Monday, June 29, 2009, The Foreign Policy Association of New York had an event with Mr. Richard J. Shmierer, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State at the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs,  titled THE FUTURE OF US POLICY IN IRAQ.

Mr. Schmierer is an Arabic speaking Senior Foreign Service professional who served in Gemany, Saudi Arabia and Iraq where he was in June 2004 with the reopening of the US Embassy. in 2005, while with the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University he published a book “Iraq: Policy and Perceptions.” Then in July 2007 assumed the position of Director, Office of Iraq Affairs, and in June 2008 got his present position of Deputy Assistant Secretary.

Mr. Schmierer pointed out the importance of the milestone of the US policy of withdrawal from the Iraqi cities and called it a watershed day. The target is that by 2o11 all US troops will be out of Iraq and only diplomats and NGOs will come instead.

Further, he said that the center of gravity of US relations with Iraq will shift from security to economic development - there will be a growing effort to get the NGOs take over the main role he said.

January 2010 there will be national elections to council representatives and this will lead to a new Iraq leadership.

Iraq had a subsidized socialist economy that was inefficient - this economy must thus be restructured. They need foreign investment and are open to it but investors want to see first the infrastructure taken care of.

Today more then half of the Iraqis work for the government and what is needed for the future is an entrepreneurial economy. They have significant debt to the neighboring Arab States.

A question about capitalist takeover of the Iraqi assets was answered - every country is specific so is Iraq. Oil exports from Iraq can provide support for the Iraqi people - be this health care, education etc. There will be a ballance of support for the people and private enterprise. There is no such balance yet today so there is no support for the people either. Iraqis get now advice from the IMF and other sources, but it is that they could benefit from international investment in development. Ultimately it will be for the Iraqis to decide. The problem is the level of corruption. The US is not out of the reconstruction business altogether - what we support is capacity development.

A question about the composition of Iraq brought out for the first time the issue of ethnicities, extreemists, sunni terrorists - and that raises animosity

A question on how we are prepared to react to the Iranian events was answered that we are prepared to support Iraqi security forces to provide security for Iraq.

——–

As said, above event took place the day before the festivities in Iraq that the locals tried to view as a start of the “good riddance” process. That following day was also going to be the day when the Iraqi government intended to auction off for the first time oil development rites.

I obviously had mixed feeling about the way the US State Department explained the situation in Iraq.

(a) there was no single indication why the US fought so hard to keep the three parts of Iraq glued together - after all it was the outside Hashemite King imposed by the British, and the pipelines built by the British, that were the only reason that Iraq was formed in the first place.

(b) which foreign oil companies will be alllowed now to reenter Iraq. Will indeed the US gain anything out of this war, and if so how will the British and the Chinese look at what the US calls normalization?

I knew that we will soon find out where the wind blows, and we post this after the first indications we got - just a couple of days after that Iraqi independence  show.

———

First, let us see a British-experience reaction:

Iraqis are too shrewd to fall for an ‘invisible’ occupation.
By Priya Satia
The Financial Times, July 1 2009 20:03

We are at the beginning of the end. On Tuesday, US troops left Iraq’s cities, and in two years they will leave the country. Or so the official story goes. In reality, most of the “withdrawing” forces are merely relocating to forward operating bases where they appear to be hunkering down for a long entr’acte offstage in expensive, built-to-last facilities.

Still, Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, is touting this redistribution of American power as a “great victory” against foreign occupation, akin to the Iraqi rebellion against the British in 1920. The US media appear bemused at the comparison, as they continue to miss the point of the Iraqi insurgency. But Mr al-Maliki is more right than he knows about the historical echo: 1920 turned out to be a sad year for Iraq, as the brutal British suppression of that uprising inaugurated four decades of British rule, lasting until the 1958 Iraqi revolution.

Today, too, victory is tinged with fraud. And the Fallujah bombers – the “patriotic resistance” – know it. Mr al-Maliki may claim US participation in maintaining public order is “finished”, but everyone knows public order depends on Iraqi awareness of the offstage presence of US troops.

US operations will be suspended for a few days to promote the perception that Iraqi forces are actually in control; Ali al-Adeeb, a senior leader of Mr al-Maliki’s Dawa party, says the Americans will become “invisible”.

But Iraqis are too shrewd to fall for invisible occupation again; indeed, they never fell for it the first time. Tuesday’s withdrawals echo the cynical British grant of “independence” in 1932 more than Mr al-Maliki’s selective memory of 1920. Then, too, the foreign occupiers co-operated in the local government’s efforts to create an impression of sovereignty, while continuing to pull the strings of real authority behind the scenes. Then, too, Iraqis saw through the ruse. The celebrations of 1932 rang hollow as British aircraft continued to patrol overhead and British personnel were renamed advisors, trainers, liaisons – “the same individuals with new and supposedly thicker cloaks”, one British official confessed. Today, too, the thousands of troops that will remain in Iraq will be restyled as “trainers” and “advisers”; American aircraft will retain their free hand. Moreover, the Iraqi and US governments’ focus on appearances has increased their need for secrecy about the true number and nature of the withdrawals, compounding suspicions of foul play.

Iraqis worry equally about the loyalty of Iraqi security forces, who will remain under the sway of thousands of embedded US “trainers”. Their takeover of the violent security work of the former occupiers also renders them suspect.

In sermons last week, Moqtada al-Sadr, the firebrand cleric, warned of American loyalists in the military and government. Echoing 1920s and 1930s speculation that violence was the result of British machinations, he blames recent explosions on an American conspiracy to justify the US presence. His sermons inspired marches in Sadr City with shouts of, “No, no to America. No, no to occupation. No, no to terrorism. Yes for independence”. The current withdrawals are not seen as a step toward independence but to more covert and thus even more unaccountably violent American control – like the post-1932 British period.

American officials should heed the cautionary tale of the past, unwittingly invoked by Mr al-Maliki’s bluster. As the British ambassador in “independent” Iraq realised too late, Iraqis “never swallowed the fiction that [the advisers] are maintained as much, more even, for their good than for ours”. Independence remained a mirage as British trainers refused to entrust critical elements of Iraqi security to their trainees for fear of compromising British security. Security itself remained a pipe dream. As the isolated trainers grew increasingly susceptible to a paranoid groupthink about Iraqi politics, it became impossible for them to accept real withdrawal. The fortifications that protect US trainers from their trainees threaten to create a similar bubble.

In 1932 as now, rhetoric about withdrawal was aimed at global as much as Iraqi opinion. Instead of attending only to appearances, stoking the fears of a people familiar with nominal independence, the US and Iraqi governments should deliver the reality Iraqis and Americans want: “Yes for independence.”

The writer is assistant professor of history at Stanford University and author of Spies in Arabia.

———

Then let us see about the oil development concessions:

The only bid that was accepted was by a BP group in partnership with the China National Petroleum Company. So, one could say that the US led war makes space back for the Brits whom the US skillfully helped dislodge years ago, as they did also in Iran - but this time, as easily foreseen, the Chinese with their money will be the main beneficiaries. With all the nice talk about the Iraqi economy - nothing except US troops on the ground, in this post Saddam era, will hold Iraq from an economic Chinese invasion - this like in Africa, and like in Latin America. It is essential! The sooner the US realizes, in this new G2 Interdependence with China, that the stomach for living on the barrel and the bayonet is gone, the high talk about US benevolent activities in Iraq has gone to the archives as well. Iraq will try to price its oil, then there will be an internal fight to distribute the spoils. The sooner the US decides to leave the scene to the Iraqis and their new friends, the better it will be for this country. The Saudis have just contracted the building of frontier-walls on the long Iraqi border, as well as on their Yemeni border.

———

EDITORIAL
The First Deadline

The New York Times, Published: June 29, 2009

After six bloody, ruinously costly years, there is an end in sight to the American occupation of Iraq. Under an agreement with the Baghdad government, American combat troops are to leave Iraq’s cities by Tuesday. President Obama has pledged that by Aug. 31, 2010 — 14 months from now — all combat troops will be out of Iraq and by the end of 2011 all American troops will be gone.

For a badly overstretched American military it will certainly be time to go. Repeated deployments have taken a huge toll on soldiers and their families. The Iraq war — an unnecessary war — has diverted critically needed resources away from Afghanistan, the real front in the war on terrorism. Many Iraqis are eager to see the Americans gone. Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has declared June 30 to be a day of “feast and festivals.”
But there is an enormous amount to do — and not a lot of time — to help Iraqis prepare for the withdrawal and to reduce the chances the country will unravel as American troops leave.

We once hoped that a clear timetable for an American withdrawal would finally persuade Iraq’s leaders to make the political compromises that are the only way to hold their country together without an indefinite occupation. That has not happened. The Parliament has still not passed a law to divide Iraq’s oil resources equitably.

Indeed there are worrying signs that Iraqi politicians are doing the opposite — looking for ways to shore up their communal interests in case the civil war reignites. Many of Iraq’s neighbors are making the same calculations. Violence is down, but extremists are still trying to spark a new cycle of attacks and retaliation. In June, more than 300 Iraqis and 10 Americans were killed.

Mr. Obama was right to commit to a carefully paced and responsible withdrawal, and he was right to say that the United States cannot solve all of Iraq’s problems before it leaves. But we are concerned that Iraq may not be getting all the attention it needs in Washington.

The top American military commander in Iraq, Gen. Ray Odierno, is a strong leader, and Christopher Hill, the new American ambassador in Baghdad, is a talented diplomat. Still, Mr. Obama has a high-level adviser for Afghanistan and Pakistan, for Middle East peace negotiations, and for Iran, but there is no marquee name for Iraq to ensure that the president and the bureaucracy are fully engaged.

We understand that for political reasons, in both countries, the United States cannot be seen to micro-manage events. But there are still many problems that need sustained and high-level American attention.

Iraqi Readiness Until a few weeks ago, American commanders were hoping that Iraq’s government would invite them to keep combat troops in certain Baghdad neighborhoods and in the northern city of Mosul, where sectarian tensions are high and Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia is still active. It didn’t, and Washington decided not to insist, given Iraqis’ sensitivities.

Most analysts give the American military training program good marks. They differ on whether Iraq’s army — still plagued by corruption, discipline problems, equipment shortages and security breaches — is ready to keep the peace in the cities. The police force and the interior ministry need even more work.

A January report to Congress by the Pentagon said that as of last fall, 17 of the Iraq Army’s 174 combat battalions were capable of conducting counterinsurgency operations without American support. All of Iraq’s army is dependent on the American military for intelligence, logistics and air support.

For now American troops — there are 130,000 in Iraq — are not going far. Baghdad’s sprawling Camp Victory has been designated as outside of the city limits, although it is just a 10-minute helicopter ride from the Green Zone.

Before American troops can really go, Iraq’s Army will need to develop enough of those missing capacities to be able to fight on its own. The United States is also going to have to help Iraq build an air force and a navy so it can defend its own borders — an effort that will stretch far beyond the 2011 withdrawal deadline.

Iraq is in a dangerous neighborhood, but it also has its own history of menacing its neighbors. Washington is going to have to decide how much firepower it is willing to sell Iraq, knowing that Baghdad can buy elsewhere.

Sunni Anger

Iraq is still awash in bitter resentments and the Sunni minority, which once dominated the country, is particularly resentful of the Shiite-dominated government. Areas with large Sunni populations are short-changed on services. Baghdad has not carried out a law allowing former members of the Baath Party to return to their positions or collect pensions.We are particularly concerned about the Iraqi government’s cavalier — or worse — treatment of the Awakening Councils. Those are the former Sunni insurgents who decided to switch sides, at Washington’s urging. Members have complained about delays in being paid. The government has barely made a down payment on its commitment to find jobs for the group’s 94,000 members in the security services, ministries or private sector.
Baghdad blames dropping oil prices and a budget squeeze for the employment problems. But keeping these fighters, and their relatives and neighbors, on the government’s side should be a top priority. Mr. Maliki has further alienated many Sunnis by ordering the arrest of several council leaders and a few high-profile Sunni politicians. Iraqi officials say the arrests are justified. United States officials need to impress on the prime minister the dangers he is courting.

Kurdish Ambition

Speaking privately, many American officials say they are even more worried about rising tensions between Arabs and Kurds in northern Iraq.

The disputes are over boundaries, oil and the power of Iraq’s central government. The autonomous Kurdish regional government insists that it has a historical claim to towns and villages in three provinces just over the present regional border that were forcibly purged of Kurds and repopulated with Arabs by Saddam Hussein. Since 2003 — often with Washington’s blessing — the Kurdish government has deployed its militia, the pesh merga, to some of these areas and spent millions of dollars on services in an attempt to assert its control.

Fearing displacement or Kurdish domination, Sunni Arabs have turned to hard-line politicians or extremists, including Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, to defend their interests. American troops have had to defuse confrontations between government forces and the pesh merga. Tensions are particularly high in Nineveh Province and its capital, Mosul. The Sunnis won the majority on the provincial council in January’s election and immediately stripped the Kurdish bloc, which came in second, of all positions and patronage.

The most dangerous dispute, however, is over control of the oil-rich, multi-ethnic city of Kirkuk and the surrounding province. In April, the United Nations issued a report with several options for Kirkuk, including making it an autonomous region jointly run by Kurds, Arabs and Turkmens. Washington must press Baghdad and the Kurds to appoint responsible negotiators and urge them not to stake out extreme positions. If an agreement for Kirkuk cannot be reached, all three governments may have to consider outside administration, possibly United Nations-led, for some period.

