Jihadists Take Over, As Warned .
Analysis by Julio Godoy, published by IPS Terra Viva from the UN – New York.
 www.ipsterraviva.net/UN/news.asp?…

PARIS, Sep 8, 2011 (IPS) – The official euphoria with which the U.S. and European governments celebrated the fall of the regime of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya has given way to growing concern that many among the new Libyan leadership are radical Muslims with links to al-Qaeda. Revelations are surfacing also of a close collaboration of Western governments with the deposed dictator.

The overwhelming presence of radical Muslims among the rebel Libyan leadership has been known in Paris at least since early March. But the dangers from this are now beginning to be discussed openly in Western capitals.

On Mar. 8, François Gouyette, ambassador to Tripoli until late February, told a select group of deputies at a closed session of the French parliamentary commission of foreign affairs that the rebellion, especially in the east of the country, comprised mostly “radical Muslims”.

“In the east of the country, especially in the city of Derna, which was taken very easily by the insurrection, there is without question a high concentration of radical Muslims,” Gouyette told the deputies. “Hundreds of Libyan combatants taking part in the international jihad in Afghanistan and in Iraq originate from this region.

“Many of these combatants are back in Libya,” Gouyette warned. IPS has the minutes of the meeting.

Gouyette recalled that some 800 members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) banned by the United Nations after the terror attacks of Sep. 11, 2001, and who were recently released after being incarcerated by the Gaddafi regime for many years, “have joined the liberated areas of the country. They can represent a problem in the future.”

Gouyette recalled that Gaddafi’s regime had “closely cooperated” with “all Western intelligence services in the fight against (Muslim) terrorism represented by al-Qaeda.” Discussions at the meeting were not made available to French media.

Five months after the closed session in parliament, Gouyette’s warnings have been officially confirmed. It is now no longer a secret that four of the military leaders of the Libyan rebellion have had long-term links with radical movements.

On the other hand, secret documents found recently in Tripoli confirm that both the British and the U.S. governments collaborated closely with Gaddafi in the fight against radial Muslims.

The secret Gaddafi files were discovered by researchers from the Washington-based Human Rights Watch in the private offices of former Libyan foreign minister Moussa Koussa. Koussa fled Libya at the beginning of the insurrection last February, and has apparently found political asylum in Qatar.

Prominent among the radical rebel leaders is Abdelhakim Belhaj, also known as Abu Abdallah al-Sadek, founder of the LIFG, and veteran of the anti-Soviet war of the 1980s in Afghanistan. Following the triumph over Gaddafi, Belhaj is currently military governor of Tripoli.

U.S. secret services had captured Belhaj in Malaysia in 2003. They detained and interrogated him in a secret Bangkok prison until 2004, when he was handed over to the Gaddafi regime. Gouyette confirmed in the French parliament that Gaddafi released him in March 2010.

Among other well-known radical Muslims in the new leadership are Ismail as-Salabi of Benghazi, Abdelhakim al-Hasidi of Derna, and Ali Salabi, member of the Transitional National Council which now controls the Libyan government. All of them are founding members of the LIFG.

Salabi led the LIFG in negotiations with the Gaddafi regime that led to the release of practically the whole of the present rebel leadership from Gaddafi’s prisons.

At the beginning of the negotiations in December 2007, then French deputy minister for human rights Rama Yade described Sarkozy’s plans during an official visit by the Libyan leader to Paris as an opportunity for Gaddafi to “wipe the blood off his crimes.” But these deals did not materialise.

Megrahi lay there, clinging to life. But will he die at home or in jail?

By Kim Sengupta in Tripoli, from Tripoli, The Independent, Tuesday, 30 August 2011.

The winds of spring were nice but what about the Hamsin weather that follows?

We listened in Vienna to a self declared leader of the Spring Protests and she did not impress us with anything more solid then the hatred of the Mubarak  regime. Now, with the political professionals that sat it out in the wings, returning as champions of democracy as means to get them the power that Mubarak denied them, what chance is there that the goals of those few idealists among the new leadership, being able to shape Egypt’s future? This article, posted by Open Democracy, does not make for high hopes.

————

Calling time on the January Revolution?

Ewan Stein, 3 June 2011
 www.opendemocracy.net/ewan-stein/…

Ewan Stein is lecturer in International Relations at the University of Edinburgh.

The forces of 25 January will have to take a long-term view on completing the Egyptian revolution, as both the military and Islamist groups seem keen to consolidate gains.

On Friday 27 May protesters took to the streets in their tens of thousands once again in Cairo, Alexandria and across Egypt. The groups involved—including the Coalition of Revolutionary Youth, April 6 Youth Movement and other liberal and leftist forces—advance a number of demands, but most generally call for reviving, completing or launching a ‘second’ Revolution.

Lining up against the protest—dubbed a million-man march—were much the same forces as initially opposed or were slow to join the Revolution in its early days, and who campaigned for a ‘yes’ vote in March’s referendum on amending the constitution. All the major Islamist forces came out against it. Although members of the Brotherhood’s youth cohort demonstrated, a day later the leadership announced its withdrawal from the Coalition of Revolutionary Youth, thus formally disassociating itself from the Revolution as an ongoing process.

The Muslim Brotherhood opposed the march as a ‘revolution against the people’; Salafists judged the process un-Islamic (in much the same way as they said voting ‘no’ in the referendum was equal to unbelief), while other Islamist groups like the Wasat Party and the resurgent Gama’a Islamiyya (Islamic Group or GI) asked their members to stay at home.

