Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times
THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN - Anxious in America.

Published: June 29, 2008

Just a few months ago, the consensus view was that Barack Obama would need to choose a hard-core national-security type as his vice presidential running mate to compensate for his lack of foreign policy experience and that John McCain would need a running mate who was young and sprightly to compensate for his age. Come August, though, I predict both men will be looking for a financial wizard as their running mates to help them steer America out of what could become a serious economic tailspin.

I do not believe nation-building in Iraq is going to be the issue come November — whether things get better there or worse. If they get better, we’ll ignore Iraq more; if they get worse, the next president will be under pressure to get out quicker.

I think nation-building in America is going to be the issue. It’s the state of America now that is the most gripping source of anxiety for Americans, not Al Qaeda or Iraq. Anyone who thinks they are going to win this election playing the Iraq or the terrorism card — one way or another — is, in my view, seriously deluded. Things have changed.

Up to now, the economic crisis we’ve been in has been largely a credit crisis in the capital markets, while consumer spending has kept reasonably steady, as have manufacturing and exports. But with banks still reluctant to lend even to healthy businesses, fuel and food prices soaring and home prices declining, this is starting to affect consumers, shrinking their wallets and crimping spending. Unemployment is already creeping up and manufacturing creeping down.

The straws in the wind are hard to ignore: If you visit any car dealership in America today you will see row after row of unsold S.U.V.’s. And if you own a gas guzzler already, good luck. On Thursday, The Palm Beach Post ran an article on your S.U.V. options: “Continue to spend upward of $100 for a fill-up. Sell or trade in the vehicle for a fraction of the original cost. Or hold out and park the truck in the driveway for occasional use in hopes the market will turn around.” Just be glad you don’t own a bus. Montgomery County, Md., where I live, just announced that more children were going to have to walk to school next year to save money on bus fuel.

On top of it all, our bank crisis is not over. Two weeks ago, Goldman Sachs analysts said that U.S. banks may need another $65 billion to cover more write-downs of bad mortgage-related instruments and potential new losses if consumer loans start to buckle. Since President Bush came to office, our national savings have gone from 6 percent of gross domestic product to 1 percent, and consumer debt has climbed from $8 trillion to $14 trillion.

My fellow Americans: We are a country in debt and in decline — not terminal, not irreversible, but in decline. Our political system seems incapable of producing long-range answers to big problems or big opportunities. We are the ones who need a better-functioning democracy — more than the Iraqis and Afghans. We are the ones in need of nation-building. It is our political system that is not working.

I continue to be appalled at the gap between what is clearly going to be the next great global industry — renewable energy and clean power — and the inability of Congress and the administration to put in place the bold policies we need to ensure that America leads that industry.

“America and its political leaders, after two decades of failing to come together to solve big problems, seem to have lost faith in their ability to do so,” Wall Street Journal columnist Gerald Seib noted last week. “A political system that expects failure doesn’t try very hard to produce anything else.”

We used to try harder and do better. After Sputnik, we came together as a nation and responded with a technology, infrastructure and education surge, notes Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International. After the 1973 oil crisis, we came together and made dramatic improvements in energy efficiency. After Social Security became imperiled in the early 1980s, we came together and fixed it for that moment. “But today,” added Hormats, “the political system seems incapable of producing a critical mass to support any kind of serious long-term reform.”

If the old saying — that “as General Motors goes, so goes America” — is true, then folks, we’re in a lot of trouble. General Motors’s stock-market value now stands at just $6.47 billion, compared with Toyota’s $162.6 billion. On top of it, G.M. shares sank to a 34-year low last week.

That’s us. We’re at a 34-year low. And digging out of this hole is what the next election has to be about and is going to be about — even if it is interrupted by a terrorist attack or an outbreak of war or peace in Iraq.

We need nation-building at home, and we cannot wait another year to get started.

Vote for the candidate who you think will do that best. Nothing else matters.

