HOT MONEY
How Free Market Fundamentalism Helped Overheat the Planet
"We always had hope that next year was gonna be better. And even this
year was gonna be better. We learned slowly, and what didn't work, you
tried it harder the next time. You didn't try something different. You just
tried harder, the same thing that didn't work."
-Wayne Lewis, Dust Bowl survivor, 20 12 1
"As leaders we have a responsibility to fully articulate the risks our
people face. If the politics are not favorable to speaking truthfully, then
clearly we must devote more energy to changing the politics."
2
-Marlene Moses, Ambassador to the United Nations for Nauru, 2012
During the globalization wars of the late nineties and early 2000s, I used to follow
international trade law extremely closely. But I admit that as I immersed myself in
the science and politics of climate change, I stopped paying attention to trade. I
told myself that there was only so much abstract, bureaucratic jargon one person
could be expected to absorb, and my quota was filled up with emission mitigation
targets, feed-in tariffs, and the United Nations' alphabet soup of UNFCCCs and
IPCCs.
Then about three years ago, I started to notice that green energy programs — the
strong ones that are needed to lower global emissions fast — were increasingly
being challenged under international trade agreements, particularly the World
Trade Organization's rules.
In 2010, for instance, the United States challenged one of China's wind power
subsidy programs on the grounds that it contained supports for local industry
THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING | 56