Sir Francis Bacon (later Lord Verulam and the Viscount St. Albans) was an English lawyer, statesman, essayist, historian, intellectual reformer, philosopher, and champion of modern science. Early in his career he claimed “all knowledge as his province” and afterwards dedicated himself to a wholesale revaluation and re-structuring of traditional learning. To take the place of the established tradition (a miscellany of Scholasticism, humanism, and natural magic), he proposed an entirely new system based on empirical and inductive principles and the active development of new arts and inventions, a system whose ultimate goal would be the production of practical knowledge for “the use and benefit of men” and the relief of the human condition.
At the same time that he was founding and promoting this new project for the advancement of learning, Bacon was also moving up the ladder of state service. His career aspirations had been largely disappointed under Elizabeth I, but with the ascension of James his political fortunes rose. Knighted in 1603, he was then steadily promoted to a series of offices, including Solicitor General (1607), Attorney General (1613), and eventually Lord Chancellor (1618). While serving as Chancellor, he was indicted on charges of bribery and forced to leave public office. He then retired to his estate where he devoted himself full time to his continuing literary, scientific, and philosophical work. He died in 1626, leaving behind a cultural legacy that, for better or worse, includes most of the foundation for the triumph of technology and for the modern world as we currently know it.
15 April 2011
United Nations
United Nations (UN), international organization established immediately after World War II. It replaced the League of Nations . In 1945, when the UN was founded, there were 51 members; 192 nations are now members of the organization (see table entitled United Nations Members ).
Organization and Principles
The Charter of the United Nations comprises a preamble and 19 chapters divided into 111 articles. The charter sets forth the purposes of the UN as: the maintenance of international peace and security; the development of friendly relations among states; and the achievement of cooperation in solving international economic, social, cultural, and humanitarian problems. It expresses a strong hope for the equality of all people and the expansion of basic freedoms.
The principal organs of the UN, as specified in the charter, are the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council , the Trusteeship Council (see trusteeship, territorial ), the International Court of Justice , and the Secretariat. Other bodies that function as specialized agencies of the UN but are not specifically provided for in the charter are the Food and Agriculture Organization , the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the associated International Finance Corporation and International Development Association, the International Civil Aviation Organization , the International Labor Organization , the International Maritime Organization, the International Monetary Fund , the International Telecommunication Union , the United Nations Children's Fund , the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization , the Universal Postal Union , the World Health Organization , the World Intellectual Property Organization, and the World Meteorological Organization . Temporary agencies have included the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration , the International Refugee Organization (whose responsibilities were later assumed by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees ), and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East , which is still in existence.
The official languages of the UN are Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish. The working languages of the General Assembly are English, French, and Spanish (in the Security Council only English and French are working languages).
The Secretariat and the Secretary-General
All UN administrative functions are handled by the Secretariat, with the secretary-general at its head. The charter does not prescribe a term for the secretary-general, but a five-year term has become standard. Trygve Lie , the first secretary-general, was succeeded by Dag Hammarskjöld (1953-61), who served until his death. U Thant , acting secretary-general, was elected secretary-general (1962), was reelected in 1966, and served through 1971. Succeeding secretaries-general were: Kurt Waldheim (1972-81); Javier Pérez de Cuéllar (1982-91), Boutros Boutros-Ghali (1992-96), Kofi Annan (1997-2006), and Ban Ki-Moon (2007-). (See also the table entitled United Nations Secretaries-General .) The secretary-general transcends a merely administrative role by his authority to bring situations to the attention of various UN organs, by his position as an impartial party in effecting conciliation, and especially by his power to "perform such … functions as are entrusted to him" by other UN organs. Also strengthening the office of secretary-general is the large Secretariat staff, which is recruited on a wide geographic basis and is required to work exclusively in the interests of the organization.
The General Assembly
The only UN body provided by the charter in which all member states are represented is the General Assembly. The General Assembly was designed to be a deliberative body dealing chiefly with general questions of a political, social, or economic character. It meets in a regular annual session beginning the third Tuesday in September; special sessions are sometimes held. It has seven main committees set up to deal with specific matters designated as (1) political and security, (2) economic and financial, (3) social, humanitarian, and cultural, (4) trusteeship, (5) administrative and budgetary, (6) legal, and (7) special political. It also has procedural, standing, and many ad hoc committees. The assembly passes on the budget and sets the assessments of the member countries. It may conduct studies and make recommendations but may not advise on matters under Security Council consideration, unless by Security Council request. In the assembly, decisions on routine matters are taken by a simple majority of members voting; a two-thirds majority is required for matters of importance, such as the admission of new members, the revision of the charter, and budgetary and trusteeship questions.
The Security Council
The Security Council was constructed as an organ with primary responsibility for preserving peace. Unlike the General Assembly, it was given power to enforce measures and was organized as a compact executive organ. Also unlike the assembly, the Security Council in theory functions continuously at the seat of the UN.
The council has 15 members. Five—China (until 1971 the Republic of China [Taiwan]; since then the People's Republic of China), France, Great Britain, the United States, and Russia (until 1991 the USSR)—are permanent. The 10 (originally six) nonpermanent members are elected for two-year terms by the General Assembly; equitable geographic distribution is required. Customarily there are five nonpermanent members from African and Asian states, one from Eastern Europe, two from Latin America, and two from Western Europe and elsewhere. In the council the presidency is occupied for one-month terms in the alphabetical order of the members' names in English.
In 1997 a UN commission proposed changes to the council, including adding five new permanent members without veto powers, adding four additional nonpermanent members, and placing restrictions on the use of the veto. The proposed changes were regarded by many nations as a groundwork for negotiations on the eventual restructuring of the council. Brazil, Germany, India, Japan, and South Africa have sought permanent seats on the council, and in July, 2005, the first four nations submitted a General Assembly resolution calling for the expansion of the council (but not for veto-power for new permanent members). The African Union, however, has called for new permanent members to have the veto and for Africa to receive two permanent seats. There has been no significant progress on the issue, but in Sept., 2008, the General Assembly unanimously called for intergovernmental negotiations on the enlargement of the council to begin by the end of Feb., 2009.
There are two systems of voting in the Security Council. On procedural matters the affirmative vote of any nine members is necessary, but on substantive matters the nine affirmative votes required must include those of the five permanent members. This requirement of Big Five unanimity embodies the so-called veto. In practice the council has, on most substantive matters, not treated an abstention by a permanent member as a veto. In two situations, however, those of recommending applicants for UN membership and of approving proposed amendments to the charter, the actual concurrence of all permanent members has been required. The veto has prevented much substantive action by the UN, but it embodies the reality that resolution of major crises requires agreement of the major powers.
Under the charter the council may take measures on any danger to world peace. It may act upon complaint of a member or of a nonmember, on notification by the secretary-general or by the General Assembly, or of its own volition. In general the council considers matters of two sorts. The first is "disputes" (or situations that may give rise to them) that might endanger peace. Here the council is limited to making recommendations to the parties after it has exhausted other methods of reaching a solution. In the case of more serious matters, such as "threats to the peace," "breaches of the peace," and "acts of aggression," the council may take enforcement measures. These may range from full or partial rupture of economic or diplomatic relations to military operations of any scope deemed necessary. By the terms of the charter, the UN was forbidden to intervene in matters "which are essentially … domestic," but this limitation was not intended to hinder Security Council measures to prevent threats to peace. The charter was intentionally ambiguous regarding domestic issues that could also be construed as threats to peace and left a potential opening for intervention in domestic issues that threaten to have dangerous international repercussions.
History
Origins
The earliest concrete plan for the formation of a new world organization was begun under the aegis of the U.S. State Department late in 1939. The name United Nations was coined by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1941 to describe the countries fighting against the Axis. It was first used officially on Jan. 1, 1942, when 26 states joined in the Declaration by the United Nations, pledging themselves to continue their joint war effort and not to make peace separately. The need for an international organization to replace the League of Nations was first stated officially on Oct. 30, 1943, in the Moscow Declaration, issued by China, Great Britain, the United States, and the USSR.
At the Dumbarton Oaks Conference (Aug.-Oct., 1944), those four countries drafted specific proposals for a charter for the new organization, and at the Yalta Conference (Feb., 1945) further agreement was reached. All the states that had ultimately adhered to the 1942 declaration and had declared war on Germany or Japan by Mar. 1, 1945, were called to the founding conference held in San Francisco (Apr. 25-June 26, 1945). Drafted at San Francisco, the UN charter was signed on June 26 and ratified by the required number of states on Oct. 24 (officially United Nations Day). The General Assembly first met in London on Jan. 10, 1946.
It was decided to locate the UN headquarters in the E United States. In Dec., 1946, the General Assembly accepted the $8.5 million gift of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., to buy a tract of land along the East River, New York City, for its headquarters. The principal buildings there, the Secretariat, the General Assembly, and the Conference Building, were completed in 1952. The Dag Hammarskjöld Memorial Library was dedicated in 1961.
Original Vision and Cold War Realities
In practice the UN has not evolved as was first envisaged. Originally it was composed largely of the Allies of World War II, mainly European countries, Commonwealth countries, and nations of the Americas. It was conceived as an organization of "peace-loving" nations, who were combining to prevent future aggression and for other humanitarian purposes. Close cooperation among members was expected; the Security Council especially was expected to work in relative unanimity. Hopes for essential accord were soon dashed by the frictions of the cold war , which affected the functioning of the Security Council and other UN organs.
The charter had envisaged a regular military force available to the Security Council and directed the creation of the Military Staff Committee to make appropriate plans. The committee—consisting of the chiefs of staff (or their deputies) of the Big Five—was unable to reach agreement, with the USSR and the other four states on opposing sides; thus no regular forces were established. The same split frustrated the activities of two special Security Council bodies, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Commission on Conventional Armaments. Hence no arrangements were concluded for regulating the production of atomic bombs or reducing other types of armaments (see disarmament, nuclear ). The charter anticipated that regional security agreements would supplement the overall UN system, but in fact such comprehensive alliances as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Organization of American States , the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization , and the Warsaw Treaty Organization to an extent bypassed the UN system.
There were some early instances of Soviet cooperation with the United States and other powers that allowed for UN successes in restoring or preserving peace. These included the settlement (1946) of the complaint of Syria and Lebanon that France and Great Britain were illegally occupying their territory; the partitioning of Palestine (see Israel ); the fighting over Kashmir between India and Pakistan (see India-Pakistan Wars ); and the withdrawal of the Dutch from Indonesia. However, in many other issues of more direct importance to the great powers, conflict between the USSR and the remaining members of the Big Five prevented resolution. The Security Council was crippled by the veto, which by the end of 1955 had been used 78 times, 75 of them by the Soviet Union.
Growing Activity of the Assembly
In reaction to the limitations that the cold war imposed on the Security Council, the United States, Britain, France, and other nations tried to develop the General Assembly beyond its original scope. In the assembly the United States and Great Britain had strong support from among the Commonwealth and Latin American countries and generally commanded a majority. The Soviet Union could muster only a smaller bloc, sufficient to create debate between East and West but less effective in voting.
Of more importance were procedures evolved in the Korean crisis in 1950. At that time the Soviet Union was boycotting the Security Council because of the UN refusal to admit the People's Republic of China as a member. Since the USSR was not present to cast a veto, the Security Council was enabled to establish armed forces to repel the North Korean attack on South Korea (see Korean War ). Thus, at a time when the young organization had begun to seem politically sterile, it gave birth to the first UN army and to the widest "collective security" action in history up to that time, although the United States provided the bulk of both fighting personnel and matériel. In addition, firmer UN action in future crises was prepared for when, in Nov., 1950, the assembly adopted the "Uniting for Peace" resolution, which permitted it to take its own measures when use of the veto paralyzed the council. Although the assembly has been convened a few times under this resolution, its authority to require action by members has remained vague, and it has never developed workable enforcement machinery.
Some areas were opened for UN intervention, however, where world opinion and great power responsiveness favored it. In the struggle for independence in Morocco, Algeria, and elsewhere, the ruling colonial powers claimed these conflicts to be domestic; with their seats on the Security Council they were in a position to veto assembly resolutions, and with the official governments of rebellious territories under their control they were enabled to forestall UN intervention. In the Hungarian revolt (1956), requests that the USSR withdraw its troops from Hungary and that UN observers be admitted to the country were rejected by the Soviet Union. In the Suez crisis (1956), however, the General Assembly resolution for an immediate cease-fire and for withdrawal of invading forces was heeded by Great Britain, France, and Israel (see Arab-Israeli Wars ).
Expanding Role of the Secretary-General
Parallel to the growing activity of the assembly was the expanding role of the secretary-general. Trygve Lie, as secretary-general, made vigorous efforts to muster world opinion in such difficulties as the Korean crisis, but his labeling of North Korea as the aggressor earned him Soviet enmity and thus limited his effectiveness. Under the "quiet diplomacy" of Dag Hammarskjöld the secretary-generalship gained greater scope. The secretary-general, not the deadlocked Security Council, was entrusted with organizing and establishing UN forces in the Suez crisis. He worked closely with the General Assembly on other issues. In 1958, when an assembly resolution asking for a strong force of UN observers in Lebanon had been vetoed by the council, the secretary-general nevertheless followed the assembly's recommendation.
