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Most people seem to think that the world economy is going through a temporary disruption, caused by a novel coronavirus. As soon as COVID-19 goes away, they expect the economy will be back to normal. I think that this assessment is overly optimistic. The way I see the situation, the world economy was already having severe growth problems, caused indirectly by resource problems, even before COVID-19 hit. In a growing world economy, a person might expect that workers would be getting richer, so that they could afford an increasing quantity of goods and services. What we really see is something very different. The number of new automobiles sold was falling in many major countries long before COVID-19 hit, even as population was generally rising. Clearly, something was seriously wrong. As I see the situation, the world has a resource problem. Resources of many kinds, including fresh water, energy products, and minerals of many kinds were becoming more difficult (and expensive) to extract, even before 2020. Substitution might have worked if the problem were only one or two resources, but not with several major resources. Cutting back was the only answer. Thus, the shutdowns for COVID-19 came at a convenient time, allowing economies that were already doing poorly to shut down. Needless to say, there was no world leader who was willing to explain this hidden issue to the world population. Instead, world leaders used standardized code words such as “we need to move to renewables” or “we need to reduce carbon use by 2050 to prevent climate change.” Unfortunately, the ability to move to alternatives in this time frame is simply an illusion, allowing world leaders to avoid mentioning the serious resource issues that the world economy is really facing. I expect that within a few months, a new crisis of some sort (perhaps financial) will come along, further reducing resource use. This will happen, whether or not the problem of the novel coronavirus is solved. In this post, I will try to explain the situation. [1] The world’s economy is a self-organizing system, powered by the laws of physics. It requires a mix of resources, including energy resources, to operate. The laws of physics require that energy be “dissipated” whenever activities we associate with generating GDP take place. For example, if a person is to drive a truck, he/she will need to eat food for his/her own personal energy. This food is “dissipated” by digestion. If the truck is to transport goods, it will need to burn some type of fuel, such as diesel. This fuel is dissipated by burning. If a computer is to operate, it will need to dissipate electricity. If a room (or a liquid) is to be heated or cooled, some sort of energy dissipation will be required. The world economy grows in a very orderly manner. It gradually adds population, as more babies are born than people die. All of these people need food and fresh water; they also need some type of housing and clothing to protect them from the elements. Ideally, they need some type of transportation in addition to walking. Businesses are formed to enable access to goods and services that fill these needs. Governments are also formed to provide services used by all and to regulate the system. A financial system is formed to facilitate transactions, among other things. The world economy cannot slow down and quickly restart. This is especially the case for an economy that had already started slowing, even before the 2020 pandemic. If not enough resources of the right kinds were available to enable true economic growth before the pandemic, it is hard to see how the situation would be very much improved a year later. One key to understanding how a self-organizing economy works is to understand that the economy is multi-sided. Businesses need to make an adequate profit, to continue in operation. Workers need to earn an adequate wage to raise a family. Customers need affordable prices. Shortages of inexpensive-to-extract resources can lead to many different problems: lack of profitability for producers, or too much wage disparity among workers, or too high prices for customers. Resource shortages can also lead to people with inadequate wages wanting to migrate. They can also lead to empty shelves in stores.

Do countries still need to worry about threats from biological weapons? The COVID-19 pandemic has led to renewed discussion of biological weapons and whether bad actors — both nations and terrorists — have refocused their attention on developing them. In a recent War on the Rocks article, Joseph Buccina, Dylan George, and Andy Weber argue that the “inadequate initial U.S. response to COVID-19, coupled with new advances in biotechnology, could make biological weapons more appealing for U.S. adversaries.” They add that China and Russia could use biological agents in a “low-boil” manner to undermine the United States as part of a “Shadow War,” a term first coined by Jim Sciutto, referring to a hybrid war, gray war, or non-linear war. The specter of mass casualty biological weapons attacks — whether by nations or terrorists — is unrealistic. The United States should not overreact to the threat of biological weapons. Although the threat from biological weapons has not vanished, it is, in fact, at one of its lowest points since the Cold War’s end. Biological weapons are primarily a tool of assassination — largely for purposes of ensuring regime security in authoritarian states — and special forces operations. U.S. policymakers should strengthen diplomatic and intelligence community efforts to protect the American people from this enduring — but manageable — threat. The History of Biological Weapons Use During the Cold War, several nations developed biological weapons for potential military use. Scholar W. Seth Carus identified 15 national biological weapons programs active from 1915 to the end of the Cold War. He points out that the number of national biological weapons programs fluctuated, with the majority lasting for only a short time. The number of biological weapons programs during the Cold War fluctuated from between eight to five. The development and possession of biological weapons is trending dramatically downward since the end of World War II. With the 1975 Biological Weapons Convention, signatories placed biological weapons use beyond the pale and the use of biological weapons has been stigmatized. After the Cold War, countries largely abandoned large-scale counterforce or countervalue biological weapons capabilities, and those that retained biological weapons programs focused on its utility for assassinations and sabotage operations in the immediate prelude to conflict. Although not a new capability, however, the potential use of biological weapons by special operations forces or intelligence operatives against fixed targets like naval bases, ports, and airbases was particularly attractive to some countries. Despite the Biological Weapons Convention and international efforts to combat the biological weapons threat, concerns about biological weapons use remain. The United States currently assesses only one country (North Korea) possesses an offensive biological weapons program and three countries (China, Iran, Russia) are engaged in activities that raise concerns about their compliance to the Biological Weapons Convention. Nations likely no longer see utility in developing or possessing biological weapons for use in large-scale, offensive military operations given the devastating capabilities of today’s advanced conventional weapons. Even as a deterrent, biological weapons have little-to-no utility against an adversary contemplating the use of biological weapons. Historically, almost all nations possessing biological weapons saw it as a deterrent against adversarial use. Most nations renounced first-use of biological weapons, holding biological weapons only to retaliate in kind. The use of weaponized Yersinia pestis (the causative agent of plague) by Imperial Japan against China during World War II is a glaring exception. In that case, Japan used biological weapons against a numerically superior opponent incapable of retaliation.

The Existential Threat of Biotech Bioterrorism The potential impact of biotech bioterrorism goes far beyond the immediate health risks. Such attacks have the potential to undermine global security, destabilize economies, and cause widespread fear and panic. Potential Impact on Global Health Biotech bioterrorism has the potential to cause significant public health crises. Engineered pathogens with increased virulence or novel properties could overwhelm healthcare systems, leading to a shortage of resources and medical personnel. In the absence of effective treatments or vaccines, widespread illness and death would result. Moreover, the deliberate release of contagious diseases could lead to a breakdown of public trust in the healthcare system, leading to decreased uptake of vaccines and compromised disease control efforts. This could result in the resurgence of once-controlled diseases and hinder global efforts to eradicate infectious diseases. Biotech bioterrorism could cause public health crises, causing healthcare shortages, illness, and death without effective treatments or vaccines. Economic and Political Ramifications Bioterrorist attacks can have severe economic consequences, both in the short and long term. The immediate costs include the allocation of resources for emergency response, healthcare, and containment efforts. The indirect costs can be even more profound, such as decreased consumer confidence, disruption of trade and travel, and loss of productivity. Politically, bioterrorist attacks can strain international relations and lead to conflicts and mistrust. In the aftermath of an attack, countries may be inclined to impose travel restrictions, trade embargoes, and other measures that further isolate nations and impede global cooperation.