Refugees One of the war’s great tragedies has been the forced flight of an estimated four million Iraqis — more than one out of 10 — from their homes. A small number, perhaps 100,000, have begun trickling back; a still smaller number have been permanently resettled abroad.

Millions live under extremely difficult conditions. Many are from the former Sunni elite. Others are Shiites whose mixed-population neighborhoods became Sunni during the upheavals of 2006-7. They all need the chance to return safely. Iraq needs their talents. Large numbers of refugees also put dangerous economic and political strains on Iraq’s neighbors.

Working out the politics and logistics of whether refugees return to their old homes (now occupied by others) or get new ones will require international aid and advice and enlightened leadership. While waiting for that to happen, millions of people need housing, food and education assistance. Syria and Jordan, which host the largest numbers of refugees, need continued international and American help. The United States needs to take in many more Iraqis, especially those who risked their lives to work with the Americans.

Governing More than anything, Iraq needs competent, inclusive government. To win public loyalties, the government must do a much better job of providing basic services to all Iraqis. With improved security, there has been an encouraging leap in electricity production, although there are still too many interruptions and shortfalls. Clean water is in desperately short supply.

American advisers have been working with Iraqi ministries, but United States officials say they are staggered by the lack of skilled managers and the pervasive corruption. Tackling those problems nationally and regionally must be a top priority. As American troops leave, the Pentagon must continue to provide security so civilian advisers can work throughout the country.Iraq’s politicians also need to show a far greater willingness to address and resolve long-deferred political problems. In February, on the same day he outlined his withdrawal plans, Mr. Obama said “ a lot of the ultimate outcome” in Iraq would depend on how difficult issues, including the oil law, are resolved. American officials now say that is unlikely to happen any time soon and they will be satisfied if legislators manage to pass a new election law in time for January’s national elections.
There are growing concerns that Prime Minister Maliki may be accumulating too much power, undercutting rivals and building a cadre of military and intelligence officers loyal only to him. Washington must make clear that it will not support any power grab and find ways to encourage other political leaders, while dissuading them from making their own power grabs.

Neighbors A stable Iraq is in the clear interest of all of its neighbors. Unfortunately few have seen it that way. Iran and Syria have meddled constantly — driving up the violence and backing off only when it looked as if the war could spin out of control and over Iraq’s borders or the Americans might retaliate. Tehran would still like to control Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government.

Meanwhile, many of America’s closest regional allies have withheld their support. Egypt’s Sunni-led government has only recently named an ambassador to Baghdad. Saudi Arabia’s Sunni royal family still has not.

Washington must do a lot more to persuade these allies that their interests would be far better served by building strong diplomatic and economic ties with Iraq. That is the best way to counterbalance Tehran. And with closer ties come more influence and more opportunity to help defend the interests of Iraq’s Sunni minority.

Relations with Tehran are particularly difficult right now, but at some point the Obama administration will have to renew its offer for dialogue. Iraq’s stability will have to be part of those discussions. We assume those discussions are already under way with Damascus.

The United States cannot fix Iraq. That is up to the Iraqis. But in the time left, this country has a responsibility and a strong strategic interest to do its best to help Iraq emerge from this disaster as a functioning, sovereign and reasonably democratic state.

Franny Armstrong Informs us that Scotland has become the first nation world-wide to comply in full with the IPCC CO2 emissions’ cut.  It is a 42% cut based on 1990 by 2020.

Compare above with the US 14% based on 2005 by 2020 - it is indeed more then 10 times the cuts suggested in the US House of Representatives legislation and 5 times the EU’s 20 by 2020 plans.

 http://www.christianaid.org.uk/ActNow/Co…

Scotland! Bonny, bonny Scotland has finally passed its own Climate Act, and in the process has become the first rich nation to commit to mid-term targets that are actually in line with the IPCC’s guidelines for avoiding that dreaded 2˚C threshold. Massive bigups to Stop Climate Chaos, WWF, Christian Aid and Friends of the Earth Scotland for all their work to make that happen, as well as everyone else who took the time to lobby their MSPs about this. Scotland actually now leads the developed world in climate mitigation policy. Who knew?

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20…

      Scottish parliament agrees tougher 42% target to cut emissions.

Campaigners say ‘hugely significant’ vote to cut emissions by 42% by 2020 sets new ‘moral’ standard for the rest of the industrialised world

Scotland has set itself the world’s most ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets after the Scottish parliament voted today to cut the nation’s CO2 emissions by 42% by 2020.
In a rare show of unity, all political parties at Holyrood unanimously agreed to fix the target as part of a radical climate change bill which also requires the Scottish government to set legally binding annual cuts in emissions from 2012.

The measures are tougher than the 34% target set in the UK government’s climate change act last year, which has no statutory annual targets. In common with UK government aspirations, the new act also commits Scotland to an 80% reduction on 1990 levels by 2050.

The campaign coalition Stop Climate Chaos Scotland, which claims its 60 member organisations represent two million people, said this “hugely significant” vote set a new “moral” standard for the rest of the industrialised world.

It comes the day after the US stated that a 40% cut by 2020 was “not on the cards”: developing nations have demanded this level of cut from rich nations.

Kim Carstensen, head of WWF International’s global climate initiative, said: “At least one nation is prepared to aim for climate legislation that follows the science. Scotland made the first step to show others that it can be done. We now need others to follow.”

However, the new measures are already under intense scrutiny. The act allows ministers to reduce the target later this year if the UK government’s advisory panel on climate change says it is unrealistic, or the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen in December fails to agree on a global deal to replace Kyoto.

Environment groups are critical of the Scottish government’s refusal to abandon road, bridge and airport expansion programmes, its plans for a new coal-fired power station, and its unwillingness to tackle directly increasing car use.

Furthermore, Scottish ministers only directly control about 30% of Scotland’s total annual emissions of 68m tonnes of CO2 – which only equates to a 700th of the world’s emissions. Most significant policies are controlled in Brussels and London, critics point out.

About 40% is covered by the European Union carbon emissions trading agreement, while the UK government has policy responsibilities for a further 30% of Scotland’s emissions. That includes fuel taxation, low emission vehicles, VAT on energy efficiency and air taxes.

The Committee on Climate Change, the panel set up to advise Gordon Brown’s government, has warned Salmond that Scotland is effectively jumping the gun by setting a 42% target in advance of a deal at Copenhagen.

In a letter to Stewart Stevenson, the Scottish climate change minister, the committee’s chief executive, David Kennedy, said it believes Scotland should follow the UK strategy of waiting until the Copenhagen conference.

If a deal is reached, it should follow the UK government’s lead and only then set a 42% target.

The Scottish government had also increased the pressure on itself by including emissions from international aviation and shipping in its target, Kennedy wrote, even though it has no control over policy for these sectors.

“I would therefore consider that an appropriate Scottish 2020 target could be set slightly below 34% to account for different treatments of international aviation under UK and Scottish approaches.”

Despite these criticisms, the chairman of Stop Climate Chaos Scotland, Mike Robinson, said the significance of the all-party consensus could not be underestimated.

“It means Scotland’s climate change bill has the toughest target of any industrialised nation in the world and will be held up as an example, ahead of the climate talks in Copenhagen in December, of what can and should be done,” he said.

“This is a moral commitment and we hope other developed nations will hear this call for action and follow Scotland’s lead.”

Although on renewable energy the Scottish National party is very likely to surpass its ambitious targets to deliver half of Scotland’s electricity from renewables by 2020, ministers have failed to embark on any politically unpopular measures to combat car use or the growth in short-haul aviation.

It has authorised a second road bridge over the Firth of Forth and abandoned bridge tolls, paid to extend the M74 motorway, supports a new ring road around Aberdeen and dualing the A9 and wants a major new coal-fired power station.

Its most ambitious emissions-reduction policies, such as using carbon capture for all fossil fuel power stations, using marine energy, and a wholesale switch to green transport, either have targets set at 2030 or are largely UK-government controlled. The SNP has also completely ruled out any new nuclear power stations.

——————-

Scotland ‘Leads the World’ in the Fight Against Climate Change

The Scottish Parliament today (Wednesday 24 June) led the world by passing the strongest climate change legislation of any industrialised nation.

MSPs voted in favour of legislation that commits Scotland to:

at least 80% cuts of all greenhouse gases (on 1990 levels) by 2050
a 2020 target of at least 42% reduction in greenhouse gases
include the full effects of emissions from international aviation and shipping from the start
a strong duty on all public bodies to make a full contribution to tackling climate change
strong energy efficiency measures to tackle fuel poverty and save energy
Stop Climate Chaos Scotland (SCCS) has been campaigning for three years to see these key elements included in the Bill.

Mike Robinson, Chair of Stop Climate Chaos Scotland, said: This is a truly momentous day. The Scottish Parliament has voted for legislation that will be held up as a positive example to the world ahead of climate talks in Copenhagen in December. An emissions reduction target of at least 42% and the inclusion of aviation and shipping from the start sets Scotland’s Bill apart from the UK Act. We hope other developed nations will hear this call for action and follow Scotland’s lead. Now that MSPs from all parties have made these moral commitments, they have a responsibility to do what is necessary to deliver them.

Stop Climate Chaos Scotland commends the Liberal Democrats and Greens for introducing robust targets early in the process and Labour and the SNP for their strong targets as the Bill neared conclusion.

—————
To the Editor:

Re “In Climate Change Bill, What May Become an Election-Year Issue” (Congressional Memo, June 27, The New York Times):

I can only hope that voters will take the time to read what the scientists are saying and see through the hot air offered by those politicians who deny global warming and deny the urgency of the situation.

Michael Yellin
Montclair, N.J., June 28, 2009

•

To the Editor:

“Betraying the Planet,” by Paul Krugman (column, June 29, The New York Times), recognizes that we can no longer afford to deny global warming, particularly in light of heavy Republican opposition to the Waxman-Markey bill that was passed in the House on June 26. Refuting global warming certainly constitutes betraying the planet, yet, surprisingly enough, so does supporting the bill.

A minority of the 212 representatives who voted against the bill did so because they considered the bill too weak. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said that countries should cut their emissions by 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. Yet the short-term target in the bill offers only a 4 percent reduction by 2020, which just begins to signal the numerous problems with the bill.

Supporting this bill is a step backward and would only further betray the planet and give in to these global warming deniers.

Brian Howe
Manlius, N.Y., June 30, 2009

•

The Coral Reef Crisis: Addressing the Threats of Global Warming and Ocean Acidification.
Public Presentation: 6th July 2009 (15:30 -17.00) at the Royal Society by Professor J.E.N. Veron
With introduction by Sir David Attenborough
Communicating the danger of major ecosystem collapse:
Coral reefs are directly impacted by the synergistic effects of global warming and ocean acidification and are likely to be placed into a situation of irreversible decline if immediate steps are not taken to reduce CO2 emissions. In December 2009, Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will be meeting in Copenhagen to discuss and hopefully agree to greenhouse gas emission reduction targets. The scientific community has a critical role to play in informing the decision makers involved in the UNFCCC talks about the level of greenhouse gas emissions cuts required to avoid the most severe impacts of climate change and ocean acidification.
Professor J.E.N Veron is the former Chief Scientist of the Australian Institute of Marine Science and widely regarded as the world’s leading authority on coral reef ecosystems. He has extensively researched the highly synergistic threats posed to coral reef ecosystems by global warming and ocean acidification. Professor Veron will summarise these threats and the action he believes is essential at Copenhagen this December.
This presentation will be followed by a summary of the findings and recommendations of a Technical Expert Workshop held earlier in the day.
Location: The Royal Society, 6-9 Carlton House Terrace, London, SW1Y 5AG (HUlink to mapUH)

 HUhttp://royalsociety.org/UH  The nearest tube station is Piccadilly Circus (5 minutes), Charing Cross (10 minutes) and Victoria (20 minutes).
This event is being organised by the International Programme on the State of the Ocean, the Royal Society, and the Zoological Society of London.
Please note seats are not reserved unless prior arrangements have been made with  HUaylin.mcnamara at zsl.orgUH.

Doors open 20 minutes before the presentation starts.

Aylin McNamara

Zoological Society of London
Regent’s Park
London NW1 4RY
tel: +44 (0)20 7449 6287  fax: +44 (0)20  7722 2852
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“The Global Deal: Climate Change and the Creation of a New Era of Progress and Prosperity” - a book
by Sir Nicholas Stern as presented by Joanne J. Myers to the Carnegie Council - Ethics in International Affairs, New York City - May4th, 2009.

 http://www.cceia.org/resources/transcrip…

The Global Deal: Climate Change and the Creation of a New Era of Progress and Prosperity.

Ma4y 4, 2009

Introduction JOANNE MYERS: I’m Joanne Myers, Director of the Public Affairs Program. On behalf of the Carnegie Council, I’d like to welcome our members and guests, and to thank you for joining us on this rainy Monday morning.
Today, our speaker is a world-renowned economist, Nicholas Stern.

