Black and White

The colors of a pirate flag. Or alternatively, "black and white" can represent an utterly simplistic view of the world. East versus West. Us versus Them. Good versus Evil.

It's never that straightforward. Unfortunately however, taking a black and white view of the world makes it easy to write eye-grabbing headlines and project the idea that you have the answer to every problem. Economist/New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman (author of The World is Flat) drives me crazy with his black and white view of the world. In his famous book, Friedman argued that technology has made the world a fair arena of competition for everyone. He claimed that since it's easier to communicate and share information, the world must be completely fair.

Um, Tom, let's not forget about the fact that economic inequality has increased almost exponentially since the industrial revolution, and the skewed plane on which people compete has only become tilted further in favor of those with the goods since the dot-com explosion of the 1990s. The rich keep getting richer much faster than everyone else. How does that make for a flat world?

More recently, Friedman took the opportunity to espouse more black and white nonsense. Only this time it's worse: he's lecturing the world on a topic in which he doesn't even have expertise -- U.S. diplomacy. Friedman says the pirates in Somali waters are likely to cooperate with al-Qaeda, and the U.S. should employ a surge of military power to gain control of the pirates.

From John Feffer, co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies:

The lumping together of Islamists and pirates obscures the only real solution to Somalia's manifold problems. Piracy is not going to end through the greater exercise of outside force, no matter what New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman may think. . . Indeed, the sniper killing of three pirates by three U.S. Navy Seals has, to date, merely spurred more ship seizures and hostage-taking.

Read the whole article here.

Are you an environmentalist or an economist?

Carbon tax? Cap and trade? Climate change economics can be exhausting and complicated. But I just found a great article that breaks the whole thing down in a very understandable way. Yes, Mother Jones is a little biased as a publication, but the reporters are stellar communicators. And I love me some good reporting. The gist? I'm much more of an environmentalist than economist. Vote cap and trade.

FROM MOTHER JONES

March/April 2009

By Kevin Drum

Though it's not been mentioned much lately amid the sea of bailout headlines, the global economy isn't the only thing melting down right now. So are the polar ice caps. As NASA climatologist James Hansen has warned, we are nearing—if we haven't already passed—the tipping point at which the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere becomes so high that feedback loops will cause it to keep increasing on its own even if humans never emit another CO₂ molecule again. To keep the planet habitable, he says, we must cut emissions not 10, not 20, but a full 80 percent by 2050; anything short of that will lead to "global cataclysm."

Fine then. We need to fix the climate, and we need to start yesterday. President Obama plainly understands this. His environmental rhetoric has focused mainly on things like wind farms and green jobs, but the backbone of his climate policy is actually an ambitious program that, if done right, will reduce greenhouse gases and raise desperately needed revenue—and, most important of all, has a fighting chance of making it through the congressional sausage factory in one piece. If he sticks to his guns, the idea will be a household term before the year is out. It's called cap and trade, and it springs from a simple yet surprisingly hard-to-answer question: What's the best, and fastest, way to reduce pollution?

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