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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on March 13th, 2010 ISRAEL COMES IN FIFTH PLACE OF NATIONS MOST FAVORED BY AMERICANS – GALLUP POLL. Israel finished behind Canada, Britain, Germany and Japan in a February Gallup survey. Respondents were asked to provide their opinions on a list of 20 countries that also included the Palestinian Authority. Some 67 percent answered that they have a favorable opinion of Israel, compared to 25 percent with an unfavorable opinion. The telephone poll, an update of Gallup’s annual World Affairs survey, contacted 1,025 American adults last month. The results have a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percent. Some 20 percent of respondents viewed the Palestinian Authority favorably, an improvement over last year’s total of 15 percent, placing it fourth from the bottom. Iran continued to rank last, with a 10 percent favorable rating. Israel was the only country rated this year that is viewed more favorably by Republicans, with 80 percent of respondents identifying as Republicans viewing the country favorably, compared with 53 percent of Democrats. Some 63 percent of those polled said their sympathies lie more with Israel than with the Palestinians — the highest level of support for Israel in 19 years. About 15 percent said they side more with the Palestinians, while 23 percent said they favor both sides, neither side or have no opinion. ——————- JERUSALEM AND WEST BANK TENSE AFTER DAY OF TURMOIL – At Least 12 Arrested And 15 Injured As Leftists and Palestinians Clash With Security Forces12 March 2010
By Nir Hasson and Agencies An uneasy calm returned to Jerusalem on Friday evening after a day of turmoil that saw Palestinians and leftwing protestors clash with security forces across the city. In East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrakh neighborhood police arrested eight leftwing activists demonstrating against Jewish construction there. The detentions sparked fury among protesters, some of whom told Haaretz that the arrests were unlawful. Police has discriminated against the 100-odd leftists who took part in the march, at the same time allowing a rightwing counter-demonstration to continue unimpeded, they claimed. Palestinian sources, meanwhile, reported that at least 15 Palestinians were injured in demonstrations in the West Bank villages of Bil’in, Na’alim and Dir Nizam, according to an Army Radio report. Earlier in the day, four Palestinians were detained on suspicion of throwing stones and two officers were slightly injured in clashes in Jerusalem’s old city, a police spokesman said. At least one protester was treated by medics. Israel had on Friday barred Palestinians from crossing from the West Bank into Israel and Jerusalem, and barred men under 50 from al-Aqsa mosque, the flashpoint holy site in the walled Old City. As hundreds of youths streamed away from noon prayers at a mosque in the district of Ras al-Amud, men hurled stones at a car carrying Orthodox Jewish children. One rock smashed a side window, but there were no obvious injuries, Reuters reported. Israel’s closure of the West bank, which authorities say is aimed at preventing a repeat of violent clashes last week in which dozens were injured, is set to last until Sunday. In the Gaza Strip Islamists rallied supporters to protest at Israel’s policies in Jerusalem: “We will redeem al-Aqsa mosque with our souls and our blood,” the crowd chanted. As demonstrators burned U.S. and Israeli flags, Khalil al-Hayya, a leader of the Hamas movement which rules Gaza, urged Hamas’s rival, West Bank-based Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, to reverse his decision to engage in “proximity talks” with Israel through U.S. mediators after a hiatus of 15 months. “These direct and indirect negotiations provide a cover to the Zionist aggression against our people and our lands,” Hayya told the crowd. “Our angry people now are calling on the Palestinian negotiator to back off from these negotiations which encourage more settlements and the Judaisation of Jerusalem.” —————— By Barak Ravid and Natasha Mozgovaya Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday said he would establish a committee to probe Israel’s announcement this week that it would construct 1,600 new housing units in East Jerusalem, which has since led to a diplomatic crisis with the United States. “Prime Minister Netanyahu decided to create a team to probe the events that unfolded during U.S. Vice President Biden’s visit to Israel,” read a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office. “The team will formulate regulations to prevent the recurrence of similar incidents in the future,” the statement continued. The U.S. has waged harsh criticism of Israel’s announcement on Tuesday about new settlement construction – a move that deeply embarrassed the visiting Biden and imperiled U.S. plans to launch indirect negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. The team will be headed by Director-General of the Prime Minister’s Office, Eyal Gabai, and will include members of the Interior Ministry, Housing Ministry and the Jerusalem Municipality. Netanyahu earlier on Saturday said he was surprised by the U.S. administration’s public condemnation of his government over the building plan in East Jerusalem. Sources in the Prime Minister’s Office said the crisis appeared to be orchestrated by the U.S. administration, as Netanyahu apologized to U.S. Vice President Biden and believed that the crisis was behind the two allies. Netanyahu on Saturday evening convened a meeting of the forum of seven cabinet ministers to discuss the diplomatic tension with the Obama administration, and is expected to issue a formal statement about the matter at the start of Sunday’s weekly cabinet meeting. The prime minister has repeatedly said he was unaware of the East Jerusalem construction plan. Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Friday called Israel’s announcement “insulting” to the United States. “I mean, it was just really a very unfortunate and difficult moment for everyone – the United States, our vice president who had gone to reassert our strong support for Israeli security – and I regret deeply that that occurred and made that known,” Clinton said during the CNN interview. Clinton did not blame Netanyahu personally for the announcement, but she said, “He is the prime minister. Like the president or secretary of state…ultimately, you are responsible.” Netanyahu spoke with Clinton over the weekend in what was later described to reporters as a 45-minute conversation in which the premier mostly remained quiet and listened to Clinton’s scathing criticism. Also on Friday, Israeli envoy to the U.S. Michael Oren was summoned for a meeting with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg. A senior U.S. official predicted “a dicey period here in the next couple days to a couple of weeks” as Palestinians demanded the reversal of the plan. Netanyahu on Friday also called European officials including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Italian President Silvio Berlusconi to discuss the crisis with the U.S. “This was an embarrassing incident,” Netanyahu told the European leaders. “I admit that and I am sorry, and I even apologized to Vice President Biden, but I was not in any way aware of the building plan ahead of the announcement.” Netanyahu also discussed Israeli construction in East Jerusalem with the two leaders, saying, “This government’s policy regarding building in East Jerusalem is no different than that of any other government.” He added, “In all negotiations conducted up until now, Israel has clarified for the Palestinians and the U.S. that these neighborhoods are part of the Jerusalem bloc that will remain in Israeli hands in any final-status agreement.” Netanyahu also told Merkel and Berlusconi that regulations would be implemented to avoid such embarrassments in the future. Earlier in the week, Netanyahu said he believed that despite the conflict with the U.S. over the plan for new housing in East Jerusalem, indirect talks with the Palestinians would continue as planned early next week. U.S. Mideast envoy George Mitchell is expected in Israel on Tuesday and is set to meet with Netanyahu. ————— SECRETARY CLINTON KEYNOTES 2010 AIPAC POLICY CONFERENCE. 11 March 2010 AIPAC Policy Conference 2010 is taking place March 21-23 in CONFIRMED PLENARY SPEAKERS – Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – Rt. Hon. Tony Blair, Quartet Representative and former Prime – Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) – Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) – Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) – Amb. Michael Oren, Israeli ambassador to the United States ———— In 2009 Vice President Joe Biden was the closing speaker of the AIPAC meeting. He was also listed originally as speaker for the 2010 meeting, but this week’s events in Israel may now have changed his mind. —————– Policy Conference 2009 Highlights
Delegates also heard from Senator John Kerry, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli President Shimon Peres, and House and Senate leaders from both parties. Permalink |
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In the closing address of AIPAC Policy Conference 2009, Vice President Joe Biden affirmed the Obama administration’s commitment to a strong and enduring U.S.-Israel relationship. “The bond between Israel and the United States,” Biden said, “was forged by a shared interest in peace and security, by shared values that respect all faiths and peoples, by deep ties among our citizens and by a common commitment to democracy.”
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on March 13th, 2010 The following is a contribution from Phillip F. Henshaw where he argues that when we try to answer a problem, most obviously by spending money to find a solution and provide and answer, we at the same time do indeed create newer levels of problems that will need more complicated answers and will require even higher levels of funds. We try to fight nature rather then learn from it and I suggest we look at the arguments and use them as a new playing field for policy makers. What we hope with this is to enlarge the circle of the debate by letting others come up with contentions that there may be additional playing fields that are harder to quantify. We do not intend to stop there then and ask – try please nevertheless to see if you can yet, in rational ways, answer this need to decide what steps must be taken when one decides on priorities. With funds that are not unlimited – what are the categories of problems we tackle then first? (the editor) In effect, we tried already once to tackle these issues under: http://www.sustainabilitank.info/2010/03… but I have to confess that we did not get very far. Henshaw wrote then – “Even the best of solutions, or could I say *especially* the best of solutions, tend to lead people not having foresight into the deepest sort of trouble. Eradicating Smallpox was greeted as proof we could overcome any great threat of nature, but incidentally also did serve to greatly multiply people and kicked off our great completely unaffordable profit/science healthcare spiral. That this is what our healthcare crisis is really about sort of just dawned on me. What makes healthcare an all but incurable growing addiction is the combination of: 1) our being mortal, so the more healthcare we get the more we physically need, and 2) that this has become the last great growth industry for American capitalism. It combines the economic arts we are most proud of, science, finance, good works and marketing, to create an incurable and unaffordable economic addiction to disease. That healthcare has become a genuine cancer by multiplying cures and costs toward the exhaustion of the economy, is a true Gordian Knot of moral quandaries rapidly bankrupting everyone. Has our talent for controlling nature really become incurable? … destined to overwhelm us with its natural complications? That very dilemma also seems to be one that nature solves in making literally every perfect thing she makes, though… i.e. that she somehow doesn’t get carried away with limitless problem solving, and is able to make things whole and perfect anyway. It’s ‘a long shot’, of course, but this suggests we really need to change. If we weren’t so busy telling nature how to behave maybe there actually are secrets to find in how she does things worth studying.” ———– Vicious spirals & their relief – food for thought about solutions that multiply problems.By P.F. Henshaw There are problems that get progressively worse as you work on solving them, often because strategies don’t fit changed circumstance. The worst trouble, of course, comes from having strategies that define the environment as part of the model. Then if the environment changes behavior your model would not have a way of telling you about it.