The Islamists, like the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), chastise and mock those incorrigible secularists that don’t seem to know when to stop protesting. In language reminiscent of that of the old regime, they deride what they see as demonstrating for its own sake, making incoherent and unreasonable demands, and refusing to appreciate the gains the Revolution has realised. They want, so they say, to protect Egypt’s economic recovery and prevent further ‘fitna’ (discord or sedition), which represents for Islamists and military men alike the sum of all fears. Perhaps most stingingly for those behind January 25, they chide the protesters for ignoring the wishes of the majority and riding roughshod over the long-suffering Egyptians’ desires for peace and stability.

Islamism and the military regime

Three months into the Revolution political Islam is enjoying something of a heyday. The Brotherhood’s political experience, combined with renewed vigour and self-confidence, is helping it to consolidate its influence over what has always been its primary base—the urban middle classes. But, more importantly, the Brotherhood now shares the political stage with a proliferation of other Islamist groups and movements. Most consequential, now as in the latter half of Mubarak’s rule, are Salafists. Previously ‘apolitical’ under Mubarak, who cultivated them as a safer alternative to the Brotherhood, Salafists now have political vehicles like the newly formed Fadila (Virtue) and Nur (Light) parties, as well as unprecedented access to the mosque pulpit and freedom to hold mass meetings and rallies.

Also Salafist in outlook , the previously ‘jihadist’ Gama’a Islamiyya, essentially dormant since its ceasefire in 1997, has exploded back onto the scene as both a proselytising and a political force. Aboud Zomr, mastermind of President Sadat’s assassination, has been released from prison and become a regular fixture on the media circuit. Zomr and other former militants, who—it must be stressed—remain sworn off violence, paint the January Revolution as a culmination of the GI’s own uprising against the Mubarak regime in the 1990s. The Revolution, they argue, vindicates the GI’s own decision to renounce armed struggle.

The revolutionary coalition of 25 January faces a military regime and an increasingly entrenched Islamist opposition, each enjoying robust external support and cordial mutual relations. Saudi Arabia has just promised Egypt a generouspackage of aid, and Qatar committed investment of up to $10 billion. The US, for its part, has pledged not to alter its own aid package to the regime.

The strength of political Islam in Egypt relates not only to grassroots popularity, but also to economic power supported by regional networks. The Brotherhood has, since the 1970s, had strong links to capital, and now benefits from the end of the repeated Mubarak-era seizures of its assets. Salafists continue, as they did under the old regime, to have access to substantial revenues, mostly from Wahhabi soul mates across the Red Sea. And there are strong pro-Salafist forces within the Muslim Brotherhood, a political direction that offers financial as much as transcendental payoffs. If its plush new Maqattam offices are anything to go by, Muslim Brotherhood Inc. is feeling no pain.

There are thus strong incentives for Islamists and the SCAF not to ‘complete’ the Revolution, something those expecting dramatic change in Egypt’s pro-Western foreign policy anytime soon should bear in mind. The demonstrations on Friday received scant coverage in the global media, meaning international interest in the Revolution will also be on the wane. The lifeline the forces of January 25 desperately need is continued, or increased, support from ‘ordinary’ Egyptians. The turnout on Friday was clearly nowhere near that of the first Friday of Anger on January 28. And while such comparisons are unfair—these were still mass protests—their opponents will spin them as sideshows, harmlessly playing out while grownup politics continues elsewhere.

Predictably enough, not unlike in other parts of the world, the powers that be in Egypt have decided—at least on core demands—not to change course. Parliamentary elections will still take place in September, with presidential ones shortly thereafter. By the end of the year, with a constitution in place, the SCAF will hand over to a civilian government. Not before.

Connecting with the people

Even once the new constitution has been written and a president and legislature elected via ‘free and fair’ elections, Egypt will remain an imperfect democracy. Still largely a peasant society, votes—particularly in rural areas—will no doubt be collected on community rather than individual levels. The political party of the provincial candidates will, to a large extent, remain arbitrary and irrelevant to the electorate. Local leaders will not readily support radical or leftwing political agendas, and will likely find more natural homes in Islamist parties.

In the ‘developed’ quarters of the cities people will vote according to political conviction, and here the Muslim Brotherhood is in the strongest position. But of no small significance will be the sprawling urban ‘ashwa’iyyat, the informal neighbourhoods whose inhabitants may not be beholden to the local sheikh, but neither are they members of the politically engaged intelligentsia. Over sixty percent of Cairenes live in neighbourhoods such as Imbaba, which have been neglected by the central government for decades, and often considered more-or-less outside the body politic.

In previous elections Mubarak’s National Democratic Party could rely on local heavies (baltagiyya) in such areas to corral people into polling stations and make sure they voted the right way. Such local brokers have tended to be ideologically flexible—respecting power and money—and also served as muscle for the Gama’a Islamiyya, which, in the late 1980s and early 1990s administered the effectively autonomous ‘Republic of Imbaba.’

It is groups like the GI and the Salafist movement in general that now stand the best chance of making inroads in these areas. Both the SCAF and the Brotherhood realise this. The former quickly turned to Salafist preachers as intermediaries in its, rather lame, attempts to calm sectarian tensions in Imbaba at the beginning of May. Whether or not Salafist leaders instigated the violence in the first place, they had the ability to stop it. They speak an intelligible language and can offer material, as well as spiritual, palliatives. This, after all, was why Mubarak tolerated the Gama’a Islamiyya in the same area for years, even when the group had colluded in his predecessor’s murder. And now they are back, not unreasonably hoping to receive the same largesse.

