How to Survive the Triple Whammy of Energy, Food and Climate Crises

By John Feffer, Foreign Policy in Focus
Posted on August 5, 2008, Printed on August 11, 2008

 essay originally appeared in TomDispatch, a website run by Tom Engelhardt and associated with The Nation magazine.

Gas prices are above $4 a gallon; global food prices surged 39% last year; and an environmental disaster looms as carbon emissions continue to spiral upward. The global economy appears on the verge of a TKO, a triple whammy from energy, agriculture, and climate-change trends. Right now you may be grumbling about the extra bucks you’re shelling out at the pump and the grocery store; but, unless policymakers begin to address all three of these trends as one major crisis, it could get a whole lot worse.

Just ask the North Koreans.

In the 1990s, North Korea was the world’s canary. The famine that killed as much as 10% of the North Korean population in those years was, it turns out, a harbinger of the crisis that now grips the globe — though few saw it that way at the time.

That small Northeast Asian land, one of the last putatively communist countries on the planet, faced the same three converging factors as we do now — escalating energy prices, a reduction in food supplies, and impending environmental catastrophe. At the time, of course, all the knowing analysts and pundits dismissed what was happening in that country as the inevitable breakdown of an archaic economic system presided over by a crackpot dictator.

They were wrong. The collapse of North Korean agriculture in the 1990s was not the result of backwardness. In fact, North Korea boasted one of the most mechanized agricultures in Asia. Despite claims of self-sufficiency, the North Koreans were actually heavily dependent on cheap fuel imports. (Does that already ring a bell?) In their case, the heavily subsidized energy came from Russia and China, and it helped keep North Korea’s battalion of tractors operating. It also meant that North Korea was able to go through fertilizer, a petroleum product, at one of the world’s highest rates. When the Soviets and Chinese stopped subsidizing those energy imports in the late 1980s and international energy rates became the norm for them, too, the North Koreans had a rude awakening.

Like the globe as a whole, North Korea does not have a great deal of arable land — it can grow food on only about 14% of its territory. (The comparable global figure for arable land is about 13%.) With heavy applications of fertilizer and pesticides, North Koreans coaxed a lot of food out of a little land. By the 1980s, however, the soil was exhausted, and agricultural production was declining. So spiking energy prices hit an economy already in crisis. Desperate to grow more food, the North Korean government instructed farmers to cut down trees, stripping hillsides to bring more land into cultivation.

Big mistake. When heavy rains hit in 1995, this dragooning of marginal lands into agricultural production only amplified the national disaster. The resulting flooding damaged more than 40% of the country’s rice paddy fields. Torrential rains washed away topsoil, while rocks and sand, dislodged from hillsides, ruined low-lying fields. The rigid economic structures in North Korea were unable to cope with the triple assault of bad weather, soaring energy, and declining food production. Nor did dictator Kim Jong Il’s political decisions make things any better.

But the peculiarities of North Korea’s political economy did not cause the devastating famine that followed. Highly centralized planning and pretensions to self-reliance only made the country prematurely vulnerable to trends now affecting the rest of the planet.

As with the North Koreans, our dependency on relatively cheap energy to run our industrialized agriculture and our smokestack industries is now mixing lethally with food shortages and the beginnings of climate overload, pushing us all toward the precipice. In the short term, we face a food crisis and an energy crisis. Over the longer term, this is certain to expand into a much larger climate crisis. No magic wand, whether biofuels, genetically modified organisms (GMO), or geoengineering, can make the ogres disappear.

After the attacks of September 11, 2001, “We are all Americans” briefly became a popular expression of solidarity around the world. If we don’t devise policy choices that address energy, agriculture, and climate, while replacing the idolatry of unrestrained growth at the heart of both capitalist and communist economies, the tagline for the 21st century may be: “We are all North Koreans.”

Through a Glass Darkly

For years, development experts have bemoaned the declining terms of trade that have kept some developing countries, and most poor farmers, mired in poverty. With the exception of the first energy crisis era in the 1970s, between the end of World War II and 2006, food prices never stopped sinking in relation to manufactured goods. Lower food prices are generally a boon for consumers. But they are devastating for the small farmers who make up the vast majority of the world’s poor.

However, over the past three years, according to the World Bank, food prices have increased 83%. That may be only an annoyance for wealthy shoppers, but for the poor, who often devote more than 50% of their incomes to feeding their families, such staggering rises can be the difference between life and death.