Figure 1 US Healthcare costs, doubling at 2x the rate of GDP Take for instance the case of Healthcare costs explosion. Once you see the pattern of wonderful solutions resulting in a unwanted side effects – the health care spiraling costs – it becomes a Type III problem that some may define as “solving the wrong problem”. We got an entry strategy without an exit strategy. The same pattern is visible in the environmental impact explosion or when looking at the great financial bubbles. Basically what happens is that you find people sticking with an old solution and failing to notice the emerging moral dilemmas that could guide them to better choices. In essence, already J. M. Keynes did see a dilemma coming for economies as a whole, but was ridiculed for it. Everyone’s best solution for all economic problems was accumulating investment. He brought up the approaching natural limits of money and what a sustainable economy would need (1). Paraphrasing, he observed that a non-growing economy would still need to maintain a positive rate of return on investments. It would then go ever deeper in debt to itself, if its creditors did not spend enough of their earnings to keep the level of financial investment and physical production in balance – bringing about “peak money” at the same time as “peak stuff”. He of course didn’t phrase it in modern terms that way. He told it as a parable, he called it “the widow’s cruse” (2) {“However much of profits entrepreneurs spend on consumption, the increment of wealth belonging to the entrepreneurs remains the same as before. Thus, profits, as a source of capital increment for entrepreneurs, are a ‘widow’s cruse’ which remains undepleted, however much be devoted to riotous living”}(J.M.Keynes, Treatise on Money, 1930: p.139) . Keynes further told it as a story of Elijah and a “more favorable possibility” for limiting the growth of debt as the economy approached natural limits than having conditions become “sufficiently miserable” to bring the net rate of returns on investment to zero. It’s a variation of the very ancient tradition of debt forgiveness, researched by Michael Hudson (3). In Keynes version, though, *there are no defaults*. Pity that his thinking on the subject was treated so dismissively. The reason it seems so strange is that it implies changing the entire financial game at a time when it’s working fine, and doesn’t need to, an idea that people might use foresight. It seems irrational! Many natural growth systems do the very same strange thing, as they grow beyond their zone of limitless freedom and discover the new environments they are entering. They change their game from one of multiplication to one of refinement and adaptation. You can begin to understand the systems ecology of it to think of a single living cell that discovers a way to continually multiply its control of its environment. A single cell in the womb does that, autonomously taking up the nutrients that, to it, are “just free for the taking” and multiplies furiously from one cell to many billions before being born to try its luck with a new environment. Any kind of natural system that begins with compound growth has to face the same dilemma. For human economic choices in the same situation the problem is not having an explicit genetic map of how to do it. We have to use our limited view of the world with alternately brilliant and somewhat ‘flaky’ mental equipment and make up choices as we go. Our entry plan was multiplying our control of nature, and now we need an exit plan. I’ve been looking at the problem regarding healthcare for a long time, but only last week really understood the moral quandary it poses. It seems to raise the subject to the level of mortal and moral threats we face with the energy crisis, climate change, the growing extinction of species, or the financial insolvency of the world. We’re profoundly addicted, to buying extensions to our lives for growing profit. It started with the great early achievements of healthcare, like the universally acclaimed combination of great science and our societal commitment to good works in eradicating Smallpox. It seems *especially* the best of solutions like these that tend to lead people to not have foresight into the deepest sort of trouble ahead. Eradicating Smallpox was one of the kinds of proof we took as meaning we could overcome any great threat of nature. We didn’t notice that it incidentally also served to greatly multiply the number of people on the one hand and the start of a wonderful but quite unaffordable teamwork between modern science, public service, and growing profits, while outpacing GDP. It dawned on me that we really must face the complex moral dilemmas of somewhat turning that teamwork off somehow. What makes healthcare an all but incurable growing addiction is the combination of 1) our being mortal, so the more healthcare we get the more we physically need, 2) that this has become the ultimate growth industry for capitalism (except circular lending.. of course) and 3) that healthcare is a net resource consumer, not a producer. The earth is in a resource crisis and we need resources to become sustainable. The threat combines the economic arts we are most proud of, science, finance, good works and marketing, to make a completely incurable and unaffordable economic addiction and disease. It seems that healthcare has become a genuine cancer, multiplying cures and costs toward the exhaustion of the economy, a true Gordian knot of moral quandaries rapidly bankrupting everyone. That there must be *some* other solution is hinted at by how nearly the same dilemma is solved by nature with literally every perfect thing she makes. Everything that becomes perfect switches plans in the middle of the story. Growth is an amazing run of luck for some system multiplying its control of nature, and then to become sustainable finding its way of giving that up. The models of how to do it in nature may display better timing, yes, but they also clearly show there are ways to not get carried away with limitless problem solving. It seems there’s a way to go forward at a dead end, by switching to a strategy of making things whole and complete instead of ever more complex. It’s “a long shot”, of course, but getting the clear message, that we need to change, is a great start. If we weren’t so busy telling nature how to behave, for example, maybe we could look and find secrets worth studying in how she does it. Most efforts are presently looking the other way, of course, with most economic resources still going to people trying to hang onto the failing growth system. Even most of what is called “sustainability” is focused precisely on that, sustaining growth. What we rather need is a new purpose, to discover how to jump off the escalator of growth at a practical place. An important technical problem is that vicious spirals and their relief is partly a critical matter of timing. Figure 2 shows the basic options for when to make the switch from change in relation to the past, to change in relation to the future. It illustrates the difference between a transition timed to be smooth, and effortless, and one that’s late and increasingly destabilizing. Physical systems have momentum in their directions of development, so as in driving a car- late turns at too high a speed lead to fishtailing – by repeated over-corrections. That becomes spinning and tumbling with complete loss of control for too late or sharp a turn. So it’s important that the turn match the vehicle.
That view at least parallels the human dilemma of having gotten used to a limitless earth that seemed to follow our models, and belatedly realizing our need to change. All our institutions and finances are designed for doubling assets every 20 years, for example. Now that we’re running into nature, at scale, the vague models we had for how things worked “out there” also are clearly not what nature is following. There are major omissions from our models, such as how natural systems have all kinds of independently animated parts, that learn as they go like we do. Our kinds of models can’t be defined that way. Another intriguing example of a vicious spiral is in our response to resource depletion and search for sustainable energy and other resources. Growth naturally uses up resources at ever faster rates. That we’re even trying to use sustainable resources for sustaining growth is the oddity. Sustainable resources are only at all sustainable for a stable economy, not an exploding one. Solar panels simply don’t get an ever doubling amount of sunshine is the problem. Growing at our traditional “constant” doubling rate our energy use doubles every 30 years, along with the scale, speed and complexity of change. We’d get confused with the speed of change long before, but also run out of earth to put solar panels on in only about 250 years, completely covering the globe. An equally odd, but actually much more telling error is the quite widely accepted plan to reduce energy and other resource uses by conserving and making growth more efficient. The telling thing about that is that improving economic efficiency has been known for 150 years to increase the rate of resource use and depletion, the opposite of what people now use it for. It’s become our plan for slowing resource use and depletion. The ratio of efficiency reductions to stimulus for energy is 2.5. On average saving 1 unit of energy makes it easier for the economy to use energy and results in 2.5 units of new uses (4). The telling feature of this is how clearly it separates what we think we can explain from what the economic system actually does. It’s a key question for trying to understand what anyone is to believe. It points to the possibility that the natural systems we refer to in conversation may not physically exist. That’s a great question to ask, “is anything real out there?” If you can tell the difference between mental models and physical things it’s easier to see the answer. Telling the difference can be tricky of course. To help there are things that logical constructs can do that physical systems can’t, and others that physical systems can do that logical ones can’t. One thing physical systems can do that logic can’t is to change organization fluidly by themselves. One thing that logic can do that physical systems can’t is change without a proportional use of energy or continuous complex processes. One way people are trying to make a better fit between perceived and natural worlds are in the various environmental partnership programs and group learning practices. In a complex world groups of stakeholders with different theoretical models, life experience, approaches and interests, have a common need to find ways to help solve each other’s problems creatively. Getting scientists and non-scientists to work together is part of the challenge. Scientific models are defined without any environment, and without any individually animated parts. It seems the work is hardly begun of making them into better operating manuals for environments that display little else. There are lots of people struggling with the basic problems of sustainability science, but there seem very few who appreciate the basic questions yet. I’m sure there are many worth mentioning for general reading – people who are careful thinkers, have a fresh real world view of natural systems, and are sometimes easy to read include: Elinor Ostrom, Helena Norberg-Hodge, Jane Jacobs, Joseph Tainter and Gerald Midgley. One quote from Helena Norberg-Hodge (5) illustrates the point. Speaking about practical choices in response to global warming instead of as a political or economic contest she wrote: “First, people in the South simply cannot replicate the development path taken by the North: not only has our ‘development’ already used up too much of the planet’s resources – including its ability to absorb CO2 emissions – but the South has no colonies to supply it with cheap resources and labor, no ‘Third World’ to exploit. Second, arguing for equity ignores the fact that development and globalization do not benefit the majority; they have instead been responsible for a dramatic increase in poverty, while primarily benefiting only a small wealthy elite.” In nature, seeing the practical choices is what lets you discover the moral questions you really face, and anything else is simply abdicating the choice to understand enough to make your own choices. The worst problem before us is how the combined effect of all these multiplying problems, the enormous catalog of liabilities that a strapped future economy won’t be able to afford. Figure 3 is a conceptual sketch of the problem of “Throwing our energy at an impossible dream” (6). Putting ever more energy into maintaining a growth system rapidly depletes the resources that are most profitable to deplete, while creating ever expanding overhead costs throughout the system. Multiplying complexity till it quits is no solution.
