Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.Carl Jung

Inner Life Directions

Expanding Reality

Governance

  • Climate Change: Moral Failing

    As part of their Polluters Project, The Guardian published a list of 20 of the world’s largest companies responsible for a third of all carbon emissions. Some are state owned, some are investor owned, and almost all are familiar names. Perhaps you’ve heard of the list, even so it’s too important not to reiterate.  In order of how much carbon dioxide they have contributed since 1965:

    Saudi Aramco, Chevron, Gasprom, Exxon Mobil, National Iranian Oil Co, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Coal India, Pemex, Petroleos de Venezuela, PetroChina, Peabody Energy, ConocoPhillips, Abu Dhabi National Oil Co, Kuwait Petroleum Corp, Iraq National Oil Co, Total SA, Sonatrach, BHP Billiton, Petrobras

    A leading climate change scientist, Michael Mann, succinctly puts the problem this way, “The great tragedy of the climate crisis is that seven and half billion people must pay the price-so that a couple of dozens polluting interests can continue to make record profits. It is a great moral failing of our political system that we have allowed this to happen.”  Moral failing is so apt. Some are calling on politicians at a climate change conference in Chile in December to take urgent measures to rein in polluters. It’s far from certain they will act, or will act in a meaningful way. Meanwhile the list is a reminder that climate change is a moral imperative we must each live with. If we drive and car pollution is a big culprit, it may be difficult to avoid these companies, still by being vigilant and holding the issue in our awareness, we may collectively continue to be the catalysts for needed action.

  • Slave Labor and Supply Chains

    The UN describes modern slavery as the condition of people whose work “is performed involuntarily and under the menace of penalty.”  Modern slaves can be forced to work through threats of violence, through withholding of identification, through threats to family members, and also through subtler means like financial pressure or limiting movements. All told according to a recent report by the Walk Free Initiative, in 2018 there were 40.3 million people living in these conditions, mainly women. When Mauritania abolished slavery in 1981, as the last stronghold it made slavery illegal throughout the world.  One problem is how difficult it is to track down the offenses. It is part of countries with shady human rights certainly, but it is everywhere, including the US. Of these 40 plus million there are at least 16 who are part of the supply chain, meaning the people who work on the things we buy. Even if slave conditions are outlawed within manufacturing, it is difficult to enforce, to make sure products are entirely made by slave free labor. The fashion and the tech industries are two of the worst culprits. With fashion for example, we want cheap clothes, and cheap clothes can only come with cheap labor.  Some businesses are onboard, yet because products can have many parts which come from many different countries it is often difficult to know if slave working conditions were involved. Another aspect of the tragedy is that so many of those who are forced to work and/or live under these conditions are not aware they are being exploited. There are no easy answers, but one hope lies in education: Educating people about their rights, and promoting human rights education among vulnerable populations such as those of migrant workers or those likely to be in underage marriages.

    If and when we can, let’s contribute to that education.

  • Prisons in Norway

    As a follow up to a recent post about abolishing prisons, this BBC News story on prisons in Norway makes an important point. Prisons there are beyond what many criminal justice reformers dare to hope for here. The setting is rustic, there are no barbed wires around and the guards who are called Prison Officer Assistants function like teachers, counselors, mentors. The whole idea behind the Norway prison system is that those who are in prison will one day be neighbors and so rehabilitation is opted over retribution, so that when they come out prisoners are better people than when they went in. Since in Norway the maximum sentence is 21 years all prisoners are eventually released. Each inmate has his own cell with TV, a bath and a view of the woods outside. They study trades, pursue degrees, take yoga classes, go into retreats when they need to. And what is striking especially when compared with US prisons is that there is no violence. Once in a while an inmate may act violently but the facility has none of the incidents of violence that are routinely expected in contemporary US prisons.  Each guard who has had at least 3 years of training, is assigned about 3 inmates, so the ratio is far different than  in the US and surely also makes a difference. After 2 years of this approach the recidivism rate in Norway has gone down to 20%.  Prior to that, it had been 60 to 70%. In the UK it’s about 50% and in the US it is 68% within 3 years and 76% within 5 years.

    Of course this approach is expensive and that argument may be used by critics as a drawback. It costs the equivalent of about 98,000 British pounds per person. In the US the average is usually $30,000 but can be double that in some states. Economics tell us however, that there are social costs, and opportunity costs, and I suspect when all these are added together (not even factoring in the social good and humanity of the issue) the Norway type of prison may in the long run turn out to be cheaper.

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