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China, Russia and India are joining forces
This month, as Newsweek goes to print, an international organisation all but unknown in
the West is set to announce that its membership will soon include countries representing half
the world’s population. If the hopes of its leading backers – particularly Russia – are realised, the 15th annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in the Russian city of Ufa will mark the moment when this previously obscure body starts to demand much closer attention from the West.
The SCO’s plan is to invite India and Pakistan to apply formally to take their place alongside Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan as full members.
The idea behind these invitations is to extend the SCO’s reach south across the Asian landmass, bolstering its claim that it is a counterbalance to the Western-dominated international institutions that have held sway since the end of the Second World War. But if the imminent expansion of the SCO signals a major step on the road to a “multi-polar” world order, then it is a journey that promises to be long and arduous, with ample opportunity for fellow travellers to go their separate ways.
Over the past few years, the Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has repeatedly vented his frustration at Turkey’s lack of progress in joining the European Union by raising the prospect of joining the SCO instead. During a visit to Russia in 2013, Erdoğan is reported to have said: “If we get into the SCO, we will say goodbye to the European Union. [The SCO] is better – much more powerful. Pakistan wants in. India wants in as well. If the SCO wants us, all of us will become members of this organisation.” To date, no invitation has been forthcoming for Turkey, in spite of warm words in public between Erdoğan and Russian president Vladimir Putin. At a time of instability on Turkey’s southern border and growing uncertainty about Putin’s intentions, however, Erdoğan’s threats bolster the apparent credibility of the SCO even if they are yet to be taken seriously at the highest levels.
The SCO started life, in 1996, as the “Shanghai Five”, formed in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s break-up to enable Russia, China and the three former Soviet states in Central Asia that share a border with China (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan) to resolve their various territorial disputes. Having succeeded in this effort to ensure stability in Central Asia, the “Five” became six in 2001, with the addition of Uzbekistan, and changed their name to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. The job of secretary-general to the organisation is shared between the members in rotating three-year terms – the Russian governor of Irkutsk Oblast, Dmitry Mezentsev, who did not respond to Newsweek‘s requests for an interview, is the present incumbent – although the SCO’s permanent headquarters are in Beijing.
The focus during the organisation’s early years was on regional security, conceived of in the Chinese formulation of countering “terrorism, separatism and extremism” – for example, the threat Beijing identified from its Uighur population in the western province of Xinjiang, which borders the former Soviet states. Since 2004, SCO members have run a “Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure”, based in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent, which assembles security and intelligence staff from its members and promotes closer co-operation through shared blacklists and enhanced extradition procedures for terror suspects.
If the SCO had remained as primarily a vehicle to further China’s efforts to suppress Uighur separatism on its western flank, the chances are the organisation would have remained relatively obscure. However, its agenda has steadily crept beyond those beginnings and the SCO’s gradually rising profile reflects the range of political and economic influences driving its major members, including the economic ambitions of China in Central Asia, Russia’s determination to retain its influence in the region, Moscow’s growing estrangement from the West, and the potential void that will be left behind when Nato finally pulls out of Afghanistan.
Each of these factors is likely to push the SCO further into the spotlight, but each also brings the growing prospect of disagreement and paralysis for the organisation thanks to the central issue that will ultimately decide its fate: the competition and mutual suspicion that persists between Beijing and Moscow.
Shifting towards Beijing
How likely is it that the organisation Erdoğan appears to rank alongside the European Union, and that could soon include three of the four Brics, will emerge as a major new player in international relations?
“The main thing to recognise about the SCO is that there are fundamental disagreements between Russia and China over the organisation’s purpose and scope,” says Alexander Cooley, author of Great Games, Local Rules: The New Great Power Contest for Central Asia and Professor of Political Science at Barnard College, New York. “The Russians basically see the SCO as one of a number of institutions that they hope will develop a revisionist agenda against the West and against US influence.” The Chinese, by contrast, are focused far more on regional development and infrastructure investment both to help stabilise Xinjiang, the western province that has seen serious unrest among its Muslim Uighur population, most recently in 2009, and to create new markets for Chinese companies. These two visions do not sit perfectly together. Russia has never wanted the SCO to form a central part of its security planning in Central Asia, preferring instead the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, which it formed in 2002 with its Central Asian neighbours, says Alexander Gabuev, chair of the Russia in the Asia-Pacific Programme at the Carnegie Moscow Centre.
