The Problem of China: As viewed from the USA
For more than a century, the overwhelming majority of greenhouse gases have been emitted by advanced industrial states. Recently, however, China has assumed the top spot in annual emissions. On a per person basis, of course, China still trails the global leaders by a good distance.
NEW SECURITY IDEAS
I believe in making security a lighter, more fun topic. In this quest to bring stand up comedy to what is basically a sit down field, I offer the following new ideas in part gleaned from conversations with colleagues who surely will not mind my skipping the attributions.
Weep for OPEC?
Representatives from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) are meeting in Vienna this week and the looming threat of Copenhagen is clearly on their agenda. I wrote “threat of Copenhagen” because OPEC states are primarily devoted to selling a commodity that is a significant source of climate change.
AMERICA’S COMMAND STRUCTURE
I think the geographically based commands should be eliminated with one exception, replaced in part by additional functional commands. As some may know, I stand against our willingness to manage global security as well as our own, a willingness allowed by our great military power relative to others and the encouraged free riding of nearly all our “allies”.
What’s the baseline?
The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change dates to the June 1992 Earth Summit. The overwhelming majority of nations are parties to this agreement — even the United States, which did not ratify the followup Kyoto Protocol. Essentially, for 20 years the world has been negotiating reductions in greenhouse gas emissions based on reductions from a 1990 baseline.
Wanted: trust fund benefactors
Mohamed Nasheed, a former journalist and political prisoner who was elected president of the Republic of Maldives last fall, is relatively pragmatic (and pessimistic) about the future prospects of his nation constituted by 1200 small islands in the Indian Ocean.
Fall class
Believe it or not, two weeks before Labor Day in the U.S., classes started today at my university. I’m teaching an undergraduate course for nearly 50 students on “Global Ecopolitics” — a term used by Dennis Pirages, a professor at Maryland when I was in graduate school.
Climate Engineering
It may be August, when many policy wonks take vacation in Washington and other capitals, but Bjørn Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus Center is in the midst of releasing a series of papers analyzing potentially affordable solutions to global climate change.
STRATEGICALLY LOST IN AFGHANISTAN
The Obama administration seems to be having big second thoughts about Afghanistan. President Obama in his election campaign promised to make Afghanistan the central front in our unnamed war.
Investment bubbles and climate politics
If you didn’t read Matt Taibbi’s piece “The Great American Bubble Machine” from Rolling Stone, then this is a good time to check it out. The article, which argues that the investment firm Goldman Sachs has been behind a series of disastrous speculative bubbles in recent years, has received a great deal of attention.
