Jennifer Marohasy

a forum for the discussion of issues concerning the natural environment

Economics

Always Scared to Death?

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With reference to the crisis in financial markets, Sydney-based think tank The Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) held a forum yesterday entitled ‘The End of Capitalism’.   

CIS Research Fellow, Dr Oliver Marc Hartwich, suggested that doom and gloom headlines in magazines such as Time, The Economist and Der Spiegel foretelling the end of capitalism were no different from other irrational scare stories.  Dr Hartwich referred several times to examples of global scares from the book ‘Scared to Death’ by Christopher Booker and Richard North.   

I am not sure that I agree with Dr Hartwich – he went as far as to suggest that with the fear of a depression we wouldn’t be hearing so much about global warming because the media could generally only focus on one major scare at a time.  But I can definitely recommend the Booker and North expose of a long list of media scare stories beginning with the great salmonella scare of 1988-89.

The book is dedicated to “all those scientists and campaigners who, amid the madness of our age of ‘scares’, have kept a sense of proportion and fought for the truth to prevail.”     

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Scared to Death, From BSE to Global Warming: Why Scares are Costing Us the Earth by Christopher Booker and Richard North, published by Continuum UK, 2007. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Scared-Death-Global-Warming-Costing/dp/0826486142

Global Warming: Sweden to Gain Economically

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SWEDEN is, like Australia, experiencing the effects of an upward trend in temperatures that by some has been attributed to the recorded increase in carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. However, Sweden unlike Australia is likely to gain economically from global warming.

Sweden has been in the forefront of implementing energy efficient building standards borne out of necessity. Swedes have always favoured smaller four cylinder cars with heated front and passengers seats, a feature which you learn to appreciate during the winter months. The winters in Northern Sweden are fierce with sub zero temperatures for months on end and very little if any daylight.

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A Depression Would Reduce Carbon Emissions

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PREDICTIONS for the planet are dire indeed, if we do not drastically cut our carbon dioxide emissions in the very near future. 

In Australia, we will lose the Barrier Reef and the Kakadu wetlands, the Murray River will dry up completely and snow vanish from our Alpine regions.  Sea level could rise precipitously as the great ice sheets of Greenland and the Antarctic melt.

On the economic front, things have actually gone from bad to worse.  The sub-prime crisis has morphed into fears of a global recession, perhaps even a depression.  Bastions of United States capitalism such as General Motors now teeter on the brink of bankruptcy. Here in Australia, companies that run child-care centres and shopping malls are collapsing.  Even our iron ore shipments are now being cancelled by China. The world price of oil has plummeted 60 percent in just a few months – the reason is an anticipated reduction in global demand.

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How to Cap and Trade

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California’s blueprint to address global warming won’t include details of an emissions-trading program as regulators try to build consensus on how best to organize the market-based system.  Read more here.