Krupa is reading for an MSc in Environmental Policy Mansfield College, Oxford. Braden MacDonald is reading for a BS in physics at the University of British Columbia.

Joseph Stiglitz
Freefall: Free Markets and the Sinking of the Global Economy
Allen Lane, 2010
400 Pages
£25
ISBN 978-1846142796

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With the proliferation of esoteric financial instruments, a shift toward massive private and public sector leveraging, and the slow emergence of enormous real estate bubbles, the finance sector was primed for a meltdown. Predictably, the hidden spread of risk in financial instruments like derivatives and collateralised debt obligations, combined with a diffuse over-investment in toxic sub-prime mortgages and mortgage-backed securities, led to the now infamous crisis of September 2008 and unprecedented government intervention. The many looming signs of catastrophe that appeared during the heady years after the 2000 dot-com technology bust were ignored by many free market ideologues in the financial community, but the near collapse did not come as a surprise to everyone. A few prescient analysts, including famed New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and billionaire currency trader George Soros, had publicly voiced their concerns repeatedly by noting the dangerous confluence of flawed corporate governance, inadequate regulatory oversight, and myopic asset risk management.

Few commentators, however, were as consistently outspoken as Joseph Stiglitz, a visionary Nobel laureate in economic sciences from Columbia University and former chief economist for the World Bank. Stiglitz, a political centrist and neo-Keynesian economist who worked extensively in previous Democratic administrations, warned policy makers repeatedly that the United States was headed toward a deep, painful recession if pre-emptive interventions were not made. But Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan had a close relationship with the private sector and saw no reason to reverse long-cherished beliefs in rolling back government oversight and keeping interest rates low—until it was too late.

As a result, Stiglitz’s latest writings are rife with righteous indignation. He spares no one—not even President Obama—in the absorbing, fast-paced Freefall: Free Markets and the Sinking of the Global Economy, a work that engrosses the reader and brings to life even the dullest of economic concepts. As he systemically confronts heavyweights like Obama’s chief economic advisor (and former Harvard president) Larry Summers, George W. Bush, and the CEOs of major investment banks from around the world, Stiglitz critically assesses the current state of everything from the euphemistically titled American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (i.e., the stimulus package) to the role of the Federal Reserve and  the policy responses of developing countries in the immediate aftermath of the crisis. His fast-paced prose reads like a thriller and his thoroughly researched insights are packed into an illuminating 297 pages as he scathingly separates fact from fiction, dogma from truth, and economic theory from hard and inconvenient realities.

Throughout the book, Stiglitz emphasises the borderline-jingoistic mentality that pervades much of the financial community. Emboldened by the sense of being “too big to fail”, banks engaged in increasingly risky activities and predatory lending practices. To support these activities, bankers initiated a multi-decade push for deregulation and significantly reduced government involvement in the financial sector. With hundreds of millions of dollars in political contributions, the banking sector was able to wield considerable influence in the political sphere—often at the expense of average citizens. Once the 2008 collapse occurred, bankers were only too happy to reap the rewards of their political “investment” in the form of taxpayer-subsidised bailouts and hefty bonuses. Indeed, Stiglitz deadpans that “a country [i.e., the United States] in which socialism is often treated as an anathema has socialised risk and intervened in markets in unprecedented ways.”

Of course, with their combination of astounding potential rewards, excessive risk-taking, and aggressive virility, major Wall Street finance firms have a tendency to attract and encourage the ethically challenged—the kind of people who are willing to take risks with the assets of others and show little regard to the final outcome. Stiglitz argues that we should not be surprised when markets function in a suboptimal manner; indeed, individuals acting only in their own self-interest are likely to ignore the negative effects of their actions. It should be made clear that Stiglitz is not “anti-capitalist”—far from it. He makes it apparent, however, that we cannot assume that markets will be self-correcting in the absence of a progressive regulatory regime.

Interestingly, Stiglitz is particularly vehement in his criticism of President Barack Obama. He sees little change from the Republican, far-right days of Obama’s predecessor, the justifiably vilified George W. Bush. Although Obama was elected on the promise of “hope” and “change” and was forced into the midst of an economic crisis from his first days in office, Stiglitz claims that he has taken little restorative action beyond placating Wall Street and maintaining the status quo of the troubled global financial system. He describes how the Obama administration has shown a disturbing ongoing complacency toward bankers and an unambiguous willingness to accede to Wall Street’s increasingly brazen requests. By failing to rein in rogue banking practices, Obama has allowed a resumption of, among other things, high-frequency, high-risk transactions and a culture of outsized bonuses. Additionally, Stiglitz notes that Obama missed a historic opportunity for reform by maintaining a holdover of many of Bush’s core team of advisors, raising questions surrounding the feasibility for change under the new president.