Foreign terrorist groups like al-Qa‘ida and ISIS are seeking to rebuild overseas, and they maintain worldwide networks of supporters that could seek to target the Homeland. Among state actors, we expect Iran to remain the primary sponsor of terrorism and continue its efforts to advance plots against individuals in the United States. Foreign terrorists continue to engage with supporters online to solicit funds, create and share media, and encourage attacks while their affiliates in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East prioritize local goals. Since the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, ISIS’s regional branch—ISIS‑Khorasan— has garnered more prominence through a spate of high-casualty attacks overseas and English‑language media releases that aim to globalize the group’s local grievances among Western audiences. Individuals with terrorism connections are interested in using established travel routes and permissive environments to facilitate access to the United States. U.S. Department of Homeland Security 3 • Iran maintains its intent to plot attacks against current and former US government officials in retaliation for the 2020 death of Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps-Qods Force (IRGCQF) Commander and designated foreign terrorist Qassem Soleimani. Iran relies on individuals with pre-existing access to the United States for surveillance and lethal plotting—using dual nationals, members of criminal networks, and private investigators—and has attempted plots that do not require international travel for operatives. In August 2022, the DOJ indicted an IRGC-QF member for allegedly conspiring to assassinate a former US National Security Advisor between late 2021 to mid‑2022. Iran’s surrogate Lebanese Hizballah also called for revenge against the United States for Soleimani’s death.

Gene-editing techniques such as CRISPR could make biological weapons more deadly. Nations could develop novel or modified pathogens that would spread more quickly, infect more people, cause more severe sickness, or resist treatment more fully. Equipment needed for wide-area dispersal may become less necessary, for example, if a pathogen can be engineered to spread faster on its own. Whether that potential is tantalizing enough to convince countries to revitalize or initiate biological weapons programs is uncertain. These kinds of modifications have long been possible, just harder, using traditional genetic engineering techniques. But there are worrying signs that some leaders sense a new opportunity. In 2012, for example, Russian President Vladimir Putin intimated to his defense minister that he should plan to develop weapons based on new principles, including genetics. Another concern is that gene editing may make it easier to carry out targeted assassinations. Conceivably, a government might edit the genes of a deadly virus so that it would affect only a single target based on his or her genetic code. This capability does not yet exist, but it might become possible with time and effort. Nonetheless, as the biosecurity expert Gigi Gronvall has noted, given the prevalence of far easier methods of assassination, states may decide that developing and testing such a weapon is not worth the time, effort, and cost. A related fear is that advances in gene editing could allow scientists to develop biological weapons capable of discriminating among target populations based on ethnic, racial, or other genetically defined characteristics. According to Gronvall, these so-called ethnic weapons would be tricky to design and test, and any target population would likely have considerable overlap with nontarget populations. Still, the world is only in the early stages of the biotechnology revolution, and biological weapons have been used in ethnic and racial conflicts before. In the 1970s, for example, Rhodesia’s intelligence agency introduced cholera into wells in areas held by black nationalist guerillas. And in 1981, the apartheid government of South Africa launched Project Coast, which is believed to have looked into biological means to assassinate opponents. According to some accounts, researchers with Project Coast also discussed plans to selectively administer an antifertility vaccine to black women. These examples give reason to monitor the threat of targeted biological weapons. Some observers argue that gene editing could make it easier to develop or use biological weapons clandestinely, thus reducing the risk of international disapprobation. But maintaining a secret biological weapons program has never been particularly difficult. The equipment and agents required also have legitimate uses, and the challenges of international oversight mean that the odds of getting caught are low. It is unlikely that new technologies would change this in any fundamental way. Concerns that gene editing will make biological weapons so cheap that countries reassess their strategic value are also overstated. CRISPR does make gene editing less expensive; in 2014, a scientist at Vanderbilt University noted that an activity that used to take 18 months and cost about $20,000 took only three weeks and cost about $3,000. The expense can only have fallen in the years since this estimate was made. But biological weapons are already cheaper than alternatives such as nuclear weapons. And although gene editing lowers the cost of developing a deadly pathogen, it does little to reduce the price tag on the many other steps involved, such as weaponization, manufacturing, and delivery. Considering all of this, one particular concern emerges. The combined factors of lower cost, easier access, and greater effectiveness might not be enough to sway major powers, but they may incentivize rogue and small states to reconsider the marginal utility of investing in biological weapons. As a result, any strategy to address the risk of genetically edited biological weapons must take into account a broad range of state types, not just the major powers. Still, it’s important to put the threat in perspective: geneediting advancements need not change the basic calculus to the extent that some fear.

America’s national priorities are badly misplaced. Our country spends, with almost no debate, nearly $1 trillion a year on the military while at the same time ignoring massive problems at home. We apparently have unlimited amounts of money for nuclear weapons, fighter planes, bombs, and tanks. But somehow we can’t summon the resources to provide health care for all, child care, affordable housing, and other basic needs. The United States remains the world’s dominant military power. Alone, we account for roughly 40 percent of global military spending; the U.S. spends more on its military than the next 10 countries combined, most of whom are allies. Last year, we spent more than three times what China spent on its military. Not counting supplemental spending, the United States plans to dedicate about $900 billion to the military this year. Almost half of this amount will go to a handful of huge defense contractors enjoying immense profits, which have significantly increased as a result of the war in Ukraine. Like a majority of Americans, I believe that Ukraine needs the help of the United States and the international community to fight off Russia’s invasion—and that it’s both morally right and strategically necessary to provide them with what they need to do so. But many defense contractors seem willing to capitalize on the war to line their pockets. In a particularly egregious example, RTX Corporation, formerly Raytheon, has increased prices for its Stinger missiles sevenfold since 1991, leaving the U.S. paying more than $400,000 to replace each missile sent to Ukraine. Even accounting for inflation and improvements to missile technology, that is an outrageous price increase. Yet somehow, while increasing costs for the American taxpayer by billions, RTX has the money to announce plans to buy back $37 billion in stock through 2025. Taxpayers pay dramatically more. Shareholders get richer. It’s not just RTX. The stocks of American arms manufacturers have surged: Northrop Grumman’s share price increased 40 percent by the end of 2022, and Lockheed Martin’s by 37 percent. In 2022, the federal government awarded Lockheed Martin more than $45 billion in unclassified contracts. The company returned about one quarter of that amount to shareholders through dividends and stock buybacks, and paid its CEO $25 million. There’s a name for all this: war profiteering. There’s a solution too. During World War II, then-Senator Harry Truman decided to investigate the windfall profits made by military contractors who enriched themselves at the expense of millions of servicemen who risked death defending our country. “Their greed knows no limit,” he said about the contractors who were gouging the government during wartime. Not much has changed. Congress should resurrect the Truman Committee, a bipartisan special committee designed to rein in defense contractors, closely oversee military contracts, and take back excessive payments. These companies’ greed is not just fleecing the American taxpayer; it’s killing Ukrainians. A contractor padding its profit margins means that fewer weapons reach Ukrainians on the front lines. Corporate greed is helping Vladimir Putin. These companies are fully reliant on the U.S. taxpayer, yet their CEOs make about 100 times more than the secretary of defense, and 500 times more than the average newly enlisted service member. But the Pentagon bears a big share of the blame too. The Defense Department has been plagued by waste, fraud, and financial mismanagement for decades. In fact, the DOD remains the only federal agency that cannot pass an independent audit—a requirement under federal law since the early 1990s. Last year, the DOD failed its sixth audit, and was unable to fully account for 63 percent of its $3.8 trillion in assets. And every year, auditors discover billions of dollars in the Pentagon’s proverbial couch cushions. In 2022, the Navy audit found $4.4 billion in previously untracked inventory, while the Air Force identified $5.2 billion worth of variances in its general ledger. It should therefore come as no surprise that defense contractors routinely overcharge the Pentagon—and the American taxpayer—by nearly 40 to 50 percent. One company, TransDigm, overcharged by 4,451 percent. Taxpayers are getting wise to this graft: Data for Progress found that 80 percent of likely voters believe that the Defense Department should be required to pass an independent audit before Congress increases its budget by another nickel. But despite billions in fines for fraud or misconduct, the contracts never seem to dry up. That may be down to America’s system of legalized bribery: A share of the profits from these lucrative contracts will flow back to politicians who gladly accept millions in campaign contributions to make sure the defense budget is always flush. According to the watchdog group OpenSecrets, defense contractors spent nearly $140 million lobbying the federal government last year. Millions of dollars more go directly to members of Congress in campaign contributions from companies, individuals, and political-action committees linked to the defense industry. In the 1990s, there were 51 major defense contractors in this country. Today, they have consolidated into five giants: Lockheed Martin, RTX, Boeing, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman. These big five can use the monopoly positions granted them by the United States government to reap enormous profits. In fact, in fiscal year 2022, they shared more than $118 billion in Pentagon contracts. Congress must put an end to this form of corporate welfare. The best way to do that is to reinstate the Truman Committee on war profiteering so that we can end corporate greed in the defense industry. A windfall-profits tax could help achieve this end as well. No one denies that we need a strong military. But, like every other agency of government, it must be run efficiently and cost-effectively. It cannot simply be a cash cow for a handful of giant corporations.