Beyond such missions Hammarskjöld interpreted his office as responsible for preserving peace even when the assembly itself was deadlocked and could issue no definite instructions. In practice he operated largely under a General Assembly mandate but frequently took executive steps that could not be completely detailed by instructions. Thus the office of secretary-general was evolving as the UN's de facto executive authority in matters of international conflict, and the Security Council began to meet much less frequently.
Effects of a Growing Membership
By the late 1950s the UN was being revolutionized by a change in membership. Since the inception of the UN there had been a steady growth of feeling that the organization should comprise all the nations of the world. But new membership was long blocked by East-West rivalry; each side was antagonistic to admission of new members unfavorable to its views, and as non-Communist countries outnumbered Communist ones the USSR was especially intransigent. From 1947 to 1955 only Yemen (1947), Pakistan (1947), Myanmar (1948), Israel (1949), and Indonesia (1950) gained admission. The way to a compromise was led by Canada in 1955; 16 new members were admitted in that year, and thereafter expansion was rapid.
Accompanying expansion came voting realignment. The clear majority of the United States and its allies disappeared as the Afro-Asian group of nations (see Third World ) obtained over half of the assembly seats. New voting blocs formed, including the NATO nations, the Arab nations, the Commonwealth nations, and, increasingly, a general Afro-Asian bloc. Latin America shifted away from its pro-U.S. position. Other themes began to equal that of the cold war in assembly debates, and more militant stands were taken against remnants of colonialism.
The changed nature of the UN was revealed in UN Africa policy in the early 1960s. The UN acted strongly in the crisis in the Congo , and during its involvement there the secretary-general developed his office to an unprecedented extent. When the UN was invited (1960) by the Congo government to send troops there, a UN force was quickly organized by Hammarskjöld from among neutral European and African states. The UN troops, confronted by social and political chaos, engaged in direct military action to force Katanga province to reintegrate with the Congo, which it finally did in 1963.
UN action in the Congo and later in sending peacekeeping forces to Cyprus (1964) demonstrated a willingness to intervene in basically internal situations, both to restore order and to prevent the spread of disorder to neighboring states. This willingness was especially evident in the attention paid to the remaining colonial areas, mainly in Africa. The UN repeatedly condemned the colonial policies of Portugal (until that country began to free its colonies after the 1974 coup) and the racial policies of South Africa and Rhodesia, against which severe economic sanctions were applied.
Diminished UN Influence and Its Uncertain Revival
Having lost its automatic majority in the assembly, the United States joined the Soviet Union in limiting UN power and authority, mainly by keeping major issues within the purview of the Security Council and the veto, with inaction the usual result. There was a corresponding decline in the freedom of movement allowed the secretary-general. In the wake of Hammarskjöld's Congo operation and accidental death, the Soviet Union's "troika" plan for a three-person secretary-generalship—an Eastern, a Western, and a neutralist member, each with a veto—was a sign that the USSR would not tolerate another activist secretary-general. Although its plan was defeated, the USSR's goal was largely achieved, since succeeding secretaries-general avoided actions that might be controversial.
Severe financial pressures have also served to restrict UN action. A number of countries, including the USSR, have refused to pay for UN actions, such as the Congo operation, not directly approved by the Security Council. The United States successfully pushed for a reduction of its assessment to 25% of the UN budget in 1977, instead of one third or more, but has still been in substantial arrears. (By the late 1990s the problem of U.S. arrears had grown so great that the United States was in danger of losing its vote in the General Assembly.)
Finally, the major powers have tended to deal with each other outside the framework of the UN. While certain agreements in peripheral areas of disarmament and international cooperation have been worked out within the UN—e.g., the peaceful use of atomic energy (see Atomic Energy Agency, International ), cooperation in outer space, and arms limitation on the international seabed—most major negotiations and agreements have been on a bilateral basis.
As a result, until 1991 the UN played a relatively secondary role in most world crises, including the Arab-Israeli Wars of 1967 and 1973; the India-Pakistan War of 1971; the Vietnam War; and the Afghanistan War. However, with Soviet cooperation, the UN played a major role approving action in the Persian Gulf in 1991 to drive Iraq from Kuwait, and it actively supervised the subsequent cease-fire, embargo, and removal of strategic weapons from Iraq (see Persian Gulf War ).
Since the early 1970s, the UN expanded its activity in the development of less developed countries. The UN and its related agencies have had a significant impact in disease control, aid to refugees, and technological cooperation. It has provided a mechanism through which developed countries can jointly contribute with a minimum of national antagonism and from which less developed countries can receive aid with a minimum of suspicion and resentment. The UN has also been active in setting standards of human dignity and freedom, such as in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the establishment of international labor standards, and has been a forum for discussion on some environmental issues, such as at the "Earth Summit" in 1992.
The current UN is an all but universal global institution. Its peacekeeping forces were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1988, and in 2001 the UN itself, along with Secretary-General Annan, was awarded the prize. Beginning in the 1990s, the UN was increasingly involved in peacekeeping efforts throughout the world. Although the UN played a subsidiary role in the Persian Gulf War , its potential to gain a more prominent peacekeeping role was enhanced with the end of the cold war. In recent years the UN has supervised the 1993 elections in Cambodia (as part of its largest peacekeeping effort ever) and the 1999 referendum in East Timor (although it could not prevent the violence the followed), and it has mounted peacekeeping operations in Angola, Bosnia, Congo (Kinshasa), Eritrea and Ethiopia, Haiti, Kosovo, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and Sudan and Chad among others. In addition, the UN has provided police forces in regions, such as Kosovo, Bosnia, and East Timor, where the local government could not.
The Security Council's assertiveness in enforcing the Gulf War cease-fire resolutions in the early 1990s seemed indicative of a new vigor. Later divisions on the council over that issue, however, and limited success with respect to peacekeeping in Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti, and Sierra Leone indicate that, unless the parties overseen by such forces are desirous of peace, perhaps the council can assert itself successfully only when the great powers are convinced that their interests are at stake. The fact was made all-too-obvious by the divisions that emerged between the United States and Britain, on one side, and France, Russia, and China over whether to approve military action against Iraq in 2003. Other divisions hampered the UN's ability to develop (2007) a fully workable peacekeeping mission in Sudan and Chad, where rebellion in Sudan's Darfur region and bordering parts of Chad created large numbers of refugees beginning in 2003. On the other hand, the UN peacekeeping mission along the Eritrea-Ethiopia border (2000-2008) was ended after the two benefiting nations undermined it. In an effort to ensure that UN peacekeeping missions that are mounted are effective, Annan pushed for forces that were large enough to be able to enforce the peace, though that was not always possible. UN peacekeeping forces have also become more assertive about using force to protect themselves and civilians and more active in enforcing the peace.
A related and pressing problem has been the financial crisis created by the arrears owed by the United States and other nations, a crisis exacerbated by the expense of increased peacekeeping operations. Even as the nations of the world have been expanding the UN's role as peacekeeper, its ability to fund such operations has been hampered by nonpayment of UN dues. American dissatisfaction with the UN has led to opposition within Congress to payment of UN dues and resulted in unyielding U.S. opposition to the reelection of Boutros-Ghali as secretary-general. Kofi Annan, who succeeded Boutros-Ghali in 1997, worked to streamline UN operations and reduce costs, in part to restore American confidence and interest in the organization. In 1999 the U.S. Congress passed legislation that would pay some of the nation's back dues, but it also called for a further reduction in the assessment that the United States is expected to pay. An agreement in Dec., 2000, called for a reduction in U.S. dues to 22% of the UN's budget. In 2000, U.S. arrears had reached $1.3 billion, according to UN calculations, but by the end of 2004 that had been reduced by more than 80%.
In 2004 the UN's reputation was tarnished by revelations about corruption in the oil-for-food program that allowed Iraq, beginning in 1996 and ending after the U.S.-led invasion, to export oil to generate income that was to be used to purchase food and other humanitarian relief. Saddam Hussein's government received sizable kickbacks through the program (although the money Iraq earned through smuggling oil abroad was much greater), and many outside Iraq illicitly profited as well. A detailed UN investigation into the program, led by Paul Volcker , began in 2004, and it released its final report in 2005. The investigation accused the UN official who had headed the program of personally benefiting from it, and faulted the conduct of others, including two of Annan's close advisers. The integrity of Annan's son, who benefited from employment and payments from a company involved in the program, was questioned, although Annan himself was not accused of benefiting or of manipulating the program to benefit anyone. However, Annan was criticized for having exercised inadequate oversight (as was the Security Council) and for having failed to make a thorough inquiry into the affair when questions first arose about it.
Also in 2005 Annan attempted to win international support for a group of comprehensive reforms within the United Nations, but agreement proved difficult to secure. UN members did approve the establishment of a Peacebuilding Commission, intended to aid war-torn nations in reestablishing political stability and economic growth. In Dec., 2005, under pressure from the United States and other wealthy nations, UN members approved a two-year budget with a spending cap for 2006 that was expected to be reached in June of that year. The intention was to link the approval of further spending to passage of management reforms by the General Assembly.
The General Assembly approved (Mar., 2006) the replacement of the UN Human Rights Commission with a Human Rights Council. The move was designed to restore credibility to the UN's human rights body, which was criticized for having included among its member nations many countries that had been denounced for violations of human rights, but the new body soon faced similar criticisms. In May the Assembly refused to approve the centerpiece of Annan's ambitious administrative reform plans for the United Nations; some modest reforms were approved in July. The budget cap, meanwhile, had been removed in June by the General Assembly. Annan was succeeded as secretary-general by South Korean diplomat Ban Ki-Moon in 2007.
Bibliography
The United Nations publishes a series of comprehensive yearbooks (1947-). See also M. Waters, The United Nations (1967); L. M. Goodrich, E. I. Hambro, and A. P. Simons, Charter of the United Nations: Commentary and Documents (3d ed. 1969); D. W. Wainhouse, International Peacekeeping at the Crossroads (1973); L. M. Goodrich, The United Nations in a Changing World (1974); D. P. Moynihan, A Dangerous Place (1978); Conference on United Nations Procedures, Global Negotiations and Economic Development (1980); E. Luard, A History of the United Nations (2 vol., 1982-89); J. P. Humphrey, Human Rights and the United Nations (1983); P. R. Baehr and L. Gordenker, The United Nations: Reality and Ideal (1984); Department of Public Information, The United Nations and Human Rights (1984); R. Riggs and J. Plano, The United Nations: International Organization and World Politics (1987); P. J. Fromuth, ed., A Successor Vision: The United Nations of Tomorrow (1988); A. Roberts, United Nations, Divided World: The UN's Role in International Relations (1988); R. Berridge, Return to the United Nations: UN Diplomacy in Regional Conflicts (1991); S. Meisler, United Nations: The First Fifty Years (1995); T. Hoopes and D. Brinkley, FDR and the Creation of the U.N. (1997); S. C. Schlesinger, Act of Creation: The Founding of the United Nations (2003).
Organization and Principles
The Charter of the United Nations comprises a preamble and 19 chapters divided into 111 articles. The charter sets forth the purposes of the UN as: the maintenance of international peace and security; the development of friendly relations among states; and the achievement of cooperation in solving international economic, social, cultural, and humanitarian problems. It expresses a strong hope for the equality of all people and the expansion of basic freedoms.
The principal organs of the UN, as specified in the charter, are the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council , the Trusteeship Council (see trusteeship, territorial ), the International Court of Justice , and the Secretariat. Other bodies that function as specialized agencies of the UN but are not specifically provided for in the charter are the Food and Agriculture Organization , the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the associated International Finance Corporation and International Development Association, the International Civil Aviation Organization , the International Labor Organization , the International Maritime Organization, the International Monetary Fund , the International Telecommunication Union , the United Nations Children's Fund , the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization , the Universal Postal Union , the World Health Organization , the World Intellectual Property Organization, and the World Meteorological Organization . Temporary agencies have included the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration , the International Refugee Organization (whose responsibilities were later assumed by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees ), and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East , which is still in existence.
The official languages of the UN are Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish. The working languages of the General Assembly are English, French, and Spanish (in the Security Council only English and French are working languages).
The Secretariat and the Secretary-General
All UN administrative functions are handled by the Secretariat, with the secretary-general at its head. The charter does not prescribe a term for the secretary-general, but a five-year term has become standard. Trygve Lie , the first secretary-general, was succeeded by Dag Hammarskjöld (1953-61), who served until his death. U Thant , acting secretary-general, was elected secretary-general (1962), was reelected in 1966, and served through 1971. Succeeding secretaries-general were: Kurt Waldheim (1972-81); Javier Pérez de Cuéllar (1982-91), Boutros Boutros-Ghali (1992-96), Kofi Annan (1997-2006), and Ban Ki-Moon (2007-). (See also the table entitled United Nations Secretaries-General .) The secretary-general transcends a merely administrative role by his authority to bring situations to the attention of various UN organs, by his position as an impartial party in effecting conciliation, and especially by his power to "perform such … functions as are entrusted to him" by other UN organs. Also strengthening the office of secretary-general is the large Secretariat staff, which is recruited on a wide geographic basis and is required to work exclusively in the interests of the organization.
