Global Issues
By John Seitz
Blackwell Publishers, 1995. 257 pp., $39.95
Reviewed by Lisa Macdonald
On first glance, this book looks like an interesting and environmentally conscious study of the major social and ecological issues confronting the world today. Unfortunately, it's not. In fact it's the exact opposite, a reaffirmation of that old adage, "you can't judge a book ...".
Global Issues contains a wealth of up-to-date, detailed information about a large number of international issues, ranging from wealth and poverty trends to global food production, environmental degradation, population changes, war and energy sources. As a resource for research into any one of these issues, it is therefore very valuable.
The problem lies in what the author does with this information. To give just a few examples: on the question of world energy use, Seitz begins with the fact that oil is a non-renewable resource. It is also extremely polluting and the cause of much world conflict due to its restricted availability. All true enough. Seitz's "solution", however, is to embrace nuclear power as a cleaner, more dependable and safer energy source.
He actually argues, "We accept chemical plants despite accidents such as that at Bhopal which killed more than 2000 people ... So why should the accidents at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island make us reject nuclear power?". Be the first on your block to have a Bhopal!
On world poverty, Seitz documents in great detail the huge economic, and therefore social, divide between rich and poor, the breaking down of community and the inability of most people to develop their full potential as human beings. Again, all true enough. But Seitz's solution is that "poor nations should study carefully the experiences of Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore" where a "high regard for education and hard work", as well as "stable governments", have, supposedly, reduced the gap between rich and poor.
It doesn't get much more profound on any other issue either. The author's efforts to be "above politics" lead to an analysis of the major economic, political and social forces which is either stunningly naive or outright reactionary.
Whichever it is, in every area that he examines, Seitz ends up using the indicators of the massive crises confronting humanity to reassert (although in good liberal language) the central practices and ideologies of advanced capitalism that got us into this mess in the first place — the profit motive, individualism, "human nature", the supremacy of the nuclear family form (and in particular the breast feeding of children!), and so on, all of it imbued with a patronising approach to the people of the Third World which verges on racism.
Global Issues caricatures the "old" ideas of public ownership and control, but contains no new (let alone challenging) ideas about solutions to the crises it describes. And it's expensive to boot. Don't waste your money.