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The following photo was part of the NYT article; “The Trouble With Markets for Carbon.” We were quite astonished because Green House Gasses and Carbon Particulates are very different issues - an unseen pollution that it is hard to explain to the un-initiated, and soot that you see with the naked eye and it makes the Eiffel Tower Vanish. We found the picture cute - but did not see its relation to the article. Was this a lack of understanding by the artistic director of the Times - or a plain symbol for the flussiness in the US?

News as per Agence France Press of Wednesday June 4, 2008 - posted on truthout.

World Leaders Struggle to Agree to Food Crisis Plan.

by: Michael Thurston, Agence France-Presse

Pakistani women struggle as they try to order food outside of a subsidized food store on the outskirts of Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Basic food and fuel prices have soared in Pakistan over the last months, causing many to depend on government subsidies to simply get by. (Photo by Emilio Morenatti of AP)

Rome (the location of the UN fight) - World leaders battled Wednesday to agree on how to tackle the global food crisis, making multi-billion dollar aid pledges but struggling to agree notably on biofuels, sources said.
In a draft of the final declaration to be agreed Thursday, obtained by AFP, they vowed to use “all means” to ease suffering of those left hungry and poor by soaring food prices.
But the draft, a final version of which is due to be agreed on Thursday, includes compromise language on the vexed issue of biofuels, which are promoted notably in the United States but criticized by others.
In what critics would likely see as ducking the issue, they agreed that biofuels present both “challenges and opportunities” — and say that more research is needed.
“We are convinced that in-depth studies are needed to ensure the production and use of biofuels is sustainable … taking into account the need to achieve and maintain food security,” adds the draft, which was still being worked on.
The wrangling over diplomatic language came after United Nations officials announced almost three billion dollars (2 billion euros) of new aid to help ease the food crisis, but UN chief Ban Ki-moon warned up to 20 billion dollars a year would be needed.
“We simply cannot afford to fail,” the UN Secretary General said at the food security summit in Rome, which is grappling with how to stop the crisis escalating. “Hundreds of millions of people expect no less.”
New funding totalling some 2.7 billion dollars was announced on the second day of the summit in Rome, where Ban has already demanded a 50 percent increase in food production by 2030.
Food prices have doubled in three years, according to the World Bank, sparking riots in Egypt and Haiti and in many African nations. Brazil, Vietnam, India and Egypt have all imposed food export restrictions.

John Holmes, head of the UN task force on the food crisis, said a “broad consensus” was building around an action plan, which is scheduled to be presented at a Group of Eight meeting in Japan later this month.
World Bank President Robert Zoellick called for the lifting of trade barriers that contribute to food price inflation.
“We need an international call to remove export bans and restrictions,” he said. “These controls encourage hoarding, drive up prices and hurt the poorest people around the world who are struggling to feed themselves,” he said.
Humanitarian charity Oxfam spokesman Alexander Woollcombe said that criticizing developing countries’ trade barriers distracted from the need for wealthy countries to re-examine their own trade policies.
“Rich countries would do better to focus on fixing their own policies instead of criticizing developing country governments,” he told AFP.
World leaders also agreed that food security must be taken into account in a long hoped-for new world trade accord, according to the draft declaration.
“We will strive to ensure that food agricultural trade and overall trade policies are conducive to fostering food security for all,” they said, referring to last-gasp efforts to agree a World Trade Organization (WTO) deal.

Former UN secretary general Kofi Annan put his signature Wednesday to a new initiative partnering the three UN food agencies with his Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).
“By unifying our efforts we can drastically step up our support for Africa’s smallholder farmers,” said Annan, stressing that the alliance would “focus on the small-scale farmer, not to run them out of business.” Buyers pick maize at a market on the outskirts of Nairobi
World Food Programme executive director Josette Sheeran announced the 1.2 billion dollars in new emergency aid. “With soaring food and fuel prices, hunger is on the march and we must act now,” Sheeran said in a statement.
The Islamic Development Bank would spend 1.5 billion dollars on agriculture in the poorest countries, FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf announced.

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Once more - hunger is imposed by US and EU policy that creates set-asides in order to decrease quantities of agricultural commodities in order to support the prices of those commodities.

Then they dump remaining surplus in developing countries, and are happy also to hand out food for free - obviously, using US/EU ships, NGOs, bureaucracies, consultants … So “our” economy is not at a total loss. There is money in hunger!

