 .S.
businesses like to talk about the need for certainty. In the aftermath of the
2007-08 financial crisis, they made an entire industry out of the claim that
more certainty would lead to better investment horizons.
 |
| The
Chinese and Europeans actually like to think in long-term horizons. That bodes
well for their strategies on the environment. |
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|
And yet, it is an
indisputable fact that U.S. conservatives and corporate interests conspire in
the political process not to have long-term perspectives. That, they believe,
would unduly restrict the freedom of maneuver of U.S. corporations.
It is a well-known fact that the planning horizon required for energy and
environment projects often requires a minimum of 30 years. Thinking in such long
arcs feels quite natural to the Chinese and the Europeans. No wonder they are
also the ones willing to engage in long-term thinking on the environment.
Under these circumstances, it is no surprise that climate change is just one
more field in which America's penchant for short-termism comes to haunt itself.
By the same token, those other societies see the United States as being in
danger of entering some form of a new dark age.
Perhaps we will indeed get lucky and American short-termism and business
opportunism will manage to complement more fundamental and long-term strategies,
as practiced by the Europeans.
To be sure, we are at a frontier the world hasn't faced in many years. Ever
since the invention of the railway, it has been the United States and its
economy that has served the world as the engine of transformation to a newer and
higher state of technology and quality of life.
Also to be sure, there are plenty of NGO representatives and environmental
activists in the United States who are political realists and yet remain
optimists on what the United States can do for energy transformation.
They see many forces for real good, far away from the falsely alluring
suggestions of shale gas and the like. They point to pure business rationale and
market thinking as the forces driving the U.S. economy toward a cleaner state.
|
| Climate change is just one more field in which America's penchant for
short-termism comes to haunt itself. |
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|
For example, coal
plants are being
closed (and new ones are not
being built) because they is no longer economically feasible. And car
manufacturers are using lighter materials and hence driving down fuel
consumption.
All true, but this is the result more of happenstance than of a real
strategy. It takes quite accidental happenings and elevates them artificially to
the level of being "planned" or strategic.
What remains in fundamental dispute in U.S. political circles is any serious
acceptance of the fact that we will need to do more with far less — a restraint
on our boundless consumption.
In addition, because the United States for the first time has had a very
serious bout with its limits of growth (and the related inherent optimism), it
is falsely casting itself as a "poor" nation — too poor to prioritize
environmental action.
The Europeans certainly aren't any richer, but they have the distinct
advantage of not feeling like they are God's chosen few. Through the force of
their own history, they know the importance, inevitability and healing power of
self-denial.
This lay of the land leads to a tantalizing role reversal. The formerly old
world, Europe, and the presumably spent force, China, are remaking themselves
and accepting the profound challenges of modernity.
They don't have a clear pathway to the answers and ultimate solutions. But at
least there is next to no domestic dispute about the need to accept the
challenge, without any reservation.
In contrast, the United States, for a long time synonymous with the very idea
of modernity, is casting itself in the cloak of the ancient. Stunning numbers of
people there resort to notions such as God's will and even disputing the concept
of evolution to pull an escapist act.
They are not prepared to accept any need for changing their behavior and
consumption patterns. They do not see that a superior standard of living comes
with certain obligations.
|
| U.S.
businesses like to talk about the need for certainty. Yet they conspire in the
political process not to be confronted with long-term
challenges. |
|
|
In the modern era,
it was always understood that the role of rich countries was to assume the
burdens of progress. That meant being a bit tougher on themselves, if for no
other reason than to stay ahead in the global race.
No nation embodied this spirit better and more feverishly than the United
States. Optimism and a very real sense of can-do were the very essence of the
American mantra. Now that spirit seems lost.
For the rest of the world, the current, suboptimal state of affairs means
something uncomfortable, yet exciting. Rather than relying on the United States
as the longstanding leader and continuing to act like mere understudies and
followers, other countries are now collectively thrust back upon themselves and
their own ability to engineer meaningful change.
Stephan Richter's five-part series, The
United States as an Anti-Modernity Force, continues tomorrow with How To
Turn Environmental Threats into Profits. |
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