The work of transitioning to a sustainable economy may be unprofitable or only marginally so, but it may be mostly affordable, and that’s the difference. The irony is that our dependency on an unsustainable system is foreclosing our opportunity to transition to something that could last. Only very conceptual work has been done on the question of where we will cross the line of vanishing physical system returns for energy invested (7)(8). It’s nature’s version of whole system bankruptcy, when the energy overhead costs for obtaining energy exceed the returns. There is no actual limit to our energy supplies, only to affordable energy. Using up cheap energy supplies before methods of using expensive ones are available is as great a threat as banking on Ponzi schemes. It’s also ironically, still the best choice for high financial returns. To end on a positive note, being strongly pushed into discovering what our real choices are includes finding some positive things. We need to discover what animates the world around us, and how nature succeeds in both – respecting the genius of every individual thing and finishing what seem like completely impossible design tasks. Somehow, when running out of seed resources at the limits of their initial growth, is when nature switches to completing and perfecting her most lasting designs. Whatever nature does always sounds impossible! The nice part is it’s often easier to do than understand. Immersing ourselves in studying that for a while might have large hidden rewards. 1) J.M. Keynes 1935 The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money, chapter 16 2) P.F. Henshaw 2008 Natural Climax http://synapse9.com/issues/NaturalClime…. note #1 3) Michael Hudson – 1992 The Lost Tradition of Biblical Debt Cancellations http://michael-hudson.com/articles/debt/… 4) P.F. Henshaw 2009 Inside Efficiencies, for BioPhysical Economics 09 http://synapse9.com/pub/EffMultiplies.ht… 5) Helena Norberg-Hodge 2010 North-South Divide And Tackling Global Warning, Countercurrents http://www.countercurrents.org/hodge2802… 6) P.F. Henshaw 2009 Throwing our energy at an impossible dreams, picked up by a number of sites, http://energybulletin.net/50990 7) Charles A. S. Hall, Stephen Balogh, David J. R. Murphy 2009 What is the Minimum EROI that a Sustainable Society Must Have?, Energies 2009, 2, 25-47; 8) P.F. Henshaw 2009 Profiting from Scarcity, The Oil Drum http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5478 Figures: 1. Rand 2008 Current and Projected Health Care Spending http://www.randcompare.org/us-health-car… 2. P.F. Henshaw 2009 Growth & response model, comparing 5 development curves with constant % rates of change, switching from growth in relation to the past to growth in relation to the future at different times. 3. P.F. Henshaw 2010 Conceptual model of increasing present investment for diminishing future returns for growth systems using current returns on investment for a guide. Permalink |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on March 13th, 2010 EVEN THOUGH WE KNOW THAT WE ARE JUST LOSING TEMPORARILY ONE HOUR WHEN SPRINGING THE CLOCK FORWARD, WE NEVERTHELESS APPRECIATE THE E-MAIL WE GOT FROM THE NATIONAL WILDLIFE FEDERATION – WE TAKE A SERIOUS LOOK AT WHAT THEY SAID. from: “Becky Garland, National Wildlife Federation” <beoutthere@nwf.org> Dear Pincas,
Then, be sure to take the Be Out There Pledge indicating that you will make outdoor play a healthy habit for your kids. It will take less than a minute—and you’ll receive fun tips and interactive tools to inspire you and your family to Be Out There all year long! Rebecca Garland ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on March 13th, 2010 The Difference Between News and Ideas Sometimes, I get frustrated when I put together these weekly news round-ups for you. You see, many of the topics that are “news” now, we covered months — and sometimes years — ago… when they were merely ideas. Take the Chinese cleantech boom, for example, which we’ve been touting since 2007. Back then, we told readers that China would be a clean energy force to reckon with, that their solar companies could produce at lower costs, that their non-democratic government could fast-track project with minimal bureaucratic red tape. As such, many of our readers have profited handsomely from our Chinese cleantech picks like JA Solar (NASDAQ: JASO), Trina Solar (NYSE: TSL), Hong Kong Highpower (NASDAQ: HPJ), and plenty of others. But only lately, as the hindsight data is revealed, has the mainstream media jumped on board, with everyone from the Wall Street Journal to the New York Times touting China’s cleantech abilities and the United States’ laggard position. It’s not “news” until it happened. But the profits are made while it’s happening (… Whatever it is.). That’s the difference between news and ideas. You read the news. You profit from ideas… and you usually read them here first. This Week’s News (And Our Ideas) So it’s news this week that Japan, South Korea, and China are spending $9 billion on “infrastructure and information technology to make electricity networks more efficient.” It’s news, according to Reuters, because Zpryme, a market research firm, compile the data and released a report. But it’s been an idea for the past year, as we constantly reported on the necessity of a smart grid to aid the deployment of renewable resources. Green Chip readers have profited from this idea… others are only now reading the news. It was also news this week when a Chinese wind turbine maker, A-Power Generation (NASDAQ: APWR), announced it’s building a production plant in Nevada. The plant will have an annual capacity of 1,100 megawatts and create 1,000 long-term jobs. I guess it was only an idea on February 10, when I ran an article entitled, Chinese Cleantech Companies: Made in the USA (by China), in which I specifically mentioned A-Power and their plans for a U.S. plant. In the month it took for that story to go from a Green Chip idea to mainstream news, the stock has gone up more than 17%. In other news this week, German solar installer Phoenix Solar (XETRA: PS4) announced it’s “expecting business in the ongoing first quarter to be significantly better than in the year-earlier period.” But we’ve been reporting on the German feed-in tariff cuts since last year, and how that would lead to more installations fueled by Chinese-built panels before the subsidies disappeared, i.e, higher business in the first and second quarters. And finally, it was news this week that China and India signed up to the Copenhagen Accord for fighting climate change, after being lambasted by politicians and the media alike for stymieing the talks last December. But we’ve been reporting on China’s and India’s ambitious climate energy and energy goals for some time now and how, in many ways, their goals are more ambitious than ours are. In an article entitled The Clean Energy Batter: U.S. vs. China, I reported that China and U.S. actually have similar emissions targets, but China’s are official policy while the U.S.’s are simply White House announcements. So you couldn’t have known the real story before it hit the wire. And that’s really the point of Green Chip: To know the market so well that we’re ahead of it. And by reading these pages, you are, too. Our premium services take that one step further, and help you invest in green trends before others know about them. We help you invest in the ideas that will be profitable when they become news. You can read this week’s ideas below. Call it like you see it, Nick Hodge How to Rebuild America: The New Road to Energy Sustainability Permalink |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on March 12th, 2010 Turkey is an important State. It was born from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire after having chosen the loosing side in WW I. It went after that through a distilling process with the secular-military revolution of Ataturk, and was on its way to modernization. In the process Turks killed Armenians – that is well documented, and eventually Armenians said it was genocide. Those were clearly the childhood days of a more modern Turkey. Growing up would have meant recognizing that in its evolution, Turkey has some darker shadows in its history basin – recognize it and stretch out a hand in peace. Instead Turkey preferred to continue without any relations to Armenia, while at the same time distancing itself from its Middle Eastern and Caucasian neighbors while courting a Europe that refuses to forgive a forgetful Turkey its past behaviour in relation to its Armenians, and then later its Kurds. Turkey, in its ridiculous courting of Europe, has missed even the boat that was anchored in its doorsteps with the creation of five newly independent Central Asian States most of which being of Turkic ethnicity anyway. Turkey is torn now between Islam and secularism with an Islamic background – whatever they chose, it is going to be neither Christian Greek, nor Christian Armenian while the West – that is Europe and the US – are basically Christian and can be counted upon as backing Armenia’s simple request to call the killings of a century ago an example of genocide like they are ready to call what went on in Kosovo, much more recently, a genocide against Muslims. Turkey is important to the West as a bridge to the Islamic world of Asia including the Middle East and Central Asia, but the West can not tell its parliaments that for foreign policy reasons they are not allowed to call an old case of genocide by its name, or to tell their more liberal people that a cartoon or some other free expression that might offend someone’s feelings is not plain satire that they can express if it were their own leaders – secular or religious – be it even the Pope. Turkey has now recalled its Ambassadors to the US and Sweden as sign of displeasure with Congress and Parliamentarian declarations in States that allow free expression via voting – specially as the direct consequence of it if it was genocide or plain heinous killing is not going to bring anyone to life back anyway. We belabor this topic because our website has placed great hope in a reorienting Turkey on various issues – be these related to the place of Turkey on Kyoto Protocol and climate change, on oil and gas pipelines, or be it on the OIC, peace efforts in the Middle East, relations with Iran, Iraq etc. We are thus unhappy when Turkey steps back from responsibility that comes with maturity. Why not just tell Armenia – let’s sign a peace accord based on mutual understanding that what has happened then, call it what you want, and we are sorry for it, will never happen again. The whole world would then applaud. Look at Jews and Germans – it was worse – but they talk and do not walk out on each other. Permalink |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on March 12th, 2010 Climate science: a peace-studies lesson. Involves – Civil society Democracy and government International politics; global security globalisation; the politics of climate change. by Paul Rogers, 11 March 2010. OpenDemocracy from the UK. The doubters of global warming are emboldened by their new ability – as in the “climategate” affair – to put climate researchers on the defensive. But the experience of comparable assaults on the discipline of peace studies in the 1980s suggests that hostile scrutiny can have longer-term benefits for the target. The author mentions – “The articles in this series try to throw light on recent or current developments in international security. Just occasionally an element of personal experience creeps in. This is one of those.” Soon after the furore, Associated Press tasked a team to examine 1,073 emails from the CRU material in order to provide an independent view of what had happened. The result showed no evidence that climate change was faked (see “’ClimateGate’ Doesn’t Show Global Warming Was Faked, AP Reports”, Huffington Post, 12 December 2009); but amid a deluge of negative comment this attracted little attention, and the impression persists that the whole case for human-induced climate change has been severely hit. For many of the researchers involved, the period of late 2009-early 2010 has been traumatic; they may have had to contend with controversy over the years, but this is something outside their experience. The intensity of the coverage, and the zealotry of many sceptics in pressing their case, stem in part from changing global circumstances. There has long been deep opposition to any international move towards a low-carbon economy, from reasons both ideological (free-market true-believers) and commercial (the more retrograde transnational corporations, especially fossil-fuel companies). There was no great risk of such a move as long as George W Bush was in the White House; but the election of Barack Obama and the prospect of Copenhagen agreeing a successor to the Kyoto protocol made 2009 potentially a dangerous year. In this context, “climategate” has been a gift. The peace benefit The lesson of my own experience in the 1980s suggests that the longer-term impact might be rather different from what the architects of this affair intend. I got into working in the field of international security from teaching environmental science and resource-conflict at Huddersfield Polytechnic, west Yorkshire, in the early 1970s (and recently came across some of my thirty-five-year-old lecture notes dealing with rising atmospheric CO² levels!). I moved to Bradford’s department of peace studies at the end of the decade, just as the cold war was entering a particularly tense period; from around 1980 onwards, several of us there saw the need for independent research and writing on nuclear issues. An early outcome (with co-authors Malcolm Dando and Peter van den Dungen) was a book about the risks and consequences of nuclear war: As Lambs to the Slaughter: The Facts About Nuclear War (1981). It struck a chord; 25,000 copies were sold in a few weeks, and that year around 500,000 people purchased an accompanying leaflet published by the environment group Ecoropa. As Lambs… was part of a wider body of writings, much of it for an academic rather a general readership. This was the case with A Guide to Nuclear Weapons (1981) which ran to several editions and led eventually to a reference work: The Directory of Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Arms and Disarmament 1990. The core purpose of this writing was to be as accurate as possible; this meant (for example) always analysing Soviet as well as western systems and postures, and having a particular focus on the actual consequences of a nuclear war. What strikes me in retrospect – and when thinking about the problems that climate scientists now face – is how widely varied were the reactions to our work. Military officers, for example, were actually very interested in it and very ready to engage in intensive debates. I was first invited to lecture at the Royal Air Force staff college in 1982 and have continued frequently to lecture at defence