Fragilecologies

Category: Capacity Building

  • Rio1992, Rio+20 and the UNFCCC

    Rio1992, Rio+20 and the UNFCCC

    – Conference of Parties: Don’t compare apples to oranges!

    I started to write about the happenings at Rio+20, while sitting in one of its food courts. But I realized I needed more time and distance to formulate my perspective and expectations about Rio+20, so I decided to write these comments after a week at the world’s Second Earth Summit (what Rio+20 should have been called).

    After a week at this conclave I came to realize I had fallen into a trap. When I first started to think about the Rio+20, I found myself comparing it to the conference of parties (COPs) of the various UN Conventions in general and more specifically those of the UNFCCC. These political conventions (their structures, functions and expected outcomes) were first formulated at the First Earth Summit.

    From this COP perspective, my expectations for results at Rio+20 were cautiously optimistic. I thought we would see some advances in issues related to the three UN conventions on biodiversity, climate and desertification. Despite this measured optimism, however, my first judgments of the recent conference were harsh: no step-like, sorely-needed progress would be achieved; NATO (no action, talk only) would prevail; political posturing (blah, blah, blah) would abound; and a declaration by attending global leaders at the end calling for advances in saving species, capping carbon dioxide emissions and arresting land degradation, respectively, would fail to emerge. The Earth Summit’s platitudes, I assumed, would likely be similar to those made in earlier decades at other international conferences.

    I was wrong, I now realize.

    The problem was that I was comparing proverbial apples and oranges, an EARTH SUMMIT of leaders (apples) with an accounting of progress made over 20 years through the annual COPs where negotiators are trying, against all political and economic odds, to hammer out a roadmap for the sustainability (e.g. long term into the distant future) for the planet (oranges).

    A Search for Understanding

    An EARTH SUMMIT is NOT a COP. In theory, Rio+20 is really a Conference of Humanity, the grandchild of the 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment. In other words, an Earth Summit of global leaders can only legitimately be compared with Stockholm and the Rio1992 Earth Summit.

    The climate COPs, on the other hand, are held each year by the UNFCCC’s Conference of Parties, with 17 annual ones having been held so far and the 18th scheduled to be held in Qatar later this year (2012). Negotiators from most countries meet on an uneven climate playing field to iron out different, often competing perspectives on how to prepare for and cope with climate change and its environmental and societal consequences.

    Rio+20 should not be viewed as a COP-like meeting. It was—in my view—supposed to look back to assess progress since 1992 (as well as since the forgotten Stockholm conference) with regard to various aspects of human interactions with the environment. Its purpose was not to assess the progress in negotiations since COP 17 in Durban, South Africa last year. Many people (originally, myself included) seem to be judging, often unknowingly, the success or failure of the summit based on political progress since Durban.

    There is no doubt that the key to arresting the continued global warming of the atmosphere (or the loss of biodiversity or increased desertification) rests with political leaders and their collective will to act worldwide on the numerous creeping threats to humanity.

    But an Earth Summit like Rio+20 is not just a political meeting. It involves all other facets of society: companies, educators, disaster managers, students, etc. This is why it is important NOT to compare the assembly of civil society at Rio+20 to the annual political events that are the COPs.

    Looking back to 1992 or even 1972, concern about the state of the planet is at an all-time high. There are many examples of this, not least of which is Kenyan environmental activist Wangari Mathaai’s 2004 award of the Nobel Peace Prize (there is no Nobel Prize yet specifically for the environment). In 2007 the IPCC process, as one drawing recognition to worldwide growing concern about the consequences of a warming atmosphere, received the recognition of the Nobel Committee.

    An Excel spreadsheet delineating progress to a healthier interaction of societies and their natural environments would be impressive. Concern expressed in different ways and at different rates has shown up in corporations (greenwashing notwithstanding), in civil society (convening their parallel peoples’ summits), the awakening and empowering of youth (over half of the earth’s population today), in cities large and small (institutionalizing recycling, smart energy use, carbon-reducing programs), in schools from kindergartens to universities (bringing environmental into their lesson plans), governments (shifts to alternative energies), and so forth. Concepts like sustainability, resilience, adaptation, green economy, zero carbon society are now commonly used, even by civil society and not just academics.