Neither Russia nor China, Gabuev says, would want to join an organisation that implied any sort of military alliance between them. So the SCO is highly unlikely to develop into any sort of alternative to Nato, especially not one that replicates Nato’s Article V, enshrining the principle that an attack on one member is an attack on all. At the same time, China’s long-running efforts to extend the SCO’s work into areas of economic development have largely failed to gain traction, with proposals including an SCO development bank and a free trade zone taking a long time to go nowhere. “Every economic proposal that the Chinese have offered, the Russians have considered, delayed and then mostly rejected,” says Cooley. “The Russians are uncomfortable with institutionalising China’s growing economic dominance of the region and instead they want to promote their own economic architecture, the Eurasian Economic Union.”
The proposal for an SCO development bank became stuck on the question of on what basis members would contribute capital, given that any formula linked to GDP would give China 80%-plus or the organisation and de facto control. Despite the SCO’s failure to live up to China’s hopes as a vehicle for economic development, the balance in economic diplomacy is shifting in favour of Beijing, enabling it to make progress outside the framework of the SCO and achieve many of its goals. In September 2013, having seen its proposal for an SCO development bank stall, China’s president, Xi Jinping, conducted a 10-day official tour of Central Asia, signing a string of bilateral economic and business deals and using his visit to Kazakhstan to announce the “Silk Road Economic Belt”, a bold proposal to finance and build roads, rail links, pipelines and other infrastructure across Central Asia and to create direct routes for Chinese exports to Europe.
The following month, Xi proposed a “Maritime Silk Road” focused on south Asia that is likely also to include major investments in ports. In April this year, China signalled another step in its “New Silk Road” plans with the announcement that it will invest $62bn of its vast foreign exchange reserves in the project via two state-controlled banks. Coming alongside China’s notable diplomatic coup this year in launching its Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank with the support of around 50 nations including close US allies in Europe and elsewhere, the signs are that Beijing is not going to allow its inability to move its economic agenda forward via the SCO to stall its progress indefinitely.
Alexander Gabuev at the Carnegie Moscow Centre suggests that China’s Silk Road plan does not necessarily reflect simple frustration with the SCO’s paralysis. Another important factor is China’s slowing economy, which is creating major over-capacity among Chinese infrastructure companies. In response, China is seeking to relocate industry to its western regions and create export markets for them through Central Asia. “China definitely wanted a free trade zone in the SCO,” says Gabuev. “But Russia and other countries are afraid they will be flooded with cheap Chinese goods and won’t be able to impose tariff barriers, which is why they opted instead for the Eurasian Economic Union and are not letting China in. But the Silk Road may have this free trade zone component. Nobody knows whether it has or not, so everybody is waiting.”
No choice for Russia
China’s renewed efforts to advance its economic development plans coincide with the worst breakdown in relations between Russia and the West since the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. This leaves Russia, like Turkey’s President Erdoğan, needing to demonstrate that it has other international options apart from its fractured relationships with the US and Europe.
“There is no way back to business as usual for the foreseeable future,” says Gabuev, “so people have started to realise that you have to do a pivot to Asia. And as Japan and South Korea are under pressure because they’re US allies, your pivot to Asia turns out to be a pivot to China.” This combination of factors, observers suggest, helps to explain the situation now unfolding. On one hand, the rising profile of the SCO in large part reflects Russia’s desire to put itself at the heart of an alternative international framework that is free of Western influence: a US application for observer status at the SCO was rejected in 2005.
The Russian Secretary-General of the SCO, Dmitry Mezentsev, spoke in February of the numerous countries that wanted to engage with the SCO, noting that Syria, Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Bangladesh had all applied for observer status, the level below full membership. “We value and appreciate these applications and the interest in the organisation,” Mezentsev told the SCO Press Club. “This shows that the SCO has gained credibility and influence in the region.”
On the other hand, Russia’s efforts to talk up the influence and reach of the SCO as part of its post-Ukraine international positioning are also forcing it at accept more or less reluctantly that China’s growing economic dominance cannot be effectively constrained. Prof Cooley suggests that Russia, under pressure from Western sanctions, will acquiesce in the Chinese Silk Road plan “because they have no choice in the matter”. He points out that Russia’s $400bn gas deal with China, signed late last year and portrayed as a sign of the growing co-operation between the two major non-Western powers, marked the end of a hard-fought negotiation in which China’s existing bilateral relationships in Central Asia gave it an important edge.
“The Chinese used the cheap natural gas prices that they get from Turkmenistan to play off Gazprom during the negotiations over the East Siberian pipeline,” he says. “That’s a clear case where China’s economic engagement in Central Asia really did impact Russia’s core national interest.” Moscow, however, had to put a brave face on the deal because of the need to signal it has options other than the West. Despite the clear gaps between the Russian and Chinese agendas, however, the two countries undoubtedly share a desire to create an alternative world order that gives greater weight to emerging non-Western powers. The practical difficulties of achieving this, however, even in the security sphere where the SCO counts most of its success to date are all too clear – as evidenced by a country that sits at the heart of the region the SCO aspires to unite: Afghanistan.
