State of the World 2014: Governing for Sustainability
Edited by Lisa Mastny
SotW2014 is one of the four books we consider to be "canonical" for all readers everywhere, because of its indispensable and systematic analysis of both the worst problems we confront and how best to address them.
If the civilization passes intact through the current global crises, future historians may well wonder how it was that humanity had still not come to grips with our environmental and climate emergencies by the early decades of the 21st century.
Should those historians happen across State of the World 2014: Governing for Sustainability the mystery would only deepen, because in this book they would discover that both the nature of those emergencies and the steps needed to address them were well and clearly understood.
SotW2014 consists of 22 essays by a variety of authors, each of which probes a different aspect of the sort of governance needed in order to achieve environmental and climate sustainability. The material found here simply cannot be found in the far-from-mainstream corporate media because one of the common themes running through nearly all of the essays is that the CEOs of transnational corporations are collectively responsible for most of the blocking of serious progress - and that is not a message that the corporate media has sufficient conscience or integrity to present to its audiences.
The only significant defect of the book is that there is no one chapter that reviews the underlying science, knowledge of which simply cannot be assumed - another gross and inexcusable failure of the mass media at work.
While one or two of the essays are of lesser value, as a whole the content here provides a convincing analysis of both what is going wrong and what is needed in order to turn the situation around.
Frighteningly enough, none of the authors is notably sanguine about our prospects for doing so.
Since both the UN and world's assorted governments are in thrall to corporate black hats, what is desprately needed is greatly elevated citizen push-back. But the authors are clear that in nearly all of the countries of the world activism can be a very dangerous business. This is only comparatively less true in the US than in other countries, where ever-intensifying surveillance, and grossly inflated "national security" and "counter-terrorism" budgets, as well as militarized police, are actually neo-fascist in nature and used primarily for political suppression.
Readers hard pressed for time could at least read the introductory and concluding essays by Tom Prugh and Michael Renner, which together provide a condensation of the content.
Quotations
Our preference in book reviews is to provide readers with a few characteristic and valuable passages so they can get some sense for themselves of the flavor of the authorial style(s) and concerns. In the case of SotW2014 this is a bit difficult, because each author has different concerns and writes in a different manner.
Nevertheless, here are a few.
Pgs. xix - xx
"Many . . . factors contributed to the hollowing out of Western-style governments. Particularly in the United States, wars and excessive military spending contributed greatly to deficits, impoverishment of the public sector, and declining credibility of public institutions. The rise of multinational corporations and the global economy created rival sources of authority and power. Electoral corruption, gerrymandering, and right-wing media contributed to public hostility toward governments, politics, and even the idea of the public good. The Internet helped as well to partition the public into ideological tribes at the expense of a broad and civil public dialogue.
But the War against Government is not what it is purported to be. Indeed, it is not a war against excessive government at all, but a concerted campaign to reduce only those parts of government dedicated to public welfare, health, education, environment, and infrastructure. But conservatives virtually everywhere support higher military expenditures, domestic surveillance, larger police forces, and exorbitant subsidies for fossil fuel industries and nuclear power along with lower taxes on corporations and the wealthy.
The upshot is that the public capacity to solve public problems has diminished sharply, and the power of the private sector, banks, financial institutions, and corporations has risen. As a countervailing and regulatory force, the power of democratic governments has eroded, and with it much of the effectiveness of public institutions to forsee, plan, and act - which is to say, govern."
Pg. 23
"Centralized governments alone have the capacity to respond at the scale necessary to effect changes appropriate to the 'long emergency.' They alone can wage war, grant or withhold rights, control currencies, manage fiscal policies, respond to large-scale crises, regulate commerce, and enter into binding international agreements. With respect to climate change, only central governments can effectively price or control carbon for an entire country. Only effective central governments can command the resources required to mobilize entire societies.
But a yawning chasm exists between current performance and the quaity of governance necessary to meet the exigencies of the long emergency ahead. As James Madison put it, 'The great difficulty is this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itseslf.' Governments today cannot consistently control themselves because they are decimated by a plague of corruption that devours the public interest in virtually every political system. It infects the media, economy, banking system, and corporations. This is the fountainhead of our political misfortunes, and of most others."
Pg. 243
"Appropriate technologies, ecoliteracy, markets in tune with the public good, organizational capacity - these are all indispensable tools in the quest for sustainability. And yet, they are not enough. THe problem runs much deeper. We can ony put ourselves on the path to sustainability by somehow applying what we know about good governance to the economic and political relationships that bind us to each other and to the planet we live on."
Conclusion
One of the most interesting ideas put forward in SotW2014 is that of "Deliberative Civic Engagement" or DCE. Prugh and Renner explain that this is:
Pg. 251
"A process encompassing a variety of forms of deeper democracy that go far beyond voting to involve ordinary people in the process of collectively assessing, confronting, and solving governance problems. According to Matt Leighninger of the Deliberative Democracy Consortium, successful DCE initiatives are usually marked by:
- the bringing together of a large and diverse group of citizens,
- structured and facilitated small-group discussions combined with larger forums aimed at action,
- the oppportunity for participants to consider a range of arguments, information, and policy options, and
- a final focus on concrete outcomes.
DCE initiatives have sprung up around the world, in Australia, Brazil, China, India, Nigeria, the Philippines, and South Africa, as well as in Europe and North America. Could this approach help address sustainability issues?"
