A Statistical Guide to Human Solidarity and Climate Action

In a report released last week, the UN called on the USA to "take the lead" in balancing the global carbon budget and "climate proof" its growth. It was an appropriate and no-nonsense welcome mat spread out for the American delegation to upcoming climate talks in Bali. And that's about where attention to the report started and ended.

Too bad. More striking than the call to action is the report's title -- Fighting Climate Change: Human Solidarity in a Divided World -- and the statistics that fill up half of its 399 pages. They tell the quantitative story of the astonishing wealth and advantages America enjoys. But they also tell a sad tale of a nation's failure to provide the moral leadership needed to create human solidarity in the face of global warming. Most Americans are unaware of what these numbers show, and were they to find out, would be appalled. They're not in any headlines. The news just wouldn't sell.

The tables in the report provide some explanation as to why the White House is so hostile to the United Nations. America is listed as simply one among all the other nations of the earth. It is a profoundly and globally democratic point of view, and it challenges the distorted perspective of the current go-it-alone foreign policy. The IPCC report on climate is similarly inconvenient and unacceptable. It's another document, akin to this one.

Please take a look for yourself at the tables. Their purpose is to use statistics to monitor human development in the following categories:

• enlarging people's choices....
• to lead a long and healthy life.....
• to acquire knowledge.....
• to have access to the resources needed for a decent standard of living.....
• while preserving it for future generations.....
• protecting personal security.....
• and achieving equality for all women and men.
• Finally, human and labour rights instruments

Scroll through and you'll see that the world is not in great condition, and looking inward, what emerges is a pretty shameful story. The US refusal to take leadership on the climate issue is nothing less than a national moral failure, which exerts itself through policies that work to press America’s already disparate advantage upon far needier people and nations.

How much wealthier and advantaged does America have to become before it leads the way by example on global warming, gives a little ground on carbon, makes an iron-clad promise?

And then, scrolling through, you'll run across Table 17, and start to wonder. It’s a chart of expenditures on foreign aid. Who would have thought that the US is among the stingiest of wealthy nations. In 2005, our government supplied just two tenths of 1% of Gross National Income to what is essentially international charity. What's more, all of the US aid is "tied" -- it's got strings attached. France, the UK, Finland, Ireland and Switzerland gave twice as much. Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands gave close to five times more. Most of that aid was all "untied". Most Americans have been raised to give more than 2/10ths of 1% in charity (without setting conditions). Many tithe.

Or you'll run across statistics that show the US has more than 2 million people in its prisons, the most of any nation. Second place? China, with 500,000 fewer inmates but 1 billion more people to worry about. The tables are filled with statistics that beg answers to questions that are not being asked.

There is much good in these numbers too, that tell a story about the freedoms Americans enjoy, but I walked away from my screen convinced we could do much, much better — starting with climate change — and feeling embarassed by America’s conduct within the community of nations.

The US would serve the world better by focusing on the creation of human solidarity in a divided world indeed.

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