For a brief period in the 1970s, many people in the west, and even more in the developing world, genuinely believed that the Soviet model, or something like it, offered the best hope for the future of humanity. Shorn of Stalin's murderous brutality, the system seemed in some respects superior to the west's in its provision of education, health and social security. In Russia, for example, life expectancy had roughly doubled and infant mortality fallen tenfold since 1917; in that sense, the Bolsheviks delivered handsomely on their promises.
As it turned out, the 1970s was the high-water mark of the communist system which, in one form or another, then ruled a third of humanity. We now know that its fountainhead, Soviet Russia, was already rotten within, and incapable of reform. Is it possible that the United States, the fountainhead of the free-market system, is similarly flawed; that it, too, has passed its peak and that Americans will have to make adjustments over the next 20 years as painful as the Russians have made over the past 20 years? The question is prompted not just by the end of America's long stock-market boom, and the possibility that its economy could go the way of Japan's (another country that once seemed invulnerable), but also by George W Bush's decision to renounce the Kyoto treaty to curb the gas emissions that contribute to global warming. Indeed, the language used by overseas critics of President Bush is not so very different from that once used of the Soviet regime at the height of the cold war: "a dangerous and fearful challenge to humanity", "the evil empire", "Ameri-ca the Horrible", and so on. Nobody has explicitly remarked that Bush's policies could lead to as many deaths as Stalin's or Mao's; but the comparison would not be wholly fanciful.
The world has greeted the decision with stunned amazement, but it has had ample notice of American attitudes, not just under this president but under his predecessor, whose opposition to the treaty was (characteristically) more opaque. The American Senate had already voted, without a single dissenting voice, against ratification. The problem is only partly one of consumer greed and selfishness; millions of Americans, after all, voted for Ralph Nader in the recent presidential elections. It is also, more oddly, a problem of national inflexibility. The advocates of free markets are fond of arguing that a greener world will be achieved not by government decree, but by entrepreneurial inventiveness and ingenuity. The best green technologies, they argue, will come from those who see money-making market opportunities.
Yet in the US, the home of free-market ideology, this optimistic theory is disproved. So entrenched are the interests of the big oil and automobile industries, so fundamental is the extravagant use of resources to the American self-image, that the US could well miss out on one of the big economic opportunities of the 21st century. Wind power and other renewable energy sources are among the fastest-growing markets in Europe, providing more than 10 per cent of the electricity in some regions. President Bush, however, seems determined to keep his country in the age of oil and coal.
This is where the US reveals its flaws. First, it is wedded to excess: just as it was anathema to Soviet governments to give consumers anything they wanted, so it is anathema to US governments to deny them anything. The American psyche is built on the idea that a new world of limitless land and resources gives people freedom from the irksome restrictions of an over-governed and over-crowded Europe. Restraint and prudence in the use of resources are profoundly un-American, even where they would lead to no great diminution in the comforts of life. Second, and paradoxically, its system of government is vulnerable to capture by producer interests, as shown by its present administration, in thrall to fossil-fuel producers. In a country as large as America, which lacks a national press and which also lacks class-based party loyalties, a successful presidential candidate depends enormously on sufficient funds for large-scale TV advertising campaigns. Even Congressional candidates have to campaign over far wider areas, both geographically and in terms of population, than most European representatives. The money must come overwhelmingly from established producer groups.
Together, these two things account for America's state of denial on global warming. (Those, like President Bush, who dismiss the opinions of the 2,000 scientists on the Inter- governmental Panel on Climate Change would be more convincing if they could find 2,000 scientists to examine the same evidence and take the alternative view.) It has not just failed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels (as Kyoto would require); it has actually increased them by 13 per cent, while Europe's have grown by just 1 per cent. But, as Barbara Gunnell reports (page 12), the rest of the world may go ahead with Kyoto without the Americans. Thus the US will be isolated: not socialism in one country, but an unrestrained free market in one country. One could well come to as grievous an end as the other.
Take a break
We are, according to the political commentators, facing "a void"; indeed, the Financial Times the other day used the word in a headline. This dreadful void - it sounds like something that the crew on Star Trek might fall into - is caused by the postponement of the election. For a full five weeks, MPs will be wandering around Westminster with no government business to transact. Ministers have no initiatives scheduled, no action plans to announce, no task forces to set up, no new regulations to impose. But it is doubtful that the country will be any the worse off for this pause from legislation and executive action. It would be a good moment for everybody in Westminster and Whitehall to review, carefully and rationally, what they have done for the past four years; to catch up on some reading; to see more (as MPs always say they want to) of their families. Is it too much to hope this might be a precedent, whereby the whole governing and legislative machine took a five-week sabbatical every four years?