    So, in this regard Earth Summit is a milestone conference to take stock of successes and to lay out an “Agenda21 + 40” (in 2032). What is missing though, even with the progress that really has been made in awareness and in action, are more aggressive steps toward poverty reduction, toward disaster risk reduction and in electing leaders who have the backbone to make hard decisions the benefits of which will occur well beyond their time in office.

    American humorist Will Rogers once said, “Even if you are on the right track, you will be run over if you are not going fast enough.” When it comes to coping with human induced climate change, political leaders are not yet aware that there is a faster train approaching humanity’s chances for surviving as we have come to know and expect it.

    A Rio+40 Earth Summit will likely take place too late for many of the vulnerable, people and countries. We have identified many tipping points for environmental change but have yet to identify the tipping point when policy makers will realize they must face the climate change issue head on.

    Even the notion that “There is no Planet B” does not seem to raise a political eyebrow. Suggestions, please . . . and soon!

  • Youth of the World Unite (via social networks)!

    Youth of the World Unite (via social networks)!

    Lately, I have been thinking a lot about youth. The term “youth” really has several overlapping definitions but generally individuals between the ages of 15 and 30 can be considered youth. To be honest, to someone like me at 71, everyone under 70 is youth, illustrating the subjective nature of the term. More to the point though, I consider “youth” to encompass people from about 15 and into their mid-30s.

    Until recently, youth from the earliest part of that age range and up through college-age were supposed to be seen and not heard. It was a cultural maxim, repeated often and again in movies, on TV implying immaturity and lack of experience above all else. The maxim ”Youth should be seen and not heard” was based on a belief by the elders that being young connoted a lack of maturity of opinion and wisdom of experience. For generation after generation, the understanding was that because youth had not yet been in the workforce, they lacked the experience that would one day give them the right to voice their opinions! They were expected to listen to those who were older and allegedly wiser than they were. Once they were older, they would have become wiser, from either book learning or experience or a mixture of both. Only then would they have valid and perhaps even valuable opinions, according to their elders.

    There have been moments throughout history when young people have taken to the streets, led marches, and held sit-ins or teach-ins in order to have their collective voice heard by the local if not national media as well as, hopefully, policymakers. Historically, such protests are focused on correcting an unjust (or an unpopular) policy. If the government in power when one of those historical moments arises is clever enough to quickly respond and undo the particular wrong that incited the uprising (spikes in food prices, for example, or a large increase in college tuition), the protesters almost without fail return to their homes or their classrooms, placated. Such moments are civil uprisings or jacqueries but not revolutions. If, however, the authorities fail to respond quickly to the specific demands of the uprisen crowd, a jacquerie can develop into a full-blown revolution that seeks not to change a specific policy but to change the political regime. Once a threshold is crossed, such revolutionaries are not easily placated. [On this point, please see “Davies J-curve Revisited” (www.fragilecologies.com/jun27_03.html)]

    a jacquerie that turned in to a revolution. the people wanted food.
    "More gruel please," said Oliver Twist to Fagan.

    We are seeing this process presently being repeated in various countries in North Africa and the Middle East.

    Youth, loosely defined, typically compose a large percentage of people who take to the streets (at least at first) against an unjust or unpopular policy. In recent years, they have also and often simultaneously taken to the broader cyber-streets of the digital age, sharing street-level and real-time views of the triumphs and tragedies they have experienced during various uprisings and protests on social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Hi5. With the even more recent and continued rapid spread of cellular technologies into some of the most remote areas of the world, these views are now available from every corner of the world. As a result, whenever and wherever a protest occurs today, however small it is, people around the globe have the opportunity to become instant observer-participants. The importance of this merger of social networks and new telecommunication technologies is that it provides a platform for youth to both organize and globalize their common concerns, especially about the environmental fate of the planet.

    Along with these changing communication tools must come a shift in the age-old paradigm; in other words, it is time for youth to be heard. New technologies are enabling youth to express their collective voice about how current policy makers are not dealing effectively with the myriad of environmental problems facing humanity. It is time for youth to have official recognition as a group with a voice that must be heard.