At the SCO’s summit in July 2005 in the Kazakh capital, Astana, the leaders issued a joint statement that put the organisation properly on the radar in Western capitals for the first time. Their communiqué called openly for coalition forces engaged in Afghanistan to set a deadline for dismantling their bases in the neighbouring SCO member states. That same month, Uzbekistan gave the US six months to leave its soil. A decade on, the prospect of Nato’s forces finally departing is not met with any great relish, particularly given the emergence of Isis and reports that people with links to the jihadi organisation are turning up in Afghanistan. “Of all the members of the SCO you’re seeing real concern over Afghanistan coming out,” says Sarah Lain, research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London. “Even China is starting to do a tiny bit more in security support – not in the way that Russia would but for example they’re helping to rebuild barracks for soldiers and police and supplying some limited training.”
Alexander Gabuev says that during conversations with security officials in Moscow, Beijing and Central Asian capitals, he has encountered senior figures who believe that Isis is a creation of the CIA in partnership with Saudi intelligence, in the same way that the Afghan mujahideen movement that fought the Russians in the 1980s was heavily sponsored by the West. “[They think Isis] is just there to spread instability and to weaken Iran, China and Russia, and that it’s going to spread to Central Asia and create an arc of instability,” he says. “I’m not sure that’s what Putin or Xi Jinping thinks but there are people in official positions in our intelligence bureaucracy who have these views.”
Filling Nato’s boots
The question of how the countries surrounding Afghanistan come together to address any security vacuum left by the departure of coalition forces is likely to loom large for the SCO’s members in the near future and could easily expose the organisation’s difficulties in turning statements into action. “There’s lots of dialogue and dialogue is great,” says Sarah Lain. “But at some point with Afghanistan there needs to be action and no one really wants to fill Nato’s boots in any way, so you wonder…” The default Chinese view that investment and economic stability will lead eventually to political stability could prove unequal to the task facing the SCO in this case.
Where does all this leave the SCO, a largely unknown and to date relatively ineffectual organisation that may be on the brink of a rather higher profile around the world? The move to expand its membership can be interpreted in several ways. Starting the process of admitting India and Pakistan to full membership will allow the SCO to claim that it is an international organisation of growing importance, representing a major slice of the world population and economic output. This is largely the Russian agenda – with an unspoken dimension, as Lain puts it, to counteract the “increasing gap between Russia and China’s position in the world” by bringing more countries to the table and so diluting China’s influence. This is particularly true of India, which has traditionally been much closer to Moscow than Beijing.
From the Chinese perspective, the moment at which the SCO starts to expand and appear more significant internationally might in fact signal the opposite – that Beijing is finally giving up on the idea of the SCO as an organisation that will play a major role in its international diplomacy. “My sense is that the new signalling that they’re ready to admit India is in some ways an acknowledgment that they’re not going to be able to do anything serious economically through this organisation,” says Prof Cooley, “so they might as well increase its symbolic value by letting in India and Pakistan – which you have to do as a package deal – whereas before the Chinese had resisted India’s application.”
Whichever interpretation of the likely events at the summit in Ufa gains acceptance, however, this organisation and others like it will continue to fascinate observers in the West because of our abiding suspicion that the world order is slowly changing. “You sense both in academic and outside circles that there is this curiosity: what would a powerful, non-Western international organisation look like?” says Prof Cooley. “How would it be different? How would it be effective?”
Anyone seeking answers to these questions at the headquarters of the Shanghai Co-operation Organization on Ri Tan Lu in Beijing is unlikely to come away much the wiser. Its home turns out to be a small and rather decrepit building opposite the Polish embassy that resembles a down-at-heel budget hotel with grey Mitsubishi air conditioning units on the wall outside every window and cheap floral-pattern blinds, all of which were pulled. In front, the flags of the member states fly in the courtyard from highly-polished flagpoles and there are spaces for around 20 cars to park. All of them were empty on the day Newsweek visited.
41 Comments on "China, Russia and India are joining forces"
Davy on Fri, 10th Jul 2015 10:02 am
This is from Zero Hedge. I question articles like this one trumpeting the SCO until this Asian market meltdown sorts itself out.
“Why China’s Stock Collapse Could Lead To Revolution”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-07-10/why-chinas-stock-collapse-could-lead-revolution
We identify two major channels via which a sharp market correction could affect the real economy. The first channel is consumption.