The Brotherhood, like the military, appears to have decided not to expend too many resources penetrating the ‘ashwa’iyyat directly. It has pledged not to contest more than 50 percent of seats in the elections, but it has also announced that it will form a unified list with Salafists (neither party fielding candidates in areas in which the other is running), thus allowing Salafists to pick up seats in those poorer areas in which they enjoy a clear advantage. Unless something changes it seems certain there will be an Islamist majority in parliament for the foreseeable future, albeit potentially one in which no single party dominates.

So where does this leave the forces of January 25? One of their biggest challenges has been to resonate with Egyptians in the countryside and poorer areas. In a recent interview, Khalid Za’farani, the leader of the Egyptian Justice and Development Party, formerly of the Brotherhood, remarked that liberal and socialist parties had no popular base, and that the ‘simple pious Egyptians’ rejected their ideas and would not vote for them. Za’farani is undoubtedly correct, and a substantial part of the shared Islamist agenda is to ensure, through education and proselytising, that those ‘simple’ folk never do accept secular ideas.

Urban menace?

Many who seek a better future for Egypt blame the malevolent political culture sustained by the previous regime for sectarianism and other social ills. The old system generated, for Rashid Khalidi, ‘pervasive self-loathing and an ulcerous social malaise… [which] manifested itself among other things in sectarian tensions, frequent sexual harassment of women, criminality, drug use, and a corrosive incivility and lack of public spirit.’ But now that Mubarak has gone, and these problems have clearly not gone away, many of those marching on Friday were, somewhat ironically, demanding increased policing to protect citizens.

Perhaps, in addition to confronting a mobilised Islamist social movement, and a military regime with substantial foreign support, some that want to see the Revolution ‘completed’ must also overcome a measure of class prejudice and denial. Hatred of Mubarak and his clique united Egypt, and with that unity came the feeling of common purpose that drove the Revolution forward. But many middle class Egyptians—Islamist and secularist alike—have tended to view the poor and the lower classes (tabaqat al-dinya) with a mixture of derision and fear. Popular language and customs are often sneeringly dismissed as biy’a, meaning base, course or low-brow. A recent intervention by Hazem Kandil about the role of Cairo’s slum dwellers in the Revolution provides a good example. In blatantly derogatory terms, Kandil remarks that ‘fortunately, this menacing human mass was entirely absent from the revolt, which probably contributed to its civilized and peaceful character.’ He concludes that to be successful ‘a revolutionary politics has to take the existing fears and anxieties of a class society into account.’

The political circus surrounding sectarian violence in Imbaba in early May likewise saw many a prejudice bubble to the surface. A Christian woman, Abeer Fakhri, was alleged to have been held against her will by the Coptic church for converting to Islam. For Qutb al-Arabi, writing on the Muslim Brotherhood’s website, Fakhri and other (generally Upper Egyptian) Copts who convert to Islam just to get divorced are little more than ‘ne’er do wells’ running away from their Christian husbands to shack up with equally lamentable Muslim miscreants (sayi’in), ‘many of them Microbus and tuk-tuk drivers.’ They are no use to either Christianity or Islam, al-Arabi suggests.

The Muslim Brotherhood doesn’t have to worry about the tabaqat al-dinya as it has its new Salafist allies to rely on. But who do the left and liberals have? There have been Islamist-secularist alliances in Egypt in the past, but surely uniting with Salafists would be a step too far? Clearly the forces of January 25 will have to take a long-term view on completing this Revolution, as both the military and Islamist groups seem keen to consolidate gains. Friday’s million-man march in Cairo may not have quite lived up to its name. But this is not the point.

What will matter in the long run is how, as counterrevolution takes hold, Egyptians can convert their protests into a social movement that moves beyond, rather than takes into account, society’s class ‘anxieties’.

Nominations open for the 2011 Martha T. Muse Prize – Last date 1st May 2011.

The “Martha T. Muse Prize for Science and Policy in Antarctica” is a US$ 100,000 unrestricted award presented to an individual in the fields of Antarctic science or policy that has demonstrated potential for sustained and significant contributions that will enhance the understanding and/or preservation of Antarctica. The Tinker Foundation’s goal is to establish a prestigious award that recognizes excellence in Antarctic research by honoring someone in the early to mid-stages of their career. The Prize is inspired by Martha T. Muse’s passion for Antarctica and is intended to be a legacy of the International Polar Year 2007-2008.

The prize-winner can be from any country and work in ANY field of Antarctic science or policy, including Climate change, Life Sciences, Geo Sciences, Physical Sciences, Antarctic Politics. The goal is to provide recognition of the important work being done by the individual and to call attention to the significance of understanding Antarctica in a time of change. The Prize is awarded by the Tinker Foundation  and administered by the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR).

Please visit www.museprize.org for further details. Online nominations will close on the May 1st, 2011.

—————————————–
Dr Renuka Badhe
Administrator, Martha Muse Prize
and Executive Officer, SCAR Secretariat
Scott Polar Research Institute
Lensfield Road
Cambridge CB2 1ER
United Kingdom

E-mail: rb302@cam.ac.uk
Skype:  renukabadhe
Web:    www.scar.org
—————————————–

The original posting said:

The Tinker Foundation’s goal is to establish a prestigious award that recognizes excellence in Antarctic research by honoring someone in the early to mid-stages of their career.