    Statistically, nearly half of the world’s population—almost 3 billion people—is under the age of 25. Over 1.2 billion of these people are between 10 and 19 years of age, and 85% of the world’s youth live in developing countries. That means that nearly half the world’s population and a great majority of the population that lives in developing countries does not at present have an “official” voice in policy or planning decisions for today or into their future. Youth, in essence, continues to be told to be seen and not heard by an older generation of decision makers whose worthiness of respect is becoming more and more questioned.

    It is somewhat ironic that countries such as Tuvalu, which has a population of about 11,000 citizens, which is orders of magnitude fewer people than the population of youth in the world today, have relatively influential seats in the United Nations. However, youth around the globe—again, nearly 3 billion people—have no representation in that international body. This is not meant to deride such countries as Tuvalu, which is relatively poor and underrepresented itself, but is expressed to make the point that decisions in the UN are made consistently about such grave matters as war and peace that so small a population as Tuvalu’s has a say in but that so large a percentage of world population has no voice in, which is sad and ironic because it is almost always the youth, those with such potential but with no globalized voice to express consent or refusal, that are sent to fight those wars in the name of some future that they have in no way constituted for themselves.

    www.montessori-mun.org/the-model-united-nations.html
    Maybe a mock UN by young people makes more sense??

    While youth will likely never have a seat in the UN, they can have a flag around which to rally. They can amplify their views on issues of the day and can develop together—using social networks—a plot to save the planet that would have them rescue the earth from older generations’ continuous and unsustainable exploitation of it.

    In April 1775, while America was still a colony of the British, a shot was fired in the battle for the Concord Bridge, in what is now the state of Massachusetts, that sparked the beginning of the American Revolution, the USA’s war of independence. In American history books that shot has traditionally been called “the shot heard ‘round the world.” I think that in the beginning of the 21st century we are seeing a new phenomenon with the coming together of new communication technologies and social networking—a globalization of the voice of youth. In some decades, when people look back to this time, they may likely say that this coming together proved to be for youth everywhere “the shout heard ‘round the world.”

  • Down with Earth Day! Up with Earth Year!

    Down with Earth Day! Up with Earth Year!

    For the past 53 years people have celebrated an Earth Day. Its beginning years were extremely valuable and eventful. Before the first official Earth Day in 1969, we were slowly emerging out of what might be called the dark ages of environmentalism; but, the decades preceding 1970 witnessed little concerted interest either nationally or globally in saving Planet Earth from the destructive ways of its human inhabitants.

    In the old days habitats were destroyed in the name of survival or out of a desire to create something that was viewed as a necessity or out of greed to convert a landscape or water resource into something that would generate a profit.

    Decades later after the first Earth Day, we can say with confidence that we (civil societies worldwide) have come to look at Planet Earth in a new way. Perhaps it was prompted by the satellite photo of our Planet Earth floating in space against a black universe — an inhabited “Blue Marble:” quite isolated, quite alone. That image from the late 1960s gave us the feeling that we had better not “foul our nest” or, to use another analogy, we had better work together to keep the Earth-as-a-lifeboat from sinking.

    Much has happened since the first Earth Day. The level of consciousness of the people, of government leaders, and of many industries has risen to the point where the environment enters into our everyday decision-making.

    So, now we look forward to Earth Day, which comes around but once a year (like Christmas or Independence Day). It is on our minds (and in the media) for a few weeks before and after. But, for the rest of the year, most people go back to thinking about other things and only occasionally about the fate of the planet.

    Thus, my modest proposal: A plot to save the planet

    We are in the first decades of the rest of the 21st century. What we decide today about whether or how to save the planet from wanton destruction will affect people born throughout the rest of this century. It is kind of awesome when you stop to think that many of the chemicals we put into the air and the water will accumulate there for decades if not centuries.

    Most people and governments are celebrating Earth Day once again in the year 2011. Parties, extravaganzas, gala events, teach-ins and countdowns are taking place around the globe. That’s nice BUT I suggest that we forget about celebrating Earth Day in 2012. Yes, forget it. Instead, let’s make the whole year of 2012 The EARTH YEAR. 2012 is also a major Earth summit of leaders from around the world called RIO+20, the 20th year after the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

    Let’s use all of 2012 to focus on cleaning up the water, the land and the atmosphere for the benefit of present and future generations. Let’s give our descendants the best and cleanest planet possible. We can start now, just as if we were getting ready for Earth Day, but instead we would be preparing for a much larger endeavor, an Earth YEAR. Who knows, maybe it will catch on and each year will become an Earth Year.