The General Assembly
The only UN body provided by the charter in which all member states are represented is the General Assembly. The General Assembly was designed to be a deliberative body dealing chiefly with general questions of a political, social, or economic character. It meets in a regular annual session beginning the third Tuesday in September; special sessions are sometimes held. It has seven main committees set up to deal with specific matters designated as (1) political and security, (2) economic and financial, (3) social, humanitarian, and cultural, (4) trusteeship, (5) administrative and budgetary, (6) legal, and (7) special political. It also has procedural, standing, and many ad hoc committees. The assembly passes on the budget and sets the assessments of the member countries. It may conduct studies and make recommendations but may not advise on matters under Security Council consideration, unless by Security Council request. In the assembly, decisions on routine matters are taken by a simple majority of members voting; a two-thirds majority is required for matters of importance, such as the admission of new members, the revision of the charter, and budgetary and trusteeship questions.
The Security Council
The Security Council was constructed as an organ with primary responsibility for preserving peace. Unlike the General Assembly, it was given power to enforce measures and was organized as a compact executive organ. Also unlike the assembly, the Security Council in theory functions continuously at the seat of the UN.
The council has 15 members. Five—China (until 1971 the Republic of China [Taiwan]; since then the People's Republic of China), France, Great Britain, the United States, and Russia (until 1991 the USSR)—are permanent. The 10 (originally six) nonpermanent members are elected for two-year terms by the General Assembly; equitable geographic distribution is required. Customarily there are five nonpermanent members from African and Asian states, one from Eastern Europe, two from Latin America, and two from Western Europe and elsewhere. In the council the presidency is occupied for one-month terms in the alphabetical order of the members' names in English.
In 1997 a UN commission proposed changes to the council, including adding five new permanent members without veto powers, adding four additional nonpermanent members, and placing restrictions on the use of the veto. The proposed changes were regarded by many nations as a groundwork for negotiations on the eventual restructuring of the council. Brazil, Germany, India, Japan, and South Africa have sought permanent seats on the council, and in July, 2005, the first four nations submitted a General Assembly resolution calling for the expansion of the council (but not for veto-power for new permanent members). The African Union, however, has called for new permanent members to have the veto and for Africa to receive two permanent seats. There has been no significant progress on the issue, but in Sept., 2008, the General Assembly unanimously called for intergovernmental negotiations on the enlargement of the council to begin by the end of Feb., 2009.
There are two systems of voting in the Security Council. On procedural matters the affirmative vote of any nine members is necessary, but on substantive matters the nine affirmative votes required must include those of the five permanent members. This requirement of Big Five unanimity embodies the so-called veto. In practice the council has, on most substantive matters, not treated an abstention by a permanent member as a veto. In two situations, however, those of recommending applicants for UN membership and of approving proposed amendments to the charter, the actual concurrence of all permanent members has been required. The veto has prevented much substantive action by the UN, but it embodies the reality that resolution of major crises requires agreement of the major powers.
Under the charter the council may take measures on any danger to world peace. It may act upon complaint of a member or of a nonmember, on notification by the secretary-general or by the General Assembly, or of its own volition. In general the council considers matters of two sorts. The first is "disputes" (or situations that may give rise to them) that might endanger peace. Here the council is limited to making recommendations to the parties after it has exhausted other methods of reaching a solution. In the case of more serious matters, such as "threats to the peace," "breaches of the peace," and "acts of aggression," the council may take enforcement measures. These may range from full or partial rupture of economic or diplomatic relations to military operations of any scope deemed necessary. By the terms of the charter, the UN was forbidden to intervene in matters "which are essentially … domestic," but this limitation was not intended to hinder Security Council measures to prevent threats to peace. The charter was intentionally ambiguous regarding domestic issues that could also be construed as threats to peace and left a potential opening for intervention in domestic issues that threaten to have dangerous international repercussions.
History
Origins
The earliest concrete plan for the formation of a new world organization was begun under the aegis of the U.S. State Department late in 1939. The name United Nations was coined by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1941 to describe the countries fighting against the Axis. It was first used officially on Jan. 1, 1942, when 26 states joined in the Declaration by the United Nations, pledging themselves to continue their joint war effort and not to make peace separately. The need for an international organization to replace the League of Nations was first stated officially on Oct. 30, 1943, in the Moscow Declaration, issued by China, Great Britain, the United States, and the USSR.
At the Dumbarton Oaks Conference (Aug.-Oct., 1944), those four countries drafted specific proposals for a charter for the new organization, and at the Yalta Conference (Feb., 1945) further agreement was reached. All the states that had ultimately adhered to the 1942 declaration and had declared war on Germany or Japan by Mar. 1, 1945, were called to the founding conference held in San Francisco (Apr. 25-June 26, 1945). Drafted at San Francisco, the UN charter was signed on June 26 and ratified by the required number of states on Oct. 24 (officially United Nations Day). The General Assembly first met in London on Jan. 10, 1946.
It was decided to locate the UN headquarters in the E United States. In Dec., 1946, the General Assembly accepted the $8.5 million gift of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., to buy a tract of land along the East River, New York City, for its headquarters. The principal buildings there, the Secretariat, the General Assembly, and the Conference Building, were completed in 1952. The Dag Hammarskjöld Memorial Library was dedicated in 1961.
Original Vision and Cold War Realities
In practice the UN has not evolved as was first envisaged. Originally it was composed largely of the Allies of World War II, mainly European countries, Commonwealth countries, and nations of the Americas. It was conceived as an organization of "peace-loving" nations, who were combining to prevent future aggression and for other humanitarian purposes. Close cooperation among members was expected; the Security Council especially was expected to work in relative unanimity. Hopes for essential accord were soon dashed by the frictions of the cold war , which affected the functioning of the Security Council and other UN organs.
The charter had envisaged a regular military force available to the Security Council and directed the creation of the Military Staff Committee to make appropriate plans. The committee—consisting of the chiefs of staff (or their deputies) of the Big Five—was unable to reach agreement, with the USSR and the other four states on opposing sides; thus no regular forces were established. The same split frustrated the activities of two special Security Council bodies, the Atomic Energy Commission and the Commission on Conventional Armaments. Hence no arrangements were concluded for regulating the production of atomic bombs or reducing other types of armaments (see disarmament, nuclear ). The charter anticipated that regional security agreements would supplement the overall UN system, but in fact such comprehensive alliances as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Organization of American States , the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization , and the Warsaw Treaty Organization to an extent bypassed the UN system.
There were some early instances of Soviet cooperation with the United States and other powers that allowed for UN successes in restoring or preserving peace. These included the settlement (1946) of the complaint of Syria and Lebanon that France and Great Britain were illegally occupying their territory; the partitioning of Palestine (see Israel ); the fighting over Kashmir between India and Pakistan (see India-Pakistan Wars ); and the withdrawal of the Dutch from Indonesia. However, in many other issues of more direct importance to the great powers, conflict between the USSR and the remaining members of the Big Five prevented resolution. The Security Council was crippled by the veto, which by the end of 1955 had been used 78 times, 75 of them by the Soviet Union.
Growing Activity of the Assembly
In reaction to the limitations that the cold war imposed on the Security Council, the United States, Britain, France, and other nations tried to develop the General Assembly beyond its original scope. In the assembly the United States and Great Britain had strong support from among the Commonwealth and Latin American countries and generally commanded a majority. The Soviet Union could muster only a smaller bloc, sufficient to create debate between East and West but less effective in voting.
Of more importance were procedures evolved in the Korean crisis in 1950. At that time the Soviet Union was boycotting the Security Council because of the UN refusal to admit the People's Republic of China as a member. Since the USSR was not present to cast a veto, the Security Council was enabled to establish armed forces to repel the North Korean attack on South Korea (see Korean War ). Thus, at a time when the young organization had begun to seem politically sterile, it gave birth to the first UN army and to the widest "collective security" action in history up to that time, although the United States provided the bulk of both fighting personnel and matériel. In addition, firmer UN action in future crises was prepared for when, in Nov., 1950, the assembly adopted the "Uniting for Peace" resolution, which permitted it to take its own measures when use of the veto paralyzed the council. Although the assembly has been convened a few times under this resolution, its authority to require action by members has remained vague, and it has never developed workable enforcement machinery.
Some areas were opened for UN intervention, however, where world opinion and great power responsiveness favored it. In the struggle for independence in Morocco, Algeria, and elsewhere, the ruling colonial powers claimed these conflicts to be domestic; with their seats on the Security Council they were in a position to veto assembly resolutions, and with the official governments of rebellious territories under their control they were enabled to forestall UN intervention. In the Hungarian revolt (1956), requests that the USSR withdraw its troops from Hungary and that UN observers be admitted to the country were rejected by the Soviet Union. In the Suez crisis (1956), however, the General Assembly resolution for an immediate cease-fire and for withdrawal of invading forces was heeded by Great Britain, France, and Israel (see Arab-Israeli Wars ).
Expanding Role of the Secretary-General
Parallel to the growing activity of the assembly was the expanding role of the secretary-general. Trygve Lie, as secretary-general, made vigorous efforts to muster world opinion in such difficulties as the Korean crisis, but his labeling of North Korea as the aggressor earned him Soviet enmity and thus limited his effectiveness. Under the "quiet diplomacy" of Dag Hammarskjöld the secretary-generalship gained greater scope. The secretary-general, not the deadlocked Security Council, was entrusted with organizing and establishing UN forces in the Suez crisis. He worked closely with the General Assembly on other issues. In 1958, when an assembly resolution asking for a strong force of UN observers in Lebanon had been vetoed by the council, the secretary-general nevertheless followed the assembly's recommendation.
Beyond such missions Hammarskjöld interpreted his office as responsible for preserving peace even when the assembly itself was deadlocked and could issue no definite instructions. In practice he operated largely under a General Assembly mandate but frequently took executive steps that could not be completely detailed by instructions. Thus the office of secretary-general was evolving as the UN's de facto executive authority in matters of international conflict, and the Security Council began to meet much less frequently.
Effects of a Growing Membership
By the late 1950s the UN was being revolutionized by a change in membership. Since the inception of the UN there had been a steady growth of feeling that the organization should comprise all the nations of the world. But new membership was long blocked by East-West rivalry; each side was antagonistic to admission of new members unfavorable to its views, and as non-Communist countries outnumbered Communist ones the USSR was especially intransigent. From 1947 to 1955 only Yemen (1947), Pakistan (1947), Myanmar (1948), Israel (1949), and Indonesia (1950) gained admission. The way to a compromise was led by Canada in 1955; 16 new members were admitted in that year, and thereafter expansion was rapid.
Accompanying expansion came voting realignment. The clear majority of the United States and its allies disappeared as the Afro-Asian group of nations (see Third World ) obtained over half of the assembly seats. New voting blocs formed, including the NATO nations, the Arab nations, the Commonwealth nations, and, increasingly, a general Afro-Asian bloc. Latin America shifted away from its pro-U.S. position. Other themes began to equal that of the cold war in assembly debates, and more militant stands were taken against remnants of colonialism.
The changed nature of the UN was revealed in UN Africa policy in the early 1960s. The UN acted strongly in the crisis in the Congo , and during its involvement there the secretary-general developed his office to an unprecedented extent. When the UN was invited (1960) by the Congo government to send troops there, a UN force was quickly organized by Hammarskjöld from among neutral European and African states. The UN troops, confronted by social and political chaos, engaged in direct military action to force Katanga province to reintegrate with the Congo, which it finally did in 1963.
UN action in the Congo and later in sending peacekeeping forces to Cyprus (1964) demonstrated a willingness to intervene in basically internal situations, both to restore order and to prevent the spread of disorder to neighboring states. This willingness was especially evident in the attention paid to the remaining colonial areas, mainly in Africa. The UN repeatedly condemned the colonial policies of Portugal (until that country began to free its colonies after the 1974 coup) and the racial policies of South Africa and Rhodesia, against which severe economic sanctions were applied.
Diminished UN Influence and Its Uncertain Revival
Having lost its automatic majority in the assembly, the United States joined the Soviet Union in limiting UN power and authority, mainly by keeping major issues within the purview of the Security Council and the veto, with inaction the usual result. There was a corresponding decline in the freedom of movement allowed the secretary-general. In the wake of Hammarskjöld's Congo operation and accidental death, the Soviet Union's "troika" plan for a three-person secretary-generalship—an Eastern, a Western, and a neutralist member, each with a veto—was a sign that the USSR would not tolerate another activist secretary-general. Although its plan was defeated, the USSR's goal was largely achieved, since succeeding secretaries-general avoided actions that might be controversial.
