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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on October 26th, 2008
‘I have reported on the Cold War, the breakup of the Soviet Union, the rise of Al Qaeda, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,’ says Smith. ‘But nothing matches climate change in scope and severity.’”
TO SEE THIS PROGRAM PLEASE GO TO: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/heat/ There are 9 Chapters in this two hour long video CHAPTER ONE Disappearing glaciers, rising sea levels, expanding deserts — the world is changing faster, more dramatically than ever was anticipated. CHAPTER TWO America’s growth, consumption has produced record CO2 levels; India, China are right behind with oil, coal, natural gas demand. Is the planet doomed? CHAPTER THREE With the IPCC issuing ever more urgent reports on climate change, there’s a growing momentum in the U.S and the world for real change. CHAPTER FOUR We get 52 percent of our electricity from coal-fired plants. They emit 2 billion tons of CO2 a year. Can clean coal technology be developed — and in time? CHAPTER FIVE For years, those who pushed for fuel-efficient/zero-emission vehicles have found themselves on a collision course with Detroit and Washington. CHAPTER SIX Oil profits soared in ‘07, but none of the companies are investing in alternatives in a meaningful way. It’s all going toward finding more oil/natural gas. CHAPTER SEVEN While gov’t must lean on business to tackle climate change, recall what happened with Clinton-Detroit’s new car project, and corn-based ethanol. CHAPTER EIGHT Europe’s way ahead and getting gov’t support. But T. Boone Pickens is betting on wind and Washington’s support. And nuclear’s getting a fresh look. CHAPTER NINE Congress fails to pass the landmark bill that would have regulated carbon emissions. Can Americans and the next president reverse course? “Climate change is caused by human actions, and we need to do something about it. The sooner we realize that, the better.” With that sense of urgency in mind, Martin Smith traveled to 12 countries on four continents to investigate whether major corporations and governments are up to the challenge. HEAT features in-depth interviews with top policy-makers and with leading executives from many of the largest carbon emitters from around the world, including Chinese coal companies, Indian SUV makers and American oil giants. The report paints an ominous portrait. Despite increasing talk about “going green,” across the planet, environmental concerns are still taking a back seat to shorter-term economic interests. Smith’s journey begins at the epicenter of new industrial development: China. In the midst of unprecedented growth, the Chinese are clearly moving in the wrong direction. He visits Shenhua Energy, one of the largest and fastest-growing power companies in the world—a coal conglomerate with a huge carbon footprint. But its CEO, Ling Wen, tells Smith that he answers not to the public but to his shareholders. “We must create money, not lose the money,” Ling says. “It’s my responsibility as a CEO of this company.” And when pressed whether he should make climate change a higher priority, Ling says that he would if his shareholders asked him. But, he says, “I’m afraid maybe all the shareholders, they cannot accept that concept.” In the meantime, China continues to build two new coal-fired power plants every week. Smith finds a similar situation in India, where rapidly rising income levels have prompted an explosion in the demand for new cars. Automakers are thriving, pushing out new models, including the Nano, a small car aimed at helping even the poorest citizens get behind the wheel—no small thing, as India stands to overtake China as the world’s most populous country by mid-century. With several hundred million new drivers taking to the streets, India’s carbon emissions will soar. And with new cars, of course, come new roads, linking crowded cities and fueling a construction boom across the developing world that drives emissions ever higher. The manufacture of cement is the third-largest industrial contributor of greenhouse gases in the world. Supplying more cement for buildings, roads and bridges makes big emission reductions impossible. This presents a core dilemma for all large emerging nations, from China to India, Indonesia, Russia, Mexico and Brazil: how to grow without inflicting more damage on the environment. “I think the difficulty we have is that countries that have developed and have done the polluting part are now asking the countries that are developing, `OK, you