The Prize is inspired by Martha T. Muse’s passion for Antarctica and is intended to be a legacy of the activities following the International Polar Year 2007-2008. Martha T. Muse is active with the New York Explorers Club and besides the normal interest of the Club in feats of heroism by exploration of nature, Martha tried to lead the Club also in a direction of review of the human impact on nature, and we wrote about her in our past articles - this including the effects of human induced climate change.
We hope that the Tinker Foundation has also picked up on this angle of Martha´s musing and we strogly recommend to our readers to apply for these grants. (this is a comment from the editor of SustainabiliTank.info)

The prize-winner can be from any country and work in ANY field of Antarctic science or policy, including Climate change, Life Sciences including biodiversity and its management, Geo Sciences, Physical Sciences, Antarctic Politics. The goal is to provide recognition of the important work being done by the individual and to call attention to the significance of understanding Antarctica in a time of change. The Prize is awarded by the Tinker Foundation  and administered by the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR).

Please visit www.museprize.org for further details. Online nominations will close on the May 1st, 2011.

Hey there, Pincas:

Are you fed up with political leaders who’ve failed again and again and again to put us on a path toward climate sanity? Clearly, it’s time to take matters into our own hands — literally.

That’s the idea behind the Global Work Party being organized by 350.org. On 10/10/10, people all around the world will gather in their communities to get things done. Politicians are invited to come and take notes.

In Hailey, Idaho, people are getting together for a home weatherization raffle and demonstration. In Auckland, New Zealand, they’re organizing a giant bike fix-up day. In Ambalantota, Sri Lanka, they’ll be planting hundreds of trees. In the Maldives, they’ll be putting solar panels on the president’s office. Find out what’s going on in your neck of the woods, or organize a work event yourself. With the might of our combined efforts, we’ll be sending a message to our leaders: We’re doing our part. Now get to work and do yours.

Join us in a live chat on Grist to find out more about the Global Work Party and the climate crisis that inspired it — today, Sept. 22, at noon Pacific time (3 p.m. Eastern).

Yours in working and partying,

Bill McKibben, author, activist, & Grist board member
Chip Giller, Grist founder & president

Eskom Ready To Start Buying Green Energy Plants

Date: 09-Sep-10
Country: SOUTH AFRICA
Author: Shapi Shacinda
South Africa’s power utility Eskom will start procuring renewable energy projects next month to help ease power shortages in the country and relieve its carbon footprint, it said on Wednesday.

Scotland To Align Green Energy Laws With England

Date: 09-Sep-10
Country: UK
Author: Karolin Schaps
The Scottish government launched two public consultations on Wednesday aimed at bringing its small-scale green project planning and renewable rewards laws in line with those in the rest of the United Kingdom.

Abdel Baset Al-Megrahi (Newscom)

U.S. officials tell The Daily Beast they are convinced an ex-MI6 spy—now a senior adviser to BP—helped free the Pan Am 103 bomber. Philip Shenon on the man the Senate wants to question.

Did a former top British spy now on BP’s payroll – a man known as “BP’s Lawrence of Arabia” – win the release of the Lockerbie bomber and preserve BP’s huge oil-drilling business in Libya?

U.S. law-enforcement and congressional officials tell The Daily Beast they are convinced the retired MI6 spy—Sir Mark Allen, now a senior adviser to BP in London—played a key behind-the-scenes role in freeing the Pan Am 103 bomber, Abdel Baset al Megrahi, who was released from a Scottish jail last summer and allowed to return home to Libya.

Through a BP spokesman, Allen, a well-respected spook who specialized in the Arab world in his career at MI6 and who led U.K. government efforts after the 9/11 attacks to persuade Libya to give up its WMD programs and restore ties to the West, denies he made any effort to help Megrahi.

“If we get the chance to call in some of the BP officials to testify about Megrahi, Allen will be on the top of our list for testimony,” a Senate aide said.

But government investigators in the U.S., outraged over the release of the only person convicted of the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am 747 over Scotland that left 270 people dead, most of them Americans, are hoping that BP’s newfound infamy in the Gulf of Mexico will allow the U.S. to force BP to disclose what involvement the company—and specifically, Allen—may have had in Megrahi’s release.

“Allen seems to be at the heart of this story,” said a Senate aide whose boss joined with other Senate Democrats this week in calling on the State Department and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to investigate BP’s connection to the bomber’s release.

The Senate Democrats say their outrage over Megrahi’s freedom has only grown in the wake of new reports from Libya that the Lockerbie bomber, released from a Scottish jail because he was supposedly only weeks from dying from terminal prostate cancer, is far from dead—and may in fact survive for several more years.

“If we get the chance to call in some of the BP officials to testify about Megrahi, Allen will be on the top of our list for testimony,” the Senate aide said. “Certainly some of us think subpoenas are in order.”

Allen should be quizzed, the aide said, about the instructions he received at BP from the man who hired him at the company in 2004—then-Chief Executive John Browne, who later stepped down from BP in the wake of a perjury scandal. (In a book, Browne admitted having made mistakes in court papers testifying to details of a gay relationship he had.)

Allen had obvious appeal to BP, given his close ties to Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi and his friendships with other leaders of oil-rich Arab nations—friendships cultivated in part through Allen’s love of falconry, the hobby of choice of many Arab rulers. (Allen’s book, Falconry in Arabia, was published in 1980.)

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) singled out Allen by name this week in calling for an investigation of BP’s involvement in Megrahi’s release, alleging that the energy company may have “gained access to Libyan oil reserves by using a mass murderer as a bargaining chip.”