colleges to the present day. Senior civil servants in Britain’s ministry of defence were also willing to discuss our work. The reaction on the political right – then very much in the ascendancy during Margaret Thatcher’s long premiership (1979-1990) – was very different; it was bitter and sustained opposition to what we were doing. In the Thatcherite view of the world, peace studies was “appeasement studies”, indulgent to official enemies and undermining of the nation’s moral fibre. Many articles and pamphlets were written about the Bradford department’s dangerous and subversive nature; one noble member of the House of Lords (the upper chamber of Britain’s parliament) even described us as a “rest home for urban guerrillas”. Some critics preferred a more personal touch: I was called “Dr Death”, and we regularly got abusive mail (which, on one or two occasions, went as far as death-threats). It was known that Margaret Thatcher wished “something to be done” about peace studies; but this was politically difficult, since universities still retaine considerable independence (a situation that subsequent governments have done much to redress). than now. But the University Grants Committee (UGC) came under pressure to investigate us and to its credit agreed to do so only if Bradford’s vice-chancellor allowed it; he too was prepared to say yes, but – also to his credit – only if the peace-studies staff gave their consent. We certainly would! What followed was the equivalent of today’s “subject review”. It was thorough and exacting, and the UGC made public its verdict – that the department was maintaining high standards. That outcome lifted the pressure off peace studies for the rest of the 1980s. With the end of the cold war by the end of the decade, much of the other work our staff and research students already did – on peacekeeping, environmental conflict, and mediation, among other issues – came to the fore; this created the foundation for an expansion of our work in the 1990s. The landscape after battle How does this relate to “climategate”? A key factor is that we were exposed to intensive criticism and persistent scrutiny of our work virtually from day one, and this in direct consequence made us hugely aware of the need for very high levels of accuracy and impeccable referencing of sources. Access to a wide range of military and defence journals, and a huge amount of information in the public domain, meant that this was actually not so difficult; but under so much external pressure we learned to be very cautious in our analysis at a time when exaggeration on the issues we addressed was common enough. Many of us now think that the experience made us better academics. If almost everything you write is going to be exposed to detailed examination by relentless and often politically-motivated critics, then you have to set unusually exacting standards for your work. The likely – and beneficial – implication is that climate researchers who have gone through their own test-by-fire will in future take even greater care over published assessments and analyses. In many ways we were luckier than today’s climate researchers: for there was an intense focus on our peace-studies work from the very beginning – whereas critics of climate science are able to retrieve work published a decade and more ago, when the issue was far less controversial, in order to pinpoint a minor laxity and use it to great effect to damn the whole enterprise. The overall effect of the setbacks to climate-science’s public face may amount to the loss of a year in the transition to a low-carbon future, but the good work being done in this area offers many grounds for optimism. The New Economic Foundation’s The Great Transition project, and Tim Jackson’s book Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet (Earthscan 2009) are but two examples. Alongside the evidence that continues to emerge about the accelerating impact of climate change, the flow of impressive research and compelling argument based on even more rigorous standards will ensure that the refusenik stance will in future become harder to make. In the end, peace studies was made stronger by those who sought to expose it. In a similar way, the travails of climate researchers may well end up reinforcing the integrity of the science and the necessity of the low-carbon transition. Permalink |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on March 12th, 2010 FRIDAY, MARCH 12, 2010 WASHINGTON, Mar 11 (IPS) – Releasing its annual report on the state of human rights around the world, the U.S. State Department Thursday said it was increasingly concerned about curbs imposed by foreign governments on civil society groups, the press, and Internet use. “We find ourselves in a moment when an increasing number of governments are imposing new and crippling restrictions on the non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working to protect rights and enhance accountability,” said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who released the latest edition of the Department’s massive “Country Reports”. “New technologies have proven useful both to oppressors and to those who struggle to expose the failures and cowardice of those oppressors,” she added, noting that Washington will seek to “hold everyone to the same standard, including ourselves” in its human rights policies. The 10-page introduction, the most closely read part of a report that covers 194 countries and runs thousands of pages in length, singled out a number of countries for special concern on a range of key human rights issues. In contrast to introductions issued under the administration of President George W. Bush, the 2009 edition did not categorise specific countries as “the world’s most systematic human rights right violators,” countries which were almost invariably perceived as hostile to the U.S. The 2007 report, for example, placed North Korea, Burma, Iran, Syria, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Eritrea, and Sudan in that category. Syria, Zimbabwe, and Eritrea, on the other hand, were not mentioned in this year’s introduction, although their specific Country Reports were no less critical than in previous years. Indeed, this year’s introduction cited a number of key U.S. friends – notably Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Colombia, Egypt, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Uganda, and even Switzerland – as well as Iran, Belarus, Cuba, Venezuela and North Korea, for various kinds of abuses. “It’s a highly inclusive list,” said Tom Malinowski, the director of the Washington office of Human Rights Watch. “You can’t say there’s any glaring omission. They’re highlighting most of the emblematic situations around the world.” The Country Reports, which were first mandated by Congress in 1976, is based on reporting by other governments, international and local NGOs, journalists, academics, and U.S. diplomats, is widely considered the world’s single most comprehensive accounting of political and civil rights conditions in specific countries. As in the past, the latest edition does not address rights conditions in the U.S. or in U.S.-controlled facilities overseas, including detention centres at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, or in Afghanistan where U.S. personnel have been accused of abuses in the past. The latest report on Afghanistan, however, noted that “NATO and U.S. forces continue to hand over detainees to (the Afghan intelligence agency) which perpetrates human rights violations, including torture …with impunity.” Despite a strong emphasis Clinton herself placed in a major speech last December on the importance of “human development”, including food, shelter, health, and education, as part of “our human rights agenda”, the report also does not explicitly cover economic and social rights, an omission that has drawn complaints from many human rights groups in the past. “As an organisation, we feel this report is not comprehensive because it doesn’t address economic and social rights issues that are happening around the world,” T. Kumar of Amnesty International’s Washington office told IPS. At the same time, the report stressed the commitment of the administration of President Barack Obama to integrate the U.S. more fully into the multilateral system for assessing and promoting human rights, noting in particular its decision to join the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva and more actively support human rights initiatives in the U.N. General Assembly and in regional organisation. Next fall, the report said, Washington intends to appear before the UNHRC for its first Universal Periodic Review “of our own domestic human rights situation,” it said. The introduction covered three major trends in human rights abuses during 2009. For “countries in conflict,” where combatant civilians faced serious abuses of human rights by insurgents, terrorist or paramilitary forces, and/or government forces, the report’s introduction cited ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan, Burma, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, the north Caucasus region in Russia, Sri Lanka and the Darfur region of Sudan. It also cited the situation in the Palestinian territories, notably in Gaza where Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in which more than 1,000 Palestinian civilians were reportedly killed. The introduction, however, stressed that the Operation was undertaken “in response to” rocket attacks from Gaza and made no mention of last September’s UNHRC-mandated Goldstone Report that found that both Israel and Hamas committed war crimes during the campaign or of the ongoing blockade by Israel against Gaza. Amnesty’s Kumar said he found the omission “disturbing”. “It is more complicated… to deal with humanitarian questions in a place where …Hamas is largely in control,” said Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Michael Posner Thursday. He argued that the Goldstone Report had paid “inadequate attention …to the nature of the conflict (as) …an urban conflict, an asymmetrical conflict…” The second trend highlighted by the introduction included restrictions on freedom of association and expression – including the right to send and receive information via the internet and other media – that make it more difficult for NGOs to establish themselves and press their agendas. In that respect, the introduction cited abuses in Belarus, China, Colombia, Cuba, Iran (especially after the Jun. 12 election), North Korea, Russia, Venezuela, Vietnam, and Uzbekistan. On internet freedom, on which Clinton gave a major policy address in January, the introduction was particularly harsh on China and Iran. It said Beijing had “increased its efforts to monitor Internet use, control content, restrict information, block access to foreign and domestic Web sites, encourage self-censorship, and punish those who violated regulations.” After the disputed election in Iran, the government had reduced its bandwidth apparently to prevent activists from uploading videos of protests and subsequently blocked access to Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites during the Dec. 27 Ashura demonstrations. Earlier this week, the administration announced exemptions to U.S. trade sanctions against Iran, Sudan, and Cuba to permit U.S. companies to export internet services and other communications software to the three countries. A final trend stressed in the introduction cited discrimination and harassment of vulnerable groups; among them, racial, ethnic and religious minorities, the disabled, women and children, migrant workers, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals. In that respect, China was cited for its crackdown against public interest lawyers, Tibetans, and Uighurs; Egypt for its restrictions on NGOs and attacks on Coptic Christians; Malaysia for its exploitation of foreign works; Saudi Arabia for discrimination against non-Sunni Muslims and women; and Uganda for its anti-LGBT legislation. The introduction also expressed concern about the rise of “traditional and new forms of anti-Semitism,” particularly following the Gaza conflict; “discrimination against Muslims in Europe,” including November’s approval by Swiss voters of a constitutional amendment banning the construction of minarets; and violence against Roma in Italy and central Europe. ——————— We found the report short of not mentioning the UN and other Intergovernmental organizations. such organizations could be helpful if they chose to be so – in the meantime most act according to the lowest common denominator of Member States. Permalink |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on March 11th, 2010 We have posted several articles on yesterday’s UN attempt at staging a non- event. It really starts with the announcement of a meeting at UN Headquarters in New York, 11:30 am to 1 pm, today, March 11, 2010, with the Permanent Mission of Mexico to the UN. THIS IS A CLOSED MEETING and the announcement in the Journal of the United Nations of yesterday, March 10, 2010, that says having that meeting there it does not imply any opinion or endorsement by the Secretariat of the UN. The meeting is a Briefing on the sixteenth session of the Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC – or the COP 16 of December 2010, that the UN thinks should help it extricate itself from the situation left behind by the Copenhagen COP 15. Mexico is the host and it does not want to be the home of a disaster. So that is why the UN hauled in to New York also Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, Chair of the IPCC, and Professor Robert Dijkgraaf who as head of the InterAcademy Council (IAC) was asked to arrange for a review of the IPCC scientific procedures – a step very much in need now after the fact that the UN decided to cave in to the criticism from the deniers of the idea that there is soundness in the scientific evidence that CO2 emissions are not good for the health of the planet. At least they want to be able to say that damages have not been caused by humans – so why bother with this climate change effort at all? OK – now step 2 the Journal announces for March 10, 2010, an official UN Press Conference with Mr. Rajendra Pachauri and Profesor Robbert Dijkgraaf. This announcement sounded to me quite insane. What would be the credibility of the reviewer if he lines up at what could have become in a free society at a hearing on the side of the head of the organization he is suppose to review? This really deserved two question marks. The Netherlands is an advanced State to the attention of the UN. I was tipped off and decided to call in to Ms. Isabelle Broyer, Chief of the Media Accreditation and Liaison Unit, as I wanted to get a pass to this Press Conference in order to be able to ask some good questions. As the readers of our website know, I do not hold a Press Pass to the UN since the changes in UN Administration that brought in Mr. Ban Ki-moon who replaced Mr. Sashi Tharoor