The Chinese people have kept hold of their jobs ensuring steady monthly cash flows, but generally they are feeling poorer, particularly in the face of adverse market conditions. Auto sales, which account for 9% of total retail sales, underwent a sharp decline, though not entirely caused by the wealth effect. The situation is too fluid for us to make any attempt to quantify the wealth effect, but we are inclined to believe that should the Shanghai Composite Index drop towards 3000 and stay low, we expect retail sales growth to be flat or decline slightly compared with 10.3% yoy as the average of the past five months, taking away the final growth engine, when investment and exports are all when investment and exports are all facing structural issues and have already decelerated.
The second channel is finance. We estimate that China has about RMB3.7tn in margin financing through brokers’ leverage, structured products and equity collateral financing (i.e., companies or big shareholders pledge stock rights to borrow more to invest in the equity market). The actual size of margin financing could be even bigger as we cannot fully estimate underground borrowing and over-the-counter borrowing. Further, some bank credit for real economy investment may have been diverted to the stock market.
Finally, as we said repeatedly over the past several months while watching incredulous as new stock trading account creation hit escape velocity, the collapse of the market has serious implications for social unrest.
Besides the economic rationale behind making an outsized policy response, political considerations are equally important. China has one of the world’s highest retail investor participation rates in the equity market. With the drastic fall in share prices recently, we think social stability is clearly at stake.
Northwest Resident on Fri, 10th Jul 2015 10:21 am
Davy — Nothing to be concerned about. Mak will be along shortly to explain away all the bad China news as being nothing more than evil American propaganda.
Anyway, once China rounds up a bunch of sellers, forces video-taped confessions out of them, puts on mock trials and public executions, the glorious soaring Chinese stock market will return to “normal”, at which point Mak will be back on his pedestal crowing about how superior China is compared to the evil, despicable, loathsome America.
Davy on Fri, 10th Jul 2015 10:31 am
N/R, sounds like you are implying Mak will star in his own Kabuki Theatre.
penury on Fri, 10th Jul 2015 1:29 pm
I have no idea whether SCO or the BRIC Bank will succeed or fail. Whether they will make a difference to the world for good or evil is to be determined by history, what is too obvious is that the U.S. is using the dollar to increase control over other countries in the world. A strong dollar is ravaging many countries but, we appear to be in total denial about the carnage the dollar is causing.
joe on Fri, 10th Jul 2015 1:54 pm
I always find it funny when people assume that the goals of say a NATO type group would be very different from any other, in the end they all aspire to ensure Sade spheres of influence in which to persue their agendas, or interests. It’s obvious that the future of the world is islamic, there is no way to avoid it, not without ending globalisation, not using mid – East oil and stopping all support for Israel, then using the Spanish reconqista approach and sending Muslims to islamic countries, not going to happen. In a historic irony, the poorest areas given over to muslim peasants to farm are now the biggest victims of climate change and war will form the future pool of people from which the Supranational EUROPE will draw it’s surplus population making Islam the fastest growing religion in the World. China is right to be worried. In the next 100 years many major European countries will be getting their first muslim presidents and prime ministers, that’s a certainty and western culture will never be the same. The US is on the verge of integrating it’s trade with Europe and Asia, creating a new round of globalisation drawing nations closer together, to prevent obvious things like global nuclear war. But will it work? Who can say. Alexander the great couldn’t do it. Could millions of independent mosques? Or will we all have to submit to a Caliph? The US is both the strongest and most Christian western power. No wonder it’s the biggest target. All the while the politicians play both ends off the middle, it’s a game which weakens them in the end. The same policy killed off the late Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the British Empire, and pretty much is weakening the western world. Trends in Russia will force it to give up its European identity, this has happened many times history, it’s was once the most powerful part of the Mongol Golden Horde Empire ruling as far as China, and was Islamic. So things can change allot, and fast.
Davy on Fri, 10th Jul 2015 2:53 pm
“Why China’s Market Isn’t Fixed And The Global Bubble Will Keep Imploding”
http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/why-chinas-market-isnt-fixed-and-the-global-bubble-will-keep-imploding/
China is a powder keg of debt. In fact, some $28 trillion of it. And, according to the bean counters at McKinsey, upwards of $21 trillion of that was created in just the last 90 months—–during which time China’s GDP rose by only $5 trillion……….In fact, margin debt soared by 5X in less than one year. Nothing like this has occurred anywhere in the world since, well, 1928-1929 on Wall Street.
China is the greatest eruption of unsustainable debt, wasteful construction and rampant speculation in human history. It has precisely nothing to do with capitalism or any possible form of sustainable economic growth and wealth creation……………In the process of taking its debt from $2 trillion in the year 2000 to $28 trillion at present, in fact, China has erected an endless string of uneconomic public facilities and industrial white elephants that boggle the mind. For instance, it has 1.1 billion tons of steel capacity——400-500 million tons more than its domestic economy will ever be able to use on a sustained, sell-through basis. In fact, its “excess” steel capacity is greater than the total steel industries of the US, Europe and Japan combined!……….Likewise, it ramped up a cement industry of 2 billion tons that is double or triple what will be needed when its construction of empty apartment buildings, unused airports, carless highways and bridges and pointless high speed rail lines finally comes to an end. Indeed, during the three years ending in 2014, China produced more cement than did the US during the entire 20th century.