Sebastian Ramirez; 11 – 12 November 2016; Philosophy Department- Vanderbilt University; The Biopower of Neoliberalism; ; [TMS—GK]

In the following paper, I draw on Michel Foucault’s genealogies of biopolitics and neoliberalism to explore the links between capitalism and racism in the contemporary United States. The account I develop here illustrates the way in which the biopolitical power to make live and let die is exercised through the employment of liberal and neoliberal economic strategies of government. Specifically, I argue that these strategies of government instrumentalize the population as a mass of potential market-actors and entrepreneurs and, in the process, continually reproduce, manage, and regulate the freedom, security, and endangerment of its members. The discursive deployment of the figure of the entrepreneur operates here as a marker for the selective identification and sequestration of ‘failed entrepreneurs’ and ‘illegitimate capitalists’ as dangers to the market economy and life itself. This selective mechanism, in turn, ensures the biopolitical isolation and purification of ‘successful entrepreneurs’ and ‘legitimate capitalists’ as exemplary models of healthy life. This is accomplished, as I will show, primarily through the systematic erasure of historical context from public discourse. I illustrate this fundamentally anti-historical nature of the figure of the entrepreneur with an analysis of President Obama’s 2013 commencement speech at Morehouse College. Specifically, I show that, insofar as populations are compelled to comport themselves as entrepreneurs, they are trained to perceive slavery and its descendant institutions as obstacles to be overcome through individual initiative and moral choice. Because systematic effects of this legacy are ongoing, Black Americans’ access to the politico-economic resources necessary for entrepreneurial self-direction is significantly impeded. Those who are unable to acquire these resources are compelled to secure alternative means of self-preservation. Having failed to follow socially sanctioned paths for survival, these subpopulations are depicted as ‘failed entrepreneurs,’ ‘illegitimate capitalists,’ social enemies, and examples of unhealthy life. As such, they must be sequestered and instrumentalized as raw materials for the prison-industrial complex. In closing, I suggest that the politico-economic productivity of this biopolitical investment constitutes an important extra-disciplinary function of the prison system.