with Mr. Kiyotaka Akasaka as Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information - a move that allowed Mr. Ahmad Fawzi, the Director of News and Media Division, to revoke our pass because we did not follow his ways of thinking when it comes to reliance on oil and the essence of sustainable development and problems of global warming/climate change. That was when the job Ms. Broyer holds now was in the hands of Mr. Gary Fowlie who was moved since to another job, and Mr. Fawzi is about to retire at the end of this month also. I thought that Ms. Broyer would show now the courage to correct an evil, but she was not up to this. This caused me to make sure I get the information I was after and I knew that I was on an interesting something when I got the e-mail from Geneva, which I posted, that clearly proved to me that folks from at least two outside agencies do not want to be seen as fall guys for the New York Headquarters. OK – now step 3 – the Appointments of the Secretary-General for March 10, 2010 include a private meeting at 12:00 pm with Dr. Pachauri followed by a 12:30 pm joint “stake-out” for the benefit of the UN correspondents. A stake-out is a stand-up event where usually the correspondents are allowed to ask questions. In this case – please no questions – just be used as props – please. The event is described in full in the article by Matthew Russell Lee we posted. As I was at the UN anyway – for a different event – I also learned that there was an adjustment to the Briefings to the Press schedule for the day. Seemingly Professor Dijkgraaf is no push-over to his large credit – he clearly pulled away from joint appearances with those he will be called to investigate, and did not appear at that stake-out, but as the UN is in terrible need to do something on this so called “climate-gate” was given separate Press meeting time at 1 pm. OK – now step 4 – the output from the Press events of March 10, 2010 include the self-serving “Remarks to Media on IPCC” from the UN Secretary-General that had not the courtesy of allowing questions, and a not-easy-to-get two page document by the uninitiated – “PRESS CONFERENCE ON REVIEW OF INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE.” This was the document used by Jeffrey Ball in his evaluation for the Wall Street Journal that we also presented. —————- The material follows: http://www.un.org/News/briefings/docs//2…
Press Conference on Review of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – March 10, 2010The aim of an independent review of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was to ensure the quality of its future reports, the co-chair of the scientific institute charged with that task said today. “Our goal will be to assure nations around the world that they will receive sound scientific advice on which Governments and citizens alike can make informed decisions,” Robbert H. Dijkgraaf of the InterAcademy Council said at a Headquarters press conference. Created by the world’s science academies in 2000, the Council aims to mobilize top scientists and engineers to provide evidence-based advice to international bodies. IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri announced the review’s establishment amid growing attacks by sceptics following the disclosure that the Panel’s fourth assessment report, which confirmed human responsibility for global warming, contained errors in respect of the pace of the phenomenon. Mr. Pachauri and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had then asked the InterAcademy Council to lead the independent review. “Our task is forward-looking,” Mr. Dijkgraaf stressed, explaining that the Council had been asked to form a group that could recommend improved practices and procedures so as to ensure the quality of reports in time to impact the Panel’s fifth assessment, already under way. That meant that the review and recommendations were required by the end of August 2010, “a very tight schedule”, he said. Specifically, the review would examine quality control and guidelines for the types of literature appropriate for use in assessments, with special attention to non-peer review literature. It would also look at the Panel’s procedures for Government review of IPCC materials, its handling of the full range of scientific views and its procedures for correcting errors. Reviewers had been asked to analyse the entire IPCC process, including management, administration, transparency and the way in which the Panel handled possible errors and communicated them to policymakers and the public, he said. They would also look at how the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), World Meteorological Association (WMA), the overall United Nations system and other stakeholders related to the Panel, with a view to strengthening assessments and ensuring consistent application of IPCC procedures. Finally, they would analyse the Panel’s communication strategies to ensure that the public was kept informed of its activities. Emphasizing the independence of the review, which would be conducted in accordance with the InterAcademy Council’s own procedures, he said neither the IPCC, UNEP, WMA, nor any related bodies, would exercise control over or oversee the review process or the final report. The international group of experts to be assembled by the Council would serve on an unpaid, voluntary basis in all cases where the group was asked to provide advice on a particular issue, he said, adding that the United Nations would provide funds for travel and other expenses. All draft reports of the InterAcademy Council underwent an intensive peer-review process by international experts, he said, stressing that a final report was only released to the public when the Council’s Board was satisfied that the subsequent feedback had been thoughtfully considered and incorporated. In addition, all efforts were made to ensure that reports were free of national or regional biases. Responding to questions, Mr. Dijkgraaf declined to comment on Mr. Pachauri’s chairmanship of the IPCC or give his own views on climate change and the Panel’s current structure, only reiterating the forward-looking nature of the review to be conducted, and pointing out that continual review was part of all scientific procedures. Asked how he hoped to find enough scientists for an independent review when the IPCC counted thousands of the world’s top climate scientists in its ranks, he said it would be a delicate task to find the necessary diversity of scientific disciplines and people with experience of large-scale organizations. It was also important that all involved maintain objective distance from the Panel’s work. In response to a question as to whether the opinions of climate change sceptics would be included, he said: “By nature every scientist is a sceptic.” As for alleged manipulation of data at East Anglia University and various consultancy agreements that had been the subject of controversy, he said certain case studies might be part of the investigations, but the reviewers would certainly look at management and organizational issues. Questioned further, Mr. Dijkgraaf said the number of experts to be appointed had not yet been determined, though a substantial number was needed to provide diverse expertise. Hopefully, there would have been progress in determining the Board’s composition by a 22 March meeting. * *** * Further, considering that Professor Dijkgraaf expects to have his panel ready by March 22nd, we would like to point out the added importance of the full day meeting at the Earth Institute of Columbia University on March 25th – we posted. The meeting gets added interest as the UNSG is part of that meeting, and he will be there at the home of serious scientists that may not treat him as kindly as the UN Department of Public Information. We look thus forward to further disclosures specifically that there are scientists that think the IPCC under the Pachauri ledership erred rather on the low side and not on the high side. Others may even be less kind by saying something like that both men – the UNSG and the head of the IPCC – were choices of the G.W. Bush US Administration. Permalink |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on March 11th, 2010 Jeffrey Ball is Environment Editor and Columnist at The Wall Street Journal. He covers the issues by pulling in the information from its sources and judges the information’s importance to business. As the WSJ describes him – “Jeffrey Ball is The Wall Street Journal’s environment editor. His column, “Power Shift,” appears every other Friday in the paper and chronicles the changing energy and environmental landscape. Mr. Ball has written about energy and the environment for the Journal for a decade, having covered the oil industry from the paper’s Dallas bureau and the auto industry from the Detroit bureau. His reporting focuses on the economic viability of efforts to change the way society consumes fossil fuels. He helped create Environmental Capital, the Journal’s daily blog on energy and the environment, and he has appeared on networks including PBS, NPR, CNN and the BBC. Before coming to the Journal in 1996, he worked as a reporter for the Charlotte (N.C) Observer and the Corpus Christi (TX) Caller-Times. He graduated in 1990 from Yale University, where he majored in history and was editor-in-chief of the Yale Daily News. He lives in Dallas with his wife and two daughters.” We write the above because we were impressed. – He is a good journalist – he caught on to the implications to business of the uncertainty created by the push against Climate Science and the need to clear up that uncertainty. He published: Climate Panel Vows Better Oversight on Research - WSJ.com Climate Panel Details Its Review Plan: U.N. Appoints Another Global Science Body to Investigate Problems in Now-Controversial 2007 Report on Warming Trend. By JEFFREY BALL, The Wall Street Journal, March 11, 2010. The United Nations detailed its plans for an outside review of its beleaguered panel on climate change, amid political reverberations as critics and advocates each jockeyed to use the announcement to their advantage. The InterAcademy Council, a body representing scientific academies around the world, is to conduct a wide-ranging review of the procedures and management of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The review, to be done by August, comes in response to revelations of questionable behavior and factual errors by some scientists who contributed to the IPCC’s 2007 report, which won a Nobel Peace Prize. The report called climate change “unequivocal” and “very likely” caused by emissions from human activity. Robbert Dijkgraaf, co-chair of the InterAcademy Council, said in an interview that a particularly delicate task will be to pick who participates in the review. The council needs people who have knowledge of climate science but aren’t too close to the IPCC: “Clearly you cannot be the reviewer and the reviewed at the same time,” he said. But people involved in previous IPCC reports could serve on the review committee, he said. The council was set up in 2000 to advise international institutions such as the U.N. and the World Bank. The IPCC chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, participated in a previous council report on energy issues, but Mr. Dijkgraaf said that wouldn’t compromise the council’s objectivity. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has made climate change one of the top priorities of his tenure. Mr. Ban took no questions Wednesday and didn’t directly address trhe future of Mr. Pachauri, who has faced calls to resign. But the two stood together at the U.N. podium and Mr. Ban was supportive. “Regrettably, there were a very small number of errors” in the panel’s 2007 report, Mr. Ban said. “Remember, this is a 3,000-page synthesis of complex scientific data. I have seen no credible evidence that challenges the main conclusions of that report.” In an interview Wednesday, Mr. Pachauri said he would “certainly not” resign. Critics of proposed greenhouse-gas regulations in the U.S. have begun using questions about the IPCC as their latest ammunition. Peabody Energy Co., one of the country’s major coal producers, filed a petition last month with the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s move to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions because it relies on IPCC determinations. The EPA said in a statement that it is confident its move will withstand legal challenge. “The question of the science is settled,” the agency said. The IPCC expressed “regret” earlier this year that its 2007 report erroneously claimed that Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035. The report also said inaccurately that about half of the Netherlands sits below sea level. IPCC leaders, including Mr. Pachauri, say an independent review is needed to try to restore public confidence in the panel. The InterAcademy Council’s board is likely to elect members to its review committee on March 22, Mr. Dijkgraaf said. He said the committee probably will include some people who have little exposure to climate science, but have expertise in issues such as quality control of data and use of non-peer-reviewed literature. The report will go through the council’s board, which consists largely of presidents of national science academies. “Scientific reputations will rest on this, and if it can be shown the science was sloppy, their stars will fall,” said scientific ethicist Thomas M. Powers, director of the Science, Ethics, and Public Policy Program at the University of Delaware, speaking of those involved in the IPCC report. “Apart from divining rods, the best we can do is get the smartest people in the world, the people who know science, and ask them to review their peers.” Environmentalists said that they hoped the review would quiet criticism of the IPCC. It should “restore public confidence that has been shaken by an aggressive campaign to sow confusion about climate science,” said a statement by Peter Frumhoff, who helped to write the 2007 report and is director of science and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists. Republican Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, who is among those calling for Mr. Pachauri’s resignation, on Wednesday said that the U.S. “cannot afford to continue to base our energy and environmental policies on contaminated U.N. data.” The InterAcademy Council will probe, among other things, the IPCC’s guidelines for using non-peer-reviewed literature in its reports, how to ensure the IPCC considers a “full range of scientific views,” and how it corrects any errors in its reports once detected, Mr. Dijkgraaf said, The council also will “look at the management of the IPCC,” he said. Neither the U.N. nor the IPCC will “exercise any control” over the study by the InterAcademy Council, Mr. Dijkgraaf said. Permalink |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on March 11th, 2010 State of the Planet, March 25, 2010.