Stiglitz lucidly outlines the painful outcomes of the recession and demonstrates that the symptoms still show only limited signs of abating. The stimulus appears to be having some material effect, although it was likely too small and included too many tax cuts and transfer payments. Unemployment, often seen as a lingering indicator of economic stability, is still hovering around 10 percent.  Although investment portfolios have recovered substantially from the lows of late 2008 and early 2009, many have still lost cherished retirement and educational savings. Furthermore, university graduates find themselves lost in the current economic climate, with entry-level jobs becoming increasingly scarce as employers tighten their belts and become increasingly reluctant to assume new salary obligations.

Perhaps most alarmingly (especially for American readers), it appears that many developed countries have squandered the opportunity to secure their long-term financial future. Stiglitz describes the well-supported contention that there has been a gradual capital outflow from developed countries to developing countries from around the world. Oil-exporting countries, flush with cash from America’s estimated $1.4 billion in oil imports per day, have set up sovereign wealth funds that run into the hundreds of billions of dollars (Abu Dhabi alone is estimated to have over $650 billion). In addition, emerging export-based countries like China have begun to assume an increasingly activist role in international economic policy. Through actions like purchasing enormous amounts of U.S. debt in the form of T-bills and treasury issuances, the Chinese have helped to maintain artificially low interest rates and the accompanying American debt-driven consumption patterns.

Leafing through the pages of Freefall, it becomes clear that the deeply engrained neo-conservative theories of the efficient, self-regulating nature of economies are hopelessly outdated. We have seen first-hand the economic, social, and environmental devastation wrought by an over-reliance on these economic models. Stiglitz argues that the developed world needs a reformed financial system that will perform the two core functions of a sound banking system; namely, providing an efficient payments mechanism while assessing and managing risk for loans.

In addition, Stiglitz makes clear that the inherent nature of economics has fostered a lack of responsibility in the financial sector. If we hope to overcome the embedded propensity towards amorality and, indeed, immorality, tough choices will need to be made and tougher questions will need to be asked. Citizens, policymakers, government leaders, and the private sector itself might even need to (re-)consider how we value outputs in our economy.

Stiglitz is willing to ask these big picture questions. Are employees at hedge funds, arbitrage organisations, and aggressive private equity firms really worth their big bonuses and lucrative salaries? Shouldn’t we be looking to better reward those who bring tangible assets and innovation to the economy—the entrepreneurs, the developers, the innovators? What steps can be taken to make the financial system more equitable in the short-term, more stable in the mid-term, and more sustainable in the long-term? Whether we will be able to craft an economic regime that takes into consideration a broader set of stakeholder interests and concern is up for debate. However, one thing is certain; if decisive action is not taken soon, it sure seems unlikely.

Joel Krupa is reading for an MSc in Environmental Policy at Mansfield College, Oxford.

BP is fast becoming the acronym that needs no introduction. For anyone with even a passing interest in current global affairs, no company in recent memory has dominated the newsstands and online op-eds in quite the same way as the London-based energy giant. A brand name that once proclaimed its synonymy with “Beyond Petroleum” is quickly losing its already tenuous environmental credibility as the April 20th offshore oil rig explosion systematically works its way through the Gulf of Mexico and the rest of the ocean. The spill is now being picked up by complex ocean currents and threatening not only some of America’s most prized coastline, but also vulnerable ocean ecosystems and biodiversity around the world.

BP CEO Tony Hayward has weathered the majority of the criticism to date, albeit with the occasional maladroit remark (“what the hell did we do to deserve this?” comes immediately to mind). Many analysts have praised his poise and composure under fire. Nevertheless, all of his eloquence may not be enough to avoid igniting a mini-revolution. Judging from recent comments by the BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg, BP will likely be paying out a multi-billion dollar dividend to all shareholders. Such a move is likely to exacerbate severe tensions with outraged Americans, still burning from the jingoistic wealth transfers of the 2007-2008 bank bailouts and mortgage-backed securities crisis, who are unsure about the extent of the spill’s effects and the long-term implications for America’s food supply, tourism industry, and environmental quality.

BP, however, is in a bit of a bind. It is coming under fire from investors—from large institutional bodies like the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund to everyday British retirees—realising substantial losses in their stock price, epitomised in the 30% slump that followed the recent announcement that the leak will likely not be fully resolved until at least August. Moreover, after initially distancing itself from the contractor managing the spill, BP has promised to fully compensate all affected groups, exposing itself to untold and potentially indefinite liabilities and promising further undulations in share value.