The result, agricultural production in the receiving countries is made “uneconomical” and their dependence on hand-outs perpetuated. - NOW THAT IS THE HONEST BACKGROUND TO THE ROME HIGH LEVEL FIASCO. Ahmedi-Nejad and Mugabe are there for further distraction.

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And then, also from the FAO meeting some much better news:

ROME - The rapidly growing global bio-energy industry escaped unscathed from a food summit on Thursday, but its wings must be clipped to stop fuel-from-food stoking world hunger, the UN envoy on the right to food said.

The conversion of foodstuffs like maize, sugar, soy and palm oil into biofuel was one of the most controversial issues at the June 3-5 summit, pitting biofuel giants, the United States and Brazil, against countries who fear its harmful effects.
Under pressure from Washington, a draft summit declaration avoided negative language on biofuels, instead saying they present “challenges and opportunities” and calling for an “international dialogue” on the issue. {this time a BRAVO even for Washington - and obviously for Brazil.}

Olivier De Schutter, an independent UN expert on the right to food, said countries opposed to biofuels had given in, rather than hold out against the pro-biofuel countries and risk sinking the broad declaration vowing to fight hunger.

“The final declaration says only one thing: we need to have a continued international dialogue on this issue,” De Schutter told Reuters on the sidelines of the Rome summit.

“That’s important in one way. It shows that agrofuels are now becoming part of the international agenda and that states may not act unilaterally in this domain,” he told Reuters.

The draft declaration was still being negotiated on Thursday evening, but there was no disagreement on the biofuel reference.

US Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer, who has defended a policy that will see about a quarter of US maize turned into ethanol production by 2022, said the summit declaration’s neutral language was acceptable to the United States.

De Schutter had lobbied the summit to call on the United States and the European Union to abandon policies promoting biofuel consumption — something he believes can still be achieved.

SOIL

“I think we should move towards a code of conduct that should, minimally, have the requirement that soil which is suitable to the cultivation of food should not be diverted to (grow) fuel beyond the current figures,” he said.

De Schutter’s predecessor, Jean Ziegler, caused a storm when he said using arable land to make fuel was a “crime against humanity”. The current UN food envoy may use more tempered language but his message was broadly the same.

“I am calling … for a freeze in any new investments in that kind of agrofuel which is directly competing with food.”

On the last day of the three-day summit, corn futures set record highs at the Chicago Board of Trade after rain delayed seeding the US crop.

But the United States, which has managed to increase its maize output and exports while growing its bioethanol production, maintains that biofuels contribute only about 3 percent of total global food inflation which has seen commodities’ prices double in the last couple of years.

“The reality is there is a basketfull of problems here that are causing food price increases and the majority of it is energy costs and increased consumption,” Schafer said.

That is an argument the big biofuel countries will have to continue to make as the sceptics push for global controls.

De Schutter said pressure would continue for a strict code of conduct, which could be negotiated at the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation which hosted the summit, to rein in biofuel, once considered a green alternative to oil.

“There is mounting scientific evidence that the use of energy to produce agrofuels, the use of water, the use of arable land is destructive to the environment, a threat to food security and feeding into speculation on the market,” he said.

 UN food summit hammers out plan for world’s hungry.

From Times Online, June 4, 2008 - Richard Owen in Rome.

President Lula da Silva of Brazil defended the use of biofuels, of which his country is a major producer.

Delegates to the UN summit on the world food crisis today began hammering out an emergency plan to reduce hunger and help Third World farmers despite often testy disagreement behind the scenes over the future of biofuels.

The three-day summit, convened by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), which is based in Rome, ends tomorrow, when the final communique will be issued outlining both short-term and long-term solutions.

A draft declaration vows to eliminate hunger and secure “food for all, today and tomorrow”. The leaders undertake to “stimulate food production and increase investment in agriculture” while “addressing obstacles to food access and using the planet’s resources sustainably for present and future generations”.

The draft document calls for a reduction in trade barriers and food export restrictions, emergency food aid, increased crop yields and guidelines on the use of biofuels.

