Other threats like
terrorism may well be damaging, but no other conceivable threat or
combination of threats can possibly destroy our entire system.

The end of the West as we know it?
Anatol Lieven Published: December 28, 2006

WASHINGTON: Every political, social and economic system ever created
has sooner or later encountered a challenge that its very nature has
made it incapable of meeting. The Confucian ruling system of imperial
China, which lasted for more than 2,000 years, has some claim still to
be the most successful in history, but because it was founded on
values of stability and continuity, rather than dynamism and
inventiveness, it eventually proved unable to survive in the face of
Western imperial capitalism.

For market economies, and the Western model of democracy with which
they have been associated, the existential challenge for the
foreseeable future will be global warming. Other threats like
terrorism may well be damaging, but no other conceivable threat or
combination of threats can possibly destroy our entire system. As the
recent British official commission chaired by Sir Nicholas Stern
correctly stated, climate change "is the greatest and widest-ranging
market failure ever seen."

The question now facing us is whether global capitalism and Western
democracy can follow the Stern report's recommendations, and make the
limited economic adjustments necessary to keep global warming within
bounds that will allow us to preserve our system in a recognizable
form; or whether our system is so dependent on unlimited consumption
that it is by its nature incapable of demanding even small sacrifices
from its present elites and populations.

If the latter proves the case, and the world suffers radically
destructive climate change, then we must recognize that everything
that the West now stands for will be rejected by future generations.
The entire democratic capitalist system will be seen to have failed
utterly as a model for humanity and as a custodian of essential human
interests.

Even the relatively conservative predictions offered by the Stern
report, of a drop in annual global gross domestic product of up to 20
percent by the end of this century, imply a crisis on the scale of the
Great Depression of the 1930s; and as we know, the effects of that
depression were not restricted to economics. In much of Europe, as
well as Latin America and Japan, democracies collapsed and were
replaced by authoritarian regimes.

As the report makes clear, however, if we continue with "business as
usual" when it comes to the emission of greenhouse gases, then we will
not have to wait till the end of the century to see disastrous
consequences. Long before then, a combination of floods, droughts and
famine will have destroyed states in many poorer parts of the earth -
as has already occurred in recent decades in Somalia.

If the conservative estimates of the Stern report are correct, then
already by 2050 the effects of climate change may be such as to wreck
the societies of Pakistan and Bangladesh; and if these states
collapse, how can India and other countries possibly insulate
themselves?

At that point, not only will today's obsessive concern with terrorism
appear insignificant, but all the democratizing efforts of Western
states, and of private individuals and bodies like George Soros and
his Open Society Institute, will be rendered completely meaningless.
So, of course, will every effort directed today toward the reduction
of poverty and disease.

And this is only to examine the likely medium-term consequences of
climate change. For the further future, the report predicts that if we
continue with business as usual, then the rise in average global
temperature could well top 5 degrees Celsius. To judge by what we know
of the history of the world's climate, this would almost certainly
lead to the melting of the polar ice caps, and a rise in sea levels of
up to 25 meters.

As pointed out by Al Gore in "An Inconvenient Truth," this would mean
the end of many of the world's greatest cities. The resulting human
migration could be on such a scale as to bring modern civilization to
an end.

If this comes to pass, what will our descendants make of a political
and media culture that devotes little attention to this threat when
compared with sports, consumer goods, leisure and a threat from
terrorism that is puny by comparison? Will they remember us as great
paragons of human progress and freedom? They are more likely to spit
on our graves.

Underlying Western free-market democracy, and its American form in
particular, is the belief that this system is of permanent value to
mankind: a "New Order of the Ages," as the motto on the U.S. Great
Seal has it. It is not supposed to serve only the short- term and
selfish interests of existing Western populations. If our system is
indeed no more than that, then it will pass from history even more
utterly than Confucian China - and will deserve to do so.


--
Wherever I go it will be well with me, for it was well with me here, not
on account of the place, but of my judgments which I shall carry away
with me, for no one can deprive me of these; on the contrary, they alone
are my property, and cannot be taken away, and to possess them suffices
me wherever I am or whatever I do. -- EPICTETUS

"There are no absolute certainties in this universe. A man must try to
whip order into a yelping pack of probabilities, and uniform success is
impossible." -- Jack Vance

"Civilization is the interval between Ice Ages." -- Will Durant.