Severe financial pressures have also served to restrict UN action. A number of countries, including the USSR, have refused to pay for UN actions, such as the Congo operation, not directly approved by the Security Council. The United States successfully pushed for a reduction of its assessment to 25% of the UN budget in 1977, instead of one third or more, but has still been in substantial arrears. (By the late 1990s the problem of U.S. arrears had grown so great that the United States was in danger of losing its vote in the General Assembly.)
Finally, the major powers have tended to deal with each other outside the framework of the UN. While certain agreements in peripheral areas of disarmament and international cooperation have been worked out within the UN—e.g., the peaceful use of atomic energy (see Atomic Energy Agency, International ), cooperation in outer space, and arms limitation on the international seabed—most major negotiations and agreements have been on a bilateral basis.
As a result, until 1991 the UN played a relatively secondary role in most world crises, including the Arab-Israeli Wars of 1967 and 1973; the India-Pakistan War of 1971; the Vietnam War; and the Afghanistan War. However, with Soviet cooperation, the UN played a major role approving action in the Persian Gulf in 1991 to drive Iraq from Kuwait, and it actively supervised the subsequent cease-fire, embargo, and removal of strategic weapons from Iraq (see Persian Gulf War ).
Since the early 1970s, the UN expanded its activity in the development of less developed countries. The UN and its related agencies have had a significant impact in disease control, aid to refugees, and technological cooperation. It has provided a mechanism through which developed countries can jointly contribute with a minimum of national antagonism and from which less developed countries can receive aid with a minimum of suspicion and resentment. The UN has also been active in setting standards of human dignity and freedom, such as in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the establishment of international labor standards, and has been a forum for discussion on some environmental issues, such as at the "Earth Summit" in 1992.
The current UN is an all but universal global institution. Its peacekeeping forces were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1988, and in 2001 the UN itself, along with Secretary-General Annan, was awarded the prize. Beginning in the 1990s, the UN was increasingly involved in peacekeeping efforts throughout the world. Although the UN played a subsidiary role in the Persian Gulf War , its potential to gain a more prominent peacekeeping role was enhanced with the end of the cold war. In recent years the UN has supervised the 1993 elections in Cambodia (as part of its largest peacekeeping effort ever) and the 1999 referendum in East Timor (although it could not prevent the violence the followed), and it has mounted peacekeeping operations in Angola, Bosnia, Congo (Kinshasa), Eritrea and Ethiopia, Haiti, Kosovo, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and Sudan and Chad among others. In addition, the UN has provided police forces in regions, such as Kosovo, Bosnia, and East Timor, where the local government could not.
The Security Council's assertiveness in enforcing the Gulf War cease-fire resolutions in the early 1990s seemed indicative of a new vigor. Later divisions on the council over that issue, however, and limited success with respect to peacekeeping in Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti, and Sierra Leone indicate that, unless the parties overseen by such forces are desirous of peace, perhaps the council can assert itself successfully only when the great powers are convinced that their interests are at stake. The fact was made all-too-obvious by the divisions that emerged between the United States and Britain, on one side, and France, Russia, and China over whether to approve military action against Iraq in 2003. Other divisions hampered the UN's ability to develop (2007) a fully workable peacekeeping mission in Sudan and Chad, where rebellion in Sudan's Darfur region and bordering parts of Chad created large numbers of refugees beginning in 2003. On the other hand, the UN peacekeeping mission along the Eritrea-Ethiopia border (2000-2008) was ended after the two benefiting nations undermined it. In an effort to ensure that UN peacekeeping missions that are mounted are effective, Annan pushed for forces that were large enough to be able to enforce the peace, though that was not always possible. UN peacekeeping forces have also become more assertive about using force to protect themselves and civilians and more active in enforcing the peace.
A related and pressing problem has been the financial crisis created by the arrears owed by the United States and other nations, a crisis exacerbated by the expense of increased peacekeeping operations. Even as the nations of the world have been expanding the UN's role as peacekeeper, its ability to fund such operations has been hampered by nonpayment of UN dues. American dissatisfaction with the UN has led to opposition within Congress to payment of UN dues and resulted in unyielding U.S. opposition to the reelection of Boutros-Ghali as secretary-general. Kofi Annan, who succeeded Boutros-Ghali in 1997, worked to streamline UN operations and reduce costs, in part to restore American confidence and interest in the organization. In 1999 the U.S. Congress passed legislation that would pay some of the nation's back dues, but it also called for a further reduction in the assessment that the United States is expected to pay. An agreement in Dec., 2000, called for a reduction in U.S. dues to 22% of the UN's budget. In 2000, U.S. arrears had reached $1.3 billion, according to UN calculations, but by the end of 2004 that had been reduced by more than 80%.
In 2004 the UN's reputation was tarnished by revelations about corruption in the oil-for-food program that allowed Iraq, beginning in 1996 and ending after the U.S.-led invasion, to export oil to generate income that was to be used to purchase food and other humanitarian relief. Saddam Hussein's government received sizable kickbacks through the program (although the money Iraq earned through smuggling oil abroad was much greater), and many outside Iraq illicitly profited as well. A detailed UN investigation into the program, led by Paul Volcker , began in 2004, and it released its final report in 2005. The investigation accused the UN official who had headed the program of personally benefiting from it, and faulted the conduct of others, including two of Annan's close advisers. The integrity of Annan's son, who benefited from employment and payments from a company involved in the program, was questioned, although Annan himself was not accused of benefiting or of manipulating the program to benefit anyone. However, Annan was criticized for having exercised inadequate oversight (as was the Security Council) and for having failed to make a thorough inquiry into the affair when questions first arose about it.
Also in 2005 Annan attempted to win international support for a group of comprehensive reforms within the United Nations, but agreement proved difficult to secure. UN members did approve the establishment of a Peacebuilding Commission, intended to aid war-torn nations in reestablishing political stability and economic growth. In Dec., 2005, under pressure from the United States and other wealthy nations, UN members approved a two-year budget with a spending cap for 2006 that was expected to be reached in June of that year. The intention was to link the approval of further spending to passage of management reforms by the General Assembly.
The General Assembly approved (Mar., 2006) the replacement of the UN Human Rights Commission with a Human Rights Council. The move was designed to restore credibility to the UN's human rights body, which was criticized for having included among its member nations many countries that had been denounced for violations of human rights, but the new body soon faced similar criticisms. In May the Assembly refused to approve the centerpiece of Annan's ambitious administrative reform plans for the United Nations; some modest reforms were approved in July. The budget cap, meanwhile, had been removed in June by the General Assembly. Annan was succeeded as secretary-general by South Korean diplomat Ban Ki-Moon in 2007.
Bibliography
The United Nations publishes a series of comprehensive yearbooks (1947-). See also M. Waters, The United Nations (1967); L. M. Goodrich, E. I. Hambro, and A. P. Simons, Charter of the United Nations: Commentary and Documents (3d ed. 1969); D. W. Wainhouse, International Peacekeeping at the Crossroads (1973); L. M. Goodrich, The United Nations in a Changing World (1974); D. P. Moynihan, A Dangerous Place (1978); Conference on United Nations Procedures, Global Negotiations and Economic Development (1980); E. Luard, A History of the United Nations (2 vol., 1982-89); J. P. Humphrey, Human Rights and the United Nations (1983); P. R. Baehr and L. Gordenker, The United Nations: Reality and Ideal (1984); Department of Public Information, The United Nations and Human Rights (1984); R. Riggs and J. Plano, The United Nations: International Organization and World Politics (1987); P. J. Fromuth, ed., A Successor Vision: The United Nations of Tomorrow (1988); A. Roberts, United Nations, Divided World: The UN's Role in International Relations (1988); R. Berridge, Return to the United Nations: UN Diplomacy in Regional Conflicts (1991); S. Meisler, United Nations: The First Fifty Years (1995); T. Hoopes and D. Brinkley, FDR and the Creation of the U.N. (1997); S. C. Schlesinger, Act of Creation: The Founding of the United Nations (2003).
food adulteration
ADULTERATION OF FOOD
ADULTERATION OF FOOD. "Adulteration" is a legal term meaning that a food product fails to meet federal or state standards. Adulteration usually refers to noncompliance with health or safety standards as determined, in the United States, by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
Definition of Adulterated Food
The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic (FD&C) Act (1938) provides that food is "adulterated" if it meets any one of the following criteria: (1) it bears or contains any "poisonous or deleterious substance" which may render it injurious to health; (2) it bears or contains any added poisonous or added deleterious substance (other than a pesticide residue, food additive, color additive, or new animal drug, which are covered by separate provisions) that is unsafe; (3) its container is composed, in whole or in part, of any poisonous or deleterious substance which may render the contents injurious to health; or (4) it bears or contains a pesticide chemical residue that is unsafe. (Note: The Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] establishes tolerances for pesticide residues in foods, which are enforced by the FDA.)
Food also meets the definition of adulteration if: (5) it is, or it bears or contains, an unsafe food additive; (6) it is, or it bears or contains, an unsafe new animal drug; (7) it is, or it bears or contains, an unsafe color additive; (8) it consists, in whole or in part, of "any filthy, putrid, or decomposed substance" or is otherwise unfit for food; or (9) it has been prepared, packed, or held under unsanitary conditions (insect, rodent, or bird infestation) whereby it may have become contaminated with filth or rendered injurious to health.
Further, food is considered adulterated if: (10) it has been irradiated and the irradiation processing was not done in conformity with a regulation permitting irradiation of the food in question (Note: FDA has approved irradiation of a number of foods, including refrigerated or frozen uncooked meat, fresh or frozen uncooked poultry, and seeds for sprouting [21 C.F.R. Part 179].); (11) it contains a dietary ingredient that presents a significant or unreasonable risk of illness or injury under the conditions of use recommended in labeling (for example, foods or dietary supplements containing aristolochic acids, which have been linked to kidney failure, have been banned.); (12) a valuable constituent has been omitted in whole or in part or replaced with another substance; damage or inferiority has been concealed in any manner; or a substance has been added to increase the product's bulk or weight, reduce its quality or strength, or make it appear of greater value than it is (this is "economic adulteration"); or (13) it is offered for import into the United States and is a food that has previously been refused admission, unless the person reoffering the food establishes that it is in compliance with U.S. law [21 U.S.C. § 342].
The Federal Meat Inspection Act and the Poultry Products Inspection Act contain similar provisions for meat and poultry products. [21 U.S.C. § 453(g), 601(m).
Poisonous or Deleterious Substances
Generally, if a food contains a poisonous or deleterious substance that may render it injurious to health, it is adulterated. For example, apple cider contaminated with E. coli O157:H7 and Brie cheese contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes are adulterated. There are two exceptions to this general rule. First, if the poisonous substance is inherent or naturally occurring and its quantity in the food does not ordinarily render it injurious to health, the food will not be considered adulterated. Thus, a food that contains a natural toxin at very low levels that would not ordinarily be harmful (for instance, small amounts of amygdalin in apricot kernels) is not adulterated.
Second, if the poisonous or deleterious substance is unavoidable and is within an established tolerance, regulatory limit, or action level, the food will not be deemed to be adulterated. Tolerances and regulatory limits are thresholds above which a food will be considered adulterated. They are binding on FDA, the food industry, and the courts. Action levels are limits at or above which FDA may regard food as adulterated. They are not binding on FDA. FDA has established numerous action levels (for example, one part per million methyl mercury in fish), which are set forth in its booklet Action Levels for Poisonous or Deleterious Substances in Human Food and Animal Feed.
If a food contains a poisonous substance in excess of a tolerance, regulatory limit, or action level, mixing it with "clean" food to reduce the level of contamination is not allowed. The deliberate mixing of adulterated food with good food renders the finished product adulterated (FDA, Compliance Policy Guide [CPG § 555.200]).
Filth and Foreign Matter
Filth and extraneous material include any objectionable substances in foods, such as foreign matter (for example, glass, metal, plastic, wood, stones, sand, cigarette butts), undesirable parts of the raw plant material (such as stems, pits in pitted olives, pieces of shell in canned oysters), and filth (namely, mold, rot, insect and rodent parts, excreta, decomposition). Under a strict reading of the FD&C Act, any amount of filth in a food would render it adulterated. FDA regulations, however, authorize the agency to issue Defect Action Levels (DALs) for natural, unavoidable defects that at low levels do not pose a human health hazard [21 C.F.R. § 110.110]. These DALs are advisory only; they do not have the force of law and do not bind FDA. DALs are set forth in FDA's Compliance Policy Guides and are compiled in the FDA and Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN) Defect Action Level Handbook.
In most cases, DALs are food-specific and defect-specific. For example, the DAL for insect fragments in peanut butter is an average of thirty or more insect fragments per 100 grams (g) [CPG § 570.300]. In the case of hard or sharp foreign objects, the DAL, which is based on the size of the object and the likelihood it will pose a risk of choking or injury, applies to all foods (see CPG § 555.425).