Lord Stern is a man of many achievements. But the one that is most relevant to our discussion this morning is his work on climate change. Since the release of the 2006 Stern Review on the economics of climate change, commissioned by Gordon Brown when he was the Chancellor of the Exchequer, this seminal document and the ongoing debate on this subject has made Lord Nicholas the man to turn to when questions about the costs and benefits of dealing with global warming arise.

In fact, from what I’ve read, it seems as if almost every significant discussion of climate change since has drawn heavily on his findings. This report has now been transformed into a book for the general public and is entitled The Global Deal: Climate Change and the Creation of a New Era of Progress and Prosperity.

In focusing on the economics of climate change, Sir Nicholas shifted the debate away from polar bears and unseasonable summers and reframed the argument in the cold language of the balance sheet. In The Global Deal, Lord Stern evaluates our economic future and the essential steps we must take to protect growth and reduce poverty while managing climate change. He is guided by three principles, those of effectiveness, efficiency and fairness. By proposing green technologies, international emissions trading, and financing to halt deforestation, he lays out the technological and economic foundations for new industries by which he believes we can overt a catastrophe.

At the heart of his work is a simple calculation, which is if the science of climate change is right, the transition costs incurred by switching to low-carbon economy will, however daunting, be a fraction of what we will face by averting disaster. In other words, the cost of doing nothing about global warming would be very high, while the cost of transforming our energy system would be relatively low.

Climate change is often an awkward issue for governments to address, as the costs are immediate, while benefits only accrue in the future. Even so, understandings will be vital this year, as the world’s nations and their negotiators count down toward a UN climate conference to be held in Copenhagen in December. This is a target day for concluding a grand new deal to replace the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 agreement that reduced carbon dioxide and other global warming emissions by industrial nations.

While we may be a planet in peril and the global financial crisis could distract us from the bigger task of tackling climate change, Lord Stern sees global warming as an opportunity to bring forward investments in low-carbon technologies. In the long-term, these efforts could provide sustainable and well-founded economic growth.

Please join me in giving a very warm welcome to a very distinguished guest. We are honored to have you with us.

——–

Remarks

NICHOLAS STERN: Thank you very much, Joanne. That was a very kind introduction. And thank you all very much for coming today.

Since the Stern Review was published two and a half years ago, much of my time has been spent, since I’m back in academic life, arguing with my fellow economics professors about the best way to look at these issues. And we’re doing all right with that. They’re starting to understand just how big this is and what that means for the kind of economics that they have to bring to bear. So I sort of went back into academic life and wrote academic papers, which you wouldn’t want to read unless you’re heavily into mathematical economics.

But the other part of what I’ve been doing is working with people around the world, particularly in developing countries, which was the big part of my professional life before I got involved in climate change. In Europe, my own country the U.K., still part of Europe, and the U.S., for two years or so, I’ve been intensely involved in these discussions. And these have shaped, in large measure, the structure of the book, and indeed, my motivation for writing the book.

So what I want to do in the time I’ve got is to explain something about the global deal. How would we come to an international agreement to tackle climate change? What would it look like? What principles should it be built on? But before you can do that, you have to understand yourself why it is that you need such an agreement. But also, the quantitative analysis of why you need such an agreement actually shapes the agreement itself in very large measure.

So what I want to do is to begin with the logic of the problem, why it’s so important, the scale of what we have to do, because that shapes everything else. The scale shapes everything else, and the logic of the problem itself, because it’s a risk management problem, with long time lags. That also shapes the kind of agreement that we should be putting together and the difficulties in putting it together. So let me explain, from the beginning, in a very simple and fast way, I hope, the basic science, how that shapes the economics you should bring to bear to analyze the problem. And then on the basis of those things, what the global deal should look like.

I know that most of you are not economists. There’s a lot of economics underlying what I will say. I won’t go into it in any detail. The fact that you’re not economists is your fault. Most of you would have had the opportunity at some point in your life, and you didn’t take it. But I am not going to dwell on that. But those of you who are economists will recognize that there’s quite a lot of difficult stuff underlying what I have to say.

So here is the problem. It starts with people and it ends with people. People, through their lives, their production consumption, the way they live, emit greenhouse gases. They emit more greenhouse gases than the earth can absorb. And therefore, the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere rises. So there is a flow stock problem. And that’s critical to the logic of the whole thing. The flow of emissions, because they’re not fully absorbed, adds to the stock.

The next link in the chain is from the increase in stocks of greenhouse gases to temperature increases. That’s the very simple greenhouse effect. It’s a piece of science that goes back nearly 200 years now to French mathematician and physicist, Fourier. By the end of the 19th century, the gases that were causing this effect were basically identified, and there was some initial quantitative work on how big some of these effects might be.

The greenhouse effect is very simple physics and chemistry. Those of you who have been in a greenhouse will have noticed that it’s warmer in the greenhouse than outside. The very good reason is that the glass in the greenhouse prevents some of the infrared energy escaping, and that’s how the greenhouse effect in the atmosphere works. It’s not mysterious or complex or dubious science. It’s just a very basic physics and chemistry effect.

So from global warming, from increased concentrations, increased temperatures, from increased temperatures to climate change. And the language of climate change is the language we should use, not global warming, because it’s climate change that causes the problem. And most of it’s through water, in some shape or form. Storms, floods, droughts, sea level, sea level rise. The temperature does have a direct effect, in some cases, through heat stress, changing the length of growing seasons and so on. But basically, it’s the effect of the increased temperature on the climate that’s the issue. And, of course, those effects, storms, floods, droughts, sea level rise, have a very direct impact on people.

So that’s the logic of the problem: Key aspects of that chain of events—there were five links in the chain, you were counting, that I just described. The logic of that problem shapes the economics and the politics of it all in a very profound way. First, the atmosphere doesn’t recognize where the greenhouse gases came from. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Los Angeles or Beijing or Johannesberg or London. They have the same effect. It’s global in its origins and it’s global in its impact. That global feature of the problem is absolutely fundamental.

There are lots of things that we do in life that damage what other people can do. When we take our car out, we slow other people down. If we emit, as we did in London and many other places, soot from coal fires, we give people bronchitis and heart disease. But you can see, in a very direct way, how these effects are working. They’re local, and the effects are fairly observable, and they’re fairly immediate. This is a global problem and many of these effects have long legs. So the links in the chain I describe, some of them take years or even decades to manifest themselves. That, again, affects the politics of all of this in a fairly profound way. So by the time you see these effects with their full force, it’s actually too late to head many of them off.

So you can see the way in which the logical structure here has a profound effect on what you should do and how you should do it and how you see your relationships with others. Also, this flow stock story is critical because it means the costs of delay are immense. When you have a collapse of WTO talks, as we do in life, you get together five years later, and it’s a pity that you lost those five years, but you resume roughly where you were. This is not the case with climate change, because you would have had those increased flows which increase the stocks. And you’re in a more difficult starting point five years down the track.

So this logical structure, the problem, is very important in what you can do in the politics of it all. I’ll come back to that in just a moment in one or two respects, although it runs right through what I’m saying in the book. But let me just describe the magnitude. And here, you will need a little bit of mental arithmetic. It’s not hard stuff. But it’s very important that we get a feel for the numbers. We start around where we are now, around 435 parts per million of CO2 equivalent. That’s the measure of the stock, the concentrations, at the moment, 435 parts per million of CO2 equivalent. 380-something of that is CO2. And then the rest is other greenhouse gases translated into CO2 equivalent. We’re adding about two and a half parts per million a year. And that two and a half is rising. So since the two and a half we’re adding a year is rising, averaged over a century, we would be adding, on average, well over three parts per million a year. So a century of that, it’s a bit over 300. Add a bit over 300 to 435. If we didn’t do much, at the end of the century, we’d be about 750 parts per million.

If we stopped it right there, what would the temperature eventually be within a decade or two or three? It would be about probably around five degrees centigrade, or roughly 50/50 probability of being above or below five degrees centigrade. All of this has to be expressed in probability. This is a risk management issue. What does five degrees centigrade look like? Well, we’re not sure because we haven’t been there for about 30 million years as a planet. We’ve experienced five degrees below that quite often. Well, very recently, actually, 10 or 12,000 years ago, the last Ice Age when the ice sheets came down roughly to New York and London, natural benchmarks for latitude.

But where were people? Of course, there were quite a lot of people around 10, 12,000 years ago. People have been around 100—well, it depends how you count people, but 100,000, 200,000, depending on your definition of Homo Sapiens, or depending on your definition of sapiens, I suppose. But 100/200,000 years, humans have been around, we haven’t seen five degrees centigrade for 30 million years. At that time, the Eocene period, the world was covered in swampy forests. Very little ice, anyway. Five degrees centigrade below, we have seen, much more frequently.

And, of course, both of these things, five degrees up or five degrees down, transform where people can be. They rewrite the rivers. They rewrite the coastlines. Most of where we are, as humans, is shaped by rivers and coastlines. Southern Europe would probably look like the Sahara Desert. People would have to move. People would move on an enormous scale, just as they moved when it was five degrees centigrade lower. People haven’t seen five degrees centigrade higher, nowhere near. Three degrees centigrade 2 or 3 million years ago.

Again, way, way before humans. So we don’t really know how we would react to that, other than to be able to say where we could live and how we could live would be radically different. The snows would go off the Himalayas, the big rivers of the world would get rewritten—I mean, the big rivers of the world, in terms of the populations that they present. The big majority of them, not all of them, of course, but the big majority of them arise in a few hundred square kilometers of the Himalayas. Now, if you just go clockwise around from the Yellow River to the Yangtze to the Ganges and the Brahmaputra and the Jumna and the Indus. You’re talking about rivers that are the main sources of water for countries with a couple of billion people, with a billion or so or more directly affected by those rivers. You would just rewrite where people would be. Populations would move. Hundreds of millions, probably billions of people would move, and we would have extended world conflict.

This is not Nick Stern, the economist, describing this. This is simply Nick Stern relaying to you what the science tells us in a very direct way. But I’m expressing it in a way that allows us to start thinking about this as an insurance story or a risk management story in what we’re ready to pay to reduce the odds. If we held these concentrations of greenhouse gases below 500 parts per million, which we could with strong action, and I’ll describe what it is and what it would cost, if we held those concentrations below 500 parts per million, that 50/50 probability being above five degrees centigrade would come down to something like 3 percent. And that’s a huge insurance gain, a huge rich risk reduction, if we did manage to hold it below 500 parts per million.

We can’t hold it below 450. We will be at 450 in about six years. I mean, we’re adding two and a half a year, and six times two and a half is 15. Add that to 435. You know, in six years, we’re at 450. But we can hold below 500. And we can also be thinking about how we bring it on down from there. It takes a while to do that, and even 500 is a very dangerous place to be. Far, far less dangerous than 750, obviously. But we could work out how to bring it on down from there.

What would it cost us? Very roughly speaking—I could have told the story in three, four, five, six degrees centigrade, but just to be specific and to cut down the time, I told it in terms of five. But it’s the whole distribution that counts, not just one particular temperature like five degrees centigrade. What would it cost us? Well, relative to business as usual, we would probably have to take out about 65 gigatons of CO2 equivalent. What do we have to do? We have to get down from the over 50 gigatons that we emit each year at the moment. We have to get down to about 20 gigatons by 2050. That’s, roughly speaking, the path associated with holding below 500. In 1990, we were at 40 gigatons. So getting down to 20 gigatons in 2050 is cutting by 50 percent, relative to 1990.

So globally, the kind of path I described of holding below 500 involves getting down to about 20 gigatons as a flow. 500 is the stock. Getting down to about 20 gigatons is a flow by 2050. And that involves —depends on how you define business as usual, but taking out around 65 gigatons. And now you have to do another piece of arithmetic. It’s only multiplication. It’s not hard. 65 gigatons. We could probably do that at an average, and an average costs about $30 a ton. So $30 a ton times 65 gigatons. Well, you’ve obviously got 195 in there or 1.95 or 19500, however you do the numbers, and, of course, you’ve got to get your decimal points in the right place when you do this sort of thing. You’ve got to remember that giga is billion. Scientists like giga. Economists like billion. But giga, billion, same thing. So it’s actually, when you multiply 65 gigatons or 65 billion tons by $30 a ton, it’s 1.95 trillion, 2 trillion dollars, close enough.

What will world income be in 2050? It’s a bit over 50 trillion now. If we’re sensible and follow good policies in climate and elsewhere, it could easily double. I mean, not if we don’t, but it could easily double. That makes the arithmetic and the percentages easy. We’re a bit over 50, so a bit over $100 trillion in 2050. So two in 100 or so is around 2 percent. So you can build this up through boring old economic models and so on. But it’s very important to get a feel for why these numbers are what they are.

So for around 2 percent of GDP—I picked that for the year 2050, but it might look something like that for a while, for the next few decades—you buy this enormous reduction in risk. You make the difference between probably destroying the planet, as far as it is a place for life in any sense for humans, as we know it—that’s if you do nothing—but if you act sensibly and pay this very modest insurance premium, you can reduce the risks to levels which are probably manageable.

So that’s basically the story. What does it look like if you try to do this? Well, in the first place, a properly constructed green recovery would help us to get out of a recession. That’s the very, very short run. For the next two or three decades, we will create a technological revolution similar to, probably bigger than, the railways, electricity, the motor car, or IT. We will create a, those of you who like your economic history, we will create a Schumpetarian technology innovation investment-driven story of growth for the next two or three decades. When we get to low carbon growth, we will have something—because it’s the next three, four or five decades that’s the transition to that story—but when we get there, we will have a form of growth which is cleaner, more energy secure, quieter and more biodiverse.