The parade of excess capacity and white elephants is virtually endless and includes copper products, aluminum, solar panels, construction machinery, ship-building and every manner of consumer goods. That used to be called “malinvestment”, and its what happens when central banks flood the world with uneconomic credit and governments override every semblance of financial discipline and honest calculation via endless bailouts and safety nets for gamblers………..At the end of the day, the firestorm now engulfing the China’s stock market will shake the regime itself. China’s current maximum ruler, Xi Jinping, is self-evidently an economically illiterate thug. Accordingly, there is no measure he will not try in order to arrest the current meltdown
By urging households to buy stocks, Xi has put his credibility—as well as that of the Communist Party—on the line. The stimulus measures’ failure may incite outrage among those very mom-and-pop investors who have lost everything. Though it’s impossible to tell what might ignite it, mass social unrest in China would shake the entire world.
Dredd on Fri, 10th Jul 2015 3:31 pm
“There’s no easy way to say this, so I’ll just say it: We’re no longer No. 1. Today, we’re No. 2. Yes, it’s official. The Chinese economy just
Review Due – On Sale Now
overtook the United States economy to become the largest in the world.”
(Economic War Of The Pacific – 5)
Some damage that dollar is doing eh?
penury on Fri, 10th Jul 2015 4:06 pm
Hey Dredd, get out of the book reading and try looking at the facts, US dollar up aprox 18 per cent against emerging markets.
Makati1 on Fri, 10th Jul 2015 9:36 pm
penury, the dollar is “up” because many still believe the BS that it is the ‘safest’ currency. That lie is soon to be exposed. At that point, the US will also be exposed as the 3rd world country it really is.
As for Newsweek, it is just another arm of the US MSM Propaganda mill. The spin wobbles back and forth between bashing Russia, bashing China and throwing opinions into the article rather than facts. Distractions for the sheeple.
Boat on Fri, 10th Jul 2015 9:56 pm
Why Mak. News about the US debt isn’t hidden. Am sure anyone who was interested in US finance could find all the information they wanted to make an assessment.
Makati1 on Sat, 11th Jul 2015 12:02 am
Boat, too many are still under the delusion, that was planted long ago by the US Ministry of Propaganda, that the US is number one. That is still a misconception that most of the uneducated world seems to share. A mass delusion based on history, not present conditions or the future.
The educated realize that buying USD paper is a losing game and are putting them into real resources. The common man may be still buying USTs, but the smart countries are selling and buying gold or mines or farms or…
Boat on Sat, 11th Jul 2015 1:03 am
As an American I think your wrong and you been listening to talking heads. We don’t care who’s #1 or 2,3,etc. Silly argument. How does that put money in my pocket. I buy mutual funds. Of course I look at the history of returns and next the fee structure. What they own or buy I could care less what country the business and stocks come from. I pay the mutual fund to research the country business and weigh the risk.
Northwest Resident on Sat, 11th Jul 2015 1:26 am
Mak, China is falling apart. Anybody with a brain and an awareness of current events can see that. Crashing stock market. Unsustainable debt. Dictatorial decrees and direct threats to temporarily put a bottom on the stock market crash, desperate moves that can only stretch out the inevitable for a little while longer. These are facts, not opinions. Is it so hard to let go of your “USA is evil and China is the great hope of mankind” drivel?
joe on Sat, 11th Jul 2015 2:28 am
What we have been seeing in the last 12mnths has been the endgame of QE, the problem is that most banks know that when US money gets more expensive, they will need cash to fund their activities, Greece is just a symptom of a problem that has seen the ECB do exactly what it did not want to do, become the lender of last resort. If you don’t know what privately owned central banking is please don’t read on. The ECB wanted nations to change themselves economically to become debtors who could buy Euros and spend them, it’s vital to understand then why Euro QE only started so recently. This failure of ECB strategy is why Europe can finally ‘solve’ Greece. The ECB also knows that this model has no future as Euro QE as demand for Euros is limited. At some point interest rates have to raise, if it does not, then we will have had 7 years of almost free money, that means little profit for central banks. It also implies weakness in the economies. The current answer is to increase trade and unify the world’s biggest consumer economies to create a mega-state it may one day be thought of as EURMERICA which will ensure the stability of the US dollar, and create demand for Euros.