Economic Adulteration
A food is adulterated if it omits a valuable constituent or substitutes another substance, in whole or in part, for a valuable constituent (for instance, olive oil diluted with tea tree oil); conceals damage or inferiority in any manner (such as fresh fruit with food coloring on its surface to conceal defects); or any substance has been added to it or packed with it to increase its bulk or weight, reduce its quality or strength, or make it appear bigger or of greater value than it is (for example, scallops to which water has been added to make them heavier).
Microbiological Contamination and Adulteration
The fact that a food is contaminated with pathogens (harmful microorganisms such as bacteria, viruses, or protozoa) may, or may not, render it adulterated. Generally, for ready-to-eat foods, the presence of pathogens will render the food adulterated. For example, the presence of Salmonella on fresh fruits or vegetables or in ready-to-eat meat or poultry products (such as luncheon meats) will render those products adulterated.
For meat and poultry products, which are regulated by USDA, the rules are more complicated. Ready-to-eat meat and poultry products contaminated with pathogens, such as Salmonella or Listeria monocytogenes, are adulterated. (Note that hotdogs are considered ready-to-eat products.) For raw meat or poultry products, the presence of pathogens will not always render a product adulterated (because raw meat and poultry products are intended to be cooked, and proper cooking should kill pathogens). Raw poultry contaminated with Salmonella is not adulterated. However, USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has ruled that raw meat or poultry products contaminated with E. coli O157:H7 are adulterated. This is because normal cooking methods may not reduce E. coli O157:H7 below infectious levels. E. coli O157:H7 is the only pathogen that is considered an adulterant when present in raw meat or poultry products.
Enforcement Actions against Adulterated Food
If a food is adulterated, FDA and FSIS have a broad array of enforcement tools. These include seizing and condemning the product, detaining imported product, enjoining persons from manufacturing or distributing the product, or requesting a recall of the product. Enforcement action is usually preceded by a Warning Letter from FDA to the manufacturer or distributor of the adulterated product. In the case of an adulterated meat or poultry product, FSIS has certain additional powers. FSIS may suspend or withdraw federal inspection of an official establishment. Without federal inspection, an establishment may not produce or process meat or poultry products, and therefore must cease operations. With the exception of infant formula, neither FDA nor FSIS has the authority to require a company to recall an adulterated food product. However, the ability to generate negative publicity gives them considerable powers of persuasion.
State regulators generally have similar enforcement tools at their disposal to prevent the manufacture and distribution of adulterated food. In addition, many states have the authority to immediately embargo adulterated food and to impose civil fines. Federal agencies often will coordinate with state or local authorities to remove unsafe food from the market as quickly as possible.
ADULTERATION OF FOOD. "Adulteration" is a legal term meaning that a food product fails to meet federal or state standards. Adulteration usually refers to noncompliance with health or safety standards as determined, in the United States, by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
Definition of Adulterated Food
The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic (FD&C) Act (1938) provides that food is "adulterated" if it meets any one of the following criteria: (1) it bears or contains any "poisonous or deleterious substance" which may render it injurious to health; (2) it bears or contains any added poisonous or added deleterious substance (other than a pesticide residue, food additive, color additive, or new animal drug, which are covered by separate provisions) that is unsafe; (3) its container is composed, in whole or in part, of any poisonous or deleterious substance which may render the contents injurious to health; or (4) it bears or contains a pesticide chemical residue that is unsafe. (Note: The Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] establishes tolerances for pesticide residues in foods, which are enforced by the FDA.)
Food also meets the definition of adulteration if: (5) it is, or it bears or contains, an unsafe food additive; (6) it is, or it bears or contains, an unsafe new animal drug; (7) it is, or it bears or contains, an unsafe color additive; (8) it consists, in whole or in part, of "any filthy, putrid, or decomposed substance" or is otherwise unfit for food; or (9) it has been prepared, packed, or held under unsanitary conditions (insect, rodent, or bird infestation) whereby it may have become contaminated with filth or rendered injurious to health.
Further, food is considered adulterated if: (10) it has been irradiated and the irradiation processing was not done in conformity with a regulation permitting irradiation of the food in question (Note: FDA has approved irradiation of a number of foods, including refrigerated or frozen uncooked meat, fresh or frozen uncooked poultry, and seeds for sprouting [21 C.F.R. Part 179].); (11) it contains a dietary ingredient that presents a significant or unreasonable risk of illness or injury under the conditions of use recommended in labeling (for example, foods or dietary supplements containing aristolochic acids, which have been linked to kidney failure, have been banned.); (12) a valuable constituent has been omitted in whole or in part or replaced with another substance; damage or inferiority has been concealed in any manner; or a substance has been added to increase the product's bulk or weight, reduce its quality or strength, or make it appear of greater value than it is (this is "economic adulteration"); or (13) it is offered for import into the United States and is a food that has previously been refused admission, unless the person reoffering the food establishes that it is in compliance with U.S. law [21 U.S.C. § 342].
The Federal Meat Inspection Act and the Poultry Products Inspection Act contain similar provisions for meat and poultry products. [21 U.S.C. § 453(g), 601(m).
Poisonous or Deleterious Substances
Generally, if a food contains a poisonous or deleterious substance that may render it injurious to health, it is adulterated. For example, apple cider contaminated with E. coli O157:H7 and Brie cheese contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes are adulterated. There are two exceptions to this general rule. First, if the poisonous substance is inherent or naturally occurring and its quantity in the food does not ordinarily render it injurious to health, the food will not be considered adulterated. Thus, a food that contains a natural toxin at very low levels that would not ordinarily be harmful (for instance, small amounts of amygdalin in apricot kernels) is not adulterated.
Second, if the poisonous or deleterious substance is unavoidable and is within an established tolerance, regulatory limit, or action level, the food will not be deemed to be adulterated. Tolerances and regulatory limits are thresholds above which a food will be considered adulterated. They are binding on FDA, the food industry, and the courts. Action levels are limits at or above which FDA may regard food as adulterated. They are not binding on FDA. FDA has established numerous action levels (for example, one part per million methyl mercury in fish), which are set forth in its booklet Action Levels for Poisonous or Deleterious Substances in Human Food and Animal Feed.
If a food contains a poisonous substance in excess of a tolerance, regulatory limit, or action level, mixing it with "clean" food to reduce the level of contamination is not allowed. The deliberate mixing of adulterated food with good food renders the finished product adulterated (FDA, Compliance Policy Guide [CPG § 555.200]).
Filth and Foreign Matter
Filth and extraneous material include any objectionable substances in foods, such as foreign matter (for example, glass, metal, plastic, wood, stones, sand, cigarette butts), undesirable parts of the raw plant material (such as stems, pits in pitted olives, pieces of shell in canned oysters), and filth (namely, mold, rot, insect and rodent parts, excreta, decomposition). Under a strict reading of the FD&C Act, any amount of filth in a food would render it adulterated. FDA regulations, however, authorize the agency to issue Defect Action Levels (DALs) for natural, unavoidable defects that at low levels do not pose a human health hazard [21 C.F.R. § 110.110]. These DALs are advisory only; they do not have the force of law and do not bind FDA. DALs are set forth in FDA's Compliance Policy Guides and are compiled in the FDA and Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN) Defect Action Level Handbook.
In most cases, DALs are food-specific and defect-specific. For example, the DAL for insect fragments in peanut butter is an average of thirty or more insect fragments per 100 grams (g) [CPG § 570.300]. In the case of hard or sharp foreign objects, the DAL, which is based on the size of the object and the likelihood it will pose a risk of choking or injury, applies to all foods (see CPG § 555.425).
Economic Adulteration
A food is adulterated if it omits a valuable constituent or substitutes another substance, in whole or in part, for a valuable constituent (for instance, olive oil diluted with tea tree oil); conceals damage or inferiority in any manner (such as fresh fruit with food coloring on its surface to conceal defects); or any substance has been added to it or packed with it to increase its bulk or weight, reduce its quality or strength, or make it appear bigger or of greater value than it is (for example, scallops to which water has been added to make them heavier).
Microbiological Contamination and Adulteration
The fact that a food is contaminated with pathogens (harmful microorganisms such as bacteria, viruses, or protozoa) may, or may not, render it adulterated. Generally, for ready-to-eat foods, the presence of pathogens will render the food adulterated. For example, the presence of Salmonella on fresh fruits or vegetables or in ready-to-eat meat or poultry products (such as luncheon meats) will render those products adulterated.
For meat and poultry products, which are regulated by USDA, the rules are more complicated. Ready-to-eat meat and poultry products contaminated with pathogens, such as Salmonella or Listeria monocytogenes, are adulterated. (Note that hotdogs are considered ready-to-eat products.) For raw meat or poultry products, the presence of pathogens will not always render a product adulterated (because raw meat and poultry products are intended to be cooked, and proper cooking should kill pathogens). Raw poultry contaminated with Salmonella is not adulterated. However, USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has ruled that raw meat or poultry products contaminated with E. coli O157:H7 are adulterated. This is because normal cooking methods may not reduce E. coli O157:H7 below infectious levels. E. coli O157:H7 is the only pathogen that is considered an adulterant when present in raw meat or poultry products.
Enforcement Actions against Adulterated Food
If a food is adulterated, FDA and FSIS have a broad array of enforcement tools. These include seizing and condemning the product, detaining imported product, enjoining persons from manufacturing or distributing the product, or requesting a recall of the product. Enforcement action is usually preceded by a Warning Letter from FDA to the manufacturer or distributor of the adulterated product. In the case of an adulterated meat or poultry product, FSIS has certain additional powers. FSIS may suspend or withdraw federal inspection of an official establishment. Without federal inspection, an establishment may not produce or process meat or poultry products, and therefore must cease operations. With the exception of infant formula, neither FDA nor FSIS has the authority to require a company to recall an adulterated food product. However, the ability to generate negative publicity gives them considerable powers of persuasion.
State regulators generally have similar enforcement tools at their disposal to prevent the manufacture and distribution of adulterated food. In addition, many states have the authority to immediately embargo adulterated food and to impose civil fines. Federal agencies often will coordinate with state or local authorities to remove unsafe food from the market as quickly as possible.
French Revolution
The French Revolution invented modern revolution —the idea that humans can transform the world according to a plan—and so has a central place in the study of the social sciences. It ushered in modernity by destroying the foundations of the “Old Regime”—absolutist politics, legal inequality, a “feudal” economy (characterized by guilds, manorialism, and even serfdom), an alliance of church and state, and created a vision for a new moral universe: that sovereignty resides in nations; that a constitution and the rule of law govern politics; that people are equal and enjoy inalienable rights; and that church and state should be separate. That vision is enshrined in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1789, whose proclamation of “natural, imprescriptible, and inalienable” rights served as the model for the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Eighteenth-century France experienced overlapping tensions that erupted in revolution in 1789. First, the Enlightenment contributed to an environment in which revolution was possible by its insistence on reforming institutions to comply with standards of reason and utility. Furthermore, it coincided with the rise of public opinion, which undermined the absolutist notion that political decisions required no consultation or tolerated no opposition. Second, the French state faced bankruptcy because of a regressive and inefficient tax system as well as participation in the Seven Years War (1756–1763) and the War of American Independence (1775–1783). Third, France witnessed endemic political strife in the eighteenth century. Technically absolutist monarchs who ruled by divine right and who exercised sovereignty without the interference of representative institutions, French kings in reality met with opposition to their policies from the noble magistrates of the highest law courts (Parlements), who resisted fiscal reforms in the name of protecting traditional rights from arbitrary authority. Finally, while class conflict did not cause revolution, there existed stress zones in French society, as a growing population threatened many people with destitution and as talented commoners chafed at their exclusion from high offices in the church, state, and military. Economic problems intensified after bad weather doubled the price of bread in 1789.
These tensions reached a crisis point in the “prerevolution” from 1787 to 1789. To deal with impending fiscal insolvency, the government convened an Assembly of Notables in 1787 to propose a new tax levied on all land and the convocation of advisory provincial assemblies.
Repeated resistance to reform by the notables and Parlements forced Louis XVI (ruled 1774–1792) to convene the Estates-General, a representative body composed of clergy, nobles, and the Third Estate that had not met since 1614. The calling of the Estates-General in 1789 led to a debate over the leadership of reform, and France’s struggle against royal despotism soon became a struggle against noble and clerical privilege. In this context, Emmanuel Sieyès’s pamphlet “What Is the Third Estate?” galvanized patriot opinion by responding “Everything!” and by portraying the privileged groups as unproductive parasites on the body politic.
During a stalemate over whether the estates should vote by order or head, the Third Estate claimed on June 17 that it formed a National Assembly with the authority to write a constitution. This step transferred sovereignty from the king to the nation and constituted a legal revolution. The legal revolution was protected by a popular revolution on July 14 when the people of Paris stormed the Bastille fortress in search of weapons. Popular participation continued to radicalize the revolution. In the countryside, a peasant insurgency against manorial dues and church tithes prompted the National Assembly to decree the “abolition of feudalism” on August 4.