And if we run the clock forward just a bit more, we will have reduced the risk of the transformation of the planet, which would occur as I just described it. This is a no-brainer. I mean, you’ve got the short run returns, you’ve got the driver of the technological story for the next two or three decades, you create a form of low carbon growth that’s much more attractive, and you drastically reduce the risks of major transformation of the planet. It’s just good sense, basic economics.

The wise investors and the wise business people are already out there seeing where this is going. And it’s even getting detailed. I mean, in Korea’s green recovery, they say, well, if the U.S. is going to build a smart grid, smart grids need smarter plants, they’re going to be made here in Korea. And people are already running through this story, seeing the opportunities.

But what we can’t do is pretend that there are no investment costs in this transition. There are investment costs in this transition. They’re serious. But they’re manageable. And they will happen, provided that the governments of the world set the right kind of framework for this to happen. And it means economic policy. It means a price for carbon, through attacks or a trading scheme or a bit of each. It means regulations. It means regulations on emissions. It means doing what we’ve just done in the U.K., announcing that there won’t be any more coal-fired power stations without carbon capture and storage. These are the kinds of policies it needs. It needs public, private partnerships in helping develop new technologies. It needs strong and clear policies to get there.

But basically, here we are. We know the kind of scale that we have to act on. We know the kinds of areas where we have to act, energy efficiency, low-carbon technology, and stopping deforestation. We know the economic instruments that we have to use. “Know,” in this sense, means have a good idea of. But we know enough to set off down the road. And we’re going to discover and learn like mad along the way. So we know the scale, we know the areas where we have to act, we know the kind of economic instruments. It’s now a matter of political will. And it’s this year that is absolutely crucial for putting that political will together.

I’ve already described, actually, one way or another, many aspects of the global deal. But let me now just pull out the global deal, from what I’ve said.

The global deal, if it’s going to be agreed and sustained, will have to be effective on the scale that’s necessary. I’ve already described that.

It will have to be efficient. That will be crucial because there will be serious costs of investing in the transition. It’s crucial to keep those costs as low as possible. If people think we’re wasting money pursuing those policies, then those policies will become politically fragile.

And it’s got to be equitable. Because otherwise, the different countries around the world, the different groups in the population will not support it or would not stay supporting it.

It has to be led by the rich countries. The rich countries, in terms of early action and I think it has to be led by the poor countries in terms of design. Because it’s the poorer countries of the world who are affected earliest and hardest, although we’re all affected, in the story I just described, in a very profound way.

But it’s the rich countries who have to take the lead in action. Why? Because they’re responsible, the 1 billion, out of the 6.7 billion, who live in rich countries, are responsible through their economic history for something like 60 to 65 percent of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere now. They’re largely responsible, through the pursuit of high carbon growth; but this is a very difficult starting point.

We really wouldn’t have wanted to start from here. But we are where we are. And it’s the rich countries who are largely responsible through that pursuit of high carbon growth in the past. Of course, they’re better off, and they have the better developed technologies. So I think the responsibility for early and strong action clearly lie there.

Where do we have to go to in terms of what each country should look like now? Well, I’ve already said we’ve got to get down to 20 gigatons, and I’ve explained why. In 2050, there will be 9 billion of us, roughly speaking, plus or minus a few hundred million. There will be 9 billion. So if we’re emitting, as a world, 20 gigatons, and there are 9 billion of us, remembering again that giga and billion are the same thing, 20 divided by 9, you can all do that, even on a Monday morning, is just over 2. So we’ve got to be down to 2 tons per capita as well, roughly speaking.

Where are we now? Well, Europe, Japan is 10, 12 tons per capita. So to get from 10 to 12 to 2, divide by 5, cut by 80 percent. There’s nothing mysterious in the idea that rich countries should be cutting by 80 percent. 1990 to 2050, it just follows from the arithmetic.

Now, the United States is over 20 per capita. And Barack Obama said we’ll cut by 80 percent, 1990 to 2050. He really meant 90 percent. Because, you know, to get from over 20 down to 2, you’ve got to divide by 10, right? But never mind, we’re a very tolerant lot in Europe. The basic thing is if you set out strongly down the right road, a lot of the arithmetic, a lot of the technology is going to sort itself out later on.

We shouldn’t get overly hung up about exactly 80 or 90 percent. It does matter to have a strong view of where we’re going. And it does matter to set off down that path in a strong way. I mean, that’s what’s crucial. So when we get to Copenhagen, the 2050 will be the anchor for the arithmetic. There’s going to be some very hard bargaining, and there should be, over 2020. Because 2020 is surely an indication of whether we’re serious about getting to where we want to go in 2050. And that’s going to be where, I think, hard stuff is going to come. And it’s already coming in Copenhagen. The Waxman-Markey Bill talks about 7 percent reductions by 2020, relative to 1990 for the U.S. That’s a tough ask, actually, for the U.S., because they’re already 16, 17 percent above 1990. So to get back to 7 percent, below 1990, by 2020, as in Waxman-Markey, means taking off about a quarter in a decade.

Now, this is where the politics of this is going to get tough. Because there are two ways of looking at 2020. I’m sure there are many ways of looking at 2020, but here are two. 2020 is the midpoint between 1990 and 2050. They’re arithmetically unexceptionable. And 2020 is 10 years after 2010. Again, we can’t quarrel with the arithmetic. But the perspective is fundamentally different. Because in countries like the U.S. and Canada, and I was in Canada a couple of days ago talking to environmentalists and others, and there it’s a good deal higher in the U.S. relative to 1990. So to get, say, the U.S. as in Waxman-Markey, I take out of 25 percent in the next ten years is going to be tough.

But then, you know, sitting in India or China or Indonesia or Brazil or South Africa, you’re saying, “I see, you’re going to cut by 80 percent , 1990 to 2050. And at the halfway stage, 80 percent you’re going to take out in six decades. And after three decades, you’ve taken out 7 percent?” How serious does that sound?

So you can see why these two different perspectives on 2020 matter. And I think as a world, we have to recognize we’ve only been serious about this for two or three years. And we are getting serious about this. And that’s what makes me more optimistic about getting a global deal. So that’s going to be hard bargaining and very difficult. But I hope we can get there. It’s going to need a lot of mutual understanding.

But here it is. I more or less described the global deal. It’s 50 percent reductions overall, 1990 to 2050. If people keep going on about percentages, just bring them back to the 20 gigatons in 2050, because that’s what really counts, and the path to get there. 50 percent reductions overall, 80 percent reductions for rich countries.

None of this is going to work unless the developing countries are absolutely at center stage. 8 billion out of the 9 billion people in 2050 are going to be in currently developing countries. If the rich world was emitting precisely zero in 2050, then the average for the developing world would have to be not 2, but 2 1/2 tons per capita. This cannot work unless the big majority of people in the world are involved.

So that’s essentially a story which says that over the next ten years, the developing world will embark on climate change action plans. China described a climate change action plan two years ago, India one year ago, Brazil and South Africa at the end of last year. They’re starting to develop serious engagement in working out how to cut emissions. Now, where I see the global deal working out is the developing world explains to the rich world, these are the conditions. This is conditionality of the developing world on the rich world.

Take those 80 percent cuts you’re talking about. Be credible over the next decade. Develop the technologies. Share them with us. We’ll be developing technologies. We’ll share them with you also. The biggest producer of photovoltaics is in China. One of the biggest windmill producers for electricity is in India. They will be sharing technologies both ways. But develop the technologies, share them with us, help us with the finance, help us with adapting to climate change, because it’s really happening and it will happen, and we need to invest to protect ourselves against what’s going on and to pursue development in a more hostile climate.

You do all of these things, those are our conditions, and we will commit now to taking on targets, say from ten years time. In the meantime, here are our climate change action plans. Please help us with those, because the more you do, the more we can do. This is the way in which this discussion is starting to move, and I think it should move. But building on the kind of commitments, the rich countries are already indicating that they’ll take on.

Trading will be very important, both to bring the costs down, and to allow flows from rich countries to poor countries. The sharing of technologies, I’ve already described. We need explicit mechanisms for doing that. And I’m very happy to discuss those in questions. We have to stop deforestation. It’s responsible for 20 percent of emissions. There’s no way we can achieve these targets without stopping deforestation. China is reforesting, it’s not deforesting. India has declared for a target of 33 percent of the area forested. I think it’s about 22, 23 percent now, isn’t it? So if India makes it, that’s a big change too.

But, of course, it’s the tropical forests which really count—Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, Congo, Central America, and so on. Those are the big things that really count there. We have to stop deforestation. That has to be a battle which is integrated into the whole development story. You can’t tackle deforestation in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brazil unless you help those governments create alternative opportunities, more productive agricultural opportunities outside agriculture, improving the ability to develop and enforce property rights and so on. It has to be integrated in the development story. So you’ve got to stop deforestation.

And we need to look, again, at the challenge of the Millennium Development Goals and beyond about financing for development. Because when we did those calculations—and I am partly responsible, it’s a shared responsibility, for not building climate change in as we should have, because I was Chief Economist at the World Bank when the UN had its Financing for Development Conference in Monterrey in 2002, and I led the writing of the Report for the Commission for Africa in 2005. And in each case, we understated the challenge of climate change for development. But we have to face up as a world to the extra costs of meeting development goals in the context of a changing climate.

So there you are. That’s the global deal. The targets, the trading, the technologies, the finance, the deforestation, and the adaptation story. Huge amounts of detail to work on. But it’s the framework that really counts.

Will we get there? I don’t know. But if we say it’s all too difficult, then nothing is ever going to work—and the U.S. is not going to give up its big hydrocarbon cars, and the British are too lazy to do anything, and the Chinese always cheat—you can tell, I can sit in a bar and tell the story. It’s very easy to do. But if you believe that, what is the consequence?

Well, you can’t wiggle out of the science. I mean, it’s basically clear and there. So if that’s what you really believe, you’re saying, well, we’ve got another 50, 100 years to go in terms of the kinds of life that we got used to leading. And we will, over that period so transform the planet, so that we’ll be living actually in very different and much more difficult ways. So if you’re negative and pessimistic about all this, it’s self-fulfilling. We won’t get there if you all say it’s all too difficult. And the consequences will be very severe. We must be honest about those consequences. So,buy a hat, some suntan lotion and write a letter of apology to your grandchildren. If you really want to push the negative part of the story. So the challenge is not, is it ever going to work? Yeah, it’s all too difficult. The challenge is what do we have to do to try to make it work?
Will we succeed? Of course there’s no guarantee that we’ll succeed. But we can see the way in which we have to try and the way in which we have to work together. And we can see the kinds of scale of activity. We can see the kind of technologies. We can see the kind of economic instruments. We know enough to embark down this road with purpose. If we don’t get a strong agreement in Copenhagen at the end of this year—not all the details, the details can be worked out later. But if we don’t get the basic framework, I would really worry about whether we’ll be able to put it together. Because it falls apart, people go away, and, you know, it might take a long time before we get back together again.

In the meantime, you’ve done a lot of damage in terms of increased concentrations. In the meantime, confidence in the markets that are going to sustain these kinds of investments would have been undermined. So not getting an agreement in Copenhagen, with the basic outlines, not all the details, would be very, very damaging. So this is a crucially important few months for the world really in terms of decision making.

And there’s no way that—you can’t negotiate with the basic scientific processes. You can’t negotiate with the concentrations in the atmosphere. They will be what they will be if we’re neglectful.

I’m much more optimistic than I was two or three years ago because you can see and hear the way in which the understanding and commitment on this issue has changed, whether it be in China or India or the United States or elsewhere. You can see the way that’s changed. The pace of change of technology has been quite remarkable. It’s impossible to give a talk like this to business people without going away with a pocket full of cards if somebody’s got some great idea about how to reduce emissions, how to pull the greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere. If one tenth of these ideas work that are just sort of bubbling through, we can have a whole range of ways of acting, all of which will cost a bit, probably, but, you know, some will be more successful than others.

So in terms of the changing politics, in terms of changing technologies and investments, I’m much more optimistic than I was two or three years ago. I think we’re going to get there in Copenhagen. And the months that follow, I really don’t know. But we’ve got a chance there that we can blow now. And, you know, human beings are not bad at messing up opportunities. But there is an opportunity now to mess up. And one of the reasons I wrote the book was try to reduce the probability that we might. Thank you very much.

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Questions and Answers

QUESTION: Lord Stern, thank you so much for a great talk. Are we being maybe even too optimistic? You paint a pretty bleak scenario, if we don’t do this. Should we have contingency plans in place that would suggest that we need not $30 a ton, but maybe $75 by 2015? Because what we are now seeing with the positive feedback loops, positive in a scientific sense, particularly the change in the Arctic, much more emissions of methane from both the tundra, undersea, et cetera, all of these things, which you know, which would suggest that the window we have to get this done may even be shorter. And therefore, we should be, contingency-wise, at least prepared intellectually to pay a higher cost because the time to get it done is perhaps much shorter than we think it is?
NICHOLAS STERN: These positive feedbacks, things like the melting of the permafrost and releasing a lot of methane, the collapse of the Amazon, which could well happen around three degrees centigrade, which we might be at in 50, 60 years, the decreasing acidity, so the increasing acidity of the oceans which decreases the absorptive capacity, all of these things actually are usually omitted from the formal scientific models. Complication, grounds, difficulty in quantification, but they’re very real possibilities. So it actually does look more worrying than when we were writing two and a half years ago, although all of the basic line of argument is the same.