    Earth Day, to many, serves as a feel-good day. But we can do a lot better. It is a challenging goal especially for those born after, say 1985, who are part of the eco-generation: they have been immersed in hearing about human abuses of the environment. They are the decision makers of tomorrow.

  • Roses are Red. Violets are Blue

    Roses are Red. Violets are Blue

    – Politically speaking, US States are too…

    A common phrase one hears these days about education in America is that Americans are being dumbed down. How can that be? Earlier generations had less information at their fingertips than kids today have. We did not have the Internet to fall back on a few decades ago; nor did we have smart phones with which to make instant searches for information. We were tethered to libraries. We did not have hundreds of TV channels to choose from. We did not have the capability to read news headlines from around the globe at any given instant. So, how can people say that Americans today are being dumbed down? I, for one, don’t believe we are being dumbed down. I believe that we, the American public, have already been dumbed down.

    DUH !! Medicare is a government program!! Tea Party'er visit Earth.

    I blame the political process and, for example, the notion of red and blue states (purple states came later). Red signifies conservative states and blue represents the liberal states. The community-based “we” has all but disappeared. We learned in elementary school about the political slogan from the late 1750s to keep the colonies together against the British colonizers, “United We Stand. Divided We Fall.” We have become a nations re-divided. It seems that issues are no longer viewed in different shades of grey but as black or white.

    American Political Scientist Robert Dahl once wrote about political divisions he called cleavages. As I recall, he highlighted the importance of “overlapping cleavages.” That referred to political compromise. While A and B might be opposed on one issue they could be united on other issues. So, they understood our political system; they needed each other to get polices passed that they favored. I will vote your way today because I might need you to vote my way tomorrow.  The danger, however, lays in what we have today, “reinforced cleavages.” On just about every issue — taxation, health care, social security, wars, supporting the unemployed, prison sentences for Wall Street scammers— the red and the blue politicians and their loyal supporters oppose each other with a vengeance. There is no chance for compromise, only stalemate. And the longer the stalemate continues, the worse off the country becomes: and “Divided We Fall.” Our forefathers had the foresight to see that 250 years ago. With all the electronic ways to can get information today, we have neglected their warning.

    Tea Party'ers also have asked to keep the government out of their social security. Unbelievable. and they vote!

    The American public is dumbed down and I am not sure it can get much dumber. The dumbing is due in part to ignorance and trust (people are so busy figuring out how to feed their families in these hard economic times that they are relying on political candidates that look good to the eye (nice hair, pearly white teeth, pretty smile, folksy chatter, glad-handers) but may have little idea how our government works.

    On the other hand there are those who suffer from “ignore-ance,” and the only facts that are relevant are those they choose to believe. They are often ideologically driven. Their behavior undermines the constitution they were elected to uphold. If, for example, the law of the nation is at cross-purposes to their ideological preferences, then the law of the land be damned in their view. True facts, scientific facts, are thrown in the dustbin in favor of gut-feelings, their own or those of their corporate backers. As much as a politician might believe the USA is number one is science, technology, education and health care, it is not so. On such comparative lists we are in the double-digit category.

    Another driving force that is dumbing down America is the media, which operate these days on a 24-7-365 schedule. There is no longer such a thing as a slow news day. With the globalization of instant news, we know immediately about the dog that was saved 11 days after it washed out to sea due to the devastating tsunami in Japan. Thanks to Twitter we know what a foreign friend is eating for lunch on the other side of the globe. We see lots of silly 3-minute videos on YouTube. Reality shows draw millions of viewers who are escaping their own reality for a few hours. And the media too seems to have become polarized with red and blue media (and some purple [bi-partisan] ones in-between). 

    I am presently at a loss on how to turn this situation around. How can we un-dumb Americans, people on the street and their politicians? How can we get back to a “United We Stand” way of life and of policymaking? How do we bring back a sense of community, and not just a red community vs. a blue community? The public has to take charge again. It has to put time in to being a citizen once again, to understand issues of democracy and how it works.