If the spill was unexpected, it was not altogether surprising. As a company that lauds itself for exemplary safety performance, audit processes, and contributions to the growing low-carbon energy sector, BP has an unremarkable track record. In fact, this is not its first recent case of major corporate neglect. A 2005 BP oil refinery fire in Texas City killed 15 workers and seriously injured dozens more, with subsequent reports proving gross miscalculations in process safety and hazard analysis. Incredibly, subsequent safety failures were reported at the same refinery, including further casualties. Not surprisingly, rumours abound about the safety shortcuts taken on the Deepwater Horizon rig.

Many political analysts are ruminating over how these events will affect the political career of President Obama. Populist rage is growing, fueled by a steady stream of images of ravaged beaches, oily brown pelicans, ravaged coral reefs. A recent editorial in the New York Times speculated about the linkages that could be created with other crises, arguing that this event might be the defining moment in Obama’s administration. Will this be Obama’s “Bush during 9/11” moment, in which he unites a country and retains, and perhaps delivers on, his promise of believable change? Or will he be the scapegoat—a lame duck one-term president who for all his promise could not deal with the most pressing issues of the day and confront entrenched corporate interests?

Despite Obama’s less-than-prescient decision in April 2010 to substantially reopen offshore drilling in the United States (currently indefinitely suspended), his admirable unwillingness to engage in the “drill, baby, drill” mantra of the Republicans and persistent refusal to allow access to the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge have helped keep off many potential critics so far. At recent press conferences, Obama has retained much of the cool and calm intellectual analysis for which he is best known; but this characterisation might end up undermining his perceived ability to take charge of a potentially catastrophic situation. His critiques of the tight industry-government relationship and the energy status quo, designed to convey genuine anger and frustration, are beginning to sound rehearsed and unconvincing in the face of mounting public fear and the spread of oil to previously unaffected areas.

It goes without saying that environmental disasters are not foreign to natural resource extraction industries like oil and, despite well-written energy-backed reports that argue the contrary, are expected to occur from time to time. The most famous example prior to the BP incident was the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, a preventable incident that jolted the US Congress into setting up an oil-financed spill liability trust fund. Fewer people remember a disturbingly similar 1979 spill in Mexico that was significantly bigger (emptying millions of barrels into the Gulf of Mexico), as well as the obliteration of Kuwaiti ecosystems after Saddam Hussein’s thugs released and burnt billions of gallons of oil after the Persian Gulf War; and fewer still are likely aware of Texaco’s (now part of Chevron) role in polluting a vast swath of Ecuadorian rain forest.

So what can be done to combat these injustices? The most obvious move is a shift toward large-scale investment in clean technology and energy efficiency, a repositioning that will require massive private sector capital flows into largely unknown territory. The challenges are significant, as governments are coping with the embedded technologies of yesteryear—coal, oil, and gas—and the deep pockets of their propagators. Government officials will need to send strong regulatory signals and develop attractive investment packages to ensure that the necessary infrastructural and energy policy frameworks are in place, as there is still no broadly accepted consensus on a one-size-fits-all policy for economies around the world. Furthermore, the requirements of emerging economies will need to be addressed. A recent study commissioned by the Renewable Energy and Efficiency Partnership argues that the BASIC countries (Brazil, South Africa, India, and China) all need to provide further detail for their existing, relatively progressive alternative energy policies if the requisite private sector investment flows are to occur in a timely manner.

Second, corporations will need to undergo fundamental changes in their managerial structures and incentives. A culture of quarterly reports and lavish bonuses encourages not only the shifty accounting measures and financial metrics of the Enrons and WorldComs of the world—it also leads to shortcuts in safety and environmental standards. Of course, the opportunities for reform may be limited. A recent survey of corporate executives showed that “short-term earnings” were the most important trend for corporate strategic focus, far outweighing employee safety and environmental responsibility—a troubling recurring theme in the big business community as a whole.