I think that the description that I gave of cutting by 50 percent as a world, 1990 to 2050, is actually quite unambitious, relative to science. And indeed, many scientists will tell you very loudly what you’re doing, you’re telling me to cut by 50 percent? It should be 80 percent globally by 2050. Although, of course, it is quite ambitious in the point of view of the economics. And many people would draw the conclusion that you drew, that we should be acting faster and more strongly. And therefore, you would be thinking of higher, high costs. Because the faster you do it, the more it costs. So I think that relative to the magnitude of the real scientific problem, I’ve erred on the side of caution.

I’ve erred on the side of caution on the economics. I’ve erred on the side of recklessness, if you like, on the science. So if I were to be pushed to shift in a direction from the one I just articulated, I would certainly go in the direction that you described, that we should be stronger than I am describing, not weaker. And you can make that case, and perhaps you should. I should emphasize, I am talking about average costs. A lot of the costs of what we do actually are negative. I mean, if we’re sensible about a lot of the energy efficiency options we have, we save money. But it won’t all be negative costs. And on the margin, it will be, of course, a good deal higher.

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QUESTION: One problem we face seems to be that we are locked in by the present technology that exists in the U.S., in China, in Europe. Every week, on average, a new coal-fired power plant is being opened in China, with the effect of about 1,000 megawatts. And it’s calculated for over 25 years. And today, as we speak, China is (inaudible) based on clean coal. If they continue to run these, according to their business plan, we will be far off the mark that you have indicated that we need to reach.

So those, the owners, the countries and the private owners of these plants seem, to me, to be unlikely to close down these plants without compensation or to retrofit them. And just imagine what it would cost to retrofit the power of coal fire power plants of this world with carbon capture and storage. It would also increase the energy price by today’s standard by, let’s say, 40 percent . This is, of course, site specific. So what we seem to need is a new set of economic incentives, which means going steps further from the Kyoto mechanisms, which provided some incentives which have worked in some countries, and to provide a larger global scheme that gives the developing countries where the emissions will increase the most, like China, positive incentives for change. And I haven’t seen, so far during the run-up to the Copenhagen, any proposal in pretty language which provides that scene and which links a positive cash flow with achieved reduction targets. I would like to hear your comment on what needs to be done in that direction.

NICHOLAS STERN: I think the ballpark you’re talking about, 40, 50 percent increases in prices of electricity around the world for a few decades, is probably roughly right. If you take a rich country, something like 4 percent of GDP would be primary energy. If you increase that cost by 50 percent , you get back to the 2 percent of national income I’m talking about. So if we’re talking about increasing the price of electricity 50 percent in many places for a while, that is a price that we should be quite ready to pay. And we probably would have to.

My acquaintance with India is much deeper than China. I’ve been living in India, on and off, for different parts of the last 35 years. But I’ve been living in China, again, on and off for 20 years. And the change in China in the last two or three years is quite remarkable in terms of their understanding of the issues. And the 11th five-year plan which finishes at the end of next year, had a a 20 percent reduction target of energy to output, which they probably will reach—of course, if output goes up by 40, 45 percent , and the energy use goes up by 20 some percent, which is what’s happened—but I think the 12th five-year plan, which starts in the end of next year, beginning of the year after—and they’re already working on it and preparing an energy strategy, which would actually precede the 12th five-year plan—I think is likely to have emissions targets rather than energy targets. This is all discussions over the last few months and weeks. But I think that’s where it’s going.

Will countries like China, in terms of growth ambitions, energy ambitions, will they achieve the kinds of transformations we’re talking about without substantial sharing of technology and substantial finance? The answer is no. I described briefly some importance of sharing technologies. But let’s look at the kind of schemes of the trading finance for RT that could do it. Some of you will know about the Clean Development Mechanism, which is a project by project trading arrangement. It’s designed under the Kyoto Protocol, but mostly driven by the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme, whereby a firm that has to meet a target under the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme, can buy a reduction in a developing country. But it’s organized on a project basis. And the firm itself in the developing country, which is selling it to the firm in the rich country, has to show and has to be approved by various committees at the country level in Bonn and so on has to show that it will be cutting its emissions relative to what it might have done.

“What it might have done” is counterfactual. You want to know what I might have done? Well, here is what I might have done. You know, it’s quite difficult to work with this kind of apparatus. And it’s very, very heavy. What we’re going to need for a while, I think for ten or 15 years, possibly more, and we do have to negotiate this at Copenhagen, is a successor to the Clean Development Mechanism, which is one-sided trading, in the sense that you get rewarded if you go down. But you don’t get penalized if you go up. Which can work on a wholesale way.

So the Province of China decides under its program that it’s going to have no further investment in coal-fired without carbon capture and storage. Then we can identify quite clearly the kind of reductions that would involve much more easily than the project by project scheme. And what we should be envisaging is wholesale funds, which arise from the ambitious kind of caps we’ve got in Europe and I trust we will have in the U.S., so that firms combined that fund, and that fund could take a slice of this Province of China that’s embarking on this program.

So I think if we replace the Clean Development Mechanism with something that’s much more suitable for wholesale, that’s programatic, as opposed to project-based, then we could envisage financial flows. And we’ve been modeling them a bit. And they probably would be of the order of somewhere between 100 and 200 billion a year by the 20s under these kind of trading arrangements. That’s the kind of financial structure, trading structure that we would need for a while to support these kinds of investments. And we’ve got to be quantitative and open and direct about what’s involved. There’s another story, of course, in proving that these carbon capture stories technologies work on a commercial scale. And that’s something we have to embark on again, as a world where different countries do different things. The Australians are doing a few, there are a few in the U.K., I’m sure. Canada is doing a few. I’m sure there will be more than a few in the U.S. So at the same time, as we work on the finance, we have to work on the sharing of the technology as well. But that’s exactly the kind of detail we have to work on. And we have to be frank about the scale of what’s involved.

–

QUESTION: Thank you again, Lord Stern, for that magisterial performance, which doesn’t surprise any of us. But since I suspect you’re largely preaching to the converted here, I wonder if I might ask you to rebut two of the more persuasive arguments being made by those who disagree with you and with the global warming, simply so we can get those arguments knocked down. And I hear them all the time.

The first is from sort of the view of the Bjørn Lomborg School of the skeptical environmentalist, who essentially sidesteps the case you’re making by saying that even if what you’re saying is true, with the expenditure required to deal with it now is excessive in relation to how much more good you can do to the world by spending a fraction of that money dealing with other things like Malaria and AIDS and development to stop poverty, and drinking water and things like that, and that this is, therefore, a misplaced sense of priority.

And a second argument is broadly what one might call the American conservative argument that says that expecting the world to organize itself today to impose costs upon itself now for possible dangers 100 years down the road is essentially politically irresponsible, that the technologies will find solutions before things ever get that bad. And in the meantime, we should leave well enough alone and let us take care of today’s people, who, of course, happen to be today’s voters, as well. You are going to be imposing short-term costs on people who are not going to necessarily see visible benefits for the costs and pain you’re inflicting upon them. I think those two arguments do require some sort of response from someone like yourself. And I’d love to hear it.

NICHOLAS STERN: I think the response is actually implicit in what I already said. But the challenge you’ve drawn out is absolutely right because this is what we do here. I know Bjørn Lomborg reasonably well. And he’s a rather engaging fellow. But I think he’s more of a stand-up comic than a serious contributor to this. And he’s not an economist or a scientist.

But that’s by the by. Let’s take the argument. What’s the argument? That there are better ways of investing. There’s a whole collection of mistakes in the argument. The first one, and in many ways, the most important, is to treat these as separate projects. The two defining challenges of our century are overcoming world poverty and managing climate change. I’ve spent the big majority of my professional life on the former. One of the reasons I feel so strongly about climate change is that is for the reasons I described, it would undermine the progress that we’ve made and reverse it. We succeed or fail on these two defining challenges together.

As I described it, most of the effects of climate change and their damaging form on human lives come in water in some shape or form. They’re inextricably interlinked. It is just a simple failure in logic to treat the problems of development and water management separately from those of climate change. So when you set it up as sort of separate investment projects with the internal rate of return, you’re just making a basic analytical mistake in relation to the logical structure of the problem. So the argument is just deeply flawed and deliberately misleading.

He also, very deliberately, understates the magnitude of the problem. And he takes lower estimates. He takes means. He doesn’t look at distributions. And he doesn’t look beyond the end of this century. So within that overall structural logical mistake, there are all kinds of subdiffusions of cooking the books along the way. It’s a kind I just described. Deliberately taking lower estimates, deliberately taking means and not looking at distributions, when this is a risk management problem, and deliberately curtailing the time period. I could go on. I mean, there’s mistake after mistake in there, including the discussions of discounting, in the context of a future that depends on what you do now in a very big way. Most of economics, when it discusses discounting, looks at some assumed growth path and thinks a little (inaudible) associated with investment projects around that path, which, again, is an analytical mistake of huge importance in this kind of context, when what the future looks like, including whether or not we’re better off, depends profoundly on what we do now.

So I could go on. But as I say, Bjørn tells a very good case, and he’s a very engaging guy, actually. You ought to listen to him, it’s worth going to, but just remember, he’s wrong.

The conservative story, as you portrayed it, is partly answered by what I’ve just said. Because implicit in the plausibility of that story is the notion that these effects down the track are not that big. So you’re saying, why should we give up what seems to be a lot now in return for something which, you know, is a bit uncertain and accrues to people who are going to be much richer, much richer than us? And more to the point they don’t have a vote.

Well, the answer to that is that you don’t have to give up that much now. And some of it looks very exciting and positive. I don’t want to say you don’t have to give up anything now. That would be wrong and misleading. You do have to invest now. But it has tremendous returns beyond simply the climate change story, which I described. So I think it’s very important to come back first with two things.

One is, that do you realize the magnitude of the changes that we’re potentially talking about here?

And secondly, point to the very positive parts of the story as well. But this is something which requires enormous leadership. When we gathered together as a world in 1944 at Bretton Woods, we had seen 30 years of global warfare and great depression. We could see, in a very direct way, what goes wrong if we don’t think ahead and we don’t collaborate. The evidence was, you know, in blood in very recent history.

This one, we’re having to say, look, this is actually much bigger, in many ways, than these World Wars and the Great Depression. But in 50 years, 100 years down the track, some things much earlier, but in terms of its big magnitude, this is a great test of rationality for human beings. It’s not simply that they can get scalded and say, getting scalded is not a good idea, I’ll avoid getting scalded. That’s the evolutionary approach to learning. This is a big challenge for us, in terms of rational human beings. We’ve got to anticipate this one. It doesn’t make it any less real. But it means it’s less real in terms of direct experience.

So that’s the great challenge for political leadership. That’s why communication is so important. That’s journalism communication is so important. I had a long discussion with Rahul Ghandi about how this can become a current political issue in India. In India, of all places, people understand the consequences of water, storms, floods, droughts. If ever there was a place in the world, no necessity to explain that to people, that they know. But it’s linking, linking that to action in India now, linking action in India now to what other people might do as a world. That’s the challenge of communication. I think it’s enormously important that we take that on.

JOANNE MYERS: I thank you really very much for bringing all of these issues to us today. They’re very important. And I want to thank you for making such a strong case. Thank you.

The Wall Isn’t Falling in Iran!

From the Newsweek Magazine  issue dated Jul 13, 2009.

Whenever we see the kinds of images that have been coming out of Iran over the past two weeks, we tend to think back to 1989 and Eastern Europe. That time, when people took to the streets and challenged their governments, those seemingly stable regimes proved to be hollow and quickly collapsed. What emerged was liberal democracy. Could Iran yet undergo its own velvet revolution?

It’s possible but unlikely. While the regime’s legitimacy has cracked-a fatal wound in the long run-for now it will probably be able to use its guns and money to consolidate power. And it has plenty of both. Remember, the price of oil was less than $20 a barrel back in 1989. It is currently $69. More important, as Zbigniew Brzezinski has pointed out, 1989 was highly unusual. As a historical precedent, it has not proved a useful guide to other antidictatorial movements.

The three most powerful forces in the modern world are democracy, religion, and national-ism. In 1989 in Eastern Europe, all three were arrayed against the ruling regimes. Citizens hated their governments because they deprived people of liberty and political participation. Believers despised communist leaders because they were atheistic, banning religion in countries where faith was deeply cherished. And people rejected their regimes because they were seen as having been imposed from the outside by a much–disliked imperial power, the Soviet Union.

The situation in Iran is more complex. Democracy clearly works against this repressive regime. The forces of religion, however, are not so easily aligned against it. Many, possibly most, Iranians appear to be fed up with theocracy. But that does not mean they are fed up with religion. It does appear that the more openly devout Iranians-the poor, the rural-voted for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

There is one way religion could be used against Iran’s leaders, but it would involve an unlikely scenario: were Iraq-based Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani to issue a fatwa condemning Tehran in any way, it would be a seismic event, probably resulting in the regime’s collapse. Remember, Sistani is Iranian, probably more revered in the entire Shia world than any other ayatollah, and he is opposed to the basic doctrine of velayat-e faqih that created the Islamic Republic of Iran. His own view is that clerics should not be involved in politics, which is why he has steered clear of any such role in Iraq. But he is unlikely to publicly criticize the Iranian regime. (He did, however, refuse to see Ahmadinejad when the latter visited Iraq in March 2008.)