There are a number of reasons for this recent spike. The price of oil, now near $140 a barrel, has certainly played a crucial role in this, both by driving inflation generally and because of its importance to modern, large-scale agriculture. So has the recent allocation of ever more agricultural land to biofuel production. U.S. farmers, responsible for 70% of all world corn exports, now dispatch one-fifth of their corn to ethanol production, which has had the effect of nearly doubling the price of corn.

Global warming, too, has had an impact. Drought in Australia and the eastern United States, severe flooding in China and Bangladesh, rising ocean levels and fresh water shortages throughout the world are all thought to be related to climate change, though climate scientists cannot prove that any given weather anomaly is caused by global warming. Climate scientists can be fuzzy this way about causality in the short term. Paradoxically, however, they often see the future more clearly. For instance, the top global food policy think-tank, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), predicts that global warming will be responsible for a 16% decrease in agricultural gross domestic product globally by 2020. The Center for Global Development argues that developing countries, in particular, will be hit hard by climate change: By 2080, India, its report argues, will see a staggering 30-40% drop in agricultural production and Senegal will plummet 50%.

In the United States, a much-anticipated, Bush-administration-delayed federal study foresees water shortages, more herbicide-resistant weeds, and more insect infestations as a result of climbing temperatures. The present food crisis, concludes Joachim von Braun of the IFPRI, “foreshadows what climate change will bring us.”

The other major driver of food price increases is certainly rising income levels in key developing countries. With more income, people can, of course, eat more, and eat higher off the hog — or, put another way, they can eat hog in the first place, rather than the lentils or cassava on which they were subsisting.

Over a decade ago, Lester Brown, the founder of World Watch, suggested that just such a crisis was on the way. He asked whether the world could possibly produce enough grain to feed a more prosperous China. Now, growing middle classes in China and India, the world’s most populous countries, are, just as he predicted, changing their eating habits and consuming more meat (and so, indirectly, a great deal more grain, which is used to feed the animals they are now cooking).

Lester Brown was ahead of the curve, but there were ample warning signs of an impending food crisis for those ready to see them. Oil prices have been steadily increasing since 2004 as a result of rising demand. They have been helped along greatly by growing chaos in the Middle East, fed by the Bush administration’s foolhardy invasion of Iraq.

Like the North Koreans, we, too, have been trying to squeeze more food out of a limited amount of land: arable land per capita is declining at a steady rate. Falling water tables and dry rivers — think climate change again — have no less surely pointed to a coming crunch for farmers dependent on irrigation. And don’t forget: Critics of biofuels warned time and again that there wasn’t enough elasticity in the food supply to take food out of the mouths of people in the Global South in order to fill the gas tanks of the Global North.

Back in the early 1990s, the North Korean leadership failed to grasp the correlation between rising oil prices, declining food stocks, and environmental stresses — and the political pundits and politicians of the planet conveniently wrote off the resulting catastrophe as uniquely the fault of the world’s weirdest country. Instead of taking a timely hint, wealthier governments simply shrugged off the warnings of scientists, development professionals, and energy specialists about future crises.

Responding to Riots

There’s nothing like a food riot, however, to get wealthy governments to sit up and take notice. Humanitarian organizations and aid officials may be concerned about people quietly starving to death in remote locations, but only when world security suddenly seems threatened and governments totter do rising food prices translate into a full-blown crisis. Washington, for example, woke up when riots broke out in Egypt, Haiti, and Indonesia, and the militaries in Pakistan and Thailand intervened to protect crops and storage facilities.

In response to the sudden crisis splatting on the global windshield, the United Nations food aid agency, the World Food Program, called for $755 million in emergency contributions. Saudi Arabia, its coffers flooded with oil profits, promptly promised $500 million. The World Bank then announced that it was increasing its overall support of global agriculture by $2 billion in 2009, while Washington offered $5 billion in food aid over the next two years.

Such an emergency response may, indeed, be necessary, but it is also distinctly inadequate. The Director-General of the U.N.’s Food and Agricultural Organization, Jacques Diouf, has called for a minimum of $30 billion a year for a global agricultural restructuring. It’s not at all clear who will pony up such sums, which, in any case, will be too late for countries like Haiti whose subsistence farmers needed help before their most recent growing seasons started. Most importantly, though, as an approach, it’s too conventional and, in the long run, bound to fail.