    In the back of my mind I harbor the feeling that maybe the “Leave it to Beaver” days of the 1950s were not so bad.

     

     

     

  • “Bureaucracies Run on Fear.” Mickey Glantz. September 9, 2010

    “Bureaucracies Run on Fear.” Mickey Glantz. September 9, 2010

    “Bureaucracies Run on Fear”

    My desk is bigger than yours: Size matters

    Mickey Glantz
    September 9, 2010

    Degrees of freedom for an individual to make decisions in an organization seem to increase as s/he moves upwards in a bureaucratic structure. s/he is boxed in by higher levels of authority as well as by the jurisdictional units at the same level in the organization. There is almost no degree of freedom at the lowest levels, while there is an increasing freedom of movement in terms of decision-making as one moves higher up the organization chart. The only one that has the most flexibility in making decisions, with less outspoken opposition are the leaders of the organization; though even they may not be totally free to act with abandon, as they in theory are often overseen by the equivalent of a board of directors.

    Those at a level below another level in the organization act in fear of stepping out of bounds, that is, violating the jurisdictional boundaries of neighboring units above or at the same level in the line and staff organizational chart. Boundaries are not just structural. The constraints are also functional which includes not just official work responsibilities but also the views (including idiosyncratic whims) of the leaders above him or her.

    see any similarities with bureaucracies today?

    The following is an illustrative list of some of the bureaucratic fears a worker may face:

    • Fear of angering an immediate boss
    • Fear of violating another bureaucratic unit’s boundaries
    • Fear of a displeasing a higher level of authority
    • Fear of not being favorably reviewed
    • Fear of losing one’s job
    • Fear of making wrong or unpopular decisions
    • Pressure to be BC, that is, “bureaucratically correct”
    • Reluctance to “speak truth to power”
    • Fear of exposing one’s own limitations
    •Reluctance to make waves because, as is well known, to challenge the status quo is to threaten authority

    The fear factor keeps the bureaucratic machine running but stifles creativity, out-of-the-box thinking and risk-taking. In the old days (a few decades ago), people who challenged the way things were done in their organizations were considered malcontents and were seen as disruptive to the organization. They were harassed or fired. But, later, it was realized by several but not even most organizations that those so-called malcontents, who challenged the status quo and the organization’s modus operandi, should be listened to with regard to their complaints.

    kaseyandcompany.com

    They were the ones whose comments, when correct, kept the organization operating more effectively. They were then neither rewarded nor fired but actually listened to and their comments and concerns evaluated.

    Sadly this is not the case in most bureaucracies in government and in society at large. The crowd mentality rules, and that mentality has been constrained by fear, the fear of losing one’s job. In a bureaucracy the adage is: To get along you have to go along, even if going along meant not pointing at problems in need or attention. Could it be that the “fear factor” in the workplace is responsible for survey results that show most Americans are unhappy in their jobs? Or, as noted in a USA Today report on a survey in the workplace that showed that 89% of one’s co-workers would not speak up on her or his behalf to support a co-worker in a dispute with management. Dare to speak truth to power in the workplace and you are most likely going to be on your own

    This is a sad state of affairs that must be corrected. The progress made a few decades ago about those with strong personalities critiquing and chiding management to improve efficiency in the workspace has been lost in current difficult financial times.

    What organizations need now is not fewer workers with backbone who speak their mind but more “directors” who have thicker skin.

    Post Script: for a glimpse of lessons learned working in a science bureaucracy as well as in universities and in industry, please visit PowerPoint presentation “A Perfect Job in an Imperfect Place.”

  • Are we losing the human race? Mickey Glantz

    Are we losing the human race? Mickey Glantz

    Are we losing the human race?
    Mickey Glantz
    Dateline: Moscow (at Starbucks on Stariy Arbat)
    November 11 & 18, 2009

    People need the earth more than the earth needs people.
    Mickey Glantz

    The title of this editorial has a double meaning. It alludes to our race against the adverse changes in the global climate and to whether humanity (the sum total of all civilizations on Earth) can come up with ways to stop, if not reverse, the heating up of the atmosphere as a result of civilizations’ unchecked greenhouse gas emissions. The phrase “human race” also alludes to the concern that if societies do not come to grips soon with capping their total emissions of greenhouse gases, civilizations’ will face disruptions to the extent that they could disappear.