Related Links from Times Online  http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/wo…
What leaders are eating at the UN food summit
Mugabe: UK trying to topple me
Quick fixes will not solve deeper food crisis

FAO officials said 850 million people already faced famine or malnutrition, and rising food and fuel prices would push that figure over the one billion mark, with the risk of further riots and instability in affected nations. Prices of staples such as rice, corn and wheat have soared.

The UN World Food Programme (WFP) said it was rolling out an additional US$1.2 billion in food assistance to help tens of millions of people in more than 60 nations hardest hit by the food crisis.

She said that WFP was “helping the world to weather the storm” by tripling the number of people who receive food in Haiti, doubling those who will receive food in Afghanistan, and delivering assistance to people in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya. “We have mobilised our 10,000 employees and every dollar and Euro given to us to reach as many hungry people as we can at this critical time,” she said.

The first day of the summit was dominated by controversy over the presence of the President Ahmadinejad of Iran and President Mugabe of Zimbabwe. Today, however, delegates got down to the nitty-gritty of the food crisis, with the United States and Brazil - the world’s largest producer of sugar-cane ethanol - defending the diversion of crops for energy in the face of growing criticism.

The US plans to use 25 per cent of its corn crop for ethanol production by 2022, and the European Union aims to obtain 10% of its car fuel from bio-energy by 2020. The US Agriculture Secretary, Ed Schafer, insisted that “the use of sustainable biofuels can increase energy security, foster economic development especially in rural areas and reduce greenhouse gas emissions without weighing heavily on food prices.”

He said the US was “deeply concerned by the current crisis…..We are now projecting to spend nearly five billion dollars in 2008 and 2009 to fight global hunger”.

But Jacques Diouf, director general of the FAO, said: “Nobody understands how $11-12 billion-a-year subsidies in 2006 and protective tariff polices have had the effect of diverting 100m tonnes of cereals from human consumption, mostly to satisfy a thirst for fuel for vehicles.”

Mr Schafer responded that biofuels had contributed under 3 per cent to food price increases. However FAO officials said biofuels accounted for 59 per cent of the increase in global use of coarse grains and wheat between 2005-2007, and 56 per cent of the increase in vegetable oils. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that biofuels are responsible for up to 30 per cent of the price rises overall.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the President of Brazil, accused critics of biofuels of hypocrisy. “It offends me to see fingers pointed at biofuels, which produce clean energy, when those fingers are soiled with oil and coal,” he said. “It is frightening to see attempts to draw a cause and effect relationship between biofuels and the rise of food prices”.

But he took a swipe at the US version of biofuel, saying that corn-based ethanol was less efficient than fuel produced with sugar cane, and could only compete “when it is shored up with subsidies and shielded behind tariffs”. Yasuo Fukuda, the Japanese Prime Minister, added: “In some cases, biofuel production is in competition with food supply…..We need to ensure that biofuel production is sustainable.”

The Rome summit will be followed by the G8 summit in Japan next month and the final stages of the stalled World Trade Organisation (WTO) Doha round of talks on global trade. Pascal Lamy, the head of WTO, said a Doha deal “would reduce the trade-distorting subsidies that have stymied the developing world’s production capacity”.

Douglas Alexander, Britain’s International Development Secretary, said that Western farm subsidies were also responsible for food price rises. “It is unacceptable that rich countries still subsidise farming by $1 billion a day, costing poor farmers in developing countries an estimated $100 billion a year in lost income,” he said

Sorry, but this is not a joke. It is intended to give you websites that can help evaluating insolation.

You see, agriculture and solar power need sun light, but man’s activities also take away sunlight - thus the issue of global warming is not the whole story. There is also an issue about decreased insolation.
Clouds in the sky are not just an issue of esthetics and the vanished blue sky of California may yet cost in terms of alternate energy and in crop yields.

THE WORLD HAS A HUNGER CRISIS!
Yeh! TELL ME SOME MORE!!

WHAT KIND OF A PLANET IS THIS?

The Standard of Vienna has some comments from Africa but I think they mean us and them.