Davy on Sat, 11th Jul 2015 2:52 am
Mak, read this again: Northwest Resident on Sat, 11th Jul 2015 1:26 am
“Mak, China is falling apart…..”
Your Asian drivel is getting old and worn out. No fan of the US and the dollar but you and your Asian agenda numb nuts picked the wrong horse and she lost. We are all going down. Quit being a pussy and man up Makster.
Makati1 on Sat, 11th Jul 2015 8:38 am
Boat, if it does matter, the US would not be so upset about China moving to the top of the ladder and the West sliding down to lower levels. If the number is not important, why does the sock-puppet-in-chief keep pounding on the “We are Number One” mantra in EVERY speech?
Anyone buying into the Market Casino, at this point, is suicidal and should be avoided. (1929 and the Roaring Twenties redo.) It will come as a shock when your government takes over those trillions sitting in mutual funds, 401ks, etc., and makes them into a new form of social security backed by UST toilet paper. Or when the market finally crashes to it’s real level and wipes put the whole financial system around the world. A thousand shares of Apple or GE or Monsanto will not buy a roll of real Charmin when that happens. LOL
Davy on Sat, 11th Jul 2015 8:47 am
Poor Mak, his angry drivel gives away his extreme embaressment for an agenda that has blown up in his face. Mak, Asia is not so great anymore is it. Mak, just start acting normal and you will not feel so stupid.
Boat on Sat, 11th Jul 2015 10:20 am
Mak,
Remember the meltdown? I read so much doom and gloom I almost changed course with my investment strategy. In the end I stuck with dollar cost averaging and glad I did. The dow went from 12,000 to 5,000 now at 17,000. I think I will stick with it. My investment will allow me to to replace my 36 mpg car with a 50+ mpg car when the time comes. That is called Americans going green the capitalistic way.
Remember a guy called Warren Buffett? He continued to invest during the downturn also.
Makati1 on Sat, 11th Jul 2015 11:01 am
Boat,I wonder how many said the same thing on October 23rd, 1929? The sooner it crashes, the better for the rest of the world’s future. After all, over half of the world’s population will not even know it happened and most of those others who do know, will not care. Only a small percentage enjoy the ‘benefits’ of Capitalism. I would say less than 10% of the 7+ billion of us now on this planet. The other ~90% are bleeding and dying to make Capitalism possible for the other ~10% and they are waking up to that fact.
penury on Sat, 11th Jul 2015 11:25 am
All the discussion of We are no 1 no We are no 1 is ridiculous. If China goes down the U.S. will follow, if the U.S. financial market goes down so will China. The latest Pentagon report showing how we feel about Russia and China should offer a clue. When this goes down, we are all going down. The slide has started, it may be slow it may be fast but, it will affect everyone. Even us.
Boat on Sat, 11th Jul 2015 11:33 am
I get your point even though I haven’t seen the numbers. But I don’t think most of the 90% care. For Example I don’t care what happens in Europe, China, Middle East or Japan. I wish them well. In fact they should be more responsible and help police the oil they use. I don’t think they care about me and what I have to do to earn a living. Some dude in Mongolia sitting on a horse, why would he care.
Apneaman on Sat, 11th Jul 2015 12:24 pm
Boat, you’re my hero and typical of most greedy growth obsessed industrial apes. MORE MORE MORE shout the cancer monkeys, even as the all to obvious and destructive consequences of ever more investing and consuming is now a in your face daily occurrence. I can’t wait for all these not yet built 50mpg vehicles to be in every driveway. I’m sure that is all we need to halt and reverse the well under way 6th mass extinction, stop ocean acidification and restore it to a healthy PH and end global warming.
“That is called Americans going green the capitalistic way.”
No boat, that is called the apes going extinct the express way…….while cheering.
Apneaman on Sat, 11th Jul 2015 12:33 pm
No doubt a 50 mpg car or some new ape tribe economic block will put a halt to this sort of thing.,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Antarctic wind vortex is strongest for 1000 years
Our greenhouse gas emissions are helping to spin up a giant vortex of winds around Antarctica.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25547-antarctic-wind-vortex-is-strongest-for-1000-years.html#.VaDPBLUV1NE
Apneaman on Sat, 11th Jul 2015 12:42 pm
Boat you are 100% right again, other countries really need to take a strong lesson from America regarding proper usage of fossil fuels. If only the rest policed them selves like those spartan, frugal, energy conservative Americans.
Diesel Rolling Coal on PEOPLE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGYc0wCP7oQ
Best of Monster Truck
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqHixJVRiGw
Boat on Sat, 11th Jul 2015 1:18 pm
Apneaman, The trouble with you humans that claim nothing but calatity is there is not a darn thing you can do about it. It would have been better if you had not been born and your like and I am sure you think of me in the same way. I know the only way the world makes any progress towards a cleaner planet is technology and that technology will only spread if it makes a buck for the company that makes it. Period. The rest of the talk is just ad nauseum while pointing fingers. Climb off the soap box and admit your a scourge to the environment like anyone else.