The revolution had three phases. The liberal phase found France under a constitutional monarchy during the National Assembly (1789–1791) and Legislative Assembly (1791–1792). After the destruction of absolutism and feudalism, legislation in this period guaranteed individual liberty, promoted secularism, and favored educated property owners. The aforementioned Declaration of Rights proclaimed freedom of thought, worship, and assembly as well as freedom from arbitrary arrest; it enshrined the principles of careers open to talent and equality before the law, and it hailed property as a sacred right (similarly, the National Assembly limited the vote to men with property). Other laws, enacted in conformity with reason, contributed to the “new regime.” They offered full rights to Protestants and Jews, thereby divorcing religion from citizenship; they abolished guilds and internal tolls and opened trades to all people, thereby creating the conditions for economic individualism; they rationalized France’s administration, creating departments in the place of provinces and giving them uniform and reformed institutions. Significantly, the National Assembly restructured the French Catholic Church, expropriating church lands, abolishing most monastic orders, and redrawing diocesan boundaries.
The revolution did not end despite the promulgation of the constitution of 1791. King Louis XVI had never reconciled himself to the revolution and as a devout Catholic was distressed after the pope condemned the restructuring of the church (known as the Civil Constitution of the Clergy). Ultimately, the king attempted to flee France on June 20, 1791, but was stopped at Varennes. Radicalism constituted another problem for the assembly, for Parisian artisans and shopkeepers (called sans-culottes ) resented their formal exclusion from politics in the Constitution and demanded legislation to deal with France’s economic crisis and the revolution’s enemies, particularly nobles and priests. After Varennes, radicals called increasingly for a republic. In addition, revolutionaries’ fears of foreign nations and counterrevolutionary émigrés led to a declaration of war against Austria in April 1792. France’s crusade against despotism began badly, and Louis XVI’s veto of wartime measures appeared treasonous. On August 10, 1792, a revolutionary crowd attacked the royal palace. This “second revolution” overthrew the monarchy and resulted in the convocation of a democratically elected National Convention, which declared France a republic on September 22, 1792, and subsequently tried and executed the king.
The revolution’s second, radical phase lasted from August 10, 1792, until the fall of Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794) on July 27, 1794. The Convention’s new declaration of rights and constitution in 1793 captured the regime’s egalitarian social and political ideals and distinguished it from the liberal phase by proclaiming universal manhood suffrage, the right to education and subsistence, and the “common good” as the goal of society. The constitution, however, was never implemented amid the emergency situation resulting from civil war in the west (the Vendée), widespread revolts against the Convention, economic chaos, and foreign war against Austrian, Prussia, Britain, Holland, and Spain. Faced with imminent collapse in the summer of 1793, by spring 1794 the government had “saved” the revolution and organized military victories on all fronts.
The stunning change of events stemmed from the revolutionaries’ three-pronged strategy under the leadership of Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety. First, they established a planned economy, including price controls and nationalized workshops, for a total war effort. The planned economy largely provided bread for the poor and matériel for the army. Second, the government forced unity and limited political opposition through a Reign of Terror. Under the Terror, the Revolutionary Tribunal tried “enemies of the nation,” some 40,000 of whom were executed—often by guillotine—or died in jail; another 300,000 people languished in prison under a vague “law of suspects.” The unleashing of terrorism to silence political opponents imposed order at the cost of freedom. It raised complex moral issues about means and ends and has led to vigorous historical debate: Was the Terror an understandable response to the emergency, one that saved the revolution from a return of the Old Regime, or was it a harbinger of totalitarianism that sacrificed individual life and liberty to an all-powerful state and the abstract goal of regenerating humankind? Finally, the revolutionary government harnessed the explosive force of nationalism. Unified by common institutions and a share of sovereign power, desirous of protecting the gains of revolution, and guided by a national mission to spread the gospel of freedom, patriotic French treated the revolutionary wars as a secular crusade. The combination of a planned economy, the Reign of Terror, and revolutionary nationalism allowed for a full-scale mobilization of resources that drove foreign armies from French soil at the Battle of Fleurus on June 26, 1794.
The revolution’s third phase, the Thermidorian and Directory periods, commenced with the overthrow of Robespierre and the dismantling of the Terror on 9 Thermidor (July 27, 1794) and lasted until the coup d’état on November 9, 1799, that brought Napoléon Bonaparte (1769–1821) to power. A new constitution in 1795 rendered France a liberal republic under a five-man executive called the Directory. The reappearance of property qualifications for political office sought to guarantee the supremacy of the middle classes in politics and to avoid the anarchy that stemmed from popular participation. The seesaw politics of the Directory, which steered a middle course between left-wing radicalism and right-wing royalism, witnessed the annulment of electoral victories by royalists in 1797 and by radicals (Jacobins) in 1798 and undermined faith in the new constitution. Similarly, the regime won enemies with its attacks on Catholic worship while failing to rally educated and propertied elites in support of its policies. Initially, continued military victories by French armies (including those by Napoléon in Italy) buttressed the regime. But the reversal of military fortunes in 1799 and ten years of revolutionary upheaval prompted plotters to revise the constitution in a more authoritarian direction. In Napoléon, the plotters found their man as well as nearly continual warfare until 1815. “Citizens,” he announced, “the Revolution is established on the principles with which it began. It is over.”
The French Revolution is the quintessential revolution in modern history, its radicalism resting on a rejection of the French past and a vision of a new order based on universal rights and legal equality. The slogan “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death” embodies revolutionaries’ vision for a new world and their commitment to die for the cause. Both aspects of the slogan influenced subsequent struggles for freedom throughout the world, but one might look at the French slave colony of Saint-Domingue for an example. On Saint-Domingue the outbreak of revolution received acclaim by the lower classes among the 30,000 whites, while planters opposed talk of liberty and equality and the destruction of privileges. Revolutionary ideals also quickly spread among the island’s 30,000 free people of color (affranchis ), who, despite owning property and indeed slaves, suffered racial discrimination. Free people of color demanded full civil and political rights after 1789, but the denial of these rights resulted in a rebellion of the affranchis that was brutally repressed. In 1791 Saint-Domingue’s 450,000 slaves commenced the most successful slave revolt in history. Tensions among whites, mixed-race people, and slaves were exacerbated by British and Spanish actions to weaken their French rival, creating chaos on the island. The Convention’s commitment to equality and desire to win the allegiance of rebels resulted in the abolition of slavery in 1794. A later attempt by Napoléon to reinstate bondage on Saint-Domingue failed despite the capture of the ex-slaves’ skilled leader, Toussaint Louverture (c. 1743–1803), and the slave uprising culminated in the creation of an independent Haiti in 1804. Revolutionary principles of liberty and equality had led to national liberation and racial equality.
One also sees the revolution’s significance in the fact that nineteenth-century ideologies traced their origins to the event. Conservatism rejected the radical change and emphasis on reason of the revolution, while liberalism reveled in the ideals of individual liberty and legal (but not social) equality of 1789. Nationalists treated the concept of national sovereignty as a call to awaken from their slumber in divided states or multiethnic empires. Democratic republicans celebrated the radical phase, finding in its democratic politics and concern for the poor a statement of egalitarianism and incipient social democracy. Socialists perceived in the sans culotte phenomenon the rumblings of a working-class movement, while communists considered the Russian Revolution of 1917 the fulfillment of the aborted proletarian revolution of 1792–1794.
For much of the twentieth century Marxist historians understood the revolution as the triumph of a capitalist bourgeoisie and considered it a bloc (in other words, the radical phase of 1792–1794 was necessary to protect the gains of 1789–1791). Revisionists destroyed this view, treating the revolution as the triumph of a new political culture instead of a new social class and whose main outcome was the realization of the absolutist dream of a strong centralized state rather than a complete break with the past. The revisionists’ denial of social class as an important factor in the revolution opened the field to cultural studies and a focus on marginalized groups such as women and slaves. But the revisionist interpretation has failed to achieve consensus, and scholars continue to dispute the revolution’s legacy. According to the neo-democratic view, the declaration of universal human rights, abolition of slavery, and pattern of modern democratic politics give the revolution a foundational place in the struggle for a better world. For revisionists, the violence of the Terror, the destruction of revolutionary wars, the silencing of dissidents and Catholic worshipers, and the formation of a powerful centralized state render the revolution a source of twentieth-century political horrors ranging from nationalist wars to totalitarian regimes.
Students frequently puzzle over the significance of the revolution when, after all, the Bourbons were restored to the French throne after Napoléon’s final exile in 1815. But the restoration never undid the major gains of the revolution, which included the destruction of absolutism, manorialism, legal inequality, and clerical privilege, as well as commitments to representative government, a constitution, and careers open to talent. Once the revolutionary genie announced the principles of national sovereignty, natural rights, freedom, and equality, history has shown that it could not be put back in the bottle.
Eighteenth-century France experienced overlapping tensions that erupted in revolution in 1789. First, the Enlightenment contributed to an environment in which revolution was possible by its insistence on reforming institutions to comply with standards of reason and utility. Furthermore, it coincided with the rise of public opinion, which undermined the absolutist notion that political decisions required no consultation or tolerated no opposition. Second, the French state faced bankruptcy because of a regressive and inefficient tax system as well as participation in the Seven Years War (1756–1763) and the War of American Independence (1775–1783). Third, France witnessed endemic political strife in the eighteenth century. Technically absolutist monarchs who ruled by divine right and who exercised sovereignty without the interference of representative institutions, French kings in reality met with opposition to their policies from the noble magistrates of the highest law courts (Parlements), who resisted fiscal reforms in the name of protecting traditional rights from arbitrary authority. Finally, while class conflict did not cause revolution, there existed stress zones in French society, as a growing population threatened many people with destitution and as talented commoners chafed at their exclusion from high offices in the church, state, and military. Economic problems intensified after bad weather doubled the price of bread in 1789.
These tensions reached a crisis point in the “prerevolution” from 1787 to 1789. To deal with impending fiscal insolvency, the government convened an Assembly of Notables in 1787 to propose a new tax levied on all land and the convocation of advisory provincial assemblies.
Repeated resistance to reform by the notables and Parlements forced Louis XVI (ruled 1774–1792) to convene the Estates-General, a representative body composed of clergy, nobles, and the Third Estate that had not met since 1614. The calling of the Estates-General in 1789 led to a debate over the leadership of reform, and France’s struggle against royal despotism soon became a struggle against noble and clerical privilege. In this context, Emmanuel Sieyès’s pamphlet “What Is the Third Estate?” galvanized patriot opinion by responding “Everything!” and by portraying the privileged groups as unproductive parasites on the body politic.
During a stalemate over whether the estates should vote by order or head, the Third Estate claimed on June 17 that it formed a National Assembly with the authority to write a constitution. This step transferred sovereignty from the king to the nation and constituted a legal revolution. The legal revolution was protected by a popular revolution on July 14 when the people of Paris stormed the Bastille fortress in search of weapons. Popular participation continued to radicalize the revolution. In the countryside, a peasant insurgency against manorial dues and church tithes prompted the National Assembly to decree the “abolition of feudalism” on August 4.
The revolution had three phases. The liberal phase found France under a constitutional monarchy during the National Assembly (1789–1791) and Legislative Assembly (1791–1792). After the destruction of absolutism and feudalism, legislation in this period guaranteed individual liberty, promoted secularism, and favored educated property owners. The aforementioned Declaration of Rights proclaimed freedom of thought, worship, and assembly as well as freedom from arbitrary arrest; it enshrined the principles of careers open to talent and equality before the law, and it hailed property as a sacred right (similarly, the National Assembly limited the vote to men with property). Other laws, enacted in conformity with reason, contributed to the “new regime.” They offered full rights to Protestants and Jews, thereby divorcing religion from citizenship; they abolished guilds and internal tolls and opened trades to all people, thereby creating the conditions for economic individualism; they rationalized France’s administration, creating departments in the place of provinces and giving them uniform and reformed institutions. Significantly, the National Assembly restructured the French Catholic Church, expropriating church lands, abolishing most monastic orders, and redrawing diocesan boundaries.
The revolution did not end despite the promulgation of the constitution of 1791. King Louis XVI had never reconciled himself to the revolution and as a devout Catholic was distressed after the pope condemned the restructuring of the church (known as the Civil Constitution of the Clergy). Ultimately, the king attempted to flee France on June 20, 1791, but was stopped at Varennes. Radicalism constituted another problem for the assembly, for Parisian artisans and shopkeepers (called sans-culottes ) resented their formal exclusion from politics in the Constitution and demanded legislation to deal with France’s economic crisis and the revolution’s enemies, particularly nobles and priests. After Varennes, radicals called increasingly for a republic. In addition, revolutionaries’ fears of foreign nations and counterrevolutionary émigrés led to a declaration of war against Austria in April 1792. France’s crusade against despotism began badly, and Louis XVI’s veto of wartime measures appeared treasonous. On August 10, 1792, a revolutionary crowd attacked the royal palace. This “second revolution” overthrew the monarchy and resulted in the convocation of a democratically elected National Convention, which declared France a republic on September 22, 1792, and subsequently tried and executed the king.