Nationalism is the most complex of these three forces. Over most of its history, the Iranian regime has exploited nationalist sentiment. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini came to power by battling the shah, who was widely seen as an American puppet. Soon after the revolution, Iraq attacked Iran, and the mullahs wrapped themselves in the flag again. The United States supported Iraq in that war, ignoring Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical weapons against Iranians-something Iranians have never forgotten. Over the past eight years, the Bush administration’s veiled threats to attack Iran allowed the mullahs to drum up support. (Every Iranian dissident, from Akbar Ganji to Shirin Ebadi, has noted that talk of airstrikes on Iran strengthened the regime.) And it is worth remembering that the United States still funds guerrilla outfits and opposition groups that are trying to topple the Islamic Republic. Most of these are tiny groups with no chance of success, funded largely to appease right-wing congressmen.

But the Tehran government is able to portray this as an ongoing anti–Iranian campaign.

In this context, President Obama is quite right to tread cautiously, extend his moral support to Iranian protesters, but not get politically involved. The United States has always underestimated the raw power of nationalism across the world, always assuming that people will not be taken in by cheap and transparent appeals against foreign domination. But look at what is happening in Iraq right now, where Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki boasts that America’s troop withdrawals are a “a heroic repulsion of the foreign occupiers.” Of course Maliki would not be in office but for those occupying forces, who protect his government to this day. But he is a canny politician and knows what will appeal to the Iraqi people.

Ahmadinejad is also a politician with considerable mass appeal. And he is already accusing the United States and Britain of interference. Our strategy should be to make sure that these accusations seem as loony and baseless as possible. Were President Obama to be seen as grandstanding and taking ownership of the protest movement, he would be -helping Ahmadinejad’s strategy, not America’s.
————————————————————————–
Fareed Zakaria was named editor of Newsweek International in October 2000, overseeing all Newsweek editions abroad. The magazine reaches an audience of 24 million worldwide.

from  Hazel.Foster at fco.gov.uk
In the wake of recent significant events involving North Korea, Peter Hughes, the UK’s Ambassador to Pyongyang, will be giving a media briefing on DPRK and the international reaction on 3 July in London.
Peter Hughes will be speaking via video-link live from Pyongyang. The FCO will be streaming questions (from media attending the event in London) and his answers through our website www.fco.gov.uk

The briefing will begin at 1015 UK time, 0515 NY time. If you don’t want to get up that early, it will be archived on the FCO website once it happens, so you should be able to view it later.

Hazel Foster (Miss)
Third Secretary Press
United Kingdom Mission to the United Nations
One Dag Hammarskjold Plaza
885 Second Avenue (48th Street & 2nd Avenue, 28th Floor)
New York, NY 10017
Tel:  00 1 212 745 9288
Fax:  00 1 212 745 9316
FTN:  8451 2288

UKMis Web:  ukun.fco.gov.uk
Visit our blogs at http://blogs.fco.gov.uk

we posted about the event at http://www.sustainabilitank.info/2009/06…

now we get further details at  http://www.economist.com/daily/news/disp…

——–

Greenland - Feeling free
Jul 1st 2009
From Economist.com

Day one
GIVEN the choice of subsisting on seal or whale I would plump for the former, without enthusiasm. A mouthful of seal flesh has little to recommend it, unless you are drawn to a slippery, dark, lamb-like meat that tastes as if it had been left to stew in a dirty aquarium. But neither is whale tempting: chewing its skin is like gnawing a strip of leather soaked in cod-liver oil. In either case, at least on the first encounter, a diner is likely to experience a faint sense of nausea. If you must have whale, cetacean biltong (whale jerky) is more palatable than the fresh stuff.

AFP

Hooray for two tonnes of flesh
Most Greenlanders, however, relish both meats when the chance arises. A recent weekend in Nuuk, the Greenlandic capital, saw a triple excuse to indulge. The summer solstice, which serves as the national day, coincided both with the replacement after 30 years of a much-disliked government and with celebrations for throwing off (sort of) three centuries of Denmark’s colonial yoke. As a result, Nuuk was in festive mood. The pretty red-and-white Greenlandic flag fluttered from every bus, official building and school-child’s hand. The town was criss-crossed by processions of men in white anoraks and jovial women in coloured beads and embroidered seal-skin outfits. Visiting dignitaries enthusiastically ripped veils from new pieces of public art: in one square revealing a statue of seals at play, while above the town beach appeared three slabs of concrete holding aloft a ball of stone.

Over a breakfast of herring and salmon in the town’s main hotel one could bump into a visiting bishop from Copenhagen bedecked in medallions; Iceland’s affable president; or one of a wide array of Danish royals. We outsiders then took turns trooping through the town’s fish market, gawping at mounds of halibut and at the bloody work of a sealmonger who obligingly butchered a carcass. On the streets the mood was restrained and good-natured, only rising to a murmur of excitement when the official distribution of whale-meat began.

The local government had claimed special dispensation to harpoon two rare Greenlandic whales. One of the pair, it was widely said, had turned out to be 200 years old, although I do not understand just how one determines such a fact: perhaps it is like counting the rings of a felled tree. Officials then handed out two tonnes of the flesh to the 56,000 or so residents of this massive territory. In Nuuk that was a simple matter: whale munchers crowded a sports hall for lunch, then strolled home with meat in bulging plastic bags. But the rest of Greenland is sparsely populated. There are tiny settlements (the smallest has a single inhabitant, a middle-aged man who refuses to move to the nearest town) and small towns spread far north of the Arctic circle and along Greenland’s remote and icy eastern coast. Delivering whale, on time, to the scattered masses looked like an immense bureaucratic task. Local television news reported it was only possible thanks to the many small, red propeller-planes of Air Greenland.

The survival of so many small settlements across the vast country is made possible by the largesse of the Greenland state, which in turn relies on billions of kroner doled out by distant Denmark. That Denmark spends the equivalent of more than $11,000 per Greenlander, each year, might explain why the locals, though delighted to be claiming more powers of self-government, are not yet rushing for complete independence. One afternoon in Nuuk, at a kaffemik, a sort of family party that involves drinking coffee, wine and beer—in this case to celebrate the school graduation of a daughter—guests said that they were thrilled by their new government. But they were also adamant that Greenland could not yet afford full independence. “Not now, it’s good as it is for now,” explained one woman. A visiting Danish journalist said wryly, while sipping a bâja pilluarit (celebration beer), “psychologically, the state is my father, you know?”

And yet people feel great pride at Greenland’s taking on more control: over police and the courts, over local government and the schools and dozens more things. Greenlandic is to become an official language, and the nation feels it is making itself noticed on the world stage. “It’s our land, our language. We have to do it ourselves, not rely on others doing it,” explains a woman in national dress wearing white seal boots and trousers. Despite their love of traditions, Greenlanders are under no illusion that they will return to a past of surviving on what they hunt. The celebrations and the food of old will come and go, but nobody will be asked to subsist on seal or whale.

Day two
YOUNG voters, especially left-leaning ones, are keen on Greenland’s new prime minister, Kuupik Kleist: they swept him to power in June. The folk of Nuuk explain how happy they are to see the new government (and to see the back of the old one), by saying that “Kuupik is our Obama”. At a rock concert in a sports hall on mid-summer eve, as sleet and snowfall and the midnight sky hangs grey, his appearances draws cheers from the crowd. He gives a short speech from the stage and the audience pauses, expectant. Will he burst into song? Rumours have spread that he will belt out something, perhaps an independence anthem. Instead he waves and is gone.

Adam Roberts

A traditional singer, banging on in the traditional way
For older Greenlanders, at least, it is a disappointing moment. Fifteen years ago Mr Kleist was best known as the lead singer of a local band, whose album “Samma Samma” proved a hit in part because he sang in Greenlandic, not Danish. “He has a voice like Leonard Cohen,” claims my Greenlandic guide, and others too. Having since listened to the album, I can report that his voice is far less miserable than Mr Cohen’s.

So Greenland has a singing prime minister. Mr Kleist is not the only musical politician: one could pull together a decent band with Bill Clinton on sax, Tony Blair on guitar, Madagascar’s young DJ-turned-coup-plotter-turned-president mixing the music backstage and Kim Jong Il on the tambourine. But Mr Kleist is distinct in this way: he leads a tiny country obsessed with producing music, in which music and politics are now swirling together in a heady mix.

At the weekend I spend a couple of hours at Greenland’s main recording studio, Atlantic Music, with its owner, Ejvind Elsner, a large and jovial man who has been producing local bands for two decades. He believes that young musicians are now changing the politics of his country. Before the recent election, opposition parties helped to fund a controversial new album by a band, Liima Inui, which provoked the ire of the old government. “Republik” helped to express public anger with politicians who had been caught fiddling their expenses, and to whip up calls for self-rule.

Mr Elsner claims that he had calls from officials who threatened to close his business, or at least to block access to radio and television, unless the album was scrapped. “You’ll be finished,” warned a leading figure of the old ruling party. Most offensive, apparently, was the idea of promoting “Republik” while the Danish queen visited. Instead the album has become a theme for the celebrations of self-governance Liima Inui, an impressively large group, headlined the main rock concert on the night of the self-governance celebrations.

Perhaps because of those long, dark winters, with so little else to do, Greenlanders have developed a wide variety of music, relative to their small population. The Danes introduced oompah bands, much intoning of hymns and a rural Nordic folk habit of singing jolly stories to each other. But Greenlandic customs are more entertaining. Traditions such as throat warbling (when two young women, typically, stand nose-to-nose and produce a disconcerting wail) and singing along as a seal-skin drum is tapped with a stick, are merging with new forms of Greenlandic pop, rock and hip-hop.

Mr Elsner sees a distinct a Greenlandic sound growing up, perhaps to rival successful recent Nordic musical exports from Iceland (Bjork, for example) and Norway (Røyksopp). More important, the musicians could play a powerful social role at home. “In future the music will mean a lot more for the people. We used to sing about love; now it is about politics, nature, social problems. People are not great at talking to each other, but they can have a say with music. We have to use the music to overcome our problems.”

Local rappers are most explicit in taking on Greenland’s social difficulties, singing about suicide, sexual abuse and corrupt politicians. There are other serious problems to address: alcoholism has long plagued much of northern Europe, so the governments of Nordic countries have used high taxes and restricted sales to limit binge drinking. The indigenous people of Greenland, the Inuit, are particularly vulnerable to alcohol, but many of the local Danes are equally heavy drinkers. In a society where many rely on funds doled out from Denmark, alcohol is one way to pass the time. But this weekend is not a notably drunken affair. Visiting a couple of Nuuk’s smoky bars nothing more rowdy or aggressive is on show than one might find in London on a Friday evening.

Self-selection process for private sector observers to the Climate Investment Funds
from Barbara Black to Climate

SELF-SELECTION PROCESS FOR PRIVATE SECTOR OBSERVERS TO THE CLIMATE INVESTMENT FUNDS.

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) is designing and facilitating the self selection process for private sector observers to two Climate Investment Fund (CIF) committees : Clean Technology Fund (CTF) and Strategic Climate Fund (SCF); and one subcommittee of the SCF, the Pilot Program for Climate Resilience (PPCR).

The self-selection process is directed to business associations to ensure that the business community is represented and participates in the meetings based on the  guidelines for inviting representatives of civil society to observe meetings. Five business associations attended the last CIF meetings in May, following an interim selection process for temporary observer seats. They provided a detailed summary of the meetings and useful feedback for the self selection process.

Self-selection process for private sector observers to the Climate Investment Funds

To ensure transparency in the design and implementation of the self-selection process, an Advisory Board has been created. The Advisory Board  is comprised of five recognized energy and climate change experts, who have been selected through consultations with the private sector, a broad range of stakeholders, the CIF Administrative Unit and the accredited UNFCCC business and industry NGOs. The Advisory Board has prepared the attached terms of reference and guidelines for the selection of observers for the CTF, SCF and PPCR.

If your organization wishes to participate in this selection process and believes it complies with the criteria outlined in the terms of reference of one of the fund committees/subcommittee, please complete and return the application form to  climate at wbcsd.org before 25 July 2009.

Self-selection process timeline
•   April – May 2009: The WBCSD launched the self-selection process. Temporary representatives were selected to attend the May meetings on behalf of the private sector.
•   1-12 June 2009: The WBCSD identified and invited a small group of recognized experts to join the Advisory Board
•   12-30 June 2009: Advisory Board prepares the guidelines and criteria for the self-selection process of two seats for the CTF, SCF and PPCR.
•   1-25 July 2009: Call for Application window
•   26-30 July: The WBCSD assists the Advisory Board by providing a candidate matrix using the defined criteria.
•   30 July - 10 August 2009: The Advisory Board selects the two Observer seats.
•   11 August 2009: The WBCSD communicates the decision of the Board to the CIF Administrative Unit and the applicants.
•   End October 2009 – Next CIF meetings

The design and facilitation of the self-selection process for the Permanent Observer Seats has been done in consultation with those undertaking the Civil Society self-selection process and the CIF Administrative Unit to ensure a transparent and fair process and continuity of criteria, timelines and processes.