After all, the wealthiest countries continue to show little or no interest in altering the policies that have contributed so decisively to the food crisis in the first place. Take the United States. It “ties” — places restrictions on — about 70% of its aid. That means recipient countries must use that aid to buy U.S. products, which, of course, will do little to strengthen local economies. Washington has also cut its international agricultural research by as much as 75% at a time when agricultural production is no longer keeping pace with population increases. Add in the $280 billion farm bill that Congress has just passed which, unbelievably enough, provides continued subsidies to “farmers” (read: agribusiness) already benefiting enormously from high food prices. And the European Union, like the United States, is refusing to backtrack on its commitment to boost biofuels produced from grain.

Nor is there much hope for a new Green Revolution. While the campaign to disseminate modern, industrial agricultural techniques that began in the 1960s did increase food production, rural poverty in the developing world remained endemic (which is why the current food crisis is so devastating to subsistence farmers). Today, a repetition of that Revolution’s combo of hybrid seeds, intensive irrigation, and the heavy application of petroleum-based fertilizers holds little promise.

Water is scarcer. Oil (and thus fertilizer) is considerably more expensive. The promised next stage of the Green Revolution, the application of biotech advances through genetically modified organisms to produce new, high-yield, insect-resistant crops, generally hasn’t lived up to its hype in the developing world.

Yet Western seed companies are taking advantage of the crisis to tout this particular high-tech solution. Oddly enough, all this is depressingly reminiscent of the North Korean leadership’s fascination with quick fixes in the 1990s. North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il, for instance, touted potatoes as a miracle crop, but the True Potato Seed project sponsored by the U.S. government never panned out. Giant rabbits produced by a German breeder as a newfangled North Korean livestock were a dead-end, probably because the animals themselves consumed as much food as they ultimately yielded. A variety of high-yield “supercorn” hasn’t yet revolutionized North Korean agriculture. Neither in North Korea nor in the world at large has anyone yet figured out a technical shortcut to permanent cornucopia.

Markets to the Rescue?

Perhaps the most conventional approach to the crisis has been to rely on market mechanisms. Consider the International Food Policy Research Institute, a product of the Green Revolution and its leading booster, and its eight-point plan for solving the crisis. Several of the steps are eminently sensible, such as expanding humanitarian assistance to food-challenged countries, reversing biofuel policies, and investing in social programs such as school feeding programs and health care. In the mix, however, are more of the same old market mantras. IFPRI recommends, for instance, the elimination of the export bans which 40 countries, including India and Indonesia, recently implemented to keep food from flowing out of the country through trade. And it has tried to revive a dead horse by urging further World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations to reduce barriers to global trade in agricultural products.

Pundits and policymakers addressing food problems have called for the elimination of government regulations and tariffs ever since England repealed its Corn Laws in the 1840s. In the last quarter century, the removal of trade restrictions of every sort facilitated greater agricultural production globally. Free trade helped large producers grow more and sell it cheaper abroad. But free trade hasn’t helped the rural poor — or poor countries.

Quite the opposite. The increased concentration of corporate farming and the dismantling of state programs that sustained the agricultural sector have driven small farmers out of business all over the planet, while making many of those who remain ever more dependent on expensive chemical pesticides, fertilizer, and seeds. For instance, as a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement, Mexico lost 1.3 million agricultural jobs, forcing many desperate small farmers to cross into the United States as migrant workers. Even more strikingly, the continent of Africa went from a net exporter of food in the late 1960s to a net importer today — thanks to the World Bank and the WTO riding roughshod through the continent in the same cavalry unit as the four horsemen of the apocalypse. The Bank’s “structural adjustment programs” and the WTO’s “tariff reductions” don’t quite have the ring of war, pestilence, famine, and death, but they have been just as devastating.

The quest for perfect markets usually conceals a global shell game in which wealth is redistributed from the many to the few. To even the playing field that markets constantly tilt in favor of the powerful, and to direct funds toward environmental sustainability, governments need to intervene in the economy.

After all, private enterprise is not going to invest in the large-scale improvement of rural infrastructure — the capital costs are high and profit margins far too low. More controversially, developing countries may need to maintain, or even reestablish, tariffs and subsidies to protect local producers. Since it is both sold and consumed, food should be considered a strategic resource, a matter of national security. It should be left out of trade negotiations in the same way that the “national security exception” allows governments to subsidize and protect their military industries as they please.