The revolution’s second, radical phase lasted from August 10, 1792, until the fall of Maximilien Robespierre (1758–1794) on July 27, 1794. The Convention’s new declaration of rights and constitution in 1793 captured the regime’s egalitarian social and political ideals and distinguished it from the liberal phase by proclaiming universal manhood suffrage, the right to education and subsistence, and the “common good” as the goal of society. The constitution, however, was never implemented amid the emergency situation resulting from civil war in the west (the Vendée), widespread revolts against the Convention, economic chaos, and foreign war against Austrian, Prussia, Britain, Holland, and Spain. Faced with imminent collapse in the summer of 1793, by spring 1794 the government had “saved” the revolution and organized military victories on all fronts.
The stunning change of events stemmed from the revolutionaries’ three-pronged strategy under the leadership of Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety. First, they established a planned economy, including price controls and nationalized workshops, for a total war effort. The planned economy largely provided bread for the poor and matériel for the army. Second, the government forced unity and limited political opposition through a Reign of Terror. Under the Terror, the Revolutionary Tribunal tried “enemies of the nation,” some 40,000 of whom were executed—often by guillotine—or died in jail; another 300,000 people languished in prison under a vague “law of suspects.” The unleashing of terrorism to silence political opponents imposed order at the cost of freedom. It raised complex moral issues about means and ends and has led to vigorous historical debate: Was the Terror an understandable response to the emergency, one that saved the revolution from a return of the Old Regime, or was it a harbinger of totalitarianism that sacrificed individual life and liberty to an all-powerful state and the abstract goal of regenerating humankind? Finally, the revolutionary government harnessed the explosive force of nationalism. Unified by common institutions and a share of sovereign power, desirous of protecting the gains of revolution, and guided by a national mission to spread the gospel of freedom, patriotic French treated the revolutionary wars as a secular crusade. The combination of a planned economy, the Reign of Terror, and revolutionary nationalism allowed for a full-scale mobilization of resources that drove foreign armies from French soil at the Battle of Fleurus on June 26, 1794.
The revolution’s third phase, the Thermidorian and Directory periods, commenced with the overthrow of Robespierre and the dismantling of the Terror on 9 Thermidor (July 27, 1794) and lasted until the coup d’état on November 9, 1799, that brought Napoléon Bonaparte (1769–1821) to power. A new constitution in 1795 rendered France a liberal republic under a five-man executive called the Directory. The reappearance of property qualifications for political office sought to guarantee the supremacy of the middle classes in politics and to avoid the anarchy that stemmed from popular participation. The seesaw politics of the Directory, which steered a middle course between left-wing radicalism and right-wing royalism, witnessed the annulment of electoral victories by royalists in 1797 and by radicals (Jacobins) in 1798 and undermined faith in the new constitution. Similarly, the regime won enemies with its attacks on Catholic worship while failing to rally educated and propertied elites in support of its policies. Initially, continued military victories by French armies (including those by Napoléon in Italy) buttressed the regime. But the reversal of military fortunes in 1799 and ten years of revolutionary upheaval prompted plotters to revise the constitution in a more authoritarian direction. In Napoléon, the plotters found their man as well as nearly continual warfare until 1815. “Citizens,” he announced, “the Revolution is established on the principles with which it began. It is over.”
The French Revolution is the quintessential revolution in modern history, its radicalism resting on a rejection of the French past and a vision of a new order based on universal rights and legal equality. The slogan “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death” embodies revolutionaries’ vision for a new world and their commitment to die for the cause. Both aspects of the slogan influenced subsequent struggles for freedom throughout the world, but one might look at the French slave colony of Saint-Domingue for an example. On Saint-Domingue the outbreak of revolution received acclaim by the lower classes among the 30,000 whites, while planters opposed talk of liberty and equality and the destruction of privileges. Revolutionary ideals also quickly spread among the island’s 30,000 free people of color (affranchis ), who, despite owning property and indeed slaves, suffered racial discrimination. Free people of color demanded full civil and political rights after 1789, but the denial of these rights resulted in a rebellion of the affranchis that was brutally repressed. In 1791 Saint-Domingue’s 450,000 slaves commenced the most successful slave revolt in history. Tensions among whites, mixed-race people, and slaves were exacerbated by British and Spanish actions to weaken their French rival, creating chaos on the island. The Convention’s commitment to equality and desire to win the allegiance of rebels resulted in the abolition of slavery in 1794. A later attempt by Napoléon to reinstate bondage on Saint-Domingue failed despite the capture of the ex-slaves’ skilled leader, Toussaint Louverture (c. 1743–1803), and the slave uprising culminated in the creation of an independent Haiti in 1804. Revolutionary principles of liberty and equality had led to national liberation and racial equality.
One also sees the revolution’s significance in the fact that nineteenth-century ideologies traced their origins to the event. Conservatism rejected the radical change and emphasis on reason of the revolution, while liberalism reveled in the ideals of individual liberty and legal (but not social) equality of 1789. Nationalists treated the concept of national sovereignty as a call to awaken from their slumber in divided states or multiethnic empires. Democratic republicans celebrated the radical phase, finding in its democratic politics and concern for the poor a statement of egalitarianism and incipient social democracy. Socialists perceived in the sans culotte phenomenon the rumblings of a working-class movement, while communists considered the Russian Revolution of 1917 the fulfillment of the aborted proletarian revolution of 1792–1794.
For much of the twentieth century Marxist historians understood the revolution as the triumph of a capitalist bourgeoisie and considered it a bloc (in other words, the radical phase of 1792–1794 was necessary to protect the gains of 1789–1791). Revisionists destroyed this view, treating the revolution as the triumph of a new political culture instead of a new social class and whose main outcome was the realization of the absolutist dream of a strong centralized state rather than a complete break with the past. The revisionists’ denial of social class as an important factor in the revolution opened the field to cultural studies and a focus on marginalized groups such as women and slaves. But the revisionist interpretation has failed to achieve consensus, and scholars continue to dispute the revolution’s legacy. According to the neo-democratic view, the declaration of universal human rights, abolition of slavery, and pattern of modern democratic politics give the revolution a foundational place in the struggle for a better world. For revisionists, the violence of the Terror, the destruction of revolutionary wars, the silencing of dissidents and Catholic worshipers, and the formation of a powerful centralized state render the revolution a source of twentieth-century political horrors ranging from nationalist wars to totalitarian regimes.
Students frequently puzzle over the significance of the revolution when, after all, the Bourbons were restored to the French throne after Napoléon’s final exile in 1815. But the restoration never undid the major gains of the revolution, which included the destruction of absolutism, manorialism, legal inequality, and clerical privilege, as well as commitments to representative government, a constitution, and careers open to talent. Once the revolutionary genie announced the principles of national sovereignty, natural rights, freedom, and equality, history has shown that it could not be put back in the bottle.
INADEQUATE ACTION AND NEEDED TRANSFORMATIONS
Kyoto targets are at best a useful first step. However, even these targets, which seek to peg back emissions to 1990 levels by 2010, are unlikely to be met. World CO2 emissions in 2004 continued to rise in all regions of the world, by another 4.5 percent, to a level 26 percent higher than in 1990. A rise of over 2 degrees is considered inevitable if CO2 concentrations pass 400 ppm. At current growing emission rates, the concentration would reach 700 ppm by the end of the twenty-first century. The continuing industrialization of China, recently joined by India, points to the possibility of even faster rises than these projections indicate.
If unpredictable, amplifying feedback loops are triggered, improbable catastrophes become more likely. The Gulf Stream flow could be halted, freezing Britain and Northern Europe. Droughts could wipe out the agriculture of Africa and Australia, as well as Asia, where millions depend on Himalayan melt water and monsoon rains. If the ice caps melt completely over the next centuries, seas could rise by 7 meters, devastating all coastal cities. Will the human response to widespread ecological disasters give rise to solidarity and collective action, such as the aid that came after the 2004 Asian Tsunami or to social breakdowns, as seen in New Orleans after 2005’s Hurricane Katrina and in the Rwandan genocide?
Social and technical changes with the scale and speed required are not unprecedented. The displacement of horsepower by automobiles, for example, was meteoric. Production of vehicles in the United States increased from 8,000 in 1900 to nearly a million by 1912. Substantial regulation or differential taxation and subsidies would be indispensable to overcome short term profit motives and free riding dilemmas (where some evade their share of the cost of collective goods from which they benefit). Gains in auto efficiency in the 1980s, for example, were rapidly reversed by a new fashion for sport utility vehicles.
The debates that have emerged in the early twenty-first century have been related to responses, with different winners and losers, costs, benefits, dangers, and time scales for each response. Advocates of reduced energy consumption or increased efficiency, or energy generation by solar, wind, tidal, hydro, biomass, geothermal, nuclear, or clean coal and geo-sequestration, argue often cacophonously. Yet it seems probable that all these options are needed.
It will be essential for social and natural scientists to learn to cooperate in understanding and preempting the potentially catastrophic collision of nature and society. In order to accomplish this, market mechanisms; technological innovation; international, national, and local regulations; and cultural change will all be needed. Agents of change include governments, nongovernmental organizations, and public opinion, but the most likely front-runner might be sectors of capital seeking profit by retooling the energy and transport systems, while able to mobilize political enforcement.
If unpredictable, amplifying feedback loops are triggered, improbable catastrophes become more likely. The Gulf Stream flow could be halted, freezing Britain and Northern Europe. Droughts could wipe out the agriculture of Africa and Australia, as well as Asia, where millions depend on Himalayan melt water and monsoon rains. If the ice caps melt completely over the next centuries, seas could rise by 7 meters, devastating all coastal cities. Will the human response to widespread ecological disasters give rise to solidarity and collective action, such as the aid that came after the 2004 Asian Tsunami or to social breakdowns, as seen in New Orleans after 2005’s Hurricane Katrina and in the Rwandan genocide?
Social and technical changes with the scale and speed required are not unprecedented. The displacement of horsepower by automobiles, for example, was meteoric. Production of vehicles in the United States increased from 8,000 in 1900 to nearly a million by 1912. Substantial regulation or differential taxation and subsidies would be indispensable to overcome short term profit motives and free riding dilemmas (where some evade their share of the cost of collective goods from which they benefit). Gains in auto efficiency in the 1980s, for example, were rapidly reversed by a new fashion for sport utility vehicles.
The debates that have emerged in the early twenty-first century have been related to responses, with different winners and losers, costs, benefits, dangers, and time scales for each response. Advocates of reduced energy consumption or increased efficiency, or energy generation by solar, wind, tidal, hydro, biomass, geothermal, nuclear, or clean coal and geo-sequestration, argue often cacophonously. Yet it seems probable that all these options are needed.
It will be essential for social and natural scientists to learn to cooperate in understanding and preempting the potentially catastrophic collision of nature and society. In order to accomplish this, market mechanisms; technological innovation; international, national, and local regulations; and cultural change will all be needed. Agents of change include governments, nongovernmental organizations, and public opinion, but the most likely front-runner might be sectors of capital seeking profit by retooling the energy and transport systems, while able to mobilize political enforcement.
SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS
In May 2001 sixteen of the world’s national academies of science issued a statement, confirming that the IPCC should be seen as the world’s most reliable source of scientific information on climate change, endorsing its conclusions and stating that doubts about the conclusions were not justified.
In July 2005 the heads of eleven influential national science academies (from Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) wrote to the G8 leaders warning that global climate change was “a clear and increasing threat” and that they must act immediately. They outlined strong and long-term evidence “from direct measurements of rising surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures and from phenomena such as increases in average global sea levels, retreating glaciers and changes to many physical and biological systems” (Joint Science Academies Statement 2005).
There are many unknowns regarding global warming, particularly those dependent on human choices; yet the consequences for society of either inadequate action or of any effective responses (through reduced consumption or enforced and subsidized technological change) will be huge. It is, for example, unlikely that the practices and values of free markets, individualism, diversity, and choice will not be significantly modified either by economic and political breakdowns or alternatively by the radical measures needed to preempt them.
In July 2005 the heads of eleven influential national science academies (from Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) wrote to the G8 leaders warning that global climate change was “a clear and increasing threat” and that they must act immediately. They outlined strong and long-term evidence “from direct measurements of rising surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures and from phenomena such as increases in average global sea levels, retreating glaciers and changes to many physical and biological systems” (Joint Science Academies Statement 2005).
There are many unknowns regarding global warming, particularly those dependent on human choices; yet the consequences for society of either inadequate action or of any effective responses (through reduced consumption or enforced and subsidized technological change) will be huge. It is, for example, unlikely that the practices and values of free markets, individualism, diversity, and choice will not be significantly modified either by economic and political breakdowns or alternatively by the radical measures needed to preempt them.
