Part One:
WHAT’S THE STATISTIC OF THE DECADE?
We speak with Liberty Vittert, Prof. of the Practice of Data Science at Washington Univ., and a Visiting Scholar at Harvard. She was on the judging panel for the Royal Statistical Society in determining the “International Statistic of the Decade.” The idea was to identify a statistic that captures where what we face as we enter a new decade, a number that demonstrates how we as a planet have changed from where we were in 2010, as we began the decade, to where we were as the decade ended on New Year’s of 2020. Who knew that such a competition even existed?
The winner for 2010-2019 was 24,00 square miles, which is the amount of land in the Amazon rainforest that was deforested during the last decade. That’s the equivalent of 8.4 million soccer fields (10.3 million football fields for us Americans). Put another way, this is the equivalent of the entire states of Connecticut, Hawaii, New Jersey and Massachusetts! Why has Brazil given permission to cut down this much of the environmentally-unique rainforest? To enable Brazil’s cattle ranchers to graze their animals and its nut farmers to grow their crops.
The financial gain to the Brazilian cattle ranchers and nut farmers is $20 billion. This sounds like a lot of money. But the financial loss — including droughts, floods, fires, and losing the Amazon’s ability to actually *absorb carbon* from the atmosphere (which reverses our environmentally-problematic history of pumping more and more carbon into the atmosphere) — the loss would be almost $7.8 trillion! The financial cost of deforesting the Amazon clearly dwarfs the total financial gains.
Of course those costs and gains are allocated to different people, different countries. When the environmental movement began, we recognized similar problems, which economists called “external costs.” For example when upstream polluting factories allowed toxic smoke to waft downstream, the total cost to society of the production process included the downstream external effects. But the company didn’t pay those external costs (didn’t “internalize” those costs), so the factories had no incentive to stop polluting.
Environmentalists convinced the government to order polluters to pay the full cost of their operations. With the full costs monetized, polluting corporations were forced to consider these downstream costs when they decided how “clean” an operation they would run. The same result was achieved when beverage companies (soda, beer) were required to add a 5- or 10-cent deposit on the bottles in which they distributed their products. Consumers would then have to choose whether to purchase the product in an environmentlly-friendly container or else to pay more money for the luxury of buying non-recyclable containers.
Could we be similarly successful if we were to force Brazil to “internalize” (pay) the full cost of deforesting the Amazon rainforest — including the external cost to the planet — instead of letting them reap the extra profits of using under-priced resources?
How would we monetize these external costs? Our guest estimates that it would cost $2,000 per acre to limit deforestation and therefore to save the Amazon. This still leaves us with the question of who pays what share of this monetization? The question of allocating costs — similar to the question of distributing income, profits and other societal benefits — will have to be addressed in another conversation.
Part Two:
STILL TRYING TO FIGURE OUT THE LANDSCAPE FOR DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CONTENDERS
We speak with David Dayen, the Executive Editor of The American Prospect, about whether we should change our way of viewing the different “lanes” that this group of candidates is competing in. It may seem counter-intuitive, but Dayen’s article states that, in a lot of respects, Biden and Sanders are competing for the same group of voters. Not ideologically, of course, but culturally, these two are competing for the votes of blue-collar workers and people of color, the so-called “beer track”? (Though Sanders appeals to younger voters and Biden to older.) On the other hand, Buttigieg and Warren may be competing for similar voters in the white-collar, educated classes, more upscale and wealthier voters — the “wine track.”
In 2007, Barack Obama competed in the wine track. People of color wanted him to do well, but didn’t think he had a realistic chance. When Obama won Iowa, though, POC saw that their dream might actually come true. And the wine track also embraced Obama. Iowa made it OK for at least some kind of changes from the status quo Democratic establishment.
Nowadays, ideology means a lot more in evaluating candidates, and perhaps the beer/wine track might mean a little less than it used to. (True, the 1968 race was dominated by ideological clashes, not just class differences. But 1968 was different: the McGovern changes to the primary system had not yet been adopted, so Hubert Humphrey could win the nomination without even competing in any primaries.)
By the 1990s, the more centrist, business-oriented wing of the Democratic party had emerged triumphant. Bill Clinton styled himself a “new democrat” — although it wasn’t clear what that meant. Many of his policies and declarations could just as well been stated by a Republican. (“The era of big government is over.” ” Ending welfare as we know it.”)
In 2015, Bernie Sanders woke us up to how important ideology is when voters are deciding among competing candidates. He also demonstrated that a winning campaign does not have to rely on big-dollar donations. This year, Sanders and Warren have proven that it is a viable strategy to rely on many, many small donations rather than only a group of elite big donors. (The development of social media technology has helped them achieve this: online donation makes it easy for any ordinary small donor to donate $18 to Bernie or Elizabeth.)
This financial independence has opened up space for what Democratic candidates can talk about in a primary. Candidates no longer have to make their public policy proposals acceptable to their donors’ business interests. They no longer have to worry about what they can/cannot say on the campaign trail, for fear of upsetting one of their corporate donors.
AND THEN IRAN HAPPENED
This ideological analysis could diminish in importance now that Pres. Trump has thrown international affairs into dangerous chaos by assassinating Iran’s military leader. Will this benefit Bernie’s campaign? He has been the most consistent advocate for reducing militarism in foreign policy, and now the country is likewise sick and tired of endless war with its huge cost in American lives and treasure.
On the other hand, will the coming Iran crisis hurt Joe Biden’s candidacy? He’s been at the forefront of establishment policy for over 40 years. To a very real extent, that establishment has led our country to neoconservative domestic policies and a hawkish foreign policy, which American voters may not want to continue.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth Warren just released her new plan to change bankruptcy policy. Among other things, her plan attacks the 2005 Bankruptcy Act, which Joe Biden co-sponsored.
How will it all turn out? One commentator said the upcoming first votes are comparable to a “jump ball,” at the opening of a basketball game. In just a few weeks, we will be watching Iowa and New Hampshire for clues as to which way Democratic voters will be trending along all these various fault lines.
