Sunday, November 29th, the John McLaughlin Group on US TV Channel 2, focused on Copenhagen.

The pundits – including a fair selection of opinions from right to left – pointed out that “global warming” turned to “climate change” as the public just does not believe in the issue as described by the first term. Now the latter is recognized even though there is some public doubt that it is a man made phenomenon. The bottom underlying issue is nevertheless the economy and the loss of jobs, so the argument is that climate change legislature is dead in the Senate because of the public pushing US Congress on jobs, and the perception that changing course on energy will lead to further increase in unemployment – so this is not the time to address the issue of climate change the pundits say.

Out of the five people on the panel, there was a majority that thinks the US should not intervene to save Copenhagen, if the intent is to come up with any binding resolution that will impact negatively the US while leaving in place the growth of China and India economies.

But then, the panel showed that it acknowledges that Copenhagen will give momentum to the Green Movement in the World and that countries like India and China will take advantage of this by becoming hosts to innovation results as the market forces will push in the direction of the lowest bidder – and ergo – the unemployment situation will get much worse by the fact that the US did not move more vigorously in the direction of innovation in the energy sector. So well – lack of foresight dooms the US to continue its slide downwards.

The subject of Climate Change is thus not a topic of US Economy – but of US Politics! That was the concensus of the divided panel.

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On Fareed Zakaria’s program GPS (Global Public Square) on CNN, he had as a guest Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, whom he introduced as the person who knows most about the future – as the head of a major hub for innovation. The mobile phone having become 100 times faster in the last 10 years, and computer power doubling every year.

Knowledge in term of facts will lead us to know everything but we are still limited as humans nevertheless. The real problem is not with us knowing, but with us having the capability not to let others to know. This has lead already some governments to legislate that we must delete or destroy information after 18 months or so. Google has allowed itself to accept the censorship imposed by China and is happy with the way Google can inform account holders that they are being censored.

Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, when asked by Zakaria if the US is still a leader in technology innovation – he answered flatly that in software YES, but in hardware NO. In total you can say that the US is still first, but the others are catching up very fast – and he also said that the others spend much more money on innovation then the US.

Saying the above, Eric Schmidt gave his indirect backing to points made in the McLaughlin panel about the US losing its primacy slowly, but losing employment much faster.

Eric Schmidt continued that America still controls military products but to avoid conflict we need in order to negotiate the situation – more educated, and diplomatic skills.

Teaching changes  so it will be about asking the right question and the aptitude to chose among the answers. The actual facts are supposed to be available to your fingertips anyway. Education will be about curiosity enhancement. Wikipedia was created with the help of many people – the information includes many mistakes. The basic truth is that corporations and politicians live with “spin” – so information on the internet is faulty – on purpose.

How do we know that the information we get is true? Just because you see it on TV does not make it true, and not seeing it on TV does not make it less true. Nevertheless, if you try, you can become a global citizen and times are changing.