Immaterial labour and financialized capitalism. The intensification of biopower resonates with late capitalism’s need for “a social control compatible with democratic societies where order is based on the formalized participation of great masses” (Lucarelli 2010, 120). As capitalism shifts away from Fordist production regimes and toward immaterial labor, the use of biopower increases because it is adept at managing the diverse and heterogeneous populations of late capitalism without recourse to overtly oppressive power relations. As opposed to the industrial or modernist capitalism that preceded it, “postmodern” or late capitalism is characterized by a kind of labor that is dependent upon cooperation (e.g. teamwork), communication (e.g. dialogue), and creativity (e.g. innovation). This is the basis for Lazzarato’s work on immaterial labor that, he rightly claims, requires the magnification of biopower because it not only helps produce material goods, but also seeks to exploit less-tangible human qualities associated with the intellectual work of innovation, dialogue, and teamwork. While an awareness of the relationship between creativity and capitalism is not new, as is clear in Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s (2002) famous work on the culture industry, it is now integral to all labor and industries. Considerations of creativity and communication, for example, pervade the workplace and the workforce, as the use of collaborative software, the corporate retreat weekend, the insistence that employees participate in teamwork exercises, and strategies of “creative management” come to the fore. Indeed, this is Richard Florida’s (2004) argument when he describes the rise of a “creative class” which has “evolved economic and social systems that tap human creativity and make use of it as never before” (Florida 2004, xiii [see Dufresne and Sacchetti, chapter 9]). It is not only an explicitly creative “class” that makes use of immaterial labor, for even sectors such as manufacturing and manual labor rely on communications technologies to fulfill orders, to problem solve, or even simply to organize schedules in creative and efficient ways. Immaterial labor is thus ever more present as we labor in our workplaces; but it is also ever more present as we labor in our homes and everywhere else wireless data networks are available. As mentioned, social networks such as Twitter and Facebook are consistent with contemporary biopower as users continually broadcast––and in the process produce and reproduce–– their own personal tastes, relationships, and experiences. Yet the constant stream of user updates, the continuous addition of “friends,” the never-ending “liking” of things around the internet, and the steady insertion and sharing of links does more than produce a unique identity, as corporations cull invaluable information about “user-generated content ... [that] is the very dynamic driving new revenue streams” (Coté and Pybus 2007, 100). The virtual goods and services that users produce through their unpaid labor (of linking, liking, sharing, and uploading) make use of human dialogue, cooperation, and creativity to generate profit; they make, namely, use of immaterial labor. Moreover, because this immaterial labor can take place outside working hours and anywhere a network is available, it renders the distinction between work and leisure obsolete. Late capitalism aims to “put to work the entire lives of workers” by expanding both production and consumption into every aspect of an individual’s life (Marazzi 2008, 50). Concomitant with the shift to immaterial labor is the growth of financialized capitalism. The salient place of finance is linked to the end of the Bretton Woods System in the early 1970s, the subsequent liberalization of financial markets, and the introduction, widespread acceptance, and enormous short-term profitablity of complex financial instruments. Like immaterial labor, financialized capitalism makes use of biopower insofar as it is associated with “the diversion of savings from household economies to stocks and securities” (Marazzi 2008, 21). Personal and communal earnings are increasingly put into the service of complex financial instruments leading to the new “massification of stock market investment” that allow anyone to participate in, say, widely available methods of online trading (Marazzi 2008, 16). This “massification” illustrates an intensification of biopower as private and public economies collapse into each other in the incessant expansion of capitalist profit and gain. But this collapse also speaks to the similarities between immaterial labor and financialized capitalism in their reliance on human communication, cooperation, and creativity. The necessity of communication, in particular, is understood as a crucial component of both financialized capitalism and immaterial labor. Paolo Virno (2001) identifies language itself as a primary component of post-Fordist capitalist production because “the dialogic word is installed at the very heart of capitalist production” and at the very heart of the machinations of labour (Virno 2001). In this way, all labor within late capitalism takes place in what Virno calls the “talkative factory,” as all labor makes use of human language and, by extension, of communication. As a result, financial exchange is only possible through the continual chatter of contemporary life that is spread through communications technologies, media, and social networks. Such chatter is necessary as financiers weigh, consider, and discuss the risks and benefits of potential investments by surveilling global communications. But as Marazzi (2008) points out, financialized capitalism is not merely dependent upon communications technologies because it is coextensive with language. It is its own convention, it is “language itself as means of production and circulation of goods” (Marazzi 2008, 48; author emphasis). Just as all postFordist labor takes place in a talkative environment, financialization also takes place in a talkative environment as investors cooperatively and creatively make investment decisions in the context of an increasingly complex, global economic system. Within late capitalism language thus becomes productive in capitalist terms in that it not only facilitates but also constitutes the interaction, communication, and cooperation that capitalism requires to survive. The quest for never-ending profit and relentless expansionism is foundational to capitalism in general, without which it would quickly falter. As the locales of non-capitalist spaces shrink and opportunities for expansionism decrease, capitalism expands more and more into the interior of human life. Financialization and immaterial labor are illustrative of contemporary capitalism’s quest to turn every aspect of human life, i.e. communication, cooperation, and creativity, into a vehicle for expansion and growth. As capitalism shifts from Fordist labor and manufacturing to immaterial labor and financialization, the application of biopower helps manage every aspect of everyday life. For unlike previous variants of capitalism that relied on mechanization, industrialization, and manufacturing and a fixed sense of place and identity, contemporary capitalism relies on digitization, globalization and communication and a fluid sense of place and identity. As a result, biopower helps produce the heterogeneity, cooperation, and creativity that those shifts require. It is worth repeating: industrial capitalism required a homogeneous workforce to insert into mechanized factories; contemporary practices of financialization and immaterial labor are associated with heterogeneity and workers who creatively problem solve, practice teamwork, and are comfortable with a talkative environment. The intensification of biopower aids in capitalism’s expansionary quest as it regulates and centralizes the human characteristics required by late capitalism. This process of expansion and adaptation is perhaps best described by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (1984) as a process of deterritorialization through which capitalism works at opening up exterior limits and then ensconcing those limits within its own boundaries. As capitalism expands and shifts, it must continually redefine itself in relation to new limits and challenges. According to Deleuze and Guattari, the concomitant process to deterritorialization is reterritorialization through which capitalism must absorb, and respond to, the limits that it opens up. The intensification of biopower is likewise akin to a deterritorializing practice that seeks to open up the interior limits of human life and reterritorialize the limits it opens up by deploying methods of hierarchically ordering and arranging diverse individuals.

For months, we have explained why domestic policy proposals of Republican candidates are anti-freedom, anti-liberty and anti-American. But throughout that time, we’ve said little about their foreign policy proposals. That was in large part because very few Republican candidates have provided any details of their foreign policy, dubbed “America First.” But this week, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy provided a vivid demonstration of why “America First” is nothing more than a marketing slogan that fails the American people when applied to real-life circumstances. The California Republican is widely considered the front-runner for speaker of the House should Republicans take control of Congress’ lower chamber. He confirmed to Punchbowl News this week that GOP support for Ukraine is wavering. “I think people are going to be sitting in a recession, and they’re not going to write a blank check to Ukraine,” he said. McCarthy’s statements echo those of numerous other Republicans, including Rep. Kelly Armstrong, R-N.D., who told Axios that “When people are seeing a 13% increase in grocery prices; energy, utility bills doubling ... Ukraine is the furthest thing from your mind.” This is classic “America First” rhetoric that creates the perception that anything happening elsewhere in the world is separate and unconnected to what is happening here in the United States. It sets up a binary choice between investing in America first or sending resources elsewhere, with the implication being that money sent elsewhere has no benefit to Americans. McCarthy, Armstrong and much of the rest of the Republican delegation are proposing that somehow, by surrendering Ukraine — the world’s largest exporter of grain — to Russia, food prices will go down. That doesn’t even make sense. Moreover, they want to hand all of that food and all of the money it brings in (over $27 billion in annual agricultural exports alone), to an enemy that intentionally targets civilian populations and just threatened the U.S. and our allies with nuclear war. It’s a national security nightmare. Worst of all, America First rhetoric ignores the long-term implications of foreign policy for nonsensical domestic talking points. If Vladimir Putin wins in Ukraine, he isn’t stopping. And an unleashed Putin is a profound danger to Americans. Indeed, consider the crew Putin assembled for international support: North Korea, Iran, China, Belarus, Saudi Arabia. All of them are ruled by tyrants who want to harm America. GOP appeasement of tyrants is not a strategy that places America first in any sense. It’s just appeasement that will lead to disaster for our country. The message it would send to our allies around the world is just as damaging. It announces to the world that the U.S. kneels to tyrants. Why would anyone want to align themselves with America then? America First to the GOP really means America groveling on the world stage. It’s bankrupt morally, defensively and economically. Don’t believe us? Listen instead to former President Ronald Reagan — the man repeatedly held up as Republicans’ most vaunted saint. According to a 2004 analysis by the Baltimore Sun, between 1980 and 1985, Reagan more than doubled the number of dollars devoted to defense each year, from $142.6 billion to $286.8 billion, in order to fight a Soviet enemy that had never directly attacked the United States. He also advocated for spending a minimum of 0.6% of the U.S. gross domestic product on aid to foreign countries. That’s three times what we’ve sent to Ukraine in 2022 and double what we sent to all countries combined pre-pandemic. This disconnect between messaging and reality is at the heart of what makes Republican politics so frustrating right now. GOP politicians engage in false claims about what appears good for Americans in the short term, when in reality their policies would cripple the nation in the long term. We’re not questioning that many Americans in many communities across the country are struggling. Economic insecurity is real, and it leads to existential threats like housing and food insecurity. We should be doing more to help Americans who are struggling. Democratic lawmakers have advocated for free school lunch, increasing affordable housing, funding robust public K-12 education, increasing rural access to higher education and trade schools, and ensuring everyone has access to essential health care. Yet these are the exact policies that “America First” Republican legislators keep fighting against. It’s also worth noting that the blanket 25% tariff on Chinese goods passed by former President Donald Trump and the GOP is contributing to raising prices and fueling inflation, because companies simply pass those costs on to American consumers. Compare this with President Joe Biden’s highly targeted approach to the Chinese tech industry, which had more devastating results for China without passing along price increases to American consumers. Meanwhile, GOP leaders communicate to Russia’s Putin, China’s Xi Jinping and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un that U.S. resolve can be overcome by doing nothing more than raising costs for six months. They tell our allies that the U.S. will only have their back against a foreign invader if it’s cheap and convenient to do so. And they tell the American people that it is somehow Democrats’ fault that Republicans voted to kill legislation that helps working-class Americans while supporting bills that use taxpayer dollars to line the pockets of corporate executives. But maybe that’s the point. If you view the American people as nothing more than a tool for hoarding wealth and resources, then maybe Republican policies do put America first and are making America great again. First at promoting economic inequality and great at helping the rich get richer at everybody else’s expense. It’s too bad for McCarthy and the Republican Party that they’re playing right into Putin’s hands. And in the long run, they’re putting the ambitions of Russia and China ahead of the safety, security and needs of Americans.