WBCSD will post the relevant documents for the self selection process on www.wbcsd.org so please check for updates. Please contact WBCSD ( climate at wbcsd.org) with any questions or comments.

María Mendiluce
Energy Manager, Energy & Climate

World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD)
4, chemin de Conches  l  1231 Conches – Geneva  l  Switzerland
T: +41 (0)22 839 31 36  l  F: +41 (0)22 839 31 31 l  M: +41(0)78 713 04 42

E:  mendiluce at wbcsd.org  l  W: www.wbcsd.org

From: “Yavuz Hekim” <yavuzhekim@yavuzhekim.com>
Date: June 30, 2009
 
 
 

Dear Editor in Chief
 
As an actor who has played the role of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in 6 Films in Turkey, I would like to make an interview with your newspaper by e-mail
 
Information about myself is given below.
 
Sincerely yours
 
Cell  00 90 532 482 24 28
 
Yavuz HEKİM                      www.yavuzhekim.com 

Click here to download the PDF

UN DAILY NEWS from the UNITED NATIONS NEWS SERVICE.
29 June, 2009

SECRETARY-GENERAL WELCOMES NEW UK CLIMATE CHANGE FINANCING SCHEME

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today welcomed the new initiative announced by the Government of the United Kingdom on financing for climate change, ahead of this December’s meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark, where countries are expected to wrap up negotiations on an ambitious new pact to slash greenhouse gas emissions.

According to media reports, last Friday, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown unveiled the “Roadmap to Copenhagen” proposal for $100 billion to be raised annually to finance mitigation and adaptation measures, especially in the world’s poorest nations.

“This initiative comes at a critical time, and is precisely the kind of leadership developed countries must demonstrate” if talks on a new climate change framework, seeking to replace the Kyoto Protocol whose first commitment period ends in 2012, are to succeed, Michele Montas, Mr. Ban’s spokesperson, said.

“Without a serious commitment on financing from developed countries, a deal in Copenhagen is unlikely,” she added.

The UK proposal’s focus on adaptation, the Secretary-General believes, is especially crucial since the poorest and most vulnerable developing countries are suffering most acutely from climate change.

“He also welcomes the reaffirmation of the principle that additional public funding, beyond existing pledges for development assistance, is necessary to finance adaptation,” Ms. Montas noted.

Mr. Ban also voiced hope that the UK scheme will spur discussion and financing commitments from other Member States.

Last week, he invited heads of State and government to attend an “unprecedented” global summit at UN Headquarters to propel action towards “sealing the deal” on a new global warming accord in Copenhagen.

“Climate change is the greatest challenge facing this and future generations,” he said at a press conference in New York. “Emissions are rising and the clock is ticking.”

The high-level meeting will be held on 22 September, just over two months before the start of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) talks in the Danish capital.

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We tried to obtain the UNSG Press Conference on the subject matter but all what we got was the statement by his spokesperson, or alternatively her lauding the UK position. We also got the following about the laudatory how great Mr. Ban Ki-moon is in the eyes of the world, and we quite see herewith his campaign for reappointment when his present term in office runs out. We see how he tries to make himself nice in the eyes of the P-5 but we still wait for him to take personally full position on anything really important.

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BAN RANKS AMONG MOST TRUSTED WORLD LEADERS, SAYS NEW SURVEY

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is one of the world’s most confidence-inspiring political leaders, according to a new survey made public today.

Mr. Ban ranked second to United States President Barack Obama in the poll by the non-governmental organization WorldPublicOpinion.org, in which nearly 20,000 people in 20 countries were surveyed.

On average, his evaluations across all countries polled were positive, particularly in Africa, Africa and Western Europe.

Some 90 per cent of respondents in the Republic of Korea gave the Secretary-General positive confidence scores, while in Kenya and Nigeria he polled at 70 and 69 per cent, respectively.

WorldPublicOpinion.org, which conducted the poll between 4 April and 12 June of this year, is a collaborative research project bringing together research centres from around the world, and is managed by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland.

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Secretary-General welcomes new UK climate change financing scheme

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon

The UN Secretary General generally receives better ratings than most other world leaders who are heads of nations. On average his evaluations across the 20 nations are positive (40% to 35%) and 11 nations express confidence, seven do not, and two are divided. This places him second among the leaders studied, below Obama, but slightly above Merkel.

Views of Ban Ki-moon are particularly positive in Africa and in Asia - nearly all Asian nations give him positive confidence scores led by South Korea (90%). Indonesia is an exception: views are divided. Large majorities in both Kenya (70%) and Nigeria (69%) express confidence in him.

Countries polled in Western Europe have confidence in the Secretary General, including Britain, Germany, and France, but Poland and Russia do not, and Ukraine is divided. A majority of Americans (57%) report little confidence in him, while Mexico leans toward having confidence (38% to 33%.)

The US House of Representatives has passed a bill to limit greenhouse gases. The White House lobbied hard for it: “A bold and necessary step,” said Barack Obama. Many hailed its passage as a triumph. In fact there is little to celebrate.

Recall that cap-and-trade was expected only recently to pass in the House without difficulty. It scraped through by 219 votes to 212, with 44 Democrats voting against. Opposition to cap-and-trade in the Senate is stronger, so the chances of this bill or anything like it becoming law look slim.

To make matters worse, the bill makes political compromises that undermine its effectiveness. Even so it passed by just seven votes. What this says about the prospects of a more forceful measure – one that dares to confront consumers with significantly higher energy costs – is discouraging.

To curb climate change, the world needs to cut carbon emissions. It needs US leadership on the issue too. But this bill is not the way. A bewildering combination of cap-and-trade, mandates, new regulation, and every kind of open and disguised subsidy, it is too complicated, too prone to subversion and in many ways downright self-defeating.

To soften its impact, the House first adopted undemanding targets for emissions. Debate made them milder still. Instead of auctioning emissions permits, the bill would give nearly all of them away, so the measure does little to raise needed revenue. Permits will be handed to electricity producers on condition that the windfall be passed to consumers, many of whom would see their electricity bills fall as a result.

Learning nothing from Europe’s experience, the bill relies heavily on offsets, which let companies pay someone else to plant trees or cut emissions, so they do not have to. The still-unsolved problem is policing the system to ensure the offsets are real. The bill gives oversight of domestic offsets in farming to the Department of Agriculture – good news for farmers seeking a new trough of subsidy. To defend US competitiveness, it proposes subsidies for exporters and penalties on importers. In principle, cap-and-trade does require border adjustments, but the bill is careless and creates a gateway for protectionism.

In short, it is a mess. The key to a better plan is understanding that you cannot cut carbon without making carbon-based fuels more expensive – an obvious point, you would think. But it is one that US policymakers still cannot face.

In depth: Climate change - Mar-31

Annan and Geldof launch climate campaign - Jun-26

Brown calls for £60bn climate fund - Jun-26

Europe moves to reduce pollutants - Jun-26

EU invests in China carbon capture facility - Jun-25

VIENNA - Vienna’s Albertina Museum, home to landmark Impressionist works by Monet and Renoir, will start removing 950,000 artworks from its leaking underground depot following some of Austria’s heaviest downpours in 50 years.

The gallery, which remains open, will start moving the works on Thursday, including pieces by Flemish painter Rubens and Italian master Michelangelo.

“There has not been any damage to the works so far,” gallery spokeswoman Verena Dahlitz said on Wednesday.

One of the 200-year-old gallery’s most important pieces, a delicate watercolour of a hare by Albrecht Durer from 1502, has already been saved.

The collection will be moved from central Vienna to another location in Austria and the museum does not yet know how long the operation will take.

Austria has put 10,000 soldiers on standby to cope with the flooding, which has mainly affected towns along the Danube River in northern and western Austria.

The Albertina, housed in a Neo-Classical palace which was rebuilt after World War Two bomb damage, is one of Vienna’s main tourist attractions, drawing some one million visitors a year.

Apart from the rain, the museum has also been hit by the financial crisis, with donors pulling 2 million euros ($2.81 million) in sponsorship earlier this year.

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PARIS - A French village is on the alert after several sightings of a crocodile were reported in a local pond and police and local anglers have joined the hunt for the elusive creature dubbed the “Loch Ness monster of the Vosges.”

Xertigny, a village of some 3,000 inhabitants in the Vosges region in eastern France, has been transfixed by the unexplained sightings and sightseers have regularly gathered by the water’s edge to follow the hunt.

A chicken has been left by the waterside to attract the animal but so far, it has escaped capture and local authorities are considering draining the pool.

“We have been around the pond several times and you can’t really say if anything is there,” said Bruno Aime, vice president of a local anglers’ association, told France Info radio after using a special sonar device to investigate.

“I think it’s carp but it could also be a caiman of about 1.50 meters. The equipment doesn’t let you see the difference between a pike of a meter long and a caiman of 1.50 meters,” he told France Info radio.

Crocodiles are found only in zoos and parks in France.

The local Est Republicain newspaper has covered the chase in a special blog that includes hour-by-hour updates (in French) and footage of the search but the only animal it has caught on film so far is a small mammal resembling a water vole.

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In New York City, by June 24th, the month of June 2009 counted 21 days of rain - the rainiest June in known history.

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IS ALL OF THE ABOVE SIGN OF GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE? CAN YOU FIGURE OUT HOW MUCH THIS WILL COST THE ALREADY IMPOVERISHED GLOBAL ECONOMY?

The Neda or the “Iran Libre” - the new non-alcoholic green drink of choice.

It is non alcoholic in deference to the Islamic people.

It is based on cool mint and lime juice tamed with some black chocolate syrup and strawberry pulp.

The latter two in memory of old United States and its new President.

Garnish with a rim of salt and in major bars, like the Delegates’ Bar at the UN, with glass hang-ons of two lions - the Iranian lion and the British lion.

Drink when discussing Climate Change and Green Energy Policy.

 In 1953 Iran lost its one shot at real democracy thanks to the US CIA. Later on Iran lost one million people on the hands of  a US sanctioned Saddam Hussein attack - now the Iranian government blames their old enemies while beating their own people. They also blame British nationals - but these days the real blame - honestly - is on all of us - this because we allow funds to flow to the coffers of the Iranian government - then wonder what makes them tick?

How long will it still take to recognize not just the miserable US history in Iran, which finally was recognized as such by President Obama, but also the fact that behind the CIA and the decision makers in the US Department of State - and in the White House itself - was that forced dependency on oil - engineered by self serving oil interests that had and still have a strangle hold on US policy. That is what set up the CIA and the others to do exactly what they did.

The memory of Neda Agha-Soltan deserves better from us - it deserves a good GREEN LAW in the United States - the kind of law that will help us fight our addiction to oil and thus retire the batton wielding and gun shooting goons of Tehran.

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NEW YORK TIMES OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Green Revolution(s)

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: June 23, 2009

There has been a lot of worthless chatter about what President Barack Obama should say about Iran’s incipient “Green Revolution.” Sorry, but Iranian reformers don’t need our praise. They need the one thing we could do, without firing a shot, that would truly weaken the Iranian theocrats and force them to unshackle their people. What’s that? End our addiction to the oil that funds Iran’s Islamic dictatorship. Launching a real Green Revolution in America would be the best way to support the “Green Revolution” in Iran.

Oil is the magic potion that enables Iran’s turbaned shahs — “Shah Khamenei” and “Shah Ahmadinejad” — to snub their noses at the world and at many of their own people as well. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad behaves like someone who was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple. By coincidence, he’s been president of Iran during a period of record high oil prices. So, although he presides over an economy that makes nothing the world wants, he can lecture us about how the West is in decline and the Holocaust was a “myth.” Trust me, at $25 a barrel, he won’t be declaring that the Holocaust was a myth anymore.

The Obama team wants to pursue talks with Iran over its nuclear program, no matter who wins there. Fine. But the issue is not talk or no talk. The issue is leverage or no leverage. I love talking to people — especially in the Middle East — on one condition: that we have the leverage. As long as oil prices are high, Iran will have too much leverage and will be able to resist concessions on its nuclear program. With oil at $70 a barrel, our economic sanctions on Iran are an annoyance; at $25, they really hurt.

“People do not change when you tell them they should; they change when they tell themselves they must,” observed Michael Mandelbaum, the Johns Hopkins University foreign policy specialist. And nothing would tell Iran’s leaders that they must change more than collapsing oil prices.

* * * * *

Mr. Obama has already started some excellent energy-saving initiatives. But we need more. Imposing an immediate “Freedom Tax” of $1 a gallon on gasoline — with rebates to the poor and elderly — would be a triple positive: It would stimulate more investment in renewable energy now; it would stimulate more consumer demand for the energy-efficient vehicles that the reborn General Motors and Chrysler are supposed to make; and, it would reduce our oil imports in a way that would surely affect the global price and weaken every petro-dictator.

That is how — as Bill Maher likes to say — we make the bad guys “fight all of us.”