    While the second concern may seem far-fetched to many as an impossibility (e.g., It won’t happen because political leaders are not that stupid to allow it; it won’t happen because physically the Earth’s properties will produce checks and balances against the possibility of a runaway greenhouse effect), signs are already there that we are on a path toward a 6 deg C warming, if political leaders continue to twirl their thumbs as the atmosphere continues to heat up. We have already crossed various proverbial tipping points in terms of amounts of human-induced increases in greenhouses concentrations in the atmosphere and therefore in changes in global climate. What we have not yet crossed are “trigger points” that prompt immediate action.

    A Chinese proverb suggests that if you stay on the path you are on you will get to where you are headed; in the case of unbridled greenhouse gas emissions, doing nothing will likely get us to where we are headed — an intolerably warmer Earth’s atmosphere.

    In my opinion as a 70-year old researcher who has studied climate-society-environment interactions for more than 35 years, I have come to believe that we are losing both human races. By this, I mean that people across the planet are now divided in so many ways that even small and local problems seem to elude compromise and, therefore, resolution. Because of this divisiveness, resolutions to the political, economic, financial, ethnic, religious, racial, geographic, ideological and resource issues confronting humankind, issues which will affect all life on earth from the not so distant and into the deep future, have little chance of being forged – let alone even addressed or agreed to – in a timely and effective way.

    Pundits who analyze the evolution and decline of civilizations have proposed this or that reason for the eventual collapse of civilizations that exist today. But the way I see it the reason lies in human nature; for some reason, humans for the most part are focused on well being in the short term, with whatever may have adverse impacts in the longer term being of little concern or consequence. We are in an “After you, Alphonse” dilemma (catch-22), that is, no political leader wants to make the first major sacrifice in terms of reducing GHG emissions in the absence of any other leader doing it: hence, a stalemate. Either people do not believe the science of global warming, or they believe technology will save us in some yet-to-be-identified way, or they do not understand the consequences of inaction, or — most worrisome — they don’t care about the fate of humanity.

    Actually, it seems that many people are intrigued about the end of life on earth and even the obliteration of our planet, if Hollywood movies are any measure of such intrigue and fascination. Consider, as examples, some box office winners: Terminator, Armageddon, War of the Worlds, Independence Day, When Worlds Collide and, most recently, 2012. Oh yeah, let’s not forget the US’s History TV Channel documentary “10 Ways to Destroy the Earth.”

    Of course, there are also religious and ideological fanatics who don’t care at all about the future, as they believe there will be none. They live as if tomorrow is the planet’s last day. Some even see such cataclysm as nirvana and actively work towards it.

    Many people do care about life in the relatively short term, that is, the life that there children will have to endure, maybe even they go so far as to think about the future of their yet-to-be conceived grandchildren. But they think no further. Some people have said about the future generations “I don’t owe anything to the future. It has done nothing for me.”
    Under such conditions, I believe that we are seriously at risk of losing the human race. We are using resources at rates unsustainable over the long term. We are losing species as a result of human activities at accelerated rates. And we are changing the chemistry of the atmosphere is many ways we really do not yet understand. Many bad things are most likely to happen to the planet well before we heat up our atmosphere by 6 deg C about the pre-1900 level. Like the parable about the frog in the boiling water, we seem to be sitting and waiting. But, unlike the frog, people can think rationally about the future, if they choose to do so.

    Dr. Roger Revelle, renowned American Oceanographer, suggested in 1955 that humankind was performing an experiment in the atmosphere by emitting increasing amounts of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning, the outcome of which [at that time in history] remained unknown.

    Fifty-five years have since passed and we are still actively engaged in performing that experiment, even though we now know, through scientific research, a foreseeable (though not assured), overwhelmingly adverse outcome of our experiment. Before, say, the 1950s, we did not consider the potential adverse global consequences of higher levels of GHGs in the atmosphere, but we were then and we continue inadvertently on a path of destruction, so to speak, of our global climate regime.

