Proposal for the Immediate Reduction of Fossil Fuel Levels Through Bipartisanship

Respectfully Written by Brennan Dwyer

Introduction and Problem:

Despite constant awareness being given towards politicians and the general population on the harmful effects of adding fossil fuels to the atmosphere and the immediate and future disastrous effects on our social and economic wellbeing as a result of it, there has been little action by certain politicians and countries to reduce their fossil fuel emissions.

It is suggested by this proposal that in order for there to be immediate action to reduce fossil fuel emissions by politicians and countries not fully on board with taking action against climate change, that a bipartisanship compromise should be proposed that will get everyone on board, including those that don’t see reducing fossil fuel emissions as a top priority. This bipartisan compromise is intended to get everyone on board by acting as a more business friendly and bipartisan way of reducing the fossil fuels being added to the atmosphere. It is in the respectful opinion of this proposal that there may be the grim reality of continuing to have little action being taken towards fighting climate change despite all the hard efforts of trying to get everyone on board, unless if there is some sort of bipartisan compromise that can be realistically agreed upon by all politicians, at least as of the current state of political divisiveness. This is not to discount or discourage awareness, scientific facts, and research from continuing, as they are very essential and are meant to benefit the greater good of society, and they should certainly be continued to be pursued.

The intended audience of this proposal includes but is not limited to the general population of the United States of America and the world, politicians of the United States and the world from all political viewpoints and parties, key global organizations such as the United Nations, political and global leaders from all across the world, and even different business executives and non-profit leaders from all sectors from the United States and the world.

 

Proposed Solution:

It is proposed towards the intended audience of this proposal that the suggested bipartisan compromise written by this proposal or one similar or inspired by this proposal is implemented and suggested towards countries and politicians that have not taken enough action to reduce the level of fossil fuels being added to the atmosphere. This suggested bipartisan compromise is listed below in the following bullet points.

• To have a certain amount of a tax credit given towards businesses that reduce their fossils fuel emissions by a certain amount or by being lower than their competitor’s fossil fuel emissions. This could act as a positive incentive for businesses to reduce their fossil fuels, and hopefully encourage innovation. For the businesses that don’t already pay any taxes, then a carbon grant (subsidy) can be given to them if they reduce C02 emissions.
• To encourage businesses to pursue large innovative projects that would allow them to minimalize emissions of fossil fuels into the atmosphere by reimbursing or compensating businesses that chose to pursue these large projects. The reimbursements or compensation would act as a positive incentive as well as to make up for the burden of the potential short-term costs of pursuing these projects. Perhaps even awards or loosening of certain regulations on companies that pursue those projects could be included as well. These large projects could be brainstormed and proposed by different organizations or the government, even or potentially from inside the business itself, with the knowingness of hopefully being able to be reimbursed or compensated by the government by pursuing the large project. The large projects can also be more attractive for businesses by showing them a range of possibilities of how much it can cut costs or increase revenue for them in the long run. Those calculations could be done by different organizations or the government.
• To have a fossil fuel tax that can recover all, or at least some of the lost revenue of the government as a result of what is stated on the previous two bullet points. Not only can this help make up for some of the lost revenue as just stated before, but can also potentially encourage certain businesses to not emit such high levels of fossil fuels into the atmosphere. The level of the fossil fuel tax should be reasonably agreed upon and discussed by the politicians in power from different viewpoints or parties within a country, to assure that it is a compromise that can be successfully passed and implemented into the country’s legislation, as soon as possible.

The bipartisan compromise just listed in bullet points is specifically intended to be attractive not only towards those that see climate change as a dire scientific reality, but also among those that are more fiscally or social conservative that may need the business-friendly incentives in order to be willing to pass legislation that would reduce the fossil fuel emissions.

