The Catskill Chronicle

By Mort Malkin

In a recent Gadfly column, a brief was presented for the premise that the US had become a Third World country. The reasons were so persuasive only a brief brief was needed. Who could argue with our frightful state of debt, our fractional export/import ratio, our tattered crazy quilt of health care coverage, the disparity of wealth between the obscenely rich and the rest of us …  For those who are unconvinced, the Gadfly Revelry & Research team (GRR) easily found a few more exhibits, without help from Google. The reasons range from our poor broadband coverage across the nation to multiple intelligence failures over the years on the part of the CIA, FAA, NORAD, the SEC, the Federal Reserve … not to mention the Pentagon and the White House.

But, you say, what about our vaunted military? Our F18s, Predator drones, Blackwater contractors? We can’t be outgunned by anyone. True enough, but the god of storms and the goddess of unforeseen consequences don’t fight with bullets and bombs. Rather, they use progressions of: fires, explosions, oil spills, hurricanes, floods, draughts, and unregulated credit default swaps. Our greatest threat of all is Global Overheating and Climate Chaos.

The US seems unwilling to confront melting permafrost, shrinking glaciers, oceans of 2¢ plain, an atmosphere already over 350 ppm of CO2, and the corporations that profit from burning oil, coal, and gas. Nor do the government agencies do much about the human tendency to cut corners and the corporate need to cut costs to maximize profits.

As Gadfly avers, the US is becoming a Third World country. Who will assume the position of world leader? China is trying hard, producing all manner of consumer “stuff” and buying up both US Treasury bonds and cheapened US real estate.  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad might have stood a chance if he stuck with Persian poetry and Oriental rugs, but Iran is putting their efforts into (ugh) nuclear power technology that will produce problem-ridden energy. Venezuela, under Hugo Chavez, is not much better. Venezuela may be the lynchpin of a Central and South American coalition of nations that is standing free of the WTO and the World Bank, but Hugo is still pumping oil and creating hot air.

The leadership of the planet will fall to Bolivia and its straight talking leader, Evo Morales. Bolivia? The country doesn’t even have a seacoast. But, it does have plenty of lithium ores in waiting — a whole Uyuni desert full of brine deposits containing nearly 50% of the world’s reserves of various compounds of the metal so vital to the new world of information, communications, and energy storage & transfer. President Evo Morales, an indigenous native, has decided not to allow the industrialized world to treat his nation as in the old days when Bolivia was the source of tin ores. Back in that time, the Bolivian miners did the hard work and received bare wages. The refiners and especially the craftsmen who made the pewter cups and bronze bells earned the big bucks (or pound sterling). Morales, an Aymara Indian, decided not to give away any of Bolivia’s natural resources just for a quick peso and promises (promises, promises) of schools, parks, and hospitals. He is going to establish the vertical works — mining, refining, battery technology, and research into new uses of different lithium compounds. Bolivia promises to become the leader in advanced lithium batteries for laptop computers, cell phones, iPods, hybrid and electric cars, and Tickle-Me Elmo dolls.

At the same time, Evo will insist on environmental responsibility, sustainability, and protection of the flamingos and llamas living in the Solar de Uyuni. We in the US have become accustomed to nice words and lofty speeches, and promises soon forgotten. We had better get used to a real leader who says what he means and means what he says (apologies to Alice, the March Hare and Mad Hatter). A month ago, Morales hosted The World People’s Conference on Climate Change and The Rights of Mother Earth in the city of Cochabamba. About 18,000 participants from around the planet showed up — climate scientists of the industrialized world to the indigenous people of many lands. They even invited lawyers and other governments. Although only four other heads of state came, many illustriants the world over participated. The month before, Bolivia and Ecuador refused to sign on to the Copenhagen “accord” as dictated by the US. Morales gave up a $3 million “environmental aid” bribe and proposed, instead, reparations to pay off a climate debt for the greenhouse gases emitted by the nations with two cars in every garage.

Bolivia did not just demand the money; it said it would bring the case before a Climate Justice Tribunal and abide the decision of the Court. Bolivia was not going to endorse a 2° Celsius rise in temperature that the Copenhagen discord/dysfunction would permit. A 2° Celsius temperature increase would melt the glaciers of the Andes and Himalayas and submerge a few of the islands of Micronesia. Maybe Galveston TX, too.

Bolivia, with its mineral riches holds all the aces in the geopolitical poker game. It has zinc, tin, antimony, silver, gold, and all that lithium. It also has oil and natural gas enough for its own needs and then some. The US would not dare bomb Bolivia for fear of damaging the lithium salt flats or having to listen to hours of Evo Morales at the UN.

As Bolivia’s lithium industry develops, from bottom to top, in the technology of storing energy and transferring it from form to form, they will find ways to bring wind, solar, and tide power on line cheaply. The earth will be saved from Global Overheating and Climate Chaos. Bolivia, with its vast reserves of lithium and leadership in lithium technology, will be recognized as a world leader. And, while the Bolivian researchers are playing with new and improved technology for batteries and possible electronic applications, they may find a few compounds to use for the mentally disturbed who insist on splitting atoms to heat water to form steam to turn turbines to make electricity.

With Bolivia established as the world’s most super power, Evo Morales will be able to return to llama herding and the peace of the countryside. It will be a retirement well deserved.