Global Risks
For our purposes when we talk about global risks we are
concerned with human caused risks. And although we are not concerned with
massive meteorites crashing into the Earth it is not always clear what are
human made risks and natural risks. For example, human made risks might be
unhealthy food production but susceptibly to viral infections or diseases such
as diabetes might be regarded as natural risks by some. But we all know that in
some cases one is a necessary condition in the causal chain of the other.
Hence, one problem for us is to distinguish between human
made risks and natural risks. When we discuss human made risks we have to be
clear between the effects of human activity and the underlying causes of these
effects. A prime example of this possible confusion is the present scourge of
plastics pollution. Politicians, probably taking their cue from commercial
interests, blame consumers for not preparing their plastic wastage for
recycling, rampant consumerism and wastage, over packaging, and maybe they
accuse their political opponents of not doing enough to protect the
environment.
On their website* the British Plastics Federation report
that “…only 4% of the world’s fossil resources are used in plastics production.”
One would have thought that plastics would, therefore, be a manageable and
reasonably priced exercise to control and prevent from entering into the
environment eco system. We now know that fish stocks not have mercury in their
system but plastic too. With this example I want to show that the effects are
not just simple face value causes, or one-to-one cause effect events. Global
risks might not have a single cause for a specific risk.
The answer to this plastic question, for example, it cannot just
be controlling plastic production, nor discovering alternatives, although these
might help, but rather: why aren’t there effective plastic waste collection
programmes worldwide? No doubt such programmes would have fixed costs to run
and these fixed costs might be too expensive or unavailable to some countries. By
fixed costs I do not only mean in money terms, but also in skills and
expertise, economies of scale, and coordination of these programmes worldwide.
One of the main issues of the recycling mentality is whether
recycling causes more harm than the problems they are meant to solve. A number
of factors include: the location of the waste and the distance of recycling
facilities; the quantities to be recycled, and the funds and personnel to carry
out such recycling; an then there is the initial investment and training. More
academically, we need to investigate economies of scale and the principle costs
to convert physical matter from one form to another.
In reality, the plastic recycling problem, to give one
example, is the effect of other casual factors. Mainly, lack of resources to
recycle and more commercially attractive to produce and use plastics than to
manage the waste.
Remember this number: 1,000,000,000,000.
Now remember this number: 1,000,000,000
The first number is a financial trillion and an import
number** that is very relevant for global risks within the context of the
European Union. And the second number is a financial billion.
The EU Commission estimates that about one trillion Euros
are lost due to tax evasion and tax avoidance every year within the EU. As a
comparison in 2013 the estimated health care expenditure*** in Germany was
about €369,388,754,377 ($411.5 billion). The one trillion Euros lost in taxes
in the EU is the equivalent of 2.7 the German cost of their health care system
and that’s a lot of plastics bottles that can be recycled. By the way, I use
Germany as an example because it is the largest EU country with an 80 million
plus population.
So two of the key human made global risks are lack of
resources for local authorities to organise and monitor collective services
such as pollution control, health care and other necessary services for human
living. Services, I must add, are best provided by seeking economies of scale
and the global distribution of knowledge gained from such services. And the
other factor is the disregard to good practices in provideing goods and
services, human rights violations, unaccountability and lack of transparency
especially on matters financial. What my example from the EU means is that
everyone who pays taxes within the EU is subsiding those who do not pay taxes
(mainly companies) to the approximately value of €1trillion. So such issues, at
least within the EU, as climate change, plastic pollution, environment protection,
and animal husbandry are the direct cause of lack of funds and resources by
local authorities to create programmes to control these risks.
From a philosophical perspective, mainly political
philosophy and philosophy of economics, what matters is whether the present
economic model of creating wealth, managing wealth, and sharing wealth is best
for a human population that is more and more concentrated in cities and large
urban sprawls.
The overpopulation problem that Malthus tried to identify
has mainly been solved by technology, more effective production methods, and
better life style has kept this problem under control. Indeed, such countries
as Japan, Germany, Spain and Italy have negative population growth: they need
to attract people from other countries to maintain the productivity that can keep
today’s living standards: that’s just to remain where we are.
As a consequence of inequitable wealth distribution this creates
risk in access to education, health care and human/labour rights. Don’t forget
when Marx was writing about the struggles of the labour force a large
proportion of European wealth was creating by the exploitation and plunder of
resources of countries outside Europe. And domestically created wealth did not
have to account for labour rights, health and safety, quality control, and
standards of production and manufacturing.
Sure, exploitation and plunder still goes on today, but the profits from
these activities have to be hidden and laundered to give them the impression of
transparent providence.
The causes of human global risks require us to take these human
created risks from a global perspective, there is no point of us cleaning our
coasts from plastic debris if our neighbours do not. But this is very difficult
to achieve because we are well and truly attached to the 18th and 19th
century model of the state and countries. What matters is our country: we might
have a global super digital highway but we certainly don’t have a global mind
set. Furthermore, equitable wealth distribution is very difficult because we
still do not have a valid argument, never mind a good answer to the question:
why should someone who control large portions of wealth share it with others?
Best Lawrence
*Oil Consumption
British Plastics Federation
https://www.bpf.co.uk/press/oil_consumption.aspx
**A huge problem
Taxation and Customs Union - European Commission
https://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/fight-against-tax-fraud-tax-evasion/a-huge-problem_en
***2015 health care outlook Germany
Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited
https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/global/Documents/Life-Sciences-Health-Care/gx-lshc-2015-health-care-outlook-germany.pdf
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