Kissinger: The Chance for a New World Order
Henry Kissinger, Real Clear Politics
As the new U.S. administration prepares to take office amid grave financial and international crises, it may seem counterintuitive to argue that the very unsettled nature of the international system generates a unique opportunity for creative diplomacy.

That opportunity involves a seeming contradiction. On one level, the financial collapse represents a major blow to the standing of the United States. While American political judgments have often proved controversial, the American prescription for a world financial order has generally been unchallenged. Now disillusionment with the United States' management of it is widespread.

... Even the most affluent countries will confront shrinking resources. Each will have to redefine its national priorities. An international order will emerge if a system of compatible priorities comes into being. It will fragment disastrously if the various priorities cannot be reconciled.

The nadir of the existing international financial system coincides with simultaneous political crises around the globe. Never have so many transformations occurred at the same time in so many different parts of the world and been made globally accessible via instantaneous communication. The alternative to a new international order is chaos.

The financial and political crises are, in fact, closely related partly because, during the period of economic exuberance, a gap had opened up between the economic and the political organization of the world.

Henry A. Kissinger was U.S. secretary of State from 1973 to 1977.
(13 January 2009)

Steven Chu Eases Up on the Gas Price Pedal
Matthew L. Wald, The Caucus (blog), New York Times
Steven Chu, the Nobel laureate scientist who is President-elect Obama’s choice to be energy secretary, said in testimony prepared for his Senate confirmation hearing Tuesday that high oil prices were a threat to the economy, backing away slightly from statements made in his last job, as director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, that gasoline prices should be higher.

Mr. Chu, who was expected to get a friendly and brief review by the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, said in prepared testimony that “last year’s rapid spike in oil and gasoline prices not only contributed to the recession we are now experiencing, it also put a huge strain on the budgets of families all across America.’’ He called for a “greater, more committed push towards energy independence, and with it a more secure energy system.’’

He had told the Wall Street Journal last September , “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe,” a statement likely to give some commuters a case of road rage.

Mr. Chu draws wide approval for stressing energy efficiency and new technology as approaches to the problems of energy prices and global warming. But his science-based frankness sometimes contrasts with ordinary energy politics, which are often more centered on narrower economic interests.
(13 January 2009)
Related: Obama energy pick says will fight global warming (Reuters).

Greening the stimulus
Bill McKibben, Joseph Romm and John Whitehead; Salon

... Salon Editor's note: This is the third in a weeklong series of opinion pieces about Barack Obama's proposed recovery package. We'll hear from economists, activists, environmentalists and businesspeople in the days to come.
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Bill McKibben, environmentalist and author of "Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future."

I think we should at least keep in mind the possibility that we won't really get out of this economic crisis -- that far from being a cyclical downturn, it may be a signal of something more remarkable: the confluence of forces, like peak oil, finally starting to bring our growth era to an end. If so, it makes sense to push at least a little investment in the direction of infrastructure that would support a different kind of economy than the one we've spent the last hundred years building, i.e., globalized, centralized and always growing. I'd put some money into decentralized and local renewable energy and into rebuilding the local agricultural infrastructure that's been allowed to rot away. A few billion dollars would buy a bunch of slaughterhouses and small food processors, and it would serve as a kind of insurance that we may need -- especially since, however many green jobs we create, we're not going to entirely ward off climate change.

As for green jobs, even if all you're thinking about is resuming rapid expansion of our economy, green energy strikes me as the one plausible driver for real growth -- endlessly bigger even than IT or biotech. One key is going to be to make sure some of that money goes to the people who've been left out of even the last economic booms. This should be centered on the kinds of jobs that come from community colleges and vocational technology schools: weatherization of houses, installation of solar panels, etc., etc.

Joseph Romm ...
John Whitehead ...
(14 January 2009)