can’t pollute,’” says Hameed Bhombal, of Aditya Birla Group, an Indian megaconglomerate. “It has to be done in a way that’s fair.” According to Dr. Pachauri of the IPCC, the onus is on the developed world to lead the way. Now, with the rise in gas prices, there is an additional incentive for American car companies to offer smaller, more efficient vehicles. But will they respond? Their record is discouraging. Smith asks Beth Lowery, head of environmental affairs at General Motors, why Toyota beat GM to the Prius. Lowery replies that GM looked at hybrids from a “business case” and asked, “Can this vehicle make money?” GM banked instead on trucks and SUVs and is now suffering its worst performance in 50 years. GM is now playing catch-up and investing billions in a new hybrid, the Chevy Volt, which is scheduled to be released sometime this year. There is also the problem that while hybrid cars may emit less CO2 than their gas-guzzling cousins, they still require electricity to run. So, making cars like the Volt part of a campaign to seriously reduce emissions will mean finding a new, cleaner power source. Currently, more than half of American power comes from coal. Coal is cheap and reliable, but dirty. The answer, the industry says, will be “clean coal“— a complex process by which the burnt-off carbon will be captured and buried in the earth’s crust. But as Smith investigates, he finds there are serious doubts about whether “clean coal” will ever work. When pressed, utility CEO David Ratcliffe of Southern Company, one of the world’s largest emitters of greenhouse gases, concedes that “we haven’t even come close to defining what are the legal liabilities and what are the permitting requirements” for removing carbon from coal and burying it underground. Recently, several “clean coal” projects in the U.S. have stalled over these and other uncertainties. As Jeffrey Ball, environmental news editor at The Wall Street Journal, tells Smith, “There was huge, rosy optimism about it. What’s wrong is that reality is intruding.” On the campaign trail, both Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama have announced their plans for a new energy policy that will cut carbon emissions. Optimistically, they suggest that the “greening” of American business heralds a new era of sleek technologies and opportunities for innovation. What they tend not to emphasize is cost and, on the part of every consumer, sacrifice. In his interview with FRONTLINE, California’s attorney general, Jerry Brown, reminds Smith that it won’t be easy. “Our wealth, our society, our being is driven by oil and carbon. It’s intellectually dishonest to somehow say we can get some light bulbs or get a Prius, and then we’re all done. No, this is going to take massive technological innovation. It’s going to take changes in the way we live and work. And it’s going to take cooperation of unprecedented degrees among business and government and among countries. That’s where we are, and that’s why there’s no other word except `daunting.’ I’m hopeful. I’m cautiously optimistic. But I would have to say one has to approach this with great humility.” Author and journalist Jeff Goodell adds, “We seem incapable of grasping what’s at stake here, perhaps because so much is at stake. Addressing this really means reinventing the engine of our lives—which is fossil fuels.” Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on October 24th, 2008 At the ASEM in Beijing (Asia -Euope Meeting) the Asian States the 13 Asian States committed to establish an $80 billion crisis fund. The pledge by South Korea, China, Japan and the 10-country Association of Southeast Asian Nations was reached at a breakfast meeting, according to the office of South Korean President Lee Myung Bak, who attended the meeting. Few details were given, although a preliminary agreement reached in May stated that Japan, South Korea and China would contribute 80 percent of the fund, to be set up by next June, with ASEAN countries covering the remainder. ASEAN consists of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The deal would enable countries to borrow from the fund when facing a liquidity crunch. It builds on the so-called Chiang Mai Initiative, in which the 13 nations set up bilateral contracts to supply funds through currency swap lines. The summit later Friday of 43 Asian and European nations hopes to establish a consensus on a common approach to the global crisis. “It’s very simple: We swim together, or we sink together,” Barroso said at a news conference Thursday in Beijing ahead of meetings with top Chinese leaders.