On Being Canaries

Any response that doesn’t address all three converging trends — rising energy costs, stagnant per-capita agricultural production, and climate change — will ultimately fail, just as it did in North Korea in the early 1990s. Land, energy, and the biosphere are limited resources. And it’s not only a peak in oil that we may be approaching. The depletion of oil resources and the urgent need to reduce carbon emissions from their current levels have at least entered mainstream discussion. Less well known, however, are the problems of peak land and peak water.

The last time food prices shot up, in the 1970s, the U.S. response was to put more land into agricultural production. This was the infamous “fencerow-to-fencerow” policy of Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz that Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, has linked to the glut of corn — and corn syrup — that has so profoundly affected global diets. But re-Butzing American agriculture is no longer an option. “For the first time in our history, we’re pushing up against the edge in terms of quality land,” says Otto Doering, a professor of agricultural economics at Purdue University. ” “We’re in a somewhat fixed box.”

The same applies to the world at large. Although rainforests are still being transformed into farming plots and pasture — only increasing carbon emissions into the atmosphere — humanity is reaching the limits of arable land. Chalk it up to urbanization, climate change-caused drought, and a loss of soil fertility through the application of too much fertilizer. Whether forest or farmland, we are losing productive land at a rate of one hectare every 7.67 seconds. Sure, there’s some wiggle room in Africa and Latin America, but bringing this additional land into cultivation will buy us only a little time — at the expense of the overall environment.

The water situation is even more precarious. The world is facing a declining reserve of fresh water with the depletion of underground reserves in India, China, Africa, and even the United States. (Say goodbye to the Midwest’s mighty Ogallala aquifer, which nourishes America’s breadbasket). Aside from the 1.1 billion people who already lack safe drinking water, according to the U.N., this crisis threatens farming, which monopolizes 70% of all fresh water.

Global temperature increases will only aggravate the situation. Rising oceans will inflict death-by-salt on increasing amounts of low-lying farmland, while drought dries up once fertile farming regions. Any intensification of the Green Revolution, dependent as it is on chemical fertilizer and irrigation, is only likely to add to the problem. And don’t count on the oceans to offset the food that will no longer be grown on land. The catch of wild fish has remained pretty much the same since the mid-1980s, and fish farming, too, requires land, water, and energy.

In the long run, the only realistic response is a comprehensive program to address, in tandem, the triple crises of energy, climate, and land and water resource exhaustion. If policymakers take into consideration only one, or even two, of the components of this trinity, they may well end up doing more harm than good. The making of biofuels from corn, for instance, was an attempt to address the problems of the cost of energy and the dangers of climate change, but it neglected to consider the effect on agricultural production — hence, the disastrously soaring price of corn. Calls for the next phase of a Green Revolution, which address agricultural production, are guaranteed to play havoc with the energy and water crises.

Such partial approaches don’t work largely because they assume unlimited resources. The original sin of unrestrained growth can be found in the economic theologies of both communism and capitalism. In these systems, neither the state nor the market has ever operated according to ecological principles. Now, we must quickly explore ways of boosting agricultural production in fundamentally sustainable ways without, somehow, expanding our carbon footprint.

Certainly organic farming will play a role here. Although Green Revolution guru Norman Borlaug has dismissed organic agriculture as incapable of feeding the world, an important new study published by Cambridge University Press shows that organic systems in developing countries can produce 80% more than conventional farms.

Integrated farming systems that rely on sustainable energy — solar, wind, tidal — will also be critical. No-till agriculture can cut down on energy use and soil erosion.

While properly wary of snake-oil salesmen, neither can we afford to be Luddites. New technologies will play a role as well, as long as they reduce fertilizer and pesticide use, don’t shackle debt-ridden farmers to major seed companies, and meet strict consumer safety requirements.

Even if global food prices stabilize this year and projections of a record grain harvest hold, the underlying problems will remain.

So it was with North Korea. With emergency assistance, the country pulled back from the brink by 2000. In 2008, however, it is again in a serious food crisis, thanks to high energy prices, flooding, and a shortfall in last year’s grain harvest. Once again, North Korea is the world’s canary. As we sit in the dark in the deep hole that we’ve dug for ourselves, will we finally heed its warning?

John Feffer is co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus.