POLITICS
BP Lobbied Brits Ahead of Lockerbie Bomber Release.

July 15, 2010. from London.
Theunis Bates, Contributor to aol News

LONDON (July 15) — Amid a new U.S. furor over trading a terrorist for commercial considerations, BP confirmed today that it had lobbied the British government in late 2007 over a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya prior to the release of Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi.

The London-based petroleum giant said it had voiced concerns that the slow pace of negotiations risked impeding an offshore drilling deal with Moammar Gadhafi’s North African country.
Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi, convicted in the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am airliner over Lockerbie, was released from a Scottish prison jail last August because a doctor said he was dying of cancer.
“BP told the U.K. government that we were concerned about the slow progress that was being made in concluding a Prisoner Transfer Agreement with Libya,” BP said in a statement. “We were aware that this could have a negative impact on U.K. commercial interests, including the ratification by the Libyan government of BP’s exploration agreement.”

The company’s statement appears to have been prompted by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s announcement on Tuesday that she was considering a request by four senators to investigate whether BP pushed for last year’s release of Megrahi in exchange for lucrative drilling concessions off the Libyan coast.

“Evidence in the Deepwater Horizon disaster seems to suggest that BP would put profit ahead of people — its attention to safety was negligible and it routinely underestimated the amount of oil gushing into the Gulf,” read a letter sent to Clinton by Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer of New York, and Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez of New Jersey. “The question we now have to answer is, was this corporation willing to trade justice in the murder of 270 innocent people for oil profits?”

Schumer called on the company to freeze its projects in Libya, pending an investigation. “If BP is truly dealing in good faith and has nothing to hide, it should cooperate with such an investigation,” he said Tuesday at a news conference. “The companies should not be allowed to profit on this deal if it was facilitated at the expense of the victims of terrorism.”

Megrahi, a former Libyan intelligence agent, is the only person ever sentenced in connection with the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which exploded over the small Scottish town of Lockerbie in December 1988. He was convicted in 2001 of 270 counts of murder for masterminding the attack. But last August, the Scottish government released him from jail on compassionate grounds, after being told by doctors that his prostate cancer was likely to result in his death within three months. That decision angered the U.S. and many relatives of those killed in the attack, who argued Megrahi should end his days in prison.

Almost a year later, Megrahi, 57, is still alive. And last week, the British doctor who originally diagnosed the bomber admitted Megrahi might survive for another decade.

BP insists that it never raised the actual subject of the Libyan intelligence officer’s fate while lobbying the government. “The decision to release al-Megrahi in August 2009 was taken by the Scottish government,” the company said. “It is not for BP to comment on the decision of the Scottish government. BP was not involved in any such discussions about the release of al-Megrahi.”

At the heart of this controversy is a $900 million exploration deal BP provisionally agreed with Libya in May 2007, the same month that Britain and Libya opened talks on a Prisoner Transfer Agreement. During initial negotiations over the transfer pact, Britain’s then-Justice Minister Jack Straw refused to sign on to the deal if it included Megrahi. At the same time, Libya was stalling and refusing to ratify its multimillion-dollar deal with BP.

Then in December 2007, according to The Sunday Times, Straw wrote to Kenny MacAskill — his counterpart in Scotland, who set the Libyan free last August — and said the government was abandoning its attempt to exclude Megrahi from the prisoner agreement, citing the national interest. Within six weeks of this about face, Libya had authorized the BP deal.

It later emerged that Straw had changed his mind following lobbying from the petroleum industry, especially BP. He took two phone calls from Sir Mark Allen, a former MI6 agent, then working for BP as a consultant, on Oct. 15 and Nov. 9, 2007.

In an interview with the Daily Telegraph last September, Straw admitted that trade and BP were key considerations when the government decided to include Megrahi in the prisoner agreement. “Yes, [it was] a very big part of that. I’m unapologetic about that … Libya was a rogue state,” he said. “We wanted to bring it back into the fold. And yes, that included trade because trade is an essential part of it and subsequently there was the BP deal.”

———————————————-
 www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20…

• Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 15 July 2010 12.52 BST
• Article history

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, convicted over Lockerbie bombing, meets the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, last August. Photograph: AP/Jamahiriya BroadcastingHillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, pledged last night to consider congressional demands for an investigation into allegations that BP lobbied for the release of the man convicted over the Lockerbie bombing as part of an oil-for-terrorist deal.

The White House added to the pressure on the British oil firm today as it gave the green light to renewed attempts to close valves on a new, tighter-fitting cap over BP’s fractured wellhead in the Gulf of Mexico.

With pressure mounting on BP, Clinton responded to reports that the firm had lobbied the British government for the release of Abdelbasset al-Megrahi to help it clinch lucrative drilling contracts off the coast of Libya. “I have received the letter and we will obviously look into it,” she said.

At a press conference, four senators demanded BP put its plans to drill in the Gulf of Sidra on hold until the UK and US state department investigations clear the firm of manoeuvring for Megrahi’s release.

“It is almost too disgusting to fathom that BP had a possible role in securing the release of the Lockerbie terrorist in return for an oil drilling deal,” said Charles Schumer, a Democratic senator from New York.

Megrahi was convicted in connection with the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in which 270 people died. He was released on compassionate grounds last August after doctors said he was suffering from cancer and it was likely that he had only months to live. The Libyan is still alive after his transfer to Tripoli.