Evidences on Patenting of Genetic Knowledge :- The object of developing intellectual property rights is that it shall encourage innovations by initiating competition in different fields of research. But the evidences in the domain of genetics suggests that it can restrict the innovations and further create monopolies in this field. This has definitely raised the cost of several biomedical products based on genetic knowledge. Some of the significant evidences relating to biopiracy of genetic resources are described as under: ● In the year 1999, a pharmaceutical giant corporation Myriad Genetics developed a biomedical kit to diagnose breast cancer. This kit employed two human breast cancer susceptible genes BRCA 1 and BRCA 2. The corporation impelled to develop a monopoly in the native region by compelling the local patients to be diagnosed only through their kit at their own high costs. The Myriad Genetics obtained several patents for its genes capable of detecting human breast cancer that include US Patent No. 5,709,999, and US Patent No. 5,693,473 (Gold and Carbone, 2010). ● The development of genetically engineered Tracy sheep was for the isolation and commercialization of human blood clotting agent called as AAT or Alpha-1 Antitrypsin within its mammary glands. Tracy sheep is another evidence of biopiracy of genetic knowledge. The pharma giant companies PPL and Bayer obtained US Patent No. 5,476,995 for the technique of developing Tracy and its successive generations (GRAIN, 1998). The genetically transformed sheeps were regarded as bioreactors that were exploited for generating human blood-clotting protein. ● In the year 1997, the cloning of Dolly sheep was carried out, that was granted two patents as WO 9707668 and WO 9707669 to its innovator i.e. Roslin Institute (Mooney, 1996). The object of such cloning was to investigate different human diseases via such cloned animals for human welfare. But it was the opinion of several environmentalists that this type of selective animal cloning might bring imbalance in the environment that can be hazardous. ● In the year 1976, John Moore spleen was isolated by a surgeon and his spleen cell lines were used for developing special protein. These cell lines were named as Mo Cell lines patented as US Patent No. 4,438,032 and commercialized for billions of dollars (Glasner, Atkinson and Greenslade, 2017). However, the original source of this patent i.e. John Moore was ignorant about this fact that his spleen cells generated huge income. When Moore came to know about this incident he approached the Supreme Court of California to object. However, the court decided that as the spleen was isolated from the body, therefore, the rights of John Moore declined. ● One of the largest populations of the carrier of the HIV infection is present in the African region (WHO, 2019). In the year 1991 Pasteur Institute located in Paris obtained a patent with US Patent No. 5,019,510 for claiming discovery of HIV (Wain-Hobson et al., 1991). Various researchers from different parts of the globe have isolated samples from the blood and saliva of the people from this region without any prior permission from the people or native authorities. These samples were used to isolate and study DNA. This helped to develop effective drugs against the HIV infection. The biopiracy of the genetic knowledge of the African people for HIV research could be termed as immoral. Several drugs have been manufactured against HIV infections using the genetic information of the African people. The cost of these HIV drugs is very high and beyond the purchasing capacity of the African people. However, the drugs that have been prepared by the contribution of African people are not even available to them at cheaper rate. In fact the African people are not provided with any benefit instead they were exploited. ● The Biopiracy of the blood samples of the Icelandic people was in the news headlines. It has been reported that there has been rarely any migrations in the region of Iceland since the historic times and therefore the genetic knowledge of the people of this region has been preserved. The deCODE corporation by duping the people of Iceland isolated their genetic information. In the year 1990, this corporation was of the view of developing the world’s first Biobank based on the genetic information of the human population (Tutton, 2010). The corporation was of the view to establish a database of genetic information of the human population. It was proposed by the deCODE corporation that the genetic database of Icelandic people will be quite useful in treating incurable diseases like HIV and cancer. However, in the year 2013, the services of the deCODE Corporation were stopped. ● The West African plant Amelonado spp. is a variety of cocoa plant that has a distinct flavour. The Mars Corporation of the United Kingdom obtained patents in the United States as US Patent No.5,770,433 and US Patent No. 5,668,007 for the genes of this plant and producing a similar plant variety bearing cocoa flavour (GeneWatch, 2000). The patents were especially obtained by the Mars Corporation for restricting the export of this plant from the West African nations that will hinder their national income. ● A US-based corporation POD-NERS biopirated Mexican Enola beans and obtained a US Patent No. 5,894, 079 (Nottenburg, 2009). The yellow Enola beans were created from the Enola bean variety of Mexico by this corporation by using genetic plant breeding practices and further subjected it to patent. Thus by mere manipulation of genetic knowledge the biopiracy of Enola beans was committed. ● The biopiracy of Bt or Bacillus thuringiensis gene is yet another evidence of biopiracy of genetic knowledge that is hazardous to mankind and the environment. It is well known that Bacillus thuringiensis commonly persists in the soil microflora. It excretes a protein that can inhibit various insects. This characteristic of Bt was utilized byinserting the Bt genes through genetic engineering. The crops created through Bt genes include Bt-cotton, Bt-soybean, Btpotato etc. (Guillemaud, Lombaert and Bourguet, 2016). ● In Asian countries like India, several incidences of biopiracy with respect to plant genetic resources has been reported. The biopiracy of Basmati rice by Rice Tec Inc. of the USA is one of the leading cases. The Rice Tec Inc. obtained a patent for an Indian origin rice variety i.e. basmati and patented it as US Patent No. 5,663,484 (Siddiq, Vemireddy and Nagaraju, 2012). Moreover, the corporation renamed the basmati rice variety after patenting, as Texmati. The main object of this corporation was to establish a monopoly on the variety of rice lines of basmati rice. However, after several protests by the Indian government and by providing various evidence on its origin in India, the patent on basmati rice was revoked.

