Osamanomics and the greens

Does Osama bin Laden read my column?

In his latest couple of videos, the dyed one mentioned Western civilization’s contribution to global warming among his list of complaints of quite what was wrong with the state of affairs, which he suggested a bout of Osamanomics could cure. The generation of largely American (which is not a comment on their girth) economists brought up on the ideas of Reaganomics who now

rule the roost across the global financial system can perhaps imagine the very opposite of what they believe in, namely a demand-led reduction of Group of Seven (G7) economies that culminates in collapsing economic growth across Asia, thereby keeping billions of people mired in poverty.
Interestingly, and perhaps not coincidentally, the green movement appears to want exactly the same thing.

In one of my articles last year, [1] I wrote:

Terrorism could actually play a large part in reducing the world’s carbon emissions, and that alone should make bin Laden and his ilk the new poster-boys of the green movement.

This seemingly counterintuitive idea is explained in a subsequent paragraph:

Terrorism, by targeting … urban centers, can produce a visible difference to the scenarios envisaged by the SciAm (2) writers. More atrocities on the lines of New York, Madrid or London would likely induce a gradual shift away from concentrated urban centers like Manhattan to satellite locations that have affordable residential accommodation in close proximity. In turn, this would allow many mass-transit systems to reduce their operations while also reducing the annual mileage of Americans and Europeans by a factor of 20-40%. Additionally, currently available technologies such as telecommuting would likely accelerate in this scenario, producing even more energy savings.

Much of that article was written with tongue firmly in cheek, as the introduction to the section on terrorism’s “contribution” to reducing global warming makes clear:

In the spirit of solving the world’s carbon emissions problem using fresh thinking, we could then consider truly different alternatives.

When you are living in a cave in some God-forsaken part of Pakistan, albeit with broadband connections and the services of an eccentric barber, it is possible that subtle sarcasm can be easily missed; but then again, being a literalist Wahhabi, Osama probably never had any grasp of such thought forms in the first place.

Asia Times