The state department has been sympathetic to anger in the US over his release. “There was an expectation from last August that Mr Megrahi had only a few months to live,” a spokesman, Philip Crowley, said. “Every day that he lives as a free man, we think is an affront to the families of and victims of Pan Am 103.”

BP’s future in America looked precarious as legislation that could ban the firm from offshore drilling projects for seven years cleared its first hurdle.

The House committee on natural resources yesterday approved a proposal from a California Democrat, George Miller, that would ban oil companies with a history of violating safety and environmental regulations from new drilling projects.

“One of the things you should bring to this game is a safety record. You have a company that has had an egregious safety record, a fatal safety record,” Miller said.

On paper, companies would be banned if more than 10 workers are killed at any of their facilities or they have been fined more than $10m for polluting waters, over the previous seven years. Firms would also have to prove they have paid in full for any damages or cleanup costs resulting from an oil spill.

In reality, however, this would only apply to BP. The company is expected to face billions in fines for the Gulf disaster, and had a history of safety and environmental violations well before the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion killed 11 works and ruptured the wellhead in April.

Congressional hearings have since focussed on BP’s history in the US, which include more than 700 safety and environmental violations over the last five years – compared with fewer than 10 for the other big oil companies.

Most of those violations were unrelated to offshore drilling, including a 2005 explosion at a Texas refinery that killed 15 workers and a badly maintained pipeline that spewed 200,000 gallons (910,000) of oil along Alaska’s North Slope.

The ban would not apply to existing leases, and would still allow BP to act as a minority partner on leases.

But another amendment, due to be taken up today, would require the US government to consider an oil company’s safety record before awarding offshore contracts rather than choose the highest bidder.

“We allow them to drill no matter what their environmental, safety or public health record may be,” Bart Stupak, the Michigan Democrat who proposed the amendment, told the Platts Energy forum. “I think we have to give the secretary the discretion to say: ‘Look you have got such a history here. You are not going to be allowed to drill unless you clean up your act’.”

Stupak said the reports of a Lockerbie bombing link could provoke additional congressional investigations into BP activities.

The company is also facing months, if not years, of congressional scrutiny.

Stupak added that he expected the investigation to dominate the next chair of the oversight and investigation committee.

BP’s Megrahi plea

Claims made by US senators that BP lobbied for the release of Megrahi as part of an oil-for-terrorist deal are not out of the blue.

Last September, Britain’s then justice minister, Jack Straw, admitted the UK had been partly motivated by the need to secure fresh oil contracts when ministers tried, in 2007, to make it easier to release the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing.

Straw accepted in an interview that he had decided in 2007 to drop his plan to exclude Megrahi from a prisoner transfer agreement (PTA) which was being negotiated with Libya. Straw’s change of mind followed lobbying by UK oil interests, notably BP, and the Libyan government.

Straw was lobbied on 15 October and 9 November that year by Sir Mark Allen, a former MI6 officer, who then worked for BP as a consultant. Libya was stalling on a £500m-plus oil deal with BP.

Documents last year showed Straw originally promised a PTA would only be reached with Libya if Megrahi was excluded. But he later acceded to Libyan demands to include Megrahi. The change followed a warning from BP that not including the bomber could hurt its business interests.

When asked in a Daily Telegraph interview last year if trade and BP were factors, Straw said: “Yes, [it was] a very big part of that. I’m unapologetic about that … Libya was a rogue state.

“We wanted to bring it back into the fold. And yes, that included trade … and subsequently there was the BP deal.”

A spokesman for BP said the oil company had raised concerns with the government about the slow progress in concluding the PTA, but denied mentioning Megrahi.

Megrahi was released by the Scottish government last year on compassionate grounds, because a terminal illness meant he only had a short time to live. But since his return to Libya, he has remained alive.

In a further complication, some argue that the evidence used to convict Megrahi was flawed, and that he is in fact innocent of the Lockerbie bombing.

BP is Defended by UN, “Accidents Happen, Nature of Modern Life,” Global Compact.

UNITED NATIONS, June 15, 2010

As BP continues gushing oil for over 50 days into the Gulf of Mexico, at the UN on June 14, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s main adviser on corporate social responsibility defended the company.

“Big accidents happen all the time, it’s the nature of modern life,” said Georg Kell, Executive Director of the UN Global Compact. Video here, from Minute 42:20.

Kell was promoting an upcoming CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) event slated for New York on June 24, featuring Ban and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Inner City Press asked about several participating and donating corporation, including a tobacco distributor and a company of mercenaries or soldiers of fortune.

Then Inner City Press asked about BP, a long time Global Compact member. Video here, from Minute 33:11.

Kell claimed that BP has not been active in the Compact for two years. “I think their current status is non communicating,” he said. But even as he said it, on the Global Compact website BP was listed as fully in compliance, with its next “communication of progress” not due until June 9, 2011.

One can only imagine what “progress” BP will communicate to the UN at that time.

The reality is that the UN has no substantive standards for membership in the Global Compact.

UN’s Ban listen to Kell, BP’s gusher not shown.

Despite receiving numerous detailed complaints, the UN Global Compact has for example kept as a member PetroChina and its investment in Darfur with the Sudanese government of Omar al Bashir, indicted by the International Criminal Court.

That Kell would try to misrepresent the status of BP with the Global Compact, and so quickly try to distance the Compact from BP before defending it, reflects that BP’s image is now worse than PetroChina’s.