Third, governments will need to advocate for substantial improvements in corporate environmental disclosure. Professor Mitchell Crusto of the College of Law at Loyola University, New Orleans contends that corporate environmental disclosure needs to include three major components: an investor focus that allows shareholders to adequately assess risk, an economic focus that allows a business to fully account for the costs of environmental liabilities, and, most importantly, a human rights focus that ensures that high levels of human safety, health, and well-being are maintained. In a resource-constrained world, corporate environmental disclosure cannot be driven only by clever marketing campaigns, voluntary glossy promotional materials, and the minimum obligations imposed by federal securities acts and environmental compliance statutes. Instead, corporate disclosure policy must harness both market-based and command-and-control policy mechanisms to ensure that the needs of business, the state, and communities are realised, while ensuring that any reform is stringent enough without encouraging a mass exodus into less regulated business areas. Such a movement has strong backing from activist institutional investors like the aforementioned Norwegian sovereign wealth fund. Groups such as the non-profit Carbon Disclosure Project, which represents investors with combined assets over $20 trillion, are spearheading the push for reporting of greenhouse gas emissions figures and other environmental outputs from large publicly traded companies.

A fourth (and controversial) option has been debated in legal journals for decades and implemented in varying degrees in countries around the world. It could be possible to adopt a court-appointed steward for different natural areas that can “speak” on their behalf in the same spirit that those deemed incompetent or endangered are awarded a protective guardian. Under such a scenario, a group like Friends of the Earth could intervene in the event of an environmental injustice by appealing to a public administrative body that will consider the injury and possible relief. A natural object would then be able to seek redress, as it were, on its own behalf, overcoming present legal difficulties ranging from standing constraints to deciding the appropriate beneficiaries of favorable judgments. Of course, the legal and political implications of such a development are immense, and cannot be addressed here; suffice it to say that such a proposal might act as both a deterrent against events such as this, and a means of determining recourse and liability in the event of their occurrence.

Regardless of the chosen course of action, this crisis will be remembered for evoking political, economic, and technical questions about how society deals with nature, meets the energy needs of a growing population, and the effects of searching for energy in unconventional locations. There are the obvious questions of the technical feasibility of drilling in areas where we cannot easily arrest explosions, the economic feasibility of new unconventional energy supplies with even larger environmental impacts (such as the enormous Arctic oil reserves), and the political practicability of raising energy prices and levying stiffer taxes on the multi-trillion dollar global energy industry.

But there are also the profound philosophical and moral dilemmas that inevitably arise. How will BP repay all affected parties adequately and fully—including marginalised communities and impoverished individuals that rely on the Gulf of Mexico for their livelihoods? How can we quantify the value of the ecosystem of the Gulf and neighbouring natural areas that are now damaged or lost? More broadly, is it truly ethical to continue to rely on antiquated energy systems when the necessary technology is available, albeit at higher prices than conventional supplies? There is much to learn from this disaster; hopefully, we will be able to answer the questions and apply the lessons before another disaster strikes.

Joel Krupa is reading for an MSc in Environmental Policy at Mansfield College, Oxford.

Michael Pollan
Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual
Penguin, 2010
160 Pages
£4.99
ISBN 978-0141048680

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It is often said that one should remain skeptical of any field that feels the need to attach the word “science” to its core subject area. In his delightful book, Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual, UC Berkeley journalism professor Michael Pollan takes aim at the often conflicting claims of “nutritional science”. And with good reason: despite the dramatic recent expansion in public understanding of nutrition, Americans alone still spend up to $1.5 trillion a year treating preventable chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes and obesity. Using a combination of humour and keen scientific knowledge, Pollan outlines 64 relatively easy dietary steps to reverse these troubling epidemiological statistics. His insights range from the straightforward (“avoid food products containing ingredients that a third-grader cannot pronounce”) to the humorous (“don’t eat breakfast cereals that change the colour of your milk”) and to the unexpected (“avoid food products with the word “lite” or the terms “low-fat” or “nonfat” in their names”).

Pollan corroborates his pronouncements with some remarkable findings, drawing on a wide array of disciplines. Although his book is admittedly not “anti-science”, he is careful to acknowledge the limitations of scientific endeavour and is not afraid to consult unorthodox sources like anthropologists, nurses, and great grandmothers. Who knew that the Kenyan Masai, with a diet composed of cattle blood, milk, and meat, tend not to suffer from Western diseases? Who knew that the ancient Jewish saying—“The whiter the bread, the sooner you’ll be dead”—was actually true?

Although Pollan’s astute analyses are primarily directed at individuals from the United States, his findings broadly apply to all nations that have adopted the “Western diet”: a highly processed meal selection of meat, refined sugars, salt, and non-whole wheat grains, with little vegetable and fruit consumption. Pollan shows that his 64 steps can be broken down into three further categories that capture the essence of his simple (but not simplistic) thesis, described as Eat food, Not too much, and Mostly plants. This book is clever, engrossing, and broadly relevant—it should not be missed.

Joel Krupa is reading for an MSc in Environmental Policy at Mansfield College, Oxford.