ANOMALIES AND REFUTATIONS
The science of global warming has progressed through tackling anomalies cited by skeptics. Critics of global warming made attempts to discredit the methodology of climatologist Michael Mann’s famous “Hockey stick” graph (first published in Nature in 1998). Mann’s graph showed average global temperatures over the last 1,000 years, with little variation for the first 900 and a sharp rise in the last century. After more than a dozen replication studies, some using different statistical techniques and different combinations of proxy records (indirect measures of past temperatures such as ice cores or tree rings), Mann’s results were vindicated. A report in 2006 by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council, supported much of Mann’s image of global warming history. “There is sufficient evidence from the tree rings, boreholes, retreating glaciers and other ‘proxies’ of past surface temperatures to say with a high level of confidence that the last few decades of the twentieth century were warmer than any comparable period for the last 400 years.” For periods before 1600, the 2006 report found there was not enough reliable data to be sure but the committee found the “Mann team’s conclusion that warming in the last few decades of the twentieth century was unprecedented over the last 1,000 years to be plausible” (National Academy of Science press release 2006).
Measurements from satellites and balloons in the lower troposphere have until recently indicated cooling, which contradicted measurements from the surface and the upper troposphere. In August 2005 a publication in Science of the findings of three independent studies described their measurements as “nails in the coffin” of the skeptics’ case. These showed that faulty data, which failed to allow for satellite drift, lay behind the apparent anomaly.
Another anomaly was that observed temperature rises were in fact less than the modelling of CO2 impacts predicted. This is now explained by evidence on the temporary masking properties of aerosols, from rising pollution and a cyclical upward swing of volcanic eruptions since 1960.
Critics of global warming have been disarmed and discredited. Media investigations and social research have increasingly highlighted the industry funding of skeptics and their think tanks, and the political pressures on government scientists to keep silent. Estimates of the catastrophic costs of action on emissions have also been contradicted most dramatically by the British Stern Report in October 2006. Many companies have been abandoning the skeptical business coalitions. The Australian Business Round Table on Climate Change estimated in 2005 that the cost to gross domestic product of strong early action would be minimal and would create jobs.
Measurements from satellites and balloons in the lower troposphere have until recently indicated cooling, which contradicted measurements from the surface and the upper troposphere. In August 2005 a publication in Science of the findings of three independent studies described their measurements as “nails in the coffin” of the skeptics’ case. These showed that faulty data, which failed to allow for satellite drift, lay behind the apparent anomaly.
Another anomaly was that observed temperature rises were in fact less than the modelling of CO2 impacts predicted. This is now explained by evidence on the temporary masking properties of aerosols, from rising pollution and a cyclical upward swing of volcanic eruptions since 1960.
Critics of global warming have been disarmed and discredited. Media investigations and social research have increasingly highlighted the industry funding of skeptics and their think tanks, and the political pressures on government scientists to keep silent. Estimates of the catastrophic costs of action on emissions have also been contradicted most dramatically by the British Stern Report in October 2006. Many companies have been abandoning the skeptical business coalitions. The Australian Business Round Table on Climate Change estimated in 2005 that the cost to gross domestic product of strong early action would be minimal and would create jobs.
GROWING EVIDENCE OF GLOBAL WARMING
While originally eccentric, global warming was placed firmly on the agenda in 1985, at a conference in Austria of eighty-nine climate researchers participating as individuals from twenty-three countries. The researchers forecast substantial warming, unambiguously attributable to human activities.
Since that conference the researchers’ position has guided targeted empirical research, leading to supporting (and increasingly dire) evidence, resolving anomalies and winning near unanimous peer endorsement. Skeptics have been confounded and reduced to a handful, some discredited by revelations of dubious funding from fossil fuel industries.
Just before the end of the twentieth century, American researchers released ice-thickness data, gathered by nuclear submarines. The data showed that over the previous forty years the ice depth in all regions of the Arctic Ocean had declined by approximately 40 percent.
Five yearly aerial photographs show the ice cover on the Arctic Ocean at a record low, with a loss of 50 cubic kilometers annually and glacier retreat doubling to 12 kilometers a year. In September 2005 the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) doubled its estimates of the volume of melted fresh water flowing into the North Atlantic, reducing salinity and thus potentially threatening the conveyor that drives the Gulf Stream. Temperate mussels have been found in Arctic waters, and news broadcasts in 2005 and 2006 have repeatedly shown scenes of Inuit and polar bears (recently listed as endangered) cut off from their hunting grounds as the ice bridges melt.
In 2001 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nation’s scientific panel on climate change, had predicted that Antarctica would not contribute significantly to sea level rise this century. The massive west Antarctic ice sheet was assumed to be stable. However, in June 2005 a British Antarctic survey reported measurements of the glaciers on this ice sheet shrinking. In October 2005 glaciologists reported that the edges of the Antarctic ice sheets were crumbling at an unprecedented rate and, in one area, glaciers were discharging ice three times faster than a decade earlier.
In 2005 an eight-year European study drilling Antarctic ice cores to measure the past composition of the atmosphere reported that CO2 levels were at least 30 percent higher than at any time in the last 65,000 years. The speed of the rise in CO2 was unprecedented, from 280 parts per million (ppm) before the Industrial Revolution to 388 ppm in 2006. Early in 2007 the Norwegian Polar Institute reported acceleration to a new level of 390 ppm. In January 2006 a British Antarctic survey, analyzing CO2 in crevasse ice in the Antarctic Peninsula, found levels of CO2 higher than at any time in the previous 800,000 years.
In April 2005 a NASA Goddard Institute oceanic study reported that the earth was holding on to more solar energy than it was emitting into space. The Institute’s director said: “This energy imbalance is the ‘smoking gun’ that we have been looking for” (Columbia 2005).
The second IPCC report in 1996 had predicted a maximum temperature rise of 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the twenty-first century. The third report, in 2001, predicted a maximum rise of 5.8 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the twenty-first century. In October 2006 Austrian glaciologists reported in Geophysical Research Letters (Kaser et al.) that almost all the world’s glaciers had been shrinking since the 1940s, and the shrinking rate had increased since 2001. None of the glaciers (contrary to skeptics) was growing. Melting glaciers could pose threats to the water supply of major South American cities and is already manifest in the appearance of many new lakes in Bhutan.
In January 2007 global average land and sea temperatures were the highest ever recorded for this month; in February 2007 the IPCC Fourth Report, expressing greater certainty and worse fears than the previous one, made headlines around the world. In 1995 few scientists believed the effects of global warming were already manifest, but by 2005 few scientists doubted it and in 2007 few politicians were willing to appear skeptical.
Although rising temperatures; melting tundra, ice and glaciers; droughts; extreme storms; stressed coral reefs; changing geographical range of plants, animals, and diseases; and sinking atolls may conceivably all be results of many temporary climate variations, their cumulative impact is hard to refute
Since that conference the researchers’ position has guided targeted empirical research, leading to supporting (and increasingly dire) evidence, resolving anomalies and winning near unanimous peer endorsement. Skeptics have been confounded and reduced to a handful, some discredited by revelations of dubious funding from fossil fuel industries.
Just before the end of the twentieth century, American researchers released ice-thickness data, gathered by nuclear submarines. The data showed that over the previous forty years the ice depth in all regions of the Arctic Ocean had declined by approximately 40 percent.
Five yearly aerial photographs show the ice cover on the Arctic Ocean at a record low, with a loss of 50 cubic kilometers annually and glacier retreat doubling to 12 kilometers a year. In September 2005 the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) doubled its estimates of the volume of melted fresh water flowing into the North Atlantic, reducing salinity and thus potentially threatening the conveyor that drives the Gulf Stream. Temperate mussels have been found in Arctic waters, and news broadcasts in 2005 and 2006 have repeatedly shown scenes of Inuit and polar bears (recently listed as endangered) cut off from their hunting grounds as the ice bridges melt.
In 2001 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nation’s scientific panel on climate change, had predicted that Antarctica would not contribute significantly to sea level rise this century. The massive west Antarctic ice sheet was assumed to be stable. However, in June 2005 a British Antarctic survey reported measurements of the glaciers on this ice sheet shrinking. In October 2005 glaciologists reported that the edges of the Antarctic ice sheets were crumbling at an unprecedented rate and, in one area, glaciers were discharging ice three times faster than a decade earlier.
In 2005 an eight-year European study drilling Antarctic ice cores to measure the past composition of the atmosphere reported that CO2 levels were at least 30 percent higher than at any time in the last 65,000 years. The speed of the rise in CO2 was unprecedented, from 280 parts per million (ppm) before the Industrial Revolution to 388 ppm in 2006. Early in 2007 the Norwegian Polar Institute reported acceleration to a new level of 390 ppm. In January 2006 a British Antarctic survey, analyzing CO2 in crevasse ice in the Antarctic Peninsula, found levels of CO2 higher than at any time in the previous 800,000 years.
In April 2005 a NASA Goddard Institute oceanic study reported that the earth was holding on to more solar energy than it was emitting into space. The Institute’s director said: “This energy imbalance is the ‘smoking gun’ that we have been looking for” (Columbia 2005).
The second IPCC report in 1996 had predicted a maximum temperature rise of 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the twenty-first century. The third report, in 2001, predicted a maximum rise of 5.8 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the twenty-first century. In October 2006 Austrian glaciologists reported in Geophysical Research Letters (Kaser et al.) that almost all the world’s glaciers had been shrinking since the 1940s, and the shrinking rate had increased since 2001. None of the glaciers (contrary to skeptics) was growing. Melting glaciers could pose threats to the water supply of major South American cities and is already manifest in the appearance of many new lakes in Bhutan.
In January 2007 global average land and sea temperatures were the highest ever recorded for this month; in February 2007 the IPCC Fourth Report, expressing greater certainty and worse fears than the previous one, made headlines around the world. In 1995 few scientists believed the effects of global warming were already manifest, but by 2005 few scientists doubted it and in 2007 few politicians were willing to appear skeptical.
Although rising temperatures; melting tundra, ice and glaciers; droughts; extreme storms; stressed coral reefs; changing geographical range of plants, animals, and diseases; and sinking atolls may conceivably all be results of many temporary climate variations, their cumulative impact is hard to refute
SPEEDING UP THE PROCESS
Global warming involves an unprecedented speeding up of the rate of change in natural processes, which now converges with the (previously much faster) rate of change in human societies, leading to a crisis of adaptation. Most authoritative scientific bodies predict that on present trends a point of no return could come within ten years, and that the world needs to cut emissions by 50 percent by mid twenty-first century.
It was natural scientists who first discovered and raised global warming as a political problem. This makes many of the global warming concerns unique. “Science becomes the author of issues that dominate the political agenda and become the sources of political conflict” (Stehr 2001, p. 85). Perhaps for this reason, many social scientists, particularly sociologists, wary of trusting the truth claims of natural science but knowing themselves lacking the expertise to judge their validity, have avoided saying much about global warming and its possible consequences. Even sociologists such as Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens, who see “risk” as a key attribute of advanced modernity, have said little about climate change.
For practical purposes, it can no longer be assumed that nature is a stable, well understood, background constant and thus social scientists do not need direct knowledge about its changes. Any discussion of likely social, economic, and political futures will have to heed what natural scientists say about the likely impacts of climate change.
It was natural scientists who first discovered and raised global warming as a political problem. This makes many of the global warming concerns unique. “Science becomes the author of issues that dominate the political agenda and become the sources of political conflict” (Stehr 2001, p. 85). Perhaps for this reason, many social scientists, particularly sociologists, wary of trusting the truth claims of natural science but knowing themselves lacking the expertise to judge their validity, have avoided saying much about global warming and its possible consequences. Even sociologists such as Ulrich Beck and Anthony Giddens, who see “risk” as a key attribute of advanced modernity, have said little about climate change.
For practical purposes, it can no longer be assumed that nature is a stable, well understood, background constant and thus social scientists do not need direct knowledge about its changes. Any discussion of likely social, economic, and political futures will have to heed what natural scientists say about the likely impacts of climate change.
About global warming
DEFINITION OF GLOBAL WARMING
Global warming is understood to result from an overall, long-term increase in the retention of the sun’s heat around Earth due to blanketing by “greenhouse gases,” especially CO2 and methane. Emissions of CO2 have been rising at a speed unprecedented in human history, due to accelerating fossil fuel burning that began in the Industrial Revolution.
The effects of the resulting “climate change” are uneven and can even produce localized cooling (if warm currents change direction). The climate change may also initiate positive feedback in which the initial impact is further enhanced by its own effects, for example if melting ice reduces the reflective properties of white surfaces (the “albedo” effect) or if melting tundra releases frozen methane, leading to further warming. Debate continues about which manifestations are due to long-term climate change and which to normal climate variability.
Global warming is understood to result from an overall, long-term increase in the retention of the sun’s heat around Earth due to blanketing by “greenhouse gases,” especially CO2 and methane. Emissions of CO2 have been rising at a speed unprecedented in human history, due to accelerating fossil fuel burning that began in the Industrial Revolution.
The effects of the resulting “climate change” are uneven and can even produce localized cooling (if warm currents change direction). The climate change may also initiate positive feedback in which the initial impact is further enhanced by its own effects, for example if melting ice reduces the reflective properties of white surfaces (the “albedo” effect) or if melting tundra releases frozen methane, leading to further warming. Debate continues about which manifestations are due to long-term climate change and which to normal climate variability.
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