Human bodies really can't handle space. Spaceflight damages DNA, changes the microbiome, disrupts circadian rhythms, impairs vision, increases the risk of cancer, causes muscle and bone loss, inhibits the immune system, weakens the heart, and shifts fluids toward the head, which may be pathological for the brain over the long term—among other things. At the University of California, San Francisco, medical researcher Sonja Schrepfer has dug into two of the conditions that afflict space explorers. Her research, using mice floating within the International Space Station, has revealed that blood vessels leading to the brain get stiffer in microgravity. It's part of why today's astronauts can't simply walk out of their capsules once they return to Earth, and it would play out the same way on Mars—where there's no one to wheel them to their new habitat on arrival. Schrepfer and her colleagues did, however, uncover a molecular pathway that might prevent those cardiovascular changes. "But now the question I try to understand is, 'Do we want that?'" she says. Maybe the vessels' stiffening is a protective mechanism, Schrepfer suggests, and limbering them up might cause other problems. She also wants to figure out how to help astronauts' faltering immune systems, which look older and have a harder time repairing tissue damage than they should after spending time in space. "The immune system is aging quite fast in microgravity," Schrepfer says. She sends biological samples from young, healthy people on Earth up to orbit on tissue chips and tracks how they degrade. Vision and bone problems are also among the more serious side effects. When astronauts spend a month or more in space, their eyeballs flatten, one aspect of a condition called spaceflight-associated neuro-ocular syndrome, which can cause long-lasting damage to eyesight. Bones and muscles are built for life on Earth, which involves the ever present pull of gravity. The work the body does against gravity to stay upright and move around keeps muscles from atrophying and stimulates bone growth. In space, without a force to push against, astronauts can experience bone loss that outpaces bone growth, and their muscles shrink. That's why they must do hours of exercise every day, using specialized equipment that helps to simulate some of the forces their anatomy would feel on the ground—and even this training doesn't fully alleviate the loss. Perhaps the most significant concern about bodies in space, though, is radiation, something that is manageable for today's astronauts flying in low-Earth orbit but would be a bigger deal for people traveling farther and for longer. Some of it comes from the sun, which spews naked protons that can damage DNA, particularly during solar storms. "[That] could make you very, very sick and give you acute radiation syndrome," says Dorit Donoviel, a professor at the Baylor College of Medicine and director of the Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH).

Physical and mental health problems—though dire—aren't even necessarily the most immediate hurdles to making a space settlement happen. The larger issue is the cost. And who's going to pay for it? Those who think a billionaire space entrepreneur is likely to fund a space colony out of a sense of adventure or altruism (or bad judgment) should think again. Commercial space companies are businesses, and businesses' goals include making money. "What is the business case?" asks Matthew Weinzierl, a professor at Harvard Business School and head of its Economics of Space research efforts. For the past couple of years Weinzierl and his colleague Brendan Rousseau have been trying to work out what the demand is for space exploration and pursuits beyond Earth. "There's been a ton of increase in supply and cutting of costs of space activity," Weinzierl says, "but who's on the other side?" Space companies have historically been insular: specialists creating things for specialists, not marketing wares or services to the broader world. Even commercial undertakings such as SpaceX are supported mostly by government contracts. Company leaders haven't always thought through the capitalism of their ideas; they're just excited that the rockets and widgets work. "Technical feasibility does not equal a strong business case," Rousseau says. Today private spaceflight companies target tourists for business when they're not targeting federal contracts. But those tourists aren't protected by the same safety regulations that apply to government astronauts, and an accident could stifle the space tourism industry. Stifling, too, is the fact that only so many people with money are likely to want to live on a place like Mars rather than take a short joyride above the atmosphere, so the vacation business case for permanent space outposts breaks down there as well.

But the purpose of this chapter is finding and assessing threats that pose a direct existential risk to humanity. Even at such extreme levels of warming, it is difficult to see exactly how climate change could do so. Major effects of climate change include reduced agricultural yields, sea level rises, water scarcity, increased tropical diseases, ocean acidification and the collapse of the Gulf Stream. While extremely important when assessing the overall risks of climate change, none of these threaten extinction or irrevocable collapse.

Crops are very sensitive to reductions in temperature (due to frosts), but less sensitive to increases. By all appearances we would still have food to support civilization.85 Even if sea levels rose hundreds of meters (over centuries), most of the Earth’s land area would remain. Similarly, while some areas might conceivably become uninhabitable due to water scarcity, other areas will have increased rainfall. More areas may become susceptible to tropical diseases, but we need only look to the tropics to see civilization flourish despite this. The main effect of a collapse of the system of Atlantic Ocean currents that includes the Gulf Stream is a 2°C cooling of Europe—something that poses no permanent threat to global civilization.

1.1.2 Extreme climate change and geoengineering The most likely levels of global warming are very unlikely to cause human extinction.15 The existential risks of climate change instead stem from tail risk climate change – the low probability of extreme levels of warming – and interaction with other sources of risk. It is impossible to say with confidence at what point global warming would become severe enough to pose an existential threat. Research has suggested that warming of 11-12°C would render most of the planet uninhabitable,16 and would completely devastate agriculture.17 This would pose an extreme threat to human civilisation as we know it.18 Warming of around 7°C or more could potentially produce conflict and instability on such a scale that the indirect effects could be an existential risk, although it is extremely uncertain how likely such scenarios are.19 Moreover, the timescales over which such changes might happen could mean that humanity is able to adapt enough to avoid extinction in even very extreme scenarios. The probability of these levels of warming depends on eventual greenhouse gas concentrations. According to some experts, unless strong action is taken soon by major emitters, it is likely that we will pursue a medium-high emissions pathway.20 If we do, the chance of extreme warming is highly uncertain but appears non-negligible. Current concentrations of greenhouse gases are higher than they have been for hundreds of thousands of years,21 which means that there are significant unknown unknowns about how the climate system will respond. Particularly concerning is the risk of positive feedback loops, such as the release of vast amounts of methane from melting of the arctic permafrost, which would cause rapid and disastrous warming.22 The economists Gernot Wagner and Martin Weitzman have used IPCC figures (which do not include modelling of feedback loops such as those from melting permafrost) to estimate that if we continue to pursue a medium-high emissions pathway, the probability of eventual warming of 6°C is around 10%,23 and of 10°C is around 3%.24 These estimates are of course highly uncertain. It is likely that the world will take action against climate change once it begins to impose large costs on human society, long before there is warming of 10°C. Unfortunately, there is significant inertia in the climate system: there is a 25 to 50 year lag between CO2 emissions and eventual warming,25 and it is expected that 40% of the peak concentration of CO2 will remain in the atmosphere 1,000 years after the peak is reached.26 Consequently, it is impossible to reduce temperatures quickly by reducing CO2 emissions. If the world does start to face costly warming, the international community will therefore face strong incentives to find other ways to reduce global temperatures. The only known way to reduce global temperatures quickly and cheaply is a form of climate engineering called Solar Radiation Management (SRM), which involves cooling the Earth by reflecting sunlight back into space.27 The most researched form of SRM involves injecting aerosols into the stratosphere.28 Most of the evidence so far suggests that ideal SRM deployment programmes would reduce overall damages relative to an un-engineered greenhouse world.29

[Marc A., "Opinion: Climate change is not an ‘existential threat’," Washington Post, 11-2-2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/11/02/climate-change-is-not-an-existential-threat/, accessed 5-22-2022; AD]

At the Glasgow climate conference, President Biden declared climate change an “existential threat to human existence as we know it.” No, it’s not. Climate change is not a meteor hurtling toward Earth to destroy humanity. Rather, it is a chronic, manageable condition humanity can live with.