 

Conclusion:

In summary, it is in the opinion of this proposal that likely the only way to quickly lower fossil fuel admissions in the atmosphere in order to successfully or at least partially fight climate change, is to have bipartisanship within the countries that aren’t as willing to reduce their fossil fuel levels. In a perfect world, everyone could easily take the facts given to them regarding the current and potential catastrophes regarding climate change and implement policies that would quickly reduce the fossil fuel emissions. However, considering that our current society is very politically divisive and not all politicians are as welling to make it a high priority to battle climate change, there likely needs to be a bipartisan compromise amongst politicians so that action can finally be taken to combat climate change. A flexible but detailed suggested bipartisan compromise for countries that aren’t already making enough of an effort to battle climate change was given in the previous section of this proposal.

It is kindly requested by this proposal that the reader informs others about this proposal and what it proposes, so that it can eventually be read by enough members of the intended audience so that action can finally be taken to fight against climate change. Climate change is scientifically proven to be a fact, and hopefully bipartisanship can be the plan of action that will finally make change happen that can benefit the current, and future generations of humanity.

 

Contact and general information regarding Brennan Dwyer, whom is the author of this proposal:

Email: brennandwy@gmail.com

LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brennan-dwyer-08b58487/

Previous papers written can be found at: https://independent.academia.edu/DwyerBrennan

or https://econteenblog.wordpress.com/

The author of this proposal would kindly take into consideration coming to certain events or discussing the content of this proposal with different organizations, politicians, individuals, etc.

Suggested Method of Trading and Economic Development for Developing Nations

Brennan Dwyer

 

 

 

Introduction

Global poverty is a major issue, which especially affects people in developing nations. It is very essential that something is done about global poverty, considering just how severe of an issue it is to humanity. Stated from the book “World Poverty” by Sylvia Whitman on page 3, is that “About 40% of the world’s population lives on less than $2 per day, according to 2004 World Bank Estimates” (Whitman, 2008). Most extreme poverty is especially bad in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa (Whitman, 2008). It is important to note that many experts believe that countries have seen large increases in per capita income due to international trade and direct foreign investment (Whitman, 2008). However, not all regions of the world have access to global trade (“Poverty, Inc.,” 2014). For example, Africa has many resources such as oil and gold, but is disconnected from global trade (“Poverty, Inc.,” 2014).

This paper gives a suggested method of trading and economic development for developing nations. The suggested methods of trading within this paper are largely inspired by the flying geese paradigm. The flying geese paradigm is a set of empirical evidence that attempts to explain the fast economic growth in East Asia (Kojima, 2000). The theory specifically explains the process of developing nations catching up though industrialization (Kojima, 2000). Kaname Akamatsu, the economist that originally came up with the theory, also created the term “Flying Geese Pattern of Development” (Kojima, 2000). He based this term from the two patterns he observed within the model that looked like a flying geese pattern (Kojima, 2000).

Much like the logic behind the flying geese paradigm, this paper suggests that developing countries should diversify and become more industrialized in order to become more developed countries. Currently, developing nations mostly export primary goods, and import finished goods. However, this paper states that theoretically in order for developing nations to become more developed, they should quickly shift towards importing mostly unfinished goods, raw materials, and machinery and equipment from developed countries, so that the developing countries can create their own finished goods. Perhaps this can be done quickly by a nation temporary borrowing money or raising their debt ceiling, which will be explained more in detail later in this paper. It is suggested that they produce more of their own finished goods so that they can diversify and not have as much reliance with other nations to obtain finished goods. Also, it would be logical to assume that if the developing nations produced their own finished goods, that they can export them in exchange for a large amount of revenue which can be used to purchase more exports.

 

Flowchart and Two Main Steps

Figure 1 is a flowchart of the suggested process for developing nations to adopt with trade. The flowchart would work as a step by step process as follows:

1. Developing nations extract natural resources and export them to sustain themselves in the short run with finished goods. However, they also temporary raise their debt ceiling and borrow more debt which is used to import different raw materials and physical capital.
2. The developing nations then use the imported raw materials and physical capital to produce finished goods. A portion of the finished goods would be sold within the nation’s economy to immediately increase the standard of living as well as encourage consumption. The other and larger portion of the finished goods would be exported to the developed nations in return for imports that consist of an even larger variety of raw materials and physical capital. This larger variety of raw materials and physical capital would allow the nation to diversity and grow its economy even further. After that, Step 2 continues to repeat.