    Now, we are advertently warming the atmosphere. Because of what we have learned about greenhouse gases and climate change over the past 55 years, what we are doing to the atmosphere is no really longer an experiment. It is now anthropogenic pollution as a result of the known emissions to the atmosphere of cumulative amounts of greenhouse gases worldwide, but societies are collectively paralyzed over what to do about it.

    cartoon_spaceguy1

    (Cartoon borrowed from Colorado Daily newspaper. November 18, 2009)

    Governments are reluctant to reduce their emissions for a variety of reasons: not wanting to give any other government, even those in developing countries, an economic advantage; not wanting to hold back on their energy-dependent economic development prospects; not believing that climate change is the threat that the scientific community says that it is; believing that an increase in global cloud coverage can wipe out the warming of the atmosphere; a blind faith that engineering can resolve the crisis; the absence of a credible and reliable “dread factor”, and so forth. Because of this reluctance, for whatever reason, many of the measures that have been proposed by scientists and governments alike are analogous to applying band-aids to a major life-threatening wound. Most of the proposals are feel-good measures, but are likely to be ineffective because greenhouse gas emissions will continue to increase.

    My personal fear is that political adversaries at the individual, group, national and international levels will block a coordinated response by the international community to cope effectively in a timely manner. After 15 Conferences of Parties (COPs) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, political stalemates have become the rule rather than the exception. Because of this continued inaction, as of 2010, humanity and the international community of states have increased the odds of losing the human race. Helloooo? Anybody home? Do political leaders care?

  • Who to Audit? Mickey Glantz or WorldCom?

    Who to Audit? Mickey Glantz or WorldCom?

    IN LIGHT OF THE CURRENT FINANCIAL CRISIS AND ONGOING CORRUPTION IN FINANCIAL CIRCLES, I THOUGHT IT MIGHT BE INTERESTING TO REVISIT AN EDITORIAL I WROTE SOME YEARS AGO WHEN I WAS GOING TO BE AUDITED AND THE NOW DEFUNCT WORLDCOM WAS NOT. PERHAPS, INSTEAD OF AUDITING MICKEY GLANTZ IN 2002, THEY SHOULD HAVE KEPT THEIR EYES ON BERNIE MADOFF!!!

    About ten years ago, I got a dreaded letter in the mail. It was from the Internal Revenue Service. They wanted to audit a tax return of a few years earlier. Why they picked me I will never know. The auditor said that it was some sort of random check. It was a command performance, that I must be there when they tell me to show up. In fact, my job requires that I travel a lot and apparently the IRS, at least then, allowed only one postponement. If I did not comply with a second date for the audit, I was told I would be delinquent and subject to whatever the IRS was questioning.

    After several sleepless nights, I asked my accountant to re-check my tax return and to come with me to the audit, which was not in Boulder where I live but near Denver. I drove the accountant to the audit. We sat in a waiting area and had the “opportunity” to listen to a taxpayer being raked over the coals by an auditor in one of the Dilbert-like cubicles that serves as their offices. “Mr. Glantz,” I heard the receptionist say, “the auditor will see you now.” Showtime!

    I recall walking into the office and spotting on the wall a certificate of appreciation to the auditor signed by President Reagan. The auditor appeared to be less than 30 years old. On his desk was a copy of a hunting magazine. There I was, on the opposite side of the desk, a tree-hugging liberal and supporter of animal rights. I had a feeling I was in for a bad time. I had brought some articles in which I had been quoted or that I had written for conservative magazines in order to show that I was “used” by the two ends of the political spectrum. He seemed somewhat impressed.

    I presented my itemized lists of deductible items — books, travel, unreimbursed work expenses, and so on. They were hand-written and recorded on yellow legal paper. Then the fun began. “Why did you count item X as a work expense? Where did you stay when you were in such and such a foreign city?” Most of the conversation now is nothing but a blur. I do, however, recall a couple of questions that have stuck with me. In fact, I refer to them at parties if ever the IRS becomes a topic of conversation.

    Running his finger down the hand-written lists, he came across an item marked “book.” He asked, “you have a book listed here on March 3 (three years earlier), what was the name of the book and its author?” I said that if it was on my itemized list it was work-related, probably an environment or climate book. He continued down the column and said “Here is a book for $22.43. What was the book, and who was its author?” I gave the same answer as before.