The political question is a doctrine that codifies the constitutional principle of separation of powers in the context of federal litigation. That is, the political question doctrine reflects a fundamental constitutional theory: democracy functions best when coordinated elected branches, as opposed to politically-insulated federal judges, resolve political questions.[1] It holds that where legal issues give rise to “situations where judges would be taken far out of the role, the applicable legal rules assign authority elsewhere.”[2] The leading political question case, Baker v. Carr, sets forth six factors to consider in determining whether a case gives rise to a nonjusticiable political question.[3] The Court noted that cases involving political actions or issues do not automatically render them nonjusticiable and stated that only if one of the six factors is inseparable from a case should the court dismiss a dispute as a nonjusticiable political question.[4] Consistent with the Court’s statements in Baker, the Court rarely finds that a political question prohibits its ruling on an issue.[5] Contrary to the Court’s general hesitance to address the political question issue, lower courts have found the existence of nonjusticiable political questions in the context of climate change litigation.[6] One case in particular, Connecticut v. American Electric Power (AEP), exemplifies the broader judicial confusion as to how to adjudicate the Baker factors in the context of climate change litigation.[7] Argued in the Southern District of New York, AEP involved federal common law nuisance claims aimed at curbing carbon dioxide emissions from corporate electric power facilities.[8] Focusing primarily on Baker’s “impossibility of deciding without an initial policy determination of a kind clearly for nonjudicial discretion” factor, the district court noted that climate change was a “patently” political issue and “transcendently legislative” in nature.[9] The court therefore held that because the dispute touched upon a multitude of economic, environmental, foreign policy, and national security interests, it required a legislative determination with respect to climate change before it could hear the claims.[10] On appeal, the Second Circuit analyzed the Baker factors to determine whether the district court erred in its determination that the case presented a nonjusticiable political question.[11] Focusing on the district court’s reliance on the “impossibility” factor, the Second Circuit stated the flaw in the district court’s view that the political branches’ refusal to legislate carbon dioxide emissions reserved their legal authority to make an initial policy determination before litigation could be brought.[12] Specifically, the court found that, despite the political significance of the dispute, the political branches’ refusal to legislate carbon dioxide emissions does not preclude the plaintiffs from bringing claims under the federal common law nuisance doctrine.[13] Because the dispute was not ineluctably political, the Second Circuit reversed the decision.[14] The Supreme Court granted certiorari, but did not reach the issue of the political question doctrine and held that the Clean Air Act displaced the plaintiffs’ common law nuisance claims.[15] Setting aside the ultimate grounds on which the Supreme Court dismissed AEP, it is clear that the rationale for the district court’s dismissal under the political question doctrine is based on a confusion as to how to apply the doctrine to climate change disputes. Rather than look for indicia that a political actor has been given legal power to apply law to facts with finality, as did Justice Brennan in Baker,[16] the district court engaged in an elaborate discussion of the complexity of “initial policy determination[s]” that must be made before the judiciary can adjudicate a global warming nuisance claim.[17] The Second Circuit touched upon this point when it acknowledged the lack of a “unified policy on greenhouse gas emissions” that would comprehensively preclude the bringing of global warming nuisance claims.[18] However, the Second Circuit did not state explicitly that the political question doctrine only bars suits when a non-judicial actor or agency has been given legal authority to conclusively apply law to facts. In the context of climate change litigation, nothing precludes plaintiffs from bringing common law nuisance claims in the absence of some indicia that a non-judicial political branch, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, has final authority to determine the outcome of the dispute.

The Second Circuit, in allowing the plaintiffs’ claim for an injunction to proceed, presumed that any reduction in carbon emissions, no matter how bluntly calibrated or poorly targeted, contributes in some measure, however small, to the overall project of reducing the long-term injurious consequences of climate change. That simply is not so. Wielding the sledgehammer of injunctive relief against arbitrarily selected groups of carbon emitters and producers is as likely to exacerbate as to ameliorate those injurious effects. For one thing, many climate change scholars have identified the phenomenon of “carbon leakage,” whereby poorly thought out carbon reductions in one section of the global economy result in increased emissions elsewhere, as fossil fuel price reductions, coupled with the tendency for global corporations to shift their bases of operations to avoid stringent regulation, spark rising energy consumption in other jurisdictions.38 Such leakage would exacerbate the injuries about which the plaintiffs complain since carbon emissions from non-defendants—even those halfway around the world—“cause” coastal erosion in exactly the same undifferentiated and attenuated manner as do carbon emissions from the defendants they have randomly targeted. Moreover, there are serious complexities involved in any process of carbon reduction, particularly with respect to the questions of how fast and how much. Slash emissions too fast or too far, and courts risk forcing industry to prematurely retire capital stock, “locking in” inferior technology as companies rush to innovate quickly enough to comply with short-term reduction requirements.39 Such a result would not only entail severe and irretrievable economic costs, but it would exacerbate the longrun harms of climate change by distorting the renewable energy market. On the other hand, slash emissions too little or too slowly, and courts do nothing to ameliorate climate change, while still shaping entitlements in a way that can only inhibit the emergence of any ultimate legislative solution.40 To ask a court to strike the right balance, given that even a stringent injunction will have no statistically significant impact on global temperatures, is to ask it to do the impossible.

The political question is a doctrine that codifies the constitutional principle of separation of powers in the context of federal litigation. That is, the political question doctrine reflects a fundamental constitutional theory: democracy functions best when coordinated elected branches, as opposed to politically-insulated federal judges, resolve political questions.[1] It holds that where legal issues give rise to “situations where judges would be taken far out of the role, the applicable legal rules assign authority elsewhere.”[2] The leading political question case, Baker v. Carr, sets forth six factors to consider in determining whether a case gives rise to a nonjusticiable political question.[3] The Court noted that cases involving political actions or issues do not automatically render them nonjusticiable and stated that only if one of the six factors is inseparable from a case should the court dismiss a dispute as a nonjusticiable political question.[4] Consistent with the Court’s statements in Baker, the Court rarely finds that a political question prohibits its ruling on an issue.[5] Contrary to the Court’s general hesitance to address the political question issue, lower courts have found the existence of nonjusticiable political questions in the context of climate change litigation.[6] One case in particular, Connecticut v. American Electric Power (AEP), exemplifies the broader judicial confusion as to how to adjudicate the Baker factors in the context of climate change litigation.[7] Argued in the Southern District of New York, AEP involved federal common law nuisance claims aimed at curbing carbon dioxide emissions from corporate electric power facilities.[8] Focusing primarily on Baker’s “impossibility of deciding without an initial policy determination of a kind clearly for nonjudicial discretion” factor, the district court noted that climate change was a “patently” political issue and “transcendently legislative” in nature.[9] The court therefore held that because the dispute touched upon a multitude of economic, environmental, foreign policy, and national security interests, it required a legislative determination with respect to climate change before it could hear the claims.[10] On appeal, the Second Circuit analyzed the Baker factors to determine whether the district court erred in its determination that the case presented a nonjusticiable political question.[11] Focusing on the district court’s reliance on the “impossibility” factor, the Second Circuit stated the flaw in the district court’s view that the political branches’ refusal to legislate carbon dioxide emissions reserved their legal authority to make an initial policy determination before litigation could be brought.[12] Specifically, the court found that, despite the political significance of the dispute, the political branches’ refusal to legislate carbon dioxide emissions does not preclude the plaintiffs from bringing claims under the federal common law nuisance doctrine.[13] Because the dispute was not ineluctably political, the Second Circuit reversed the decision.[14] The Supreme Court granted certiorari, but did not reach the issue of the political question doctrine and held that the Clean Air Act displaced the plaintiffs’ common law nuisance claims.[15] Setting aside the ultimate grounds on which the Supreme Court dismissed AEP, it is clear that the rationale for the district court’s dismissal under the political question doctrine is based on a confusion as to how to apply the doctrine to climate change disputes. Rather than look for indicia that a political actor has been given legal power to apply law to facts with finality, as did Justice Brennan in Baker,[16] the district court engaged in an elaborate discussion of the complexity of “initial policy determination[s]” that must be made before the judiciary can adjudicate a global warming nuisance claim.[17] The Second Circuit touched upon this point when it acknowledged the lack of a “unified policy on greenhouse gas emissions” that would comprehensively preclude the bringing of global warming nuisance claims.[18] However, the Second Circuit did not state explicitly that the political question doctrine only bars suits when a non-judicial actor or agency has been given legal authority to conclusively apply law to facts. In the context of climate change litigation, nothing precludes plaintiffs from bringing common law nuisance claims in the absence of some indicia that a non-judicial political branch, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, has final authority to determine the outcome of the dispute.

