Two Startling Victories for Global Sanity in One Week
Austerity doesn’t work. Dutch judge: Citizens are right, slash carbon emissions.
Two remarkable developments in the past week that could have a significant impact in many countries are worth a lot more attention in Canada and the United States.
First, a major research document published by five top economists at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) admitted that the strong pro-capitalist policies at the centre of its activities in developing countries for the past 30 years do not work.
One of the IMF’s main roles in recent years has been to bail out countries during financial crises. In return for loans, some 60 mostly poor countries have been forced to follow strict rules, such as privatizing government resources, deregulating controls to open markets to foreign investment, and restricting what they can spend in areas such as education and health care.
Now the paper, Causes and Consequences of Income Inequality: A Global Perspective, says there needs to be a shift and that greater income equality in both developing and developed countries should become a priority.
Dutch told to act on emissions
The other significant — but unrelated development — which received scant attention, concerns a ground-breaking decision by a judge in the Netherlands. He ordered the Netherlands government to slash greenhouse gas emissions by at least a remarkable 25 per cent by 2020.
The ruling came after almost 900 Dutch citizens, headed by the group Urgenda, took their government to court in April in a class action lawsuit to force a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to tackle climate change. Netherlands has been lagging behind other European countries in tackling climate change.
Significantly, the challenge was based, not on environmental law, but on human rights principles. Urgenda asked the courts to “declare that global warming of more than two degrees Celsius will lead to a violation of human rights worldwide.
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