From The Earth Institute, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY Thursday, March 25, 2010 - 8:30am-5:30pm EDT Beijing, London, Nairobi, New Delhi, New York, via live links/webcast New York site: Lerner Hall, Columbia University, 115 St/Broadway —————–
Webcast/event site: http://www.stateoftheplanet.org/ —————
The State of the Planet conference, held every two years, brings together insights on critical issues from the world’s most influential thinkers and leaders. This year, the Earth Institute, The Economist and Ericsson join forces to bring the conversation to the global community. With broadband access enabled by Ericsson, live events in five cities will be brought together in real time, moderated by Economist journalists. Viewers at home can participate via interactive online tools and discussion boards. Four major topics are on the table: the science and politics of climate change; healing the world economy in an environmentally sustainable way; the ongoing challenge of ending extreme poverty; and how we can build and strengthen international systems able to deal with continuing crises that span borders. Speakers include: UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon; President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa of Mexico; Prince Albert II of Monaco; Sanjeev Chadha, CEO of Pepsico India; Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme; Xu Jintao, head of the environmental economics program, Peking University; and many others. Moderator: Al Jazeera journalist Riz Khan. Hosts of the event are: Earth Institute director Jeffrey D. Sachs; Ericsson president and CEO Hans Vestberg; and Matthew Bishop, American business editor and New York bureau chief of The Economist.
New York press registration/info: Kevin Krajick kkrajick@ei.columbia.edu 212-854-9729 Beijing: brookings@tsinghua.edu.cn Nairobi: Nick Nuttall nick.nuttall@unep.org New Delhi: Abhijit Sinha Abhijit.sinha@teri.res.in
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DRAFT AGENDA – New York, NY March 25, 2010 8:30 a.m. EDT Video Introduction Welcome and Introduction by Event Hosts:
Introduction of Global Sites: Riz Khan, Al Jazeera English (Master of Ceremonies). 8:55 a.m. EDT SESSION I: CLIMATE CHANGE – What Would It Take to Complete the Climate Deal? In recent months, the world saw failed negotiations in Copenhagen, attacks on the validity of reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and calls from politicians to open criminal investigations into climate science. In this context, discussion is likely to go beyond “completion” of a climate deal to delve into the true state of our knowledge; how the world perceives it; and whether, and how, the world can move forward toward real action on climate change. New York Event Site Host: The Earth Institute, Columbia University Moderator: Matthew Bishop, American Business Editor and New York Bureau Chief, The Economist
Beijing Event Site Host: Brookings Institution, Tshingua University Moderator: James Miles, China Correspondent, The Economist Panelists:
Monaco – HSH Prince Albert II of Monaco New Delhi – Event Site Host: The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) Moderator: Simon Cox, Correspondent, The Economist Panelist:
10:30 a.m. EDT Break ——————- 10:45 a.m. EDT SESSION II: POVERTY – How Do We Achieve the Millennium Development Goals? Only five years remain until the 2015 deadline to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, the world’s agreed-upon targets to end extreme poverty and fight hunger and disease. This year is pivotal. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called on world leaders to attend a summit in New York September 20-22, to boost progress toward the MDGs and agree on a plan of action to achieve them. The prospect of falling short of the goals due to lack of commitment is real, but achieving the MDGs remains feasible with adequate commitment, policies, resources and effort. New York Event Site Host: The Earth Institute, Columbia University Moderator: Matthew Bishop, American Business Editor and New York Bureau Chief, The Economist Panelists:
Nairobi (Special Focus: Is Green Growth the Answer for Africa?) Event Site Host: United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Moderator: Jonathan Ledgard, Correspondent, The Economist Panelists:
—————— 12:15 p.m. EDT Lunch 1:30 p.m. EDT Keynote Address President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa, Mexico (speaking from Mexico City) —————- 1:58 p.m. EDT SESSION III: ECONOMIC RECOVERY – What Does a Green Recovery Look Like? This session will deal with two colliding questions. First: How do we haul the world out of the current economic recession? Second: Given that economic activity helps drive environmental degradation, how do we make a recovery environmentally sustainable? Discussion may start with shorter-term questions of money and finance, but will quickly move on to longer-term ones on how the world economy fits in with the usage or conservation of natural resources; systems of energy generation, old and new; and the survival or fall of natural ecosystems. New York Event Site Host: The Earth Institute, Columbia University Moderator: Riz Khan, Host of the Riz Khan Show, Al Jazeera English
London Event Site Host: The Economist Moderator: John Micklethwait, Editor-in-Chief, The Economist, London —————- 3:55 p.m. EDT SESSION IV: How Can an International System Be Built To Deal with Transnational Issues?
4:00 p.m. EDT Keynote Address Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary-General The challenges of sustainable development—whether heading off climate change, fighting extreme poverty, stabilizing populations, or ensuring adequate water supplies for human use and crops—must all harness actions from a wide array of institutions. Gaining cooperation among the many stakeholders involved is the toughest challenge of all. In the countdown to achieving the MDGs by 2015, and in the midst of a global economic crisis, the need to strengthen global cooperation has become an emergency rather than simply a matter of urgency. Strengthening global partnerships in the areas of aid, trade, debt relief, and access to affordable medicines and new technologies is critical to prevent a decline in development. New York Event Site Host: The Earth Institute, Columbia University Moderator: Riz Khan, Host of the Riz Khan Show, Al Jazeera English Panelists:
——————- 5:17 p.m. EDT Wrap-Up: Jeffrey D. Sachs, Hans Vestberg and Matthew Bishop ———————————————————————————————————————————————– MORE INFORMATION:
Kevin Krajick, The Earth Institute Dayna De Simone, The Economist Ericsson Corporate Public & Media Relations Phone: +46 10 719 69 92 The Earth Institute, Columbia University mobilizes the sciences, education and public policy to achieve a sustainable earth. Through interdisciplinary research among more than 500 scientists in diverse fields, the Institute is adding to the knowledge necessary for addressing the challenges of the 21st century and beyond. With over two dozen associated degree curricula and a vibrant fellowship program, the Earth Institute is educating new leaders to become professionals and scholars in the growing field of sustainable development. We work alongside governments, businesses, nonprofit organizations and individuals to devise innovative strategies to protect the future of our planet.
The Economist, edited in London since 1843, is a weekly international news and business publication offering clear reporting, commentary and analysis on world politics, business, finance, science, technology, culture, society, media and the arts. The Economist has a North American circulation of 813,000, a global circulation of more than 1.4 million and 4 million monthly unique visitors at The Economist online. Because of its international editorial perspective, it is read by more of the world’s political and business leaders than any other magazine. Ericsson is a world-leading provider of telecommunications equipment and related services to mobile and fixed network operators globally. Over 1,000 networks in more than 175 countries utilize its network equipment, and 40 percent of all mobile calls are made through its systems. It is one of the few companies worldwide that can offer end-to-end solutions for all major mobile communication standards. Ericsson is advancing its vision of being the “prime driver in an all-communicating world” through innovation, technology and sustainable business solutions. More than 80,000 employees around the world generated revenue of SEK 206.5 billion (USD 27.1 billion) in 2009. Founded in 1876, with the headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden, Ericsson is listed on OMX NASDAQ, Stockholm and NASD Permalink |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on March 11th, 2010 Despite Pundits, Netanyahu Wants Peace – writes Professor Efraim Inbar. BESA Center Perspectives Papers No. 101, March 11, 2010 EXECUTIVE SUMMERY: Israelis, as well as the current Netanyahu government, deeply desire peace. Netanyahu expressed a willingness to reach a territorial compromise through a two-state solution. Netanyahu’s readiness to compromise has been met by continued resistance from the Palestinians, who have displayed a lack of political pragmatism that is a prerequisite for reaching a compromise. It is wrong to blame Netanyahu for the current political impasse, as it is the Palestinians who have displayed inflexibility in their approach to peace. Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, wants peace and is interested in negotiations with the Palestinians. The Netanyahu government enjoys popular support because a large majority of Israelis agree with this view. All polls show that Israelis deeply desire peace and this issue influences their voting behavior. Indeed, every Israeli government must demonstrate to the electorate its seriousness in the peace process in order to be reelected. Moreover, preserving American support for Israel requires showing seriousness in the pursuit of peace. True, what is required to convince Israelis about their government’s determination to pursue peace is not always enough to impress the outside world. This gap is the source of much of the criticism leveled against Israel. But the critical and/or hostile circles, which are heavily influenced by misguided notions propagated by the discredited Israeli left and Palestinian propaganda, are not in sync with regional realities and entertain unrealistic expectations. In his June 2009 speech at the BESA Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University, Netanyahu successfully redefined the Israeli consensus and became a mainstream political leader. Despite the Jews’ ancient claim to their historical homeland, the Land of Israel, Netanyahu expressed a willingness to reach territorial compromise – a two-state solution – in order to satisfy the national needs of the Palestinians. Netanyahu’s acceptance of a Palestinian state has been conditional, however. His insistence on a demilitarized state reflects ingrained Israeli fears of their dangerous neighbors. Netanyahu also demanded the long overdue recognition of Israel as the Jewish nation-state. The Palestinians still have to reciprocate the recognition of “Palestinian legitimate rights” of 1978 by Menachem Begin. In line with Israeli consensus, Netanyahu insisted on Jerusalem remaining the undivided capital of the Jewish state. Over 70 percent of Israelis agreed with Netanyahu’s address – quite an achievement for any Israeli prime minister. The Israeli consensus revolves around the willingness to repartition the Land of Israel. There is enormous skepticism about the Palestinians’ ability to reach an historic compromise with the Zionist movement and subsequently implement the agreement. Israelis are most concerned about Palestinian compliance with Israel’s security requirements. Israelis want defensible borders, understanding that the peace process is predicated upon a strong Israel. Most of the hawkish faction within Netanyahu’s Likud party feels comfortable with Netanyahu’s positions. This faction even supported the ten-month partial freeze on new housing construction in Judea and Samaria that was announced on November 25, 2009 – an unprecedented Israeli concession. Netanyahu’s government is strongly enforcing the moratorium. Netanyahu believes that progress on the road to peace can only be achieved by a slow process of institution-building and economic growth beginning from the bottom-up. Indeed, his government has done its best to facilitate economic growth in the PA by removing dozens of roadblocks in the West Bank, thereby putting the lives of Jews at risk, and by supporting international and Palestinian economic activity. Moreover, the Israeli prime minister declared at every opportunity his willingness to enter into unconditional talks with the PA. He has even accepted proximity talks despite Israel’s traditional insistence on direct talks. So far, those advocating great Israeli territorial concessions to the Palestinians in order to bring peace have been proven wrong. Two Israeli prime ministers offered to cede virtually all of the disputed territories. The offers of Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert were respectively rejected by Yasser Arafat in 2000 and ignored by his successor, Mahmoud Abbas, in 2008. Moreover, in 2000 the Palestinians launched a campaign of terror and recently they have threatened to renew it. Similarly, after the Sharon government unilaterally withdrew from Gaza and dismantled all settlements in 2005, the Gaza Strip was converted into a launching pad for intensified missile attacks. The Palestinians seem to have a great territorial appetite. Historically, they have displayed a lack of political pragmatism that is a prerequisite for reaching a compromise. Unfortunately, the Palestinians have no Ben-Gurion-type leaders capable of making difficult decisions. The contrast to Israeli leadership is striking, particularly when history shows that Ben-Gurion was ready to accept the convoluted 1947 partition borders and a Jewish state without Jerusalem. Blaming Netanyahu for the current impasse assumes that the insatiable Palestinians must be placated at the expense of