 

Figure 1

More Details and Similarities and Differences with the Flying Geese Paradigm
As mentioned before, this step by step process is very similar and much inspired by the flying geese paradigm. The flying geese paradigm focuses on and shows a model regarding factors such as the imports, exports, and production of a country and how they would change over time, which is all explained on page 14 of the paper “THE ASIAN DEVELOPMENTAL STATE AND THE FLYING GEESE PARADIGM”, written by Shigehisa Kasahara (Kasahara 2013). It is interesting to note that the more modern version of the flying geese paradigm does certainly have some differences then the original version, as explained in that paper. Regarding the differences with the more modern version of the theory, it is stated in that paper on page 17 that “With the postulation of a pattern of continuously altering productcyclebased trade, the modern FG paradigm focuses on the regionally contextualized transformation of national economies (thus, macroeconomic in nature) rather than on the strategic behaviour of large firms of the PC theory (thus, microeconomic in nature)” (Kasahara 2013). It is also stated on page 17 that “Modern theorists, including Kojima, depict the harmonious mechanism of collective advancement by means of consecutive catchingup efforts” (Kasahara 2013).

A main key difference between the process described by the flying geese paradigm and the process described by this paper, is this paper suggests that at the very beginning process, there should be a more sudden transition to importing more raw materials, capital, and primary goods, as opposed to more gradually shifting to importing these goods as explained by the flying geese paradigm. This can hopefully speed up the process of a country becoming more industrialized and diversified and becoming a developed nation. This is can possibly be especially beneficial towards developing countries that are not already reliant on imports as their major source for consumer goods. Again, the sudden shift of importing more raw materials to later convert into finished goods could be done through a nation temporary raising their debt ceiling and using the borrowed money to begin the process suggested by this paper.

 

Mathematical Representation of Suggested Method

In addition to showing this suggested method of trading and economic development for developing nations through two steps and a flowchart, this is also expressed in a more mathematical form, as seen in both Equation 1 and 2. The goal is for a developing nation to successfully earn a profit from the suggested method. It can almost be seen as a form of entrepreneurship, where a nation borrows money to use as financial capital to purchase resources that they turn into products which they sell to other nations (and some within their own economy) for a profit. Then the profit is reinvested into repeating the process.

*(The above content was copied and pasted from Microsoft Word since I wrote my paper originally on there, and had to use “snipping tools” to add this on here, since the equations didn’t convert well.)

Equation 2 represnts how the imported raw materials plus the cost of converting the raw materials into finished goods should obviously be approximately equal to the amount of money that the loan was, considering that the loan was taken out so that the imported raw materials and the cost of converting the raw materials can be spent on.

 

Conclusion

In conclusion, it was attempted by this paper to come up with a possible method of trading and economic development for developing nations. This was done by comparing it with the flying geese paradigm which was a similar theory, and by showing a two-step process with a flowchart, and even through some mathematics. Everything within this paper should certainly be taken with a ‘grain of salt’ and is only a hypothesis that is likely not empirically proven. Perhaps going into much more in depth with this hypothesis, or even looking at real world examples and how this idea could apply to them should be farther researched.

 

 

Works Cited

Flying Geese Model. (n.d.). Retrieved from  http://www.grips.ac.jp/forum/module/prsp/FGeese.htm.

‌Kojima, K. (2000). The “flying geese” model of Asian economic development: origin, theoretical extensions, and regional policy implications. Journal of Asian Economics, 11(4), 375–401. https://doi.org/10.1016/s1049-0078(00)00067-1

Poverty, Inc. (2014). amazon.com. Retrieved from https://www.amazon.com/Poverty-Inc-George-Ayittey/dp/B01AZ1CG1E

‌THE ASIAN DEVELOPMENTAL STATE AND THE FLYING GEESE PARADIGM. 2013, https://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/osgdp20133_en.pdf.

Whitman, S. (2008). World poverty. New York, Ny: Facts On File, Inc.