© 2008 Foreign Policy in Focus All rights reserved.

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Let the diplomatic Beijing Games begin… but which leaders are taking part?
The Independent - Thursday, 7 August 2008.

(Photo) Torchbearer Yao Ming of the Houston Rockets basketball team holds the torch as he runs through the Tiananmen Gate during the 2008 Beijing Olympics torch relay.

WHO’S COMING!

*George Bush

A quiet confirmation from the White House on Independence Day helped turn the tide for China. Mr Bush is believed to have accepted a personal invitation from his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao, and Japan and Russia quickly followed suit. He said a snub would insult the people of China. Covering his bases, Mr Bush got his criticism of Beijing out of the way yesterday.

*Sonia Gandhi

When it came to its rival developing superpower, China did not send an invitation to either the Indian head of state Pratibha Patil or Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, inviting instead Sonia Gandhi, the Italian-born head of India’s Congress Party and widow of the assassinated prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. She wasted little time in accepting.

*Nicolas Sarkozy

Unsurprisingly he has been the one to generate the most controversy. First flirted publicly with a boycott before thinking harder about the true cost of such a snub. Later realised that selling the Airbus and nuclear technology were greater priorities – whatever his human rights critics said. And he’s curried favour by shying away from meeting the Dalai Lama during the Games.

*Kevin Rudd

The Australian Prime Minister has told the Chinese some awkward truths in their own language. The former diplomat and Mandarin speaker called on Beijing to engage with the Dalai Lama in March and followed it up with a candid visit in April. He stopped short of boycotting the opener in a move which might have threatened trade links.

———————

Who’s not going:

*Gordon Brown

He is a realist over relations with China, having agreed fresh trade deals with Beijing this year, but he was unable to resist the temptation to hint at dissent and opted to stay away from the opening ceremony after the crackdown in Tibet. Mr Brown insists the two are not connected. For a politician in his parlous situation, he might regret opting for the closing ceremony instead.

*Angela Merkel

The most straightforward of Europe’s leaders on issues that China finds uncomfortable, she risked the ire of Beijing by welcoming the Dalai Lama to Berlin last year – something her predecessor Gerhard Schröder hadn’t dared to do. She has been equally blunt in pointing out that the Olympic opener clashes with her holiday, so she will not be attending.

*Stephen Harper

Canada’s prime minister appeared to be swimming with the mainstream when he confirmed in April that he would not attend the Bird’s Nest show. Looking around the G8 he had the Italians, Germans, Brits and, he thought, the US with him. A few months later the snub looks more costly and Canada’s trade minister has been forced to assure the public that it won’t hit exports.

*Hans Gert-Pöttering

The president of the European Parliament is the only leading political figure to formally boycott the ceremony. Without a trade portfolio to defend – or at least with others to do that job, he felt free to take a stand over China’s treatment of the Dalai Lama. It remains a moot point whether the invitation list ever included the German politician.

———————–

And who wasn’t welcome !!!!

*Robert Mugabe

The embattled Zimbabwean leader got his refusal in first, saying that talks to resolve the political crisis prevented him from going. However, Beijing had already made it clear in private that he was not wanted. While Mr Mugabe does not usually do as he is told, he was not willing to embarrass his Chinese backers, at a time when he needs them more than ever.

*Omar Al-Bashir

While he has been indicted by the International Criminal Court, he has not been invited by Beijing. The Sudanese leader can count on Chinese support so long as he keeps the oil exports coming, but his is not a friendship Beijing wants to project. Darfur has been rivalled only by Tibet as a negative factor in China’s international image.

*Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

The unpredictable Iranian leader was among the few leaders the rest regard as a pariah who was offered a seat at Beijing. He politely refused the invitation in May but said he might show up for the Paralympics. Despite Tehran’s insistence to the contrary, some sources insist that China had made an offer it wanted the man in Tehran to refuse.

*Kim Jong-Il

It’s hard to know whether the North Korean leader’s decision to stay at home has been greeted with greater relief in Beijing or Washington. A public encounter with Kim was not a prospect to thrill the White House – or his South Korean counterpart. Instead, his right-hand man Kim Yong Nam will be a “guest of honour”.

Sunday, Aug. 3, 2008

Fukuda vows action on oil, terror: Anticlimactic Cabinet reshuffle casts doubt on prime minister’s ability to tackle tough issues

By MASAMI ITO
Staff writer Japan Times online.

Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda vowed to tackle pressing issues like surging oil prices and participation in the “war on terrorism” as his new Cabinet was officially launched at an attestation ceremony at the Imperial Palace on Saturday.

New crew: Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda and his new Cabinet head for a photo session after holding their first Cabinet meeting at the Prime Minister’s Official Residence on Saturday.

“I will give everything I’ve got in building a government that puts itself in the people’s shoes, a foundation in which people can live without worry, and an economic society in which the people can feel affluence,” Fukuda said in a statement. “And at the same time I will do my best to contribute to the peace and stability of the world and resolve the global environmental issues.”

On diplomacy, Fukuda stressed the importance of a strong Japanese-U.S. alliance but also vowed to create an open relationship to work “together” with Asia-Pacific countries.

“As a nation that actively cooperates to realize peace, I will cooperate with the international society in the ‘war on terrorism,’ ” Fukuda’s statement said, adding that he will also devote himself to resolving the North Korea’s nuclear, missile and abduction issues.

***

The key issue for the upcoming extraordinary Diet session is whether Fukuda and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party will forcefully extend the Maritime Self Defense Force’s activities in the Indian Ocean to refuel multinational naval ships engaged in counterterrorism operations.

The special antiterrorism law that enables the MSDF activities will expire in January.

The LDP’s coalition partner, New Komeito, is backed by Japan’s largest lay Buddhist organization Soka Gakkai. As an advocate of peace, it has been expressing increasing reluctance to help the LDP force the extension through the Diet.

“As a ‘peace-cooperating nation,’ I will promote international cooperation like peacekeeping operations, antiterrorism measures and rehabilitation aid,” Fukuda told a news conference Friday evening after the reshuffle. The comments were interpreted as an intention to extend the refueling activities.

***

On domestic issues, Fukuda especially expressed concern over the recent surge in prices and the aging society due to a low birth rate.

“To solve the two issues, we need to continue economic growth for more employment and an increase in income,” Fukuda said.

On Friday evening, Fukuda reshuffled his Cabinet for the first time since he was appointed prime minister in a bid to boost the stagnant support rate of his Cabinet. Most of his previous Cabinet ministers were selected by Fukuda’s nationalistic predecessor Shinzo Abe, who quit abruptly last September.

Despite calls from within the LDP to have Fukuda choose his own ministers, Fukuda continued on for 10 months mostly with Abe’s handpicked ministers.

But critics say that despite strong expectations, Fukuda’s picks were not that exciting and that is doubtful the new Cabinet lineup will give Fukuda the public support he needs to proceed.

Four ministers were retained, including Machimura and Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura. Three of the previous LDP executive members including former Secretary General Bunmei Ibuki were given ministerial posts.

————-

Sunday, Aug. 3, 2008

Sub developed radioactive leak in Sasebo: U.S.
Tainted water not dangerous but delay in report angers city officials.

Compiled from Kyodo, Staff report

WASHINGTON — A U.S. Navy submarine began leaking water with trace amounts of radioactivity during a port call in late March in Sasebo, Nagasaki Prefecture, U.S. Navy officials said Friday. - Leaving a trail: The Los Angeles-class fast attack submarine USS Houston UNITED STATES NAVY.

The leak was found on the USS Houston, a Los Angeles-class fast attack submarine, after it went to Hawaii for routine maintenance last month, the officials said, confirming a CNN television report earlier.

The officials said the amount of radiation leaked into the water was very low, but the Navy alerted the Japanese government on Friday (Japan time) because the submarine had docked in Sasebo during its travels around the Pacific.

The incident comes at a time when the Navy is trying to smooth over a problem with a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the USS George Washington, which is due to replace the aging, conventionally powered Kitty Hawk this summer as the sole U.S. carrier based in Japan.

In Tokyo, the Foreign Ministry said Saturday it was notified by the Navy that the radiation has “no effects on the environment and human bodies,” with a senior Japanese official saying it is “not a level that should be deemed problematic.”

The ministry, however, came under fire for not disclosing the information sooner after the U.S. government notified it about the leak Friday afternoon in Japan.

The ministry did not communicate it to the concerned local governments because “we judged there was no need to immediately report it since it would not have any impact on humans,” an official said.

