The price of oil did. This from a conservative think tank.

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Recent research, using previously unknown documents from Cuba show that Ramon Ferrer, captain of the of the slaver ship Amistad who was killed by the slaves in the famous uprising, was no minor wheel in the slave trade. Instead, he was a central and wealthy figure in the trade, which had hubs in New York City and Cuba. He used his considerable profits to finance railroads and other industry in Cuba, a telling example of how industrialization happened on the backs of slaves.

Michael Zeuske, a German researcher, found 170 year old documents in Havana showing that Ferrer controlled at least one other ship, and will now be going to London to research that ship.

“So, for me, this is a story of the globalization of the slave trade,” Zeuske said.

Bury the Chains by Adam Hochschild chronicles the birth and huge growth of the anti-slavery movement in Britain. It started with 12 men in a print shop in 1787 and soon grew to a mass movement. They staged the first boycott ever (against Caribbean sugar), petitioned Parliament, invented the lapel pin, did book tours, distributed flyers, put up posters,  and succeeded in banning slavery in Britain. Their innovative tactics laid the groundwork for countless social movements after them.

A replica of the Amistad leaves today from Mystic Seaport in Connecticut on an 18 month trip commemorating the abolition of slavery in Britain.

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…and nothing short of a planetary rescue will save it from the environmental cataclysm of dangerous climate change. Those are not the words of eco-warriors but the considered opinion of a group of eminent scientists writing in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

It’s the albedo flip that concerns them. Currently, ice at the polar caps reflects sun. If too much of it melts, the resultant water will begin to absorb heat, something that will make climate change vastly more severe.

Meanwhile, formerly respected Left journalist Alexander Cockburn has gone completely bonkers, becoming a foaming-at-the-mouth global warming denier, supporting the work of the lunatic Right. Let’s hope this isn’t the start of his long slide into Christopher Hitchens land.

Derek Wall, Principal Speaker of the Green Party of England and Wales gets it though, with a podcast about being green, left, and socialist. And the Darfur conflict had its genesis, at least partly, in water shortages - yet another example of the intersection of climate change, politics, and war.

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The US electoral system is unfriendly, and deliberately so, to third party attempts to get ballot status for presidential candidates. Such candidates face a bewildering thicket of regulations and rules that vary widely from state to state. Why is it that individual states determine who shall be on a presidential ballot? A much fairer system would be one set of rules set by the federal government, rather than fifty sets of rules that require large amounts of money and staff to implement. This is quite deliberate, the Twin Parties of Imperialism don’t want competition.

Then there’s the front-loading of the primaries whereby the candidates for both major parties will now be chosen by February of next year. This further lessens any real choice available to voters by closing the options early. Only those who can raise hundreds of millions need apply. Hint: Anyone who can raise that much money is not beholden to you or I, but rather to their corporate backers.

Then there’s the electoral college. We don’t elect a president. Rather, we elect electoral college delegates who in many cases do not have to follow the will of the voters. This mistrust of the voters has been enshrined in the Constitution since Day One. Clearly, the founding fathers wanted to be able to override a presidential vote if needed.

So, what we have is a system that pretends to be democratic and open, but isn’t really at all.

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The Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement of Sri Lanka has since 1958 been advocating a “no poverty, no affluence society.” This has been the foundation of its economic philosophy. It turns out there’s one small problem: no one quite knows what it means. Does “no poverty, no affluence” mean that once a poor person meets a certain standard of living, things start getting taken away? Does it mean complete equality, at whatever the average standard of living turns out to be, regardless of whether a person tries to better their situation or not? Or does it mean limitations on extravagance and waste? The interpretation of this simple, nice-sounding phrase has huge repercussions on what kind of support it will receive in the field.

Sarvodaya is wrestling with this at the same time we discuss various economic approaches to global climate change, where a similar problem arises. Recent posts have used terms like socialism, the greater good, environment first, mandatory reductions, global solutions, massive spending (by whom?), massive cutbacks, rationing, strict limits on growth, and so forth. But what do these mean? We all assume that “some rich guy” has to pay the price. But if you’re reading this post on a computer with internet access, you are one of the rich guys (gender notwithstanding).

Consider: Half the world lives on less than two dollars a day. A day’s income won’t buy a gallon of gasoline or a single cup of Starbucks coffee. A month’s income wouldn’t cover a pair of New Balance sneakers. Though they have an impact on global warming through sheer numbers, on an individual basis their impact is nearly zero. India’s annual per capita CO2 emissions are .29 tons. By contrast, the average American is responsible for 5.37 tons of CO2 per year, more than 18 times more.

Global climate change is real, and it needs a solution. But as we toss theoretical arguments around, pwrhaps without thinking of the practical definitions of our terminology, let us be clear what’s at issue: When we talk about changing the lifestyles of the wealthy, we’re talking about our own lifestyles, and the lifestyles of our neighbors. If we are to maintain the freedom we crave, our society must be convinced to make the necessary changes voluntarily. Otherwise change will come involuntarily by the choice of a government, or involuntarily as the result of not making changes. In either case, we’ll be giving up most of the liberty we take for granted.

It would serve us to find ways for people to make the necessary changes voluntarily. Because if we don’t, some undeserving despot will reap the benefit.

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