Sure, it would take time to influence the regime, but, unlike words alone, it will have an impact. I believe in “The First Law of Petro-Politics,” which stipulates that the price of oil and the pace of freedom in petrolist states — states totally dependent on oil exports to run their economies — operate in an inverse correlation. As the price of oil goes down, the pace of freedom goes up because leaders have to educate and unleash their people to innovate and trade. As the price of oil goes up, the pace of freedom goes down because leaders just have to stick a pipe in the ground to stay in power.

Exhibit A: the Soviet Union. High oil prices in the 1970s suckered the Kremlin into propping up inefficient industries, overextending subsidies, postponing real economic reforms and invading Afghanistan. When oil prices collapsed to $15 a barrel in the late 1980s, the overextended, petrified Soviet Empire went bust.

In a 2006 speech entitled “The Collapse of an Empire: Lessons for Modern Russia,” Yegor Gaidar, a deputy prime minister of Russia in the early 1990s, noted that “the timeline of the collapse of the Soviet Union can be traced to Sept. 13, 1985. On this date, Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani, the minister of oil of Saudi Arabia, declared that the monarchy had decided to alter its oil policy radically. The Saudis stopped protecting oil prices, and Saudi Arabia quickly regained its share in the world market.

If we could bring down the price of oil, the Islamic Republic — which has been buying off its people with subsidies and jobs for years — would face the same pressures. The ayatollahs would either have to start taking subsidies away from Iranians, which would only make the turbaned shahs more unpopular, or empower Iran’s human talent — men and women — and give them free access to the learning, science, trade and collaboration with the rest of the world that would enable this once great Persian civilization to thrive without oil.

Let’s get serious: An American Green Revolution to end our oil addiction — to parallel Iran’s Green Revolution to end its theocracy — helps us, helps them and raises the odds that whoever wins the contest for power, there will have to be a reformer. What are we waiting for?

Oil or Trees? Germany Takes Lead in Saving Ecuador’s Rainforest.

by Jess Smee
24 June 2009

Oil companies are salivating over the supply of black gold beneath Ecuador’s rainforest. The South American country is pledging to keep the oil in the ground — if the international community provides compensation. Now Germany has taken a leading role in raising the necessary cash.

There are many attributes which make the Yasuni National Park special: It is one of the most bio-diverse places on the planet, it is home to indigenous tribes which hunt and gather in its remote interior, and there’s a unique breed of small bat. But the national park also has a geographic curse: It sits atop Ecuador’s largest known oil reserve, thought to contain hundreds of millions of barrels.

And this potential fortune threatens its very future. In response, Ecuador has come up with an unusual plan to safeguard the UNESCO biosphere Reserve. The cash-strapped South American country has pledged to leave the oil in the ground forever — something unheard of among oil nations — if the international community compensates for some of the lost income.

The scheme, which was first mooted by Ecuadorian President Raphael Correa more than a year ago, got off to a slow start. By the end of the year the country extended its self-imposed deadline, in a last ditch bid to rally international support. Meanwhile, international oil giants were queuing to exploit the supply of black gold.
But now, all of a sudden, the ball seems to be rolling. Following a two-day visit by the Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Fander Falconí to Berlin, Germany had positioned itself at “the forefront of the initative,” the Ministry for Economic Cooperation said.

However, officials urged caution on a newspaper report which said Germany would pay $50 million (€36 million) into a yet-to-be-established international fund. “There will be emphatically no financial promises. The conversation in the Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development focused on the framework of the project and also on the efforts that Ecuador itself has to make,” Stephan Bethe, spokesman for the ministry, told SPIEGEL ONLINE.

He stressed that Ecuador’s idea had caught Berlin’s imagination: “It offers a new approach to rainforests and, from the perspective of development politics, it is very promising,” Bethe said. “Combining climate protection and fighting poverty will play a growing role in the future.”

Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Falconí told the German daily Die Tageszeitung that Germany had pledged “the first significant contribution” to a yet-to-be-created international fund. The paper reported that Ecuador was pushing Germany to pay up within one month.

Hat in Hand

Ecuador estimates that by leaving the oil untouched, some 410 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions will be averted. Oil is Ecuador’s most important export, generating around a third of its income. With the value of the untapped supply under the Yasuni National Park estimated at some $6 billion, the country argues it has little option but to approach international donors, hat in hand.

Environmentalists welcomed the plan as a way to save Ecuador’s rainforest from destruction. Preventing forests from disappearing is a vital element in the fight against climate change as they absorb huge quantities of CO2 from the atmosphere.

Still, doubts lingered about the Ecuador model. Tobias Riedl from Greenpeace Germany’s Forest Campaign warned that the scheme was far from perfect. “It is a double-edged sword. While we welcome moves to save this unique environment, the fact is that all rainforests need to be saved, regardless of whether they lie on valuable natural resources or not,” he told SPIEGEL ONLINE.

“There needs to be a broader move with industrialized nations paying money into a fund to save these forests. Preservation of these bio-diverse areas comes at a price.”

Meanwhile, environmental groups are looking to the Copenhagen Climate summit in December which aims to hammer out a new United Nations accord to replace the Kyoto Protocols which expire in 2012. Riedl remained upbeat, despite mounting signs that worldwide climate negotiations are stalling: “We expect to see how the preservation of forests can be brought into a new climate protection framework,” he said. “That is a step in the right direction.”

But there is a long way to go. Greenpeace estimates that €30 billion are needed to secure the future of the rainforests worldwide. And with 80 percent of all ancient forests (including rainforests) worldwide already gone, the clock is ticking. And Ecuador knows it.

Links:    Original article at www.spiegel.de

IAI to help build quieter, greener and cleaner aircraft
By Karin Kloosterman
June 24, 2009

Carbon offsetting your flight is one way to help reduce the amount of greenhouse gases entering the air. But experts in the transportation industry know that it’s necessary to start from the ground up — by making planes, trains and automobiles more environmentally friendly as part of their engineering.

Taking on a major partnership in the European Union’s flagship project - the $1.6 billion Clean Sky Joint Technology Initiative together with large European partners, Israel’s aviation giant Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) is helping to make skies greener. The company is the only non-EU partner in the massive research and development project.

Although in planning for a couple of years, just six months ago the Israeli company started working on its tasks. Led by Dassault, a prominent European aerospace company, IAI is also greening the skies along with Airbus and Eurocopter.

“We are dealing with reducing the amount of hazardous manufacturing waste, recycling, reducing weight - which will reduce carbon emissions - and extending the life [of the aircraft], which reduces need for recycling,” says Arnold Nathan, the director of IAI’s R&D Engineering Division.

The be all and end all of green flight projects:

Funded by the European Union’s Seventh Framework Program, Israel’s IAI is playing no small role: “This is the R&D product for the next seven years in Europe,” Nathan tells ISRAEL21c.

A third major project in the Clean Sky project is in composite materials, and finding ways to cut down on waste. The Boeing 787 and the Airbus 350 are all using more composite materials, explains Nathan. Made from cotton fabrics with epoxies, the process results in about 20-40 percent waste. And the waste is defined as hazardous to the environment.

Scrapping, recycling, extending aircraft life

In its mission, Clean Sky partners are looking into alternate ways to deal with the scrap, either through improved manufacturing methods, upfront planning, or recycling the waste efficiently. Using less energy in the manufacturing process, says Nathan, originally from Chicago, is also part of the environmental idea.

Additionally, IAI is focusing its R&D efforts on extending the life of an aircraft. “So if you make the life of an aircraft longer, you don’t have to deal with its waste and recycling,” says Nathan.

“We are really shooting to help the EU reach its 2020 goals – the ACARE — or Advisory Council for Aeronautics Research in Europe,” which by 2020 plans on reducing 50% of its CO2 emissions, 50% in external noise, and in general, greening the industry.

IAI plays a leadership role in four or five work packages. In one of six groups, each platform will come up with a serious significant piece of hardware by around 2013, two years before the project is supposed to end.

IAI is an Israeli aeronautics company involved in building aircraft. The company has partnered with Gulfstream in the US for building business jets. So far it has assembled about 70 business jets in Israel. The company also specializes in manufacturing the Arrow missile, and satellite and radar equipment through its various divisions.

Established in 1953, estimates suggest the company sees about $2 billion in sales annually, supplied by its workforce of about 1,500 people. Its products are developed from the skills and experience Israeli defense officials and researchers have acquired in order to help defend their country from hostile neighbors over the years.

 We got the following in an e-mail and we are still trying to figure out if this could be the answer that the UN Summit on finances and the economy will be looking for at the June 23-25, 2009 meetings that are being led with the help of a document prepared by Professor Stiglitz.

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It is August. In a small town on the South Coast of France, holiday season is in full swing, but it is raining so there is not too much business happening.
Everyone is heavily in debt.

Luckily, a rich Russian tourist arrives in the foyer of the small local hotel.
He asks for a room and puts a Euro100 note on the reception counter, takes a key and goes to inspect the room located up the stairs on the third floor.

The hotel owner takes the banknote in a hurry and rushes to his meat supplier to whom he owes E100.
The butcher takes the money and races to his supplier to pay his debt.
The wholesaler rushes to the farmer to pay E100 for pigs he purchased some time ago.
The farmer triumphantly gives the E100 note to a local prostitute who gave him her services on credit.
The prostitute goes quickly to the hotel owner, as she owed the hotel E100 for her hourly room use to entertain clients.

At that moment, the rich Russian is coming down to the reception and informs the hotel owner that the proposed room is unsatisfactory and takes his E100 back and departs.

There was no profit or income.
But everyone no longer has any debt and the small townspeople look optimistically towards their future.

COULD THIS BE THE SOLUTION TO THE Global Financial Crisis? Or, is there a catch here?

For background, see article

1. EUROPE: Decolonising the Arctic
2. Nearly independent day 
3. Greenland gives Denmark the cold shoulder. But would it ever be viable as a country?
4. Jun 20th 2009 Web only
6. BRITAIN: Tax havens under pressure
7. Whiter than white 
8. Britain’s offshore financial centres race for respectability
9. Jun 18th 2009

Climate change divides the Alps down the middle
Global warming is already causing flooding in the north and water shortages in south, report says

The dramatic effect of climate change on the Alps comes into focus as never before this week with the publication of a major report which reveals that the mountain range is rapidly dividing into two contrasting climatic zones, each posing new problems.

By Michael Day in Milan
Tuesday, 16 June 2009

Michael McCarthy: Don’t be fooled by this winter’s powder. The Alpine snow line is already in retreat
The Convention on the Protection of the Alps is a statutory EU body set up in 1991 and its magisterial second report, published tomorrow, which has been seen by The Independent, reveals that the northern ranges of the Alps are suffering ever more serious flooding while the parched southern mountains see less and less snow.

According to the report, precipitation in the south-east of the region has fallen nearly 10 per cent in the past 100 years while rain and snowfall in the north-west ranges has increased by the same amount over this time.

“Predictions that the European climate is dividing into two are becoming all too real,” said Marco Onida, secretary general of the Convention, who will present the report at the organisation’s headquarters in Bolzano, Italy, tomorrow, in the presence of EU officials and national representatives. “The result will be havoc for the Alps and the communities and wildlife that rely on area.”

Changing patterns of rain and snowfall, shrinking glaciers and rising temperatures will affect not only the mountains but also the communities which rely on their resources, the report warns. Already some Alpine villages in the north of the range face flooding, while areas further south are seeing tourist and other trades increasingly threatened. Some areas have already suffered water shortages.

The Alps’ most famous high peaks, Mont Blanc, The Matterhorn and Monte Rosa mark part of the dividing line between the increasingly wet north of the region and Italy and Slovenia in the dryer south.

North of the dividing line, flooding and mud slides are becoming a common threat in some Alpine communities. In the south, some of the Europe’s most celebrated Alpine beauty spots, including Italy’s Dolomites are under threat, although some micro-climates mean the dividing line does not following a rigid north-south line.

As a result of these changes, only one Alpine river – Italy’s 178-mile-long Tagliamento in the north-east of the country – has not suffered drastic modifications, the reports says. And even the Tagliamento may not be safe: the wildlife charity WWF has warned that even this, the Alps’ last river system, is threatened by water abstraction in the upper Tagliamento valley, organic pollution, and gravel exploitation.

The situation across the Alps is made worse, the Convention report says, by the increasing demand for artificial snow created during the winter months by snow machines working on the ski slopes. This is needed to sustain the winter sports industry which is an economic mainstay of the slopes, but places a further heavy burden on water and energy supplies which are already under great stress.

“The Alps are the water tower of Europe,” Dr Onida told The Independent, “But increasingly much of the water is not reaching the places downstream where it is needed, for ecosystems, agriculture and energy production.”

Around 16 million people in eight countries, from France in the west to Hungary in the east, live in the arc of Europe’s biggest mountain range. Rain and snow from its mountains provide the Danube, Rhine, Rhone and Po rivers with up to 80 per cent of their water.

Representatives from all eight Alpine countries – France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Lichtenstein, Slovenia and Hungary – together with the European Union – signed up to the Alpine Convention in 1991.

The report warns not only that the destruction of the Alps is accelerating, but that disruption to water supplies will be felt much further afield than originally thought.

Glacier shrinkage earlier this year led the Italian and Swiss governments to propose the first changes in the border line between the two countries in more than a century.

Dr Onida said there was “a battle between agriculture and tourism for control over water supplies” owing to the increasingly intensive exploitation of the slopes.

Climate change is also driving Alpine species further up the mountains while exotic species including palms get a foothold lower down.