The ministry reported the finding on Saturday morning to Sasebo and to Okinawa Prefecture, where U.S. warships make frequent port calls, after the CNN report. But it also said the notifications had nothing to do with the media report.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura said about the delay that it is “not good that a media report came earlier.”

“I believe the Foreign Ministry should report a matter of this kind immediately to the prime minister’s office and make it public when it is notified by the U.S. government, because it concerns ‘radioactivity,”‘ Machimura said.

Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura told a news conference that a delay in reporting is “inadmissible.”

Komura said that he became aware of the incident through reports on CNN Saturday morning and immediately ordered appropriate measures to be taken.

“I watched the report on CNN and contacted the ministry” for details, Komura said, expressing regret over the delay of communication.

“Exchange of information should have taken place earlier,” Komura told reporters.

***

Sasebo and Okinawa were notified of the leak only after orders from the minister were made.

***

The Houston crisscrossed the western Pacific from March to June, spending a week in Sasebo in late March and stopping over at its home base in Guam and Hawaii from May to June.

The total amount leaked while it docked in Sasebo, Guam and Hawaii is estimated at less than half a microcurie and has no adverse effects on the environment and crew, the Navy officials said. One microcurie is one millionth of a curie.

***

The problem was discovered July 24 after the sub underwent a regular maintenance check in Hawaii, the officials said, adding that the water had not been in direct contact with the nuclear reactor and that a crew member who was exposed to the water proved to be unaffected.

The Navy reported the case to health authorities in Hawaii on July 25, meaning that a report to the Japanese government came a week later.

The latest development came after a large-scale fire broke out on the George Washington while en route to Japan in May. The fire was traced to crew members smoking near improperly stored flammable materials.

While there was no damage or threat to the nuclear reactor, the ship was diverted to San Diego for repairs. It is now expected to arrive in Yokosuka, Japan at the end of September.

The Navy this week fired the captain and his deputy, saying an investigation into the fire led to a lack of confidence in the leadership of both men.

U.N. admits “significant” Myanmar exchange rate loss.
Tue Jul 29, 2008
By Louis Charbonneau and Megan Davies, Reuters, Tuesday, July 29, 2008, based on reporting by Matthew Russell Lee on Inner City Press (ICP), and reposted by the UN WIRE of the UN Foundation.

 http://www.smartbrief.com/alquemie/servl…

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The top U.N. humanitarian affairs official said on Monday the world body had suffered “significant” losses while delivering cyclone aid to Myanmar due to a distorted official exchange rate.

Earlier this month, the United Nations issued an appeal for more than $300 million (150.5 million pounds) in extra aid to cope with the effects of Cyclone Nargis that struck the Irrawaddy Delta region in early May, leaving around 140,000 people dead or missing.

Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes told reporters the United Nations has lost about $10 million in currency exchanges so far as it pays for a variety of goods and services in Myanmar.

“We were arguably a bit slow to recognize … how serious a problem this has become for us,” Holmes said, adding the loss was “significant” and that the spread between the market and official rates widened suddenly in June.

“It’s not acceptable,” he added. (THAT IS MR. HOLMES OF THE UN.)

The loss comes from a complicated system whereby the United Nations uses foreign exchange certificates with a nominal value of $1 each that are then exchanged for the local currency, the kyat, at a rate set by Myanmar’s military government.

The market rate for kyats is around 1,100 per dollar but the U.N. rate is now around 880, according to the Inner City Press  www.innercitypress.com), a blog that covers the United Nations and first raised the currency exchange issue.

Holmes said the United Nations did not include the issue of the exchange rate losses in the appeal documents because U.N. officials “were not aware of the extent of the loss.”

Holmes, who spoke at the United Nations after returning from a trip to the Irrawaddy Delta, said relief efforts were improving, with almost everyone affected by the cyclone now having been reached with items like food or shelter.

A revised appeal for aid of $482 million had raised about $200 million so far, he said, adding that initial indications from donors were “quite positive.”

He later said he was not aware of any countries refusing to contribute because of the currency loss but that donors were only just realizing themselves the extent of the problems.

Withdrawing aid would only hurt the people of the Delta who needed help, he said.

OVERVALUED EXCHANGE RATE

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said he was looking into the issue.

“Of course we are against any waste of resources that taxpayers around the world and member states provide to meet the needs of people around the world,” he said on the sidelines of a Security Council meeting on unrelated issues.