vital Israeli security interests, such as demilitarization of the West Bank and maintaining Israeli control over the Jordan Valley and Greater Jerusalem. Ascribing responsibility to Netanyahu for the impasse with the Palestinians also wrongly assumes that the Palestinians have displayed flexibility in their approach to Israel. Yet it is the Palestinians who insist on preconditions for resuming the talks. Even Netanyahu’s decision for the ten-month freeze on building in the settlements was rejected by the PLO. As a matter of fact, it is the Palestinians that are dragging their feet in the peace negotiations. Only after heavy American pressure did the West Bank leadership agree to negotiate with Israel, albeit “proximity talks,” refusing to sit in the same room with the Israeli interlocutors. Mahmoud Abbas in his May 2009 Washington Post interview emphasized that he is in no hurry to negotiate with Israel and that he expects the Americans to force Israel to accept the Palestinian conditions. His prime minister, Salam Fayyad, announced a plan to unilaterally establish a Palestinian state in two years instead of a state emerging from negotiations with Israel. Both “moderate” leaders honor suicide bombers as martyrs and provide their families with state pensions. They allow the PA-controlled media, education system and mosques to continue to promote rabid anti-Semitism. Both reject recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. Noteworthy, the PA hardly represents all Palestinians as Gaza is ruled by Hamas and is partly discredited by corruption and ineptitude. Yet, all Palestinians are united by the belief that Israel is the source for all their troubles. Palestinian society in Gaza and in the West Bank is under the spell of Hamas, which has not accepted Israel’s right to exist. Consequently, the Palestinians are not moving in the direction of compromise and reconciliation. Netanyahu’s government probably has no illusions about the ability of the Palestinians to reach an agreement with Israel and implement it in the near future, but Netanyahu keeps the option of negotiations open. In contrast, the Palestinians’ goal is to extract Israeli concessions without negotiations, hoping that Washington and/or the international community will pressure Israel into accepting Palestinian demands. Efraim Inbar is professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University and director of the Begin-Sadat (BESA) Center for Strategic Studies. This article is a revised version of a piece published in Bitterlemons on March 8, 2010. Permalink |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on March 11th, 2010 Have Fuel Cells Finally Turned the Corner? One of the most unique and remarkable elements of this public “debut” is that it is nothing of the sort from a production and operational standpoint. Bloom Energy, on its web site and in press releases, already counts such prominent companies as Bank of America, Coca-Cola, eBay, FedEx, Google, Staples, and Walmart as its customers with already installed and operating servers. Among the uses cited for the Energy Servers™ are replacements for on-site diesel generators (typically for back up or peak time period generation) and replacement of traditional grid-delivered power, including for the purpose of reducing these companies’ respective greenhouse gas emissions/carbon footprints through the use of bio-gas as fuel. However, amid the hype and buzz generated from the “60 Minutes” story and subsequent public unveiling of the Energy Server™ on February 24th, many questions remain as to whether or not this new offering is the “game-changer” that, to date, in regard to fuel cells, has been more promise than delivery. The Energy Server™ was developed largely in secret since Bloom Energy’s founding in 2001, with no substantive information on the product coming from the company until last month’s public coming-out party. Bloom Energy’s headquarters are a non-descript office building in Sunnyvale with no signage indicating their presence there. Furthermore, while most often such new technologies are tested in cooperation/collaboration with the utility industry, Bloom Energy chose not to do so with the Energy Server™ at least not that is publicly known. A representative from The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) declined specific comment to a blog posting for the Wall Street Journal, indicating that, “we haven’t had access to it.” Therefore it is unclear how the server will function if interconnected to the grid in a net-metering scenario (similar to what’s happening now in many jurisdictions with smaller Solar PV distributed generation). It’s also unclear how exactly the Energy Server™ would function in residential areas, as its capacity would dictate its deployment at the sub-station level. Finally, there are many questions as to the specific costs associated with obtaining and operating the Energy Server™. Bloom Power’s web site mentions a 3-5 year payback model on owning the server, but the company has not publicly gone into any further detail on the costs of ownership. Any deployment at a “utility level” will likely attract the attention of and possibly require the approval of regulators, at which point the cost in comparison to other generation resources, renewable or otherwise, will come into play. Despite these (and probably others not explored here) open questions, Bloom Energy and the Energy Server™ merit our industry’s interest and attention going forward. The fact that they have a deliverable product already being used in the market speaks volumes as to how far fuel cells have come from promise to reality. ———– We think that the questions in above article are basically irrelevant – this because we hope the Bloom-boxes will develop a new decentralized market that is not based on the grid. In our best dreams we envision them make the grid itself a thing of the past – so that the present investment push for smart grid will have to be reconsidered. Permalink |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on March 10th, 2010 When real scientists say they are uncertain about something because they know that nothing is matter – all is probability – they are called cooks and what they say is rejected by the real cooks – then when the scientists decide to be efficient by talking certainty rather then probability – the same real cooks call them charlatans. Is there any hope to a decent world led by decent government capable of saying that the uncertainty principle
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on March 9th, 2010 nbsp;http://peacenow.org supports Iran sanctions that can work. Congress is now considering two pieces of legislation that will limit the Iranian regime’s ability to crack down on freedom of speech within Iran: HR 4301 – the Iran Digital Enhancement Act (IDEA) – would help give the Iranian people the high-tech tools they need to communicate online. It would also make it harder for the Iranian government to monitor or block Internet communications. HR 4303 – the Stand with the Iranian People Act (SWIPA) – would punish corporations that help the Iranian government stifle free speech. It would also allow American non-profits to provide humanitarian aid within Iran. And it would bar Iranian officials who have abused the human rights of the Iranian public from entering the United States. Empowering the Iranian people must be a vital part of the American strategy to deal with the threat posed by Iran to Israel and to key American national security interests. Now is the time for action. What happens in Iran can have broad ramifications for Israel and for the future of the Arab-Israeli peace process. Permalink |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on March 9th, 2010 The suggestion of Mr. Marthinus van Schalkwyk presents some very interesting dilemmas: - first, it proposes an African for the position and we believe this is a bit like putting the carriage before the horse. Indeed, we say all the time that Africa is suffering because of the sins of others, so Africa and the Island States have most reasons to see a Climate agreement become reality, but then it is not the sufferers, but the sinners, that will have to sign up to an enforceable agreement, and those are mainly China and the US. Here indeed South Africa is one of the additional three IBSA states that participated in the formulation of the Copenhagen notice. If one where to try to pick a lead country from among the IBSA – we suggested it be Brazil as it would have the least conflicts of interest from among the three. - then, the appointment of Mr. van Schalwyk, a South African, would also mean that there will be the third Dutch person on that job in a row, albeit, this Dutchman comes from South Africa and not from the Netherlands, but nevertheless the subject will come up. - also, as we know the 2010 meeting of the UNFCCC, or COP 16, will be held in Mexico, while the following one, the 2011 COP 17 is intended for South Africa. An appointment of a South African to head the UNFCCC at this time would mean that the Mexico meeting that is limping anyway – as we just posted an hour ago – will become completely useless. Some, like the Latin American States, will find this objectionable. This one point leaves us perplexed if we sense that Cancun is just one more UN ritual led so that it has beforehand no chance to succeed – who knows – maybe the appointment of Mr. van Schlkwyk could actually result in annulment of a UN scheduled event. That could then be the first emissions saving UN led activity. - the last point has to do with the backing of Mugabe’s Zimbabwe from South Africa in the leadership of The UN Commission on Sustainable Development. The facts are that the CSD was destroyed because of that backing by South Africa, and the CSD is needed if one wants to find a base for climate activities at the UN. That past experience might have left, and who knows, perhapse still creates, a sour taste when looking at South Africa’s place in UN leadership. Will we do away also with the CSD and base climate on the Committee of 19 Wise Men that the UN Secretary-General just established? Without taking a stand on the candidate himself, nevertheless the first three points we raised will probably have to be weighed against the attributes that might be proposed when other names become available. ============== from: BuaNews (Tshwane) 8 March 2010, Pretoria — President Jacob Zuma has nominated Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk for the post of the United Nations’ new climate chief. Van Schalkwyk has been tipped as a strong contender to take over from Yvo De Boer who headed the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC). De Boer announced his resignation last month. “The South African government will consequently forward the name of Minister Van Schalkwyk to the Secretary General for his further consideration,” the Presidency said on Monday. Zuma and the minister met on Sunday to discuss this issue as well as South Africa’s global positioning, the Presidency said. “The final decision on the appointment rests with the Secretary General of the United Nations, Mr Ban Ki Moon.” Van Schalkwyk was deeply involved in climate change issues during his tenure as minister of environmental affairs and tourism. He built a strong profile for himself during the UN climate treaty negotiations leading up to the Copenhagen summit late last year. “During this period he commanded significant respect across the developing-developed country divide. This will stand him in good stead in this critical phase of driving the global climate change negotiations to conclusion,” said the Presidency. Given that South Africa will also be hosting and presiding over the climate change negotiations next year, the Presidency said it would be an “honour for the country to have one of its own to head up this very important UN institution”. If appointed, Van Schalkwyk will oversee one of the most important treaties of the 21st century – the 2012 treaty on climate change. The treaty is aimed at mitigating the causes and effects of climate change and shape the way countries power their economies. ——————- JOHANNESBURG — The South African president’s office announced the nomination of its tourism minister for the United Nations’ top climate post on Monday. The office said in a press release that Marthinus van Schalkwyk is a candidate to direct the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. The current leader of the post, Yvo de Boer, announced his resignation in February and will step down July 1. “We are pleased to know Minister Van Schalkwyk is being considered and would be very confident that he would be equal to the task of replacing Mr. de Boer,” said Themba Linden, Political Advisor at Greenpeace Africa. “By all accounts, he has an excellent standing as a negotiator, and has earned a great deal of respect for being very engaged and informed.” Van Schalkwyk’s chances of being appointed are bolstered by the high likelihood that South Africa will host the U.N.’s climate change negotiations in 2011. South Africa along with the U.S., India, Brazil and China drafted the climate change agreement reached in Denmark in December. The compromise calls for reducing emissions to keep temperatures from rising more than 2 C (3.6 F) above preindustrial levels. The nonbinding agreement also calls on rich nations to spend billions to help poor nations deal with drought and other impacts of climate change, and to develop clean energy. Even though it helped draft the accord, South Africa joined a chorus of critics, expressing disappointment at not reaching a legally binding climate change agreement. —————– Could it be that his oponent will be an Indian backed by China? The guesing game may just go wild from now on: There have also been reports in India that environment minister Jairam Ramesh has nominated Indian environment secretary Vijai Sharma for the role, and his nomination is believed to be supported by China. As such, Van Schalkwyk is likely to be regarded as a potential conciliatory candidate, securing the support of the many Africa countries that will be most directly affected by climate change and providing a potential link between the US and Europe and