"Progress is the increasing control of the environment by life.
--Will Durant

Joseph R. Darancette
daranc@NOSPAMverizon.net

The end of the West as we know it?
Anatol Lieven Published: December 28, 2006

WASHINGTON: Every political, social and economic system ever created
has sooner or later encountered a challenge that its very nature has
made it incapable of meeting. The Confucian ruling system of imperial
China, which lasted for more than 2,000 years, has some claim still to
be the most successful in history, but because it was founded on
values of stability and continuity, rather than dynamism and
inventiveness, it eventually proved unable to survive in the face of
Western imperial capitalism.

For market economies, and the Western model of democracy with which
they have been associated, the existential challenge for the
foreseeable future will be global warming.

Other threats like
terrorism may well be damaging, but no other conceivable threat or
combination of threats can possibly destroy our entire system.

As the
recent British official commission chaired by Sir Nicholas Stern
correctly stated, climate change "is the greatest and widest-ranging
market failure ever seen."

The end of the West as we know it?
Anatol Lieven Published: December 28, 2006

WASHINGTON: Every political, social and economic system ever created
has sooner or later encountered a challenge that its very nature has
made it incapable of meeting. The Confucian ruling system of imperial
China, which lasted for more than 2,000 years, has some claim still to
be the most successful in history, but because it was founded on
values of stability and continuity, rather than dynamism and
inventiveness, it eventually proved unable to survive in the face of
Western imperial capitalism.

For market economies, and the Western model of democracy with which
they have been associated, the existential challenge for the
foreseeable future will be global warming. Other threats like
terrorism may well be damaging, but no other conceivable threat or
combination of threats can possibly destroy our entire system. As the
recent British official commission chaired by Sir Nicholas Stern
correctly stated, climate change "is the greatest and widest-ranging
market failure ever seen."

The question now facing us is whether global capitalism and Western
democracy can follow the Stern report's recommendations, and make the
limited economic adjustments necessary to keep global warming within
bounds that will allow us to preserve our system in a recognizable
form; or whether our system is so dependent on unlimited consumption
that it is by its nature incapable of demanding even small sacrifices
from its present elites and populations.

If the latter proves the case, and the world suffers radically
destructive climate change, then we must recognize that everything
that the West now stands for will be rejected by future generations.
The entire democratic capitalist system will be seen to have failed
utterly as a model for humanity and as a custodian of essential human
interests.

Even the relatively conservative predictions offered by the Stern
report, of a drop in annual global gross domestic product of up to 20
percent by the end of this century, imply a crisis on the scale of the
Great Depression of the 1930s; and as we know, the effects of that
depression were not restricted to economics. In much of Europe, as
well as Latin America and Japan, democracies collapsed and were
replaced by authoritarian regimes.

As the report makes clear, however, if we continue with "business as
usual" when it comes to the emission of greenhouse gases, then we will
not have to wait till the end of the century to see disastrous
consequences. Long before then, a combination of floods, droughts and
famine will have destroyed states in many poorer parts of the earth —
as has already occurred in recent decades in Somalia.

If the conservative estimates of the Stern report are correct, then
already by 2050 the effects of climate change may be such as to wreck
the societies of Pakistan and Bangladesh; and if these states
collapse, how can India and other countries possibly insulate
themselves?

At that point, not only will today's obsessive concern with terrorism
appear insignificant, but all the democratizing efforts of Western
states, and of private individuals and bodies like George Soros and
his Open Society Institute, will be rendered completely meaningless.
So, of course, will every effort directed today toward the reduction
of poverty and disease.

And this is only to examine the likely medium-term consequences of
climate change. For the further future, the report predicts that if we
continue with business as usual, then the rise in average global
temperature could well top 5 degrees Celsius. To judge by what we know
of the history of the world's climate, this would almost certainly
lead to the melting of the polar ice caps, and a rise in sea levels of
up to 25 meters.

As pointed out by Al Gore in "An Inconvenient Truth," this would mean
the end of many of the world's greatest cities. The resulting human
migration could be on such a scale as to bring modern civilization to
an end.

If this comes to pass, what will our descendants make of a political
and media culture that devotes little attention to this threat when
compared with sports, consumer goods, leisure and a threat from
terrorism that is puny by comparison? Will they remember us as great
paragons of human progress and freedom? They are more likely to spit
on our graves.

Underlying Western free-market democracy, and its American form in
particular, is the belief that this system is of permanent value to
mankind: a "New Order of the Ages," as the motto on the U.S. Great
Seal has it. It is not supposed to serve only the short- term and
selfish interests of existing Western populations. If our system is
indeed no more than that, then it will pass from history even more
utterly than Confucian China — and will deserve to do so.