Inner City Press reported last week the junta changed the official exchange rate since the cyclone so that the estimated loss of the United Nations had risen to 25 percent from 15 percent on the spread between the official and market rates.

It reported on Monday that an internal memorandum showed the United Nations was aware of the problem in June.

The International Monetary Fund raised the issue of what it described as Myanmar’s distorted official exchange rate in a report in November 2007.

{ www.SustainabiliTank.info raised the issue way back in 2006 and this was one of the reasons that when the UNSG for Communications and Public Information (the UN DPI) was changed by the incoming new UNSG Ban Ki-moon, our accreditation with the UN DPI was withdrawn - the UN just was not ready to accept our line of questioning. We wondered for how long this suppression of facts will continue, and are now gratified that changes are forthcoming. We hope therefore that with a new US President there might be a higher demand for the truth also at the UN. we know that here, like at the US Supreme Court, changes will have to grow organically - so the world will still have to do with the present conditions for a long time to come. }

“The use of the highly overvalued official exchange rate for conversion purposes results in understatement of external trade and the foreign component of consumption, government expenditures, and investment,” the IMF said in the report said then the IMF.

Holmes said it was unclear where the exchange rate losses were going and who specifically was benefiting.

“I’m not saying that there isn’t some benefit to the government in the spread somewhere — the likelihood is that there is,” Holmes said.

{YES, EVENTUALLY THE UN WILL START SEEING WHERE THESE MONEYS WERE GOING - WE ARE CONFIDENT THAT A PERSON OF HOLME’S STATURE WILL BE CAPABLE OF SEEING THE DARKNESS IN HIS TUNNELS - WILL THE TAXPAYERS IN THE DONOR COUNTRIES SPEAK UP? FACE IT, EVEN CHARITIES END UP BEING BAILED OUT BY THE SIMPLE JOE WHO PAYS THE TAXES - MOST NGO CHARITIES ARE TAX DEDUCTIBLE - SO PLEASE THERE IS NO BAMBOOZLE HERE. }

The 10-member ASEAN comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. They are joined by Japan, China and South Korea in the ASEAN Plus Three talks. This is the 13 member Asian cover.

The East Asia Summit involves these 13 plus Australia, New Zealand and India.

Then comes the ARF - Asean Regional Forum -  that includes these 16 and Canada, North Korea, Russia, the U.S., the EU and others - so here we get the whole Eurasian world with the addition of the US and Canada, and with the exclusion of Africa, Latin America and the Small Island States.

The ASEAN Regional Forum will meet in Singapore on this Thursday - on Thursday - July 24, 2008.

The series of meetings hosted by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, is held annually in the summer to prepare for the leaders’ Summit later in the year that will focus mainly on food and security, disaster management, economic conditions and climate change issues, Japanese Foreign Ministry officials said in Tokyo.

The ARF now will place specific emphasis on security issues, particularly disaster relief, counterterrorism, maritime security, and nonproliferation and disarmament, according to the officials.

The whole onion reminds us of what went on under the cover of the runnup to the Hokkaido G8 meetings earlier this month. This time, the Summit will include only the 13 States that amount to the 11 Asian States including India and the auxiliaries from Australia - New Zealand. This Summit will leave out the TransAtlantic party goers.

Breakthrough on N. Korea nukes unlikely during Bush administration.
Further breakthroughs with North Korea on the issue of nuclear disarmament will most likely have to wait until the next U.S. president’s administration. Not only are incentives or deterrents increasingly unlikely options for U.S. President George W. Bush, who has six months left in office, but it is doubtful that North Korea will want to negotiate any long-term understanding on the eve of a new presidency. Los Angeles Times  (7/10)  http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/…

David Ignatius: Iran’s answer is “maybe.”
Iran’s mixed messages on nuclear disarmament signal the central animating debate in Iranian politics: pragmatic and hard-line camps divide Tehran while compromise has won popular support. The Washington Post (7/10) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con…

 U.S., India nuclear deal faces time crunch, uncertainty.
India believes it has the political support necessary to move ahead with U.S. President George W. Bush’s proposed nuclear deal, but the need to gain approval from international organizations makes it unlikely U.S. legislators will take up the issue before the end of the legislative calendar — and Bush’s presidency. It is unclear how committed either of Bush’s potential replacements would be to closing the deal. Google/Associated Press (7/10)  http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hjHnP…