Apneaman on Sat, 11th Jul 2015 1:44 pm
Boat, I already have many times, but you don’t know it because you and you’re know it all fox and friends philosophy just got here 5 minutes ago. You do not listen, only see and hear what you want to hear. I never say we, they or anyone should or needs to do this that or any other thing. That would be contradictory to my stance that it is too late for the apes. I know that it’s a foreign concept for you and thus hard to grasp, but not everyone on the planet believes that you are either a democrat/lefty or a republican/righty. In fact most of the world does not roll like that at all. I like point out the lies and holes in the stories. I’m generous like that. BTW we are making progress towards a cleaner planet – once were gone, (50-200 years) it will take about 10 million years for the reset.
ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES Accelerated modern human – induced species losses: Entering the sixth mass extinction
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/advances/1/5/e1400253.full.pdf
“We are now entering the sixth great mass extinction event,” said Gerardo Ceballos of the Universidad Autonoma de Mexico, lead author of the Science Advances study. “If it is allowed to continue, life would take many millions of years to recover, and our species itself would likely disappear early on.”
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/editorials/2015/06/25/1-6th-mass-extinction-under-way-and-humans-are-reason-why.html
Web of life unravelling, wildlife biologist says
“Wildlife biologist Neil Dawe says he wouldn’t be surprised if the generation after him witnesses the extinction of humanity.”
“All around him, even in a place as beautiful as the Little Qualicum River estuary, his office for 30 years as a biologist for the Canadian Wildlife Service, he sees the unravelling of “the web of life.”
“It’s happening very quickly,” he says.”
“Everything is worse and we’re still doing the same things,” he says.
“Because ecosystems are so resilient, they don’t exact immediate punishment on the stupid.”
https://web.archive.org/web/20131105135121/http://www.oceansidestar.com/news/web-of-life-unravelling-wildlife-biologist-says-1.605499
Eminent Australian scientist Professor Frank Fenner, who helped to wipe out smallpox, predicts humans will probably be extinct within 100 years, because of overpopulation, environmental destruction and climate change.
Fenner, who is emeritus professor of microbiology at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra, said homo sapiens will not be able to survive the population explosion and “unbridled consumption,” and will become extinct, perhaps within a century, along with many other species.”
http://phys.org/news/2010-06-humans-extinct-years-eminent-scientist.html
Apneaman on Sat, 11th Jul 2015 1:47 pm
My favorite quote
“Because ecosystems are so resilient, they don’t exact immediate punishment on the stupid.”
That includes the atmosphere.
Climate Change: The 40 Year Delay Between Cause and Effect
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Climate-Change-The-40-Year-Delay-Between-Cause-and-Effect.html
Davy on Sat, 11th Jul 2015 1:48 pm
Boat said “I know the only way the world makes any progress towards a cleaner planet is technology and that technology will only spread if it makes a buck for the company that makes it.” Boat, pa-ll-eee-sse, give me a quick round up of zero carbon and zero waste technology ready to change the world and I will bow before you and kiss your dirty feet.
I am not a doomer by choice. I am not a cornucopian because I am honest. I am not a delusional fool. I know when the math does not add up. I know when something is too good to be true. I also realize you can’t have your cake and eat it. Boat get real man. Enjoy your wealth but be honest about the future. A future of a destroyed planet from that enjoyment. Don’t try to blow smoke up my ass. I am not an idiot that believes in fairytales.
Apneaman on Sat, 11th Jul 2015 1:55 pm
“Nothing is less productive than to make more efficient what should not be done at all.”
Peter Drucker
Apneaman on Sat, 11th Jul 2015 1:57 pm
Our Paradoxical Economy Courtesy of Technology and the Lack of Basic Income
The Question of Slowing Productivity Amidst Rising Automation
https://medium.com/basic-income/our-paradoxical-economy-courtesy-of-technology-and-the-lack-of-basic-income-361f40051de0
Apneaman on Sat, 11th Jul 2015 2:03 pm
According to this paper from last year the atmosphere is exacting punishment on the stupid quicker than previously thought. Lot of that going around – sooner than previously thought/underestimated/faster than expected.
Maximum warming occurs about one decade after a carbon dioxide emission
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/9/12/124002/article
Davy on Sat, 11th Jul 2015 2:29 pm
Ape Man quoted “Nothing is less productive than to make more efficient what should not be done at all.” This is probably one of our top greatest defects as humans. Changing what needs to be left alone because it can’t be improved upon. Doing things to stay busy because busy is thought to be productive. Wanting progress for the sake of progress because progress is thought to be our destiny. Growing for the sake of growth because growth is thought to be prosperity.