But that Kell would then dismissively say of BP’s still gushing undersea pipeline, “Big accidents happen all the time, it’s the nature of modern life,” shows either that Kell is not the right person to lead the UN’s Global Compact, or that the UN is not what it claims to be – or both.

Diplomatic footnote: “It seems that Kell is more responsive to the UK than the US,” opined one senior UN official, who requested anonymity due to Ban Ki-moon’s anti whistleblower policies. “But where is [US Ambassador] Susan Rice on this, given Obama’s new public attacks on Tony Hayward and BP?”

————–

Please read also: www.sustainabilitank.info/2010/06/18/16114/

Mercer is a leading global provider of consulting, outsourcing and investment services. Mercer works with clients to solve their most complex benefit and human capital issues, designing and helping manage health, retirement and other benefits. It is a leader in benefit outsourcing. Mercer’s investment services include investment consulting and investment management. Mercer’s 18,000 employees are based in more than 40 countries. The company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Marsh & McLennan Companies, Inc., which lists its stock (ticker symbol: MMC) on the New York, Chicago and London stock exchanges. For more information, visit www.mercer.com

Mercer’s Quality of Living index list was revised and now covers 221 cities compared to 215 in 2009, which means direct trend comparison will not be possible until 2011. The new selection includes prominent capital and other major cities from across the world currently available in Mercer’s database, and better reflects where companies are sending their expatriate employees in the current business environment.

Slagin Parakatil, Senior Researcher at Mercer, commented: “As the world economy becomes more globalised, cities beyond the traditional financial centres are emerging as attractive places in which to expand or establish a business. Cities in many emerging markets, such as in the Middle East or Asia, have seen a significant influx of foreign companies and their expatriate employees in recent years.”

“To ensure their expatriates are compensated appropriately and an adequate hardship allowance is included in their benefits package, companies seek a clear picture of the quality of living in these cities. We have reviewed our index to reflect these developments and it now better represents the cities that most interest our clients,” Mr Parakatil said.

————

THIS YEAR, FOR THE FIRST TIME, MERCER ESTABLISHED ALSO AN ECO-CITY CATEGORY IN ITS RANKINGS.

Eco-City Ranking 2010 includes the following criteria: Water availability, water potability, waste removal, sewage, air pollution and traffic congestion. As this list is only a partial list from Mercer’s more general lists of criteria, but they still retain New York City as the base figure with 100 as guide-line, obviously these figures are different then in their general listings.

In the more general list - Vienna retains the top spot as the city with the world’s best quality of living, according to the Mercer 2010 Quality of Living Survey. Zurich and Geneva follow in second and third position, respectively, while Vancouver and Auckland remain joint fourth in the rankings. Also there Cities are ranked against New York as the base city, with an index score of 100 – but that figure obviously means a different 100. In the US, the highest ranking entry is Honolulu at position 31, followed by San Francisco at position 32.  In the UK, London ranks at 39, while Birmingham  at 55 and Glasgow at 57. Singapore at 28 is the top-scoring Asian city, followed by Tokyo at 40.

Mercer conducts the general ranking to help governments and multi-national companies compensate employees fairly when placing them on international assignments. The rankings are based on a point-scoring index, which sees Vienna score 108.6 and Baghdad 14.7.

Top Top 52 Eco-Cities ranked:

Base City: New York, US (=100)

Mercer is a leading global provider of consulting, outsourcing and investment services. Mercer works with clients to solve their most complex benefit and human capital issues, designing and helping manage health, retirement and other benefits. It is a leader in benefit outsourcing. Mercer’s investment services include investment consulting and investment management. Mercer’s 18,000 employees are based in more than 40 countries. The company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Marsh & McLennan Companies, Inc., which lists its stock (ticker symbol: MMC) on the New York, Chicago and London stock exchanges. For more information, visit www.mercer.com

Earth System Science 2010

Global Change, Climate and People

10-13 May 2010

Edinburgh International Conference Centre, Edinburgh, UK

This 3-day event will showcase recent advances in the understanding of Earth system dynamics and highlight new directions for the analysis of the interactions between humans and our environment.

We welcome participants from the growing international community engaged in all aspects of global change research.  Our aim is to help in the building of much-needed bridges between the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities, and between policy, assessment and research.   The conference themes are:

1.     Earth system modelling: from observations and process understanding to prediction and risk assessment

a. Confronting models (Earth System Models and Integrated Assessment Models) with observations.

b. Future projections (seasonal to centennial): consequences for the Earth system of climate change, and of mitigation actions (including geoengineering options, REDD, biomass energy development)

2.     Dynamics of biogeochemical cycles and climate: transitions, instabilities and feedbacks

a. Analysis of Earth system feedbacks and interactions, including issues surrounding global warming metrics

b. Rapid and abrupt changes in the Earth system: evidence from the past and risks for the future

3. People and resources: perspectives on the relationships among environment, ecosystems and human needs.

a. Socio-economic drivers in the use of natural resources

b. Implications of global environmental change, and global environmental policies, for ecosystem services and human well-being.

We are pleased to announce our keynote speakers:
Opening keynotes: Prof Berrien Moore (University of New Hampshire) and Prof Jacqueline McGlade (European Environment Agency, Denmark)
Theme 1 Dr Alan Robock (Rutgers University) Dr Mike Raupach (CSIRO) Dr Gavin Schmidt (NASA GISS) Dr Andy Morse (University of Liverpool)
Theme 2: Dr Eric Wolff (British Antarctic Survey), Prof Gabi Hegerl (University of Edinburgh) Dr Valérie Masson-Delmotte (SCE, France) Prof Carole Crumley (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
Theme 3: Prof Johan Rockström (Stockholm Resilience Centre) Dr Veronika Eyring (Institute of Atmospheric Physics, DLR, Germany) Dr Jae Edmonds (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory) Prof Kevin Anderson (University of Manchester/Tyndall)

The deadline for submission of abstracts for presentations and posters has now been extended until 9^th April.