    After about two hours of this Q&A, he summed up the meeting noting that he had found some discrepancies in favor of the IRS and that he had found even bigger errors in my favor. He suggested we forget them, and just as I was about to agree (just to get out of there), the accountant said we would file for the $167 dollars owed to me.

    Now, get the picture: I was about to get back money from the IRS following an audit. I was told that only a few percent of audits get anything back and that over 80% of those audited have to pay something additional. I had survived my first and only audit … so far.

    Today we have two major scandals related to “cooking the accounts.” Enron did it one way and WorldCom did it another. The former used a clever way to hide their lie, whereas the latter apparently manipulated their numbers so as to look profitable. But the methods of accounting they used were obviously phony and (it has been said) would have been spotted in the first few weeks of Accounting 101 at any college.

    The point I want to make is that the IRS scrutinized me at the $8- and $22-dollar level, while they were unable to detect an obvious misplacement of $3.6 billion.

    There is hope and solution in the offing, however. The new young auditors, like the one that scrutinized every meager amount on my list of deductions a decade ago, should be given the task of reviewing these multi-billion dollar corporations, and the IRS accountants in charge of monitoring and scrutinizing the WorldComs and Tycos and Xeroxes of today should be sent to the minor league to audit the hand-written lists of deductions of everyday, hard-working Americans. Maybe, this way, those hard-working laborers would finally get a break on their taxes.

  • “No Disaster Recommendations without Ramifications”:

    MICKEY GLANTZ

    SUNDAY, 24 MAY 2009

    Every assessment of a disaster, where natural or human-caused, has begins and ends with a list of recommendations or lessons learned. I have done that in my reports as well for almost four decades. The recommendations or lessons are about “how to get it right the next time there is a similar disaster?” That is always the hope. That is always the dream.

    Many of those recommendations or lessons learned are right on target in terms of requirements needed to reduce the adverse impacts of the hazards of concern. They are the result of serious scrutiny of hazards, their impacts and societal responses to them. They are the findings through serious discussion, brainstorming and plain common sense of what went right, what went wrong, and what wasn’t considered. For Katrina, for example, America’s most costly and most embarrassing so called natural disaster, one can find thousands of lessons learned from various levels of government from local to global, industries and businesses. That is the good news. However, it is, all too often, the good news in theory only. I say in theory because of a gut feeling have: that most recommendations are not acted upon. Phrased a different way, the disaster lessons we have been calling ‘lessons learned” are really not learned but only identified. When they are addressed they can legitimately be called lessons learned. Otherwise, they should be called “lessons identified”.

    The problem in all this is that when recommendations and lessons have been identified, many observers in all walks of life tend to think that the recommendations and lessons are being enacted in order to avoid similar hazard-related disasters in the future. Given the reality of an issue-attention cycle of the American public that lasts but a couple of years (as identified by Anthony Downs in the early 1970s), for example, the public turns to focus on other pressing issues, no longer focusing on the previous disaster and its recommendations. How then can we get decision makers to take recommendations or lessons more seriously? How can we get them to realize that not following up on the lessons can have considerable costs?

    It is essential to break the vicious cycle of disaster—lessons & recommendations— disaster — same lessons, etc. Many of the same lessons appear decade after decade. Our children and our children’s children will end up reading the same sets of disaster-related recommendations and lessons that our predecessors and we have been identifying. We can end the vicious cycle in the name of progress. It is a simple next step to take.

    My recommendation:

    Recommendations (and lessons learned) should no longer be presented without comment on what the consequences might be if the recommendations (and lessons) are not addressed. This way, decision makers can explicitly be made aware that there is also a likely cost for inaction when the next natural hazard turns into a national disaster. Succinctly stated, “NO RECOMMENDATIONS SHOULD BE OFFERED WITHOUT ALSO NOTING THEIR RAMIFICATIONS.”

    The ramification (if the recommendation is not acted upon):

    Business as usual (BAU) with regard to identifying lessons and making recommendations in post-disaster assessments will mean that policy makers in the future will continue to receive lists of lessons that had already been identified over previous decades and, as a result, their societies will continue to remain at risk to the impacts of hazards for which risks could have been reduced, had recommendations been pursued and identified lessons applied.