openDemocracy - globalisation
Enjoy contested debates and in-depth analysis by leading actors and thinkers – plus word from ‘ordinary’ people experiencing the effects of globalisation. The aim is clear thinking – and workable solutions for globalisation
- Who gains from global warming?, John Jackson
It seems that the climate of our planet is reverting rapidly to that which has persisted for much of the last 300 million years. Average temperatures and sea levels were higher, there were no polar ice-caps and temperature differences between poles and the equator were lower. The rate of this reversion, certainly in so far as it is connected with greenhouse gases, is being accelerated by humans and their activities and to such an extent that their must be a risk of "overshoot" into a situation which is entirely new.
John Jackson chairs the law firm Mishcon de Reya, is a director of openDemocracy and History Today and is on the committee of Unlock Democracy
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Among John Jackson's articles in openDemocracy:
"Write the constitution down!" (17 February 2005)
"A democracy in trouble" (1 March 2006)
"Alice Wheeldon and the attorney-general" (17 April 2007)
"From deliberative to determinative democracy" (15 October 2007)read more
- Cristina Kirchner's moment, Ana Caistor-Arendar
On Monday 11 December 2007, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner assumed the presidency of Argentina after being handed the baton of power by the outgoing president, her husband, Néstor Kirchner. A country known the world over for its macho culture had elected its first female head of state. At a lavish ceremony in Buenos Aires to mark the event, the second President Kirchner admitted that she would find it "difficult being a woman in a man's world", but asserted that she would "take charge of the presidency."
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- The Malthusian energy-trap: old Europe, new China, Christoph Neidhart
The price of oil is approaching $100 a barrel, the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is accumulating faster than the most pessimistic scenarios are predicting, anthropogenic climate change is occurring. The recognition that the world's scientists, diplomats and media gathered at the Bali climate-change summit are arguing over - the necessity of moving beyond dependency on a fossil-fuelled, carbon-emission-based global economy - is becoming increasingly hard to ignore.
Christoph Neidhart is a Swiss writer and journalist based in Tokyo. He was previously a research fellow at Harvard's Davis Center of Russian Studies and (1990-97) Moscow bureau chief of Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche.
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His books include Russia's Carnival: The Smells, Sights and Sounds of Transition (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002) and Ostsee, das Meer in unserer Mitte (Marebuchverlag, 2003)
Also by Christoph Neidhart in openDemocracy:
"Vladimir Putin, ‘Soviet man' who missed class" (24 October 2006)
"Tokyo's change, Moscow's echo" (28 September 2007)read more
- Disarmament: the forgotten issue, Dan Plesch
"Peace on Earth" is a seasonal wish at this time of year. It also one of the themes in Stanley Kubrick's excoriating satire of militaristic madness, Dr Strangelove. But whether the message is taken sincerely or cynically, it is no fantasy. For peace on earth - in the form of world disarmament - is practical by 2020. This article suggests how.
Dan Plesch is co-organising a conference on Disarmament and Globalisation: Old and New Wisdoms
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whose speakers include Shirley Williams, nuclear non-proliferation advisor to Gordon Brown - on 7 January 2008 at the school of Oriental and african Studies, University of London
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- Globalisation: sleepwalking to disaster, Ann Pettifor
On 9 August 2007, globalisation's rickety financial levees were broken by a storm-surge of debt, invisible to most punters, but scary enough to frighten bankers. This debt includes highly leveraged corporate debt traded on secondary markets, household mortgages, credit-card debts, car loans and other substantial outlays. But what scares financiers and other experts are the truly big debts racked up by financial institutions, including those that have insured against loan defaults.
One of the least understood, but potentially most lethal financial products they have engineered - away from the regulatory scrutiny of central bankers and finance ministries - is called a credit default swap (CDS). In reality, they are not "swaps", but a form of insurance (for illumination, read the blo