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on October 24th, 2008 From: e.polack at ids.ac.uk Climate and Disaster Governance: Understanding governance at the interface of climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction and sustainable development The Climate and Disaster Governance programme is being launched today by the Institute of Development Studies and Christian Aid: CDG will help policy-makers and civil society organisations understand how different national and sub-national governance arrangements can make development more resilient to climate change and disasters. CDG partners invite you to collaborate on or across CDG’s research themes, and to share resources and information through the programme’s website. CDG is also offering research bursaries to support developing country researchers on topics that fall under or across the programme’s research themes. To find out more visit www.climategovernance.org Climate and Disaster Governance: Understanding governance at the interface of climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction and sustainable development The Climate and Disaster Governance programme is being launched today by the Institute of Development Studies and Christian Aid: CDG will help policy-makers and civil society organisations understand how different national and sub-national governance arrangements can make development more resilient to climate change and disasters. CDG research is currently investigating: CDG partners invite you to collaborate on or across CDG’s research themes, and to share resources and information through the programme’s website. CDG is also offering research bursaries to support developing country researchers on topics that fall under or across the programme’s research themes. To find out more visit www.climategovernance.org Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on October 24th, 2008 From the Financial Times, October 24, 2008.
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on October 24th, 2008 Newsbriefs SRIHARIKOTA, Oct 23 (IPS) - With the successful launch of its maiden, unmanned mission to the moon, India has signalled growing confidence as an emerging Asian space power, ready to rub shoulders with Japan and China. Asia itself is following the lunar footsteps of western countries and analysts see the Chinese and Indian space missions as the Asian equivalent of the rivalry between the United States and the former Soviet Union for space glory four decades ago. Japan launched its first lunar orbiter Hiten in 1990 and China sent up its Change-1 orbiter is September 2007. . Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on October 24th, 2008
FrontPageMagazine.com | Thursday, October 23, 2008
On October 21, a U.S. Court of Appeals moved to block the immediate release of 17 Chinese Muslims from Guantanamo Bay, overturning a federal judge’s order this June to set the men free after seven years in detention. The legal controversy surrounding their detention serves as an occasion to reflect on the status of China’s Muslim Uighur minority, which makes up an estimated 1 to 2 percent of the China’s population, and which remains little-understood in the West.
First and foremost, the Chinese government considers the country’s 8.5 million Uighurs a threat to national security. Earlier this week, for instance, Chinese authorities declared that most of its domestic Muslim terrorists – that is, the Uighur – have close ties with similar groups operating base camps in Pakistan, which borders China’s northwest Xinjiang province.
Also this week, the Chinese government issued mug shots of eight Uighurs suspected in attacks prior to this summer’s Beijing Olympics, when Uighur separatists struck Chinese targets over a dozen times. Those attacks included a brazen assault on a police station that left sixteen officers dead. All the suspects are alleged members of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), which the U.N. says is a terrorist group linked to al-Qaeda. Rohan Gunaratna, who heads the Singapore-based International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research, recently said that there is overwhelming evidence that Uighur terrorists are being trained at ETIM camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Gunaratna reports that a village “exclusively for the Uighurs” has been built in the White Mountains of Afghanistan near Jalalabad and the Pakistan border.
These warnings underscore China’s mutually suspicious relationship with its Uighur minority. Residing in the north-west Chinese province of Xinjiang, the Uighur’s are Turkic Muslims. Their language is closer to Turkish than to Chinese, and their women often wear burkas. The Uighurs have never accepted Communist rule, so a cycle of sporadic unrest and subsequent crackdowns by Chinese authorities has persisted for decades. Of these the most recent came after the August Olympics, when the Chinese government waited until the Western media had decamped to crack down on the Uighurs.
The government’s suspicions of the Muslims in its midst have been heightened by the Uighur’s ties to radical Islamic groups and charities. Out of concerns that Xinjiang’s mosques have been financed by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, Chinese authorities have closely monitored Uighur places of worship.