the so-called BASIC group of emerging economies, of which South Africa is a member alongside Brazil, India and China. His nomination chances will be further bolstered by the likelihood that South Africa will host next year’s main UN climate change summit where diplomats still hope an international treaty agreed later this year in Mexico can be formally adopted. Permalink |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on March 9th, 2010 EU Climate Chief delivers Treaty blow. by Fiona Harvey, Environment Correspondent The world will almost certainly fail to draw up a new treaty on climate change this year, the minister in charge of last year’s Copenhagen summit has admitted, delivering a heavy blow to the barely flickering hopes for a swift global settlement. Connie Hedegaard, the Danish minister who masterminded the summit of world leaders on global warming last year and is now the European commissioner for climate change, told the Financial Times negotiations were not progressing fast enough for a treaty to be signed soon. “To get every detail set in the next nine months looks very difficult,” she said. “Europe would love that to happen, and I would love that to happen . . . but my feeling is that it is going to be very difficult to get a treaty.” Her pessimism echoed that of the outgoing United Nations climate change chief, Yvo de Boer. He told the FT as he resigned last month after four years of seeking an agreement that he could not see a treaty being signed this year. Governments had been hoping to forge a final treaty at a global conference this December in Mexico, after failing to do so in Copenhagen. However, Ms Hedegaard said this was more likely to happen at a follow-up meeting next year in South Africa. That would still allow governments to meet their self-imposed deadline of forging a new agreement before the end of 2012, when the current provisions of the world’s only existing treaty on greenhouse gas emissions, the 1997 Kyoto protocol, expire. Ms Hedegaard robustly defended the Copenhagen summit, which attracted loud criticism, especially for the chaotic way in which it finished. She said that calling world leaders to the long-running negotiations had ensured rapid progress towards the end, when for the first time developed and developing countries mutually agreed limits on their emissions. But she said there would not be another Copenhagen-style summit. “You can do such a thing one time,” she said. The price of failure, if diplomats attempted to force an agreement this year, was too high, Ms Hedegaard said. “People would say let’s skip that idea, let’s skip the UN thing,” she said. She also defended climate scientists, saying the handful of flaws in the 2007 report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the e-mails in which scientists talked of concealing data did not affect the large body of scientific evidence amassed over decades. The UN climate talks have been going on since 1992, when world governments signed the first legally binding treaty aimed at avoiding dangerous levels of climate change. The Kyoto protocol failed because it did not impose obligations on developing countries and was rejected by the US. ——————- Connie Hedegaard: Statement of CONNIE HEDEGAARD, European Commissioner for Climate Action, on the creation of the Directorate-General CLIMATE “The DG CLIMATE has been created … Permalink |
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Americas Society gets funding from the Ford Foundation to promote Social Inclusion in Latin America. Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on March 9th, 2010
Visit AS/COA at www.as-coa.org
New York, March 9, 2010—Americas Society is honored to announce the Ford Foundation’s generous award of a one-year grant of $132,700 for Americas Society’s program to promote research, policy debate, and policy change on social inclusion. The Americas Society’s Social Inclusion Program aims to strengthen the economic and political representation of previously marginalized groups, coordinate new research on expanding access to markets and social services, and highlight how government and business can address the systemic problem of social exclusion throughout the Western Hemisphere. “Drawing on new research and our unique partnerships with local and international business, our goal is to foster public/private partnerships to increase market access, support the integration of workers and influence public policy to reduce social, economic and political exclusion throughout the Americas,” says Christopher Sabatini, Senior Director of Policy for Americas Society and Editor-in-Chief of Americas Quarterly. Through the AS’s policy journal, Americas Quarterly and the Americas Society website (www.as-coa.org), the program will also highlight Ford Foundation initiatives that advance social inclusion in the region and will aggregate research to provide a comparative regional perspective on topics such as land rights, access to public services, crime and insecurity, human rights, market access, and political representation. “We are deeply grateful to the Ford Foundation for its generous support and look forward to expanding our activities to promote greater social inclusion in the Americas,” says Americas Society President and CEO Susan Segal. For further information about the Americas Society’s work on social inclusion, please contact Americas Society Communications Manager Alex Andrews at aandrews@as-coa.org or (212) 277-8384. Permalink |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on March 9th, 2010
Scientists Propose a More Efficient Way to Make Ethanol.By HENRY FOUNTAINPublished on New York Times website March 2, 2010 but in print only March 9, 2010Producing ethanol from corn is relatively easy: the corn’s abundant sugars are readily fermented into alcohol. But using what is essentially a food crop to produce fuel has been criticized as a misuse of resources that can harm both agriculture and the environment. Better, critics say, to make what is called cellulosic ethanol from leaves and stalks or other crop waste or nonfood crops like switchgrass. The process uses lignocellulose, the basic structural material of all plants and the most abundant organic compound on the planet. But cellulosic ethanol is more difficult to make. The lignocellulose must first be broken down into sugars, which can then be fermented. Current techniques use costly enzymes or highly concentrated acids that are difficult to handle. Now, Ronald T. Raines and Joseph B. Binder of the University of Wisconsin are proposing a different way. In a paper in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they describe a process that uses an ionic liquid — a salt with a low melting point — in combination with water and acids at lower concentrations to produce fermentable sugars. The researchers found that water was the key to making the process efficient. Without water, the sugars produced by the action of the ionic liquid and the acid rapidly degraded into other compounds. But water keeps chloride ions in the salt from further reacting with the sugars. The researchers say their process produces sugar yields approaching those obtained by enzymatic methods. While much work remains, they say the process may prove useful in converting agricultural waste to a useful fuel. A version of this article appeared in print on March 9, 2010, on page D3 (Science) of the New York edition. Permalink |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on March 9th, 2010 Last night, March 8, 2010, three month since Copenhagen, I learned from someone that was among the creators of the US Carbon Market that this market is practically dead. Anything new on climate? No – nothing! Is there hope? Only if you are a continuous optimist! That exchange brought me to post the following as a reminder of the post-Copenhagen spirit. Further, we are still that optimist that believes with a US health-care bill pushed through there may be a renewed US-China joint effort on climate. Further, we also follow with interest Brazil reasserting itself by putting its foot down on conditions of trade with the US. This push by Brazil may remind the US that it is hard to handle wars in Asia without house cleaning in its attitude in the Western Hemisphere. Brazil and the Latins must become US partners also on Climate and they are right to claim a more open door to US markets. ————————— Letter to Grist from Europe Copenhagen blame game is obstacle to 2010 climate deal.29 December 2009 Read More About Climate & Energy, COP16, Copenhagen climate talks, Mexico, United Nations The holidays are supposed to be the season of goodwill. But that has been in short supply over the past week and a half as governments and environmental groups blame each other for the disappointing outcome of the Copenhagen climate summit.
Then it was China’s turn. Writing in The Guardian, UK energy and climate change secretary Ed Miliband condemned China for vetoing emission targets supported by “a coalition of developed and the vast majority of developing countries” and suggested the country had “hijacked” the negotiations. He was supported by the writer and journalist Mark Lynas, who had been at the heart of the bargaining as an adviser to the Maldives. Lynas took to The Guardian’s pages with a detailed, first-hand account of how the emerging superpower had “wrecked the talks, intentionally humiliated Barack Obama, and insisted on an ‘awful’ deal so that western leaders would walk away carrying the blame.” China, predictably, hit back, calling Miliband’s comments “unfair and irresponsible” and accusing him of “trying to shirk the obligations of developed countries.” China had “performed no worse than any others,” its officials insisted. Then the European Union weighed in, saying it was “obvious” that both China and the United States “did not want more than we achieved in Copenhagen.” It, in turn, was heavily criticized for joining U.S. opposition to the continuance of the Kyoto Protocol and for failing to rally other countries to ambitious emissions targets. Just about everybody blasted the Danes for their how they chaired the conference, while many identified widespread failures in the UN negotiating system, which British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called “at best flawed, at worst chaotic.” If success has many fathers, as the saying goes, failure breeds a host of unpleasant, caught-out children, all trying to shift the blame to a sibling. And there is plenty to go around. For what it is worth, China deserves most of it. It led the disruption in plenaries that made it impossible for the conference to get down to serious negotiating, took the targets out of the “accord” that finally resulted and has expressed more pleasure at the emasculated outcome than any other country. The United States certainly made mistakes, particularly in its approach to China. But in the weeks preceding Copenhagen, the Americans moved quite far (despite political pressures from a wary Congress), and President Obama worked hard to rescue some sort of a deal at the actual gathering. The environmentalists’ failure to recognize this suggests that deep-seated anti-Americanism continues even after the departure of the much-loathed Bush administration. And though the EU should have taken more of a lead and was foolish to join in attempts to undermine the Kyoto Protocol, its leaders led the last-minute rescue missions in Copenhagen. The Danes were undoubtedly not up to the job of charing the gathering. Indeed, the accord only won arms-length acceptance from the plenary after the Danish prime minister, Lars Løkke Ramussen, was quietly ejected from the chair. This type of situation probably won’t be a problem next December in Mexico, not least because a developing country will be presiding. And the shambolic failure of the UN system, not just in Copenhagen but over the whole of the last year (leading even one of its stalwarts, Malta’s Michael Zammit Cutajar, to confess “its tough to keep the belief in it”) is leading to an unprecedented drive for reform. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced he was setting up a “high-level panel” to see “how to streamline the negotiations process,” adding that he wanted to discuss “how we can do better” with governments and civil society. And that was just one sign of the most remarkable development of the last ten days. For even as the blame flew around, the key participants — far from taking refuge in it, and scaling down their commitments — were actually underlining their determination to do more. Obama reemphasized his resolve to get a cap-and trade bill through Congress, insisting that clean energy will “drive economic growth for decades to come.” Gordon Brown said he would be stepping up efforts to get a climate treaty. And France’s Nicolas Sarkozy offered to host a summit this spring of the leaders that signed the Copenhagen accord, while Angela Merkel’s Germany will host a ministerial meeting in June. Mexico pledged to press for the most controversial international commitment of all — a 50 percent global emissions cut by 2050 — as part of “a binding international agreement” under its chairmanship. Brazil announced it would stick to its own ambitious targets. India — whose celebration of the Copenhagen’s failure was second only to China’s — launched a plan for special “green economic zones.” And China announced new regulations to increase the use of renewable energy. Welding all this into a new treaty remains a formidable task, probably more so than before the Copenhagen summit opened. But there is still much to work with, if only governments can start working together. The first step is to move beyond the finger-pointing. As Yvo de Boer, the UN official in charge of the negotiations, pointed out last week: “These countries will have to sit down together next year, so blaming each other for what happened will not help.” Permalink |
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Did the messy outcome at Copenhagen make it less likely that world governments can reach a deal next year in Mexico?The blame game began with Europe-based environmental groups pointing the finger at President Obama and the United States. Greenpeace International said the U.S. had “