For more information, and to submit abstracts and register for the conference visit: earthsystemscience2010.org

Reduced registration is available for students, delegates from developing countries and members of QUEST.

This is the First Open Science Conference of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme’s project Analysis, Integration and Modelling of the Earth System (AIMES). Sponsored and organised by QUEST,NERC’s programme for Earth System Science.
———————–Earth System Science 2010Global Change, Climate and People Edinburgh, 10-13 May 2010
**Registration and abstract submission now open** www.earthsystemscience2010.org
Cat DownyScience Programme AssistantQUEST – Earth SciencesUniversity of BristolWills Memorial BuildingQueens RoadBristol BS8 1RJ
t  0117 331 5134f  0117 925 3385w quest.bris.ac.uk

 www.upi.com/Science_News/Resource…

China overtakes U.S. in green investments.
Published: March. 26, 2010

WASHINGTON, March 26 (UPI) — China in 2009 for the first time led the world in clean energy investments, with Britain jumping up to the No. 3 spot.

China spent a staggering $34.6 billion in clean energy over the past year, almost double the United States’ $18.6 billion, a study by the Pew Charitable Trusts said.

With $11.2 billion spent, Britain surprisingly claims the No. 3 spot, followed by Spain and Brazil. South Korea impressed with a 250 percent growth of installed capacity.

Overall, global investments in the sector more than doubled since 2005 and are projected to reach $200 billion in 2010.

“Countries are jockeying for leadership,” said Phyllis Cuttino, who heads Pew’s climate change division. “They know that investing in clean energy can renew manufacturing bases, and create export opportunities, jobs and businesses.”

Over the course of a few years, China became the world’s largest producer of solar cells and has a huge wind turbine production sector. It has set a goal of having a 30 gigawatt renewable energy capacity installed by 2020 but it will soon exceed that target.

Britain’s ascent is due to huge government-backed offshore wind power projects and investments into the relatively young marine energy sector.

Countries with strong green policies — including feed-in-tariffs, carbon markets, priority loans for renewable energy projects and mandated clean energy targets — such as China, Brazil, Spain, Britain and Germany, have the most robust clean energy sectors as a percentage of their economies, the Pew researchers write. Countries without such policy frameworks, including the United States, Japan and Australia, lag behind.

“The United States’ competitive position is at risk in the emerging clean energy economy,” Cuttino said. “Our nation has a critical choice to make: pass the federal policies necessary to position us as the world leader in the large and growing global clean energy market or continue to watch as China and other countries race ahead.”

The Pew researchers note that the United States’ clean energy finance and investments lag behind many of other Group of 20 nations relative to the size of the U.S. economy.

“In relative terms, Spain invested five times more than the United States last year and China, Brazil and the United Kingdom invested three times more,” the researchers write, adding that half of the G20 nations spent a greater percentage of their gross domestic product on clean energy. “Finally, the Unites States is on the verge of losing its leadership position in installed renewable energy capacity, with China surging in the last several years to a virtual tie.”

Pew’s study is based on figures on G20 nations collected by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, the international analysis and consultancy group.

Shackleton’s Whiskey Found Buried Near South Pole.

Lauren Frayer
Contributor to aol.com
(Feb. 6, 2010) — It’s probably the most sought-after scotch in history – crates of whiskey buried in Antarctica by the famed explorer Ernest Shackleton a century ago. He abandoned them on a failed attempt to reach the South Pole in 1909, and they’ve been on ice – literally – ever since.

Researchers from New Zealand found the crates while restoring a hut Shackleton built and used during the expedition. He and his team were forced to cut short the trip and abandon supplies, including their booze, to sail away before winter ice trapped them there.

The New Zealand team first spotted two crates underneath the hut’s floorboards in 2006, but they were too deeply embedded in ice to be salvaged. Researchers returned to the site this past week, and finally extracted the crates after drilling into the ice around them. The surprise was that there were three more crates than expected – one more of whiskey and two of brandy.

The second trip was backed by the same Scottish company that distilled Shackleton’s whiskey, Mackinlay’s Rare Old Scotch. It could be the longest booze run in history. The Whyte and Mackay distillery hopes to replicate the whiskey, which hasn’t been made in a lifetime after the original recipe was lost.

“Given the original recipe no longer exists, this may open a door into history,” the company’s master blender, Richard Paterson, said in a release posted on the company’s Web site. He called the find “a gift from the heavens” for whiskey lovers.

“If the contents can be confirmed, safely extracted and analyzed, the original blend may be able to be replicated,” Paterson said.

Experts will try to extract the historic brew delicately. Some of the crates have cracked and ice has formed inside. Icebergs surrounding the crates smelled of whiskey, and there may have been leakage, according to Al Fastier, a restoration expert with the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust who made the find.

He told the BBC he heard the slosh of liquid inside the crates when they were moved, and is confident that much of the liquor is still inside.

Shackleton’s expedition ran short of supplies on a long trek to the South Pole that began in 1907. He had to turn back about 100 miles from the pole in 1909. The team had to move quickly to escape as winter ice began to form, so they were forced to abandon all