This year, during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the government implemented strict rules governing all aspects of Uighur religious life. Henceforth, according to a recent report out of Xinjiang province, “official versions” of the Koran will be the only legal ones; imams will be barred from teaching the Koran in private; the study of Arabic will be allowed only at special government schools; and Muslim students and government workers will be “compelled to eat” during the Ramadan fast. Those Uighurs wishing to make the hajj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, will be obligated to do so through government-run tours that are virtually unaffordable to the average Chinese Muslim.
Not surprisingly, the nation’s “official” Muslim spokesmen have tried to put their co-religionists’ situation in the most positive light. Chen Guangyuan, the president of the China Islamic Association, has claimed that Muslims in the country are enjoying a religious renewal. “Governments at various levels have attached great importance to religious issues, and have implemented financial policies to assist their development,” Chen has said. In his role as a government representative, Chen could hardly suggest otherwise.
Official repression is just one source of the tension between China and its Muslim minority. Another can be found in the Uighurs’ native Xinjiang province, which they share, in varying states of unease, with an almost equal number of Han Chinese. China’s dominant ethnic group, the Han have a different language and religion than the Uighurs and view their Muslim neighbors with suspicion. “The Uighurs are lazy,” one Han businessman was quoted as saying in the International Herald Tribune. “It’s because of their religion. They spend so much time praying. What are they praying for?” For their part, the Uighur have tended to see the Han as agents of the Chinese government. For instance, the Uighur accuse Beijing of encouraging Han settlement in Xinjiang as an intimidation tactic.
No one familiar with China’s oppression of Tibetan Buddhists and followers of the Falun Gong religious group will be surprised by its repressive treatment of the Uighurs. The discomforting question, however, is whether the government’s serial crackdowns are justified by the very real threat of Islamic terrorism.
Opinions differ. Groups like Human Rights Watch insist that the Uighur are blameless. They equate Uighur separatism with the peaceful Tibetan struggle for independence. But others are skeptical. Robert Spencer of JihadWatch urges skepticism toward Uighur groups’ claims that they “don’t espouse violence.” “They don’t espouse violence. They espouse Sharia,” Spencer observes. “Does China want to live under Sharia?”
This prospect seems highly unlikely, to be sure, since the Chinese government is crippled by no moral qualms about how to respond to terrorism. The Chinese Muslims being held in Guantanamo Bay would have been tortured and killed long ago had they been captured by the Chinese instead of the Americans. In fact, this was the main argument against repatriating them to China after all these years.
Still, the Guantanamo detainees’ case suggests that Spencer is right to caution against romantic depictions of Uighurs as noble victims of Chinese oppression. Although they are not considered a threat to the United States, the Uighurs at Guantanamo are suspected members of the ETIM terror group and reportedly received weapons training in Afghanistan. That fact does not justify all of the repressive measures that China has taken against its Muslim minority, but it does indicate that Chinese suspicions about their Islamic countrymen are not entirely unjustified.
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on October 23rd, 2008 REEEP announces Call for Proposals for EUR 4.3 million in grant funding.
To increase operational efficiency and to increase transparency and openness, all proposals will be submitted for evaluation via REEEP’s new on-line Programme Management Information System (PMIS). Dr. Marianne Osterkorn, REEEP International Director stated that the partnership can now add value across a number of areas. “We are grateful to all REEEP donors – UK, Norway, Ireland and Italy and we welcome the new donor Australia to the REEEP programme. We look forward to working with Australia to support the Pacific Islands to develop local energy sources and helping their quest for energy security. We also look forward to intensifying our engagement with governments and development financial institutions to increase the chances of investments in sustainable energy infrastructure “. Agata Gago Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on October 21st, 2008
OK, WE ARE BULLISH BECAUSE WE BELIEVE THAT BY NOVEMBER 5, 2008, WE WILL BE TALKING ABOUT THE SIMULTANEOUS ATTACK ON THE SEVERAL CRISES THAT MR. G.W. Permalink | |