By one measure of the U.S. economy, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the past 100 years look like one long joyride to prosperity.

Market crashes, recessions and depressions, wars, pandemics, and other economic shocks all appear as mere bumps in the road. On average, the Dow climbed 9% a year.

Despite gloomy predictions, the global economy remains remarkably resilient, with steady growth and inflation slowing almost as quickly as it rose. The journey has been eventful, starting with supply-chain disruptions in the aftermath of the pandemic, an energy and food crisis triggered by Russia’s war on Ukraine, a considerable surge in inflation, followed by a globally synchronized monetary policy tightening. Global growth bottomed out at the end of 2022, at 2.3 percent, shortly after median headline inflation peaked at 9.4 percent. According to our latest World Economic Outlook projections, growth this year and next will hold steady at 3.2 percent, with median headline inflation declining from 2.8 percent at the end of 2024 to 2.4 percent at the end of 2025. Most indicators continue to point to a soft landing. We also project less economic scarring from the crises of the past four years, although estimates vary across countries. The US economy has already surged past its prepandemic trend. But we now estimate that there will be more scarring for low-income developing countries, many of which are still struggling to turn the page from the pandemic and cost-of-living crises. Resilient growth and rapid disinflation point toward favorable supply developments, including the fading of energy price shocks, and a striking rebound in labor supply supported by strong immigration in many advanced economies. Monetary policy actions have helped anchor inflation expectations even if its transmission may have been more muted, as fixed-rate mortgages became more prevalent. Despite these welcome developments, numerous challenges remain, and decisive actions are needed. Inflation risks remain Bringing inflation back to target should remain the priority. While inflation trends are encouraging, we are not there yet. Somewhat worryingly, progress toward inflation targets has somewhat stalled since the beginning of the year. This could be a temporary setback, but there are reasons to remain vigilant. Most of the good news on inflation came from the decline in energy prices and in goods inflation. The latter has been helped by easing supply-chain frictions, as well as by the decline in Chinese export prices. But oil prices have been rising recently in part due to geopolitical tensions and services inflation remains stubbornly high. Further trade restrictions on Chinese exports could also push up goods inflation. Economic divergences widen The resilient global economy also masks stark divergence across countries. The strong recent performance of the United States reflects robust productivity and employment growth, but also strong demand in an economy that remains overheated. This calls for a cautious and gradual approach to easing by the Federal Reserve. The fiscal stance, out of line with long-term fiscal sustainability, is of particular concern. It raises short-term risks to the disinflation process, as well as longer-term fiscal and financial stability risks for the global economy. Something will have to give. Growth in the euro area will rebound but from very low levels, as past shocks, and tight monetary policy weigh on activity. Continued high wage growth and persistent services inflation could delay the return of inflation to target. However, unlike in the United States, there is little evidence of overheating, and the European Central Bank will need to carefully calibrate the pivot toward monetary easing to avoid an inflation undershoot. While labor markets appear strong, that strength could prove illusory if European firms have been hoarding labor in anticipation of a pickup in activity that does not materialize. China’s economy remains affected by the downturn in its property sector. Credit booms and busts never resolve themselves quickly, and this one is no exception. Domestic demand will remain lackluster unless strong measures address the root cause. With depressed domestic demand, external surpluses could well rise. The risk is that this will further exacerbate trade tensions in an already fraught geopolitical environment. Many other large emerging market economies are performing strongly, sometimes benefiting from a reconfiguration of global supply chains and rising trade tensions between China and the US. These countries’ footprint on the global economy is increasing. Policy path Going forward, policymakers should prioritize measures that help preserve or even enhance the resilience of the global economy. The first such priority is to rebuild fiscal buffers. Even as inflation recedes, real interest rates remain high and sovereign debt dynamics have become less favorable. Credible fiscal consolidations can help lower funding costs, improve fiscal headroom and financial stability. Unfortunately, fiscal plans so far are insufficient and could be derailed further given the record number of elections this year. Fiscal consolidations are never easy but it is best not to wait until markets dictate their conditions. The right approach is to start now, gradually, and credibly. Once inflation is under control, credible multiyear consolidations will help pave the way for further monetary policy easing. The successful 1993 US fiscal consolidation and monetary accommodation episode comes to mind as an example to emulate. The second priority is to reverse the decline in medium term growth prospects. Some of that decline comes from increased misallocation of capital and labor within sectors and countries. Facilitating faster and more efficient resource allocation will boost growth. For low-income countries, structural reforms to promote domestic and foreign direct investment, and to strengthen domestic resource mobilization, will help lower borrowing costs and reduce funding needs. These countries also must improve the human capital of their large young populations, especially as the rest of the world is aging rapidly. Artificial intelligence also gives hope for boosting productivity. It may do so, but the potential for serious disruptions in labor and financial markets is high. Harnessing the potential of AI for all will require that countries improve their digital infrastructure, invest in human capital, and coordinate on global rules of the road. Medium-term growth prospects are also harmed by rising geoeconomic fragmentation and the surge in trade restrictive and industrial policy measures. Trade linkages are already changing as a result, with potential losses in efficiency. The net effect could well be to make the global economy less, not more, resilient. But the broader damage is to global cooperation. It is still time to reverse course. Third, a great achievement of the past few years has been the strengthening of monetary, fiscal and financial policy frameworks especially for emerging market economies. This has helped make the global financial system more resilient and avoid a permanent resurgence of inflation. Going forward, it is essential to preserve these improvements. That includes protecting the hard-won independence of central banks. Lastly, the green transition requires major investments. Cutting emissions is compatible with growth and activity has become much less emission-intensive in recent decades. But emissions are still rising. Much more needs to be done and done quickly. Green investment has expanded at a healthy pace in advanced economies and China. The greatest effort must now be made by other emerging market and developing economies, which must massively increase their green investment growth and reduce their fossil fuel investment. This will require technology transfer by other advanced economies and China, as well as substantial private and public financing. On these questions, as well as on so many others, multilateral frameworks and cooperation remain essential for progress.