Plutocracy and Global Dominance

University of Munich sociology prof Ulrich Beck writes about the role national leaders need to play in a new and properly anxious world (The Guardian, July 13, 2007, p23). With critical issues transcending national borders like global warming, economic interdependence, massive immigration between countries, and terrorism the old single-nation approaches are doomed. He writes about the 'strait jacket of the nation-based approach,' and we should ponder his suggestion. Just take the warming climate encircling our beautiful planet. Merely reducing emissions and the carbon foot-prints of the G-8 nations will be insufficient to solve this looming catastrophe, even though a new Kyoto-like agreement will help. As, or IF, the major industrial nations manage to reduce their contributions to overheating the planet, the developing countries simultaneously race to industrialize and thereby INCREASE their emissions. Without a balanced and globally managed approach, this and other problems simply won't begin to be alleviated, much less solved.
As an American, I'm keenly sensitive to Professor Beck's comment: "The crucial question then is this: will the rich reduce their emissions so that the poor have enough room for growth?" Here we get into the crux of the intertwined issues of national sovereignty and maintenance of wealth in the mostly western G-8 lands. Many of these plutocrats — hedge managers, trustee babies, dot.com entrepreneurs, the hyper-rich, the 55% of Norwegians who are millionaires — won't stand for the logical answer to Beck's conundrum. What's the point of America's military democracy and high-tech armies if they can't protect the West's massive wealth, the right wing would ask? Transnational charismatic leadership is required — I'm looking for a Gandhi, a Lincoln, a Dag Hammarskjold! Ban Ki-moon and a corrupted UN don't cut it.
There is evidence in California that the middle and upper economic groups simply purchase yet another car — a hybrid — to use part of the time, and then feel smugly responsible. Magnetic and awe-inspiring leadership is critically urgent.
Leaders like new British PM Gordon Brown and the desperately-dreamed of successor to the current madman in the White
House need to adopt transnational economic and social policies in concert with other progressive leaders on our shared planet. All the world's children are begging for this.