Are Irish constituents pressurising their elected representatives on questions like globalisation, climate change, the loss of species and fair trade? Prof Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, unwittingly triggered this thought at the Economic and Social Research Institute Geary lecture this week, writes Breda O'Brien
During his lecture on globalisation, he mentioned that he had asked both the British Conservative and Labour parties why they were "so good on these issues." Constituents are concerned about them, was the reply.
Would Irish political parties, even the Greens, reply in the same fashion, I wondered. To be honest, the idea of issues like these being raised in the average TD's clinic struck me as somewhat surreal.
A TD being telephoned on Christmas Day to come and help with a constituent's blocked drains, a story which a friend swears is true, seems much more credible.
Media coverage of the lecture concentrated on Prof Stiglitz's call for trade sanctions against the US. He argues that since Europe is complying with the Kyoto protocol at considerable cost, the fact that US industry does not pay for emissions amounts to an anti-competitive subsidy. Therefore other countries that are compliant with the protocol would be entitled to restrict or tax certain US imports. The idea of the US being the subject of trade sanctions is indeed delightful, but it strikes me as about as likely as constituents harassing elected representatives to work harder to soften the harsh impact of globalisation.
However, perhaps I am being too cynical or flippant. There are indicators that Irish people are becoming increasingly aware of global concerns. For example, 700 people turned out to hear Prof Stiglitz. You could say that the audience was full of usual suspects, but it is also true that politicians are unlikely to ignore an issue that brings out that many usual suspects, particularly when some of them are heavy-hitters.
Of course, the high attendance is also explained by the fact that the professor belongs to a rare sub-species of economists who can write an elegant sentence and speak intelligibly to non-specialists.
There were a few mutters of discontent after his lecture. More than one person I spoke to afterwards said that there was nothing new in what he said. If one were to judge by applause, Peadar Kirby's comment to the effect that while the professor might be strong on diagnosis of the ills of globalisation, he was not as strong on prescribing what to do about it, also struck a chord with many of the people there.
However, perhaps Prof Stiglitz's strength is that even if one is not passionate about questions like globalisation, he can present a cogent explanation of it that engages people who might otherwise decide to ignore it on the grounds that it is just too complicated to understand. A person who can popularise an issue is very important in a world with a short attention span, even if it is somewhat surprising that the populariser is an eminent academic. Yet if one is an effective populariser, one is bound to disappoint those who are already engaged by, and informed about, globalisation. In fairness, he could not be expected to paint one simple, easy path to just and fair globalisation.
Indeed, many people would consider that the process of globalisation is inherently exploitative, and that all one can do is temper the more destructive elements of it.
People like Stiglitz who have laboured to put on the political agenda globalisation and the other ugly step-sister, climate change, have had an impact. Fianna Fáil is devoting its meeting in Westport next week to energy policy, and the Government has promised a new strategy on climate change. Given the pragmatic nature of politics, that must indicate that the parties believe there is concern among the general public. Or perhaps no one can ignore climate change any longer.
In democracies, politicians respond to perceived public concerns, rather than lead the way. This led the respected US biologist, Edward Wilson, to write an open letter to Christian evangelicals in the New Republic this week, calling for an alliance between evangelicals and scientists in order to exert political pressure to save "living nature".
With commendable frankness, he admitted that his call had a great deal to do with the fact that the National Coalition of Evangelicals has 30 million members, while the three leading humanist organisations have at best a membership of a few thousand.
Given that "political leaders are compelled to calculate as precisely as they can what it will take to win the next election" Wilson believes that accessing the political clout of evangelicals in tandem with scientists is essential.
What group would Irish environmentalists have to court in order to impress politicians? Democracy is also a concern of Prof Stiglitz, in that he believes that economic globalisation has not been accompanied by an equivalent level of political globalisation. It is not just, as Amartya Sen's seminal work suggested, that there has never been a famine in a country with a free press and regular elections, because in those circumstances the poor are able to put pressure on the government. No, Prof Stiglitz also wants democratisation of institutions like the International Monetary Fund, and an end to US dominance of it.
That may all seem very far away from the average Irish voter, who may be more concerned with the Irish health service than with the fact that according to Wilson, half of the world's species of plants and animals may be extinct by the end of the century. Yet the two concerns are not mutually exclusive.
In an eloquent passage, Wilson uses the example of how "the rosy periwinkle of Madagascar provided the alkaloids that cure most cases of Hodgkin's disease and acute childhood leukaemia". In other words, destruction of species and habitats means also the loss of sources of as yet undiscovered medicines and other breakthroughs.
Perhaps I was wrong. The sheer scale of the environmental disaster already under way may mean that Irish voters putting pressure on TDs to "save the planet" may not be as surreal as I first thought.
bobrien@irish-times.ie