I have said this before human’s large brains are an evolutionary dead end because they have not evolved a way to limit intelligence. We need an engine governor on our minds. We have gone places we don’t belong because of intelligence. These forbidden doors we opened cannot be closed. We keep opening doors looking for solutions to doors we cannot close. We are now in a vicious circle of needing more intelligence to repair the effects of our intelligence. This is truly the mechanization of evil.
Boat on Sat, 11th Jul 2015 2:33 pm
“Nothing is less productive than to make more efficient what should not be done at all.”
Peter Drucker
In spite of the fact human kind has enjoyed an ever increasing healthy life style and length of life, our buddy Apeman and some Drucker character will now provide a bullet list for our entertainment..
So we should have never tried to suggest birth control.
We should have never dreamed of a car that got better gas mileage.
In fact clean water and plumbing was the worst mistake humans could have ever made. The only solution for the earth is to dirty it up as fast as possible so humans become extinct.
Even the idea of electricity killed the earth.
This is what your dribble sounds like. I suggest therapy.
Apneaman on Sat, 11th Jul 2015 2:58 pm
Boat (crossing the river Styx) I guarantee you, your life is going to much shorter, nasty and brutish than myself and many others would have guessed even 10 years ago.
Davy on Sat, 11th Jul 2015 2:59 pm
Boat, there should be no need for birth control because populations should be naturally stable over time like the rest of the earth’s ecosystem. Life was much more resilient and sustainable before the automobile. There was a time when we had abundant clean water and didn’t need plumbing and purification like today. If you think electricity is not killing the earth via carbon releases then you are one tough cookie and I doubt therapy will help you. Therapy implies a brain that can reason.
Apneaman on Sat, 11th Jul 2015 3:19 pm
Boat you need to start from scratch if you really want to learn and understand and not just cling to and repeat corny talking points because they are emotionally soothing. I bet, like me, many here had their cherry popped by Professor Al. We always remember the first time don’t we kids.
Arithmetic, Population and Energy – a talk by Al Bartlett
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O133ppiVnWY
Boat on Sat, 11th Jul 2015 3:36 pm
Tell ya what. You give up and encourage babies in a world of 7 billion. I will simply suggest to young kids not to have any till you can afford them.
Ya’ll can give up but I will continue to buy Led bulbs even though if the system crashes it won’t make any difference.
No matter what I and many will go down fighting to do the right thing.
time to load up that worthless bag of aluminum cans I gonna recycle.
Davy on Sat, 11th Jul 2015 4:04 pm
Boat, it is likely too late to do anything but we can be honest about our situation. Being honest means generally better decisions. I like how David Korowicz put it:
“There are very significant and growing real-time risks of failures in the systems we have come to depend upon. Some of that risk might be avoided, some might be mitigated, but much we will just have to deal with.”
Apneaman on Sat, 11th Jul 2015 4:34 pm
fighting to do the right thing? By minor tweaking of mass consumption.
Fight The Good Fight
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BT1ircqQklo
Apneaman on Sat, 11th Jul 2015 5:03 pm
Here Boaty, more stories of your fellow humans enjoying an ever increasing healthy life style and length of life? courtesy of the wonders of capitalism and technology…………………
Modern Work Patterns Make No Sense
“In any case, some have claimed slavery was no big deal anyway for capital formation because Britain just pivoted to getting cotton from Egypt and, especially, India. But Indian cotton, although not grown by slaves, was grown by subsistence farmers who were dragooned by the British authorities of the Raj into producing cotton in sufficient quantities for export. How did they pay for the transition? Loans, of course. You can’t eat cotton, and it’s very vulnerable to variations in the monsoon rains.
Fast forward today, and what are all those small farmers committing suicide at a staggering rate growing? You guessed it, cotton (now woven in Bangladeshi sweatshops instead of Lancashire mills). And now it’s genetically modified cotton, which is produced by Western corporations and bought via debt upfront, with all the risk laid at the feet of the small farmers. This means the farmers also need to buy the pesticides, the upside being that they can always drink it if the rains fail to show and the debts come due, which is exactly what many of them are doing. ”
http://hipcrime.blogspot.ca/2015/07/modern-work-patterns-make-no-sense.html
Boat on Sat, 11th Jul 2015 5:13 pm
Cotton by far uses the most pesticides as a crop. The environment would be much better off if we stuck to synthetics.
PS, and why can’t they fund themselves? I forgot, you don’t believe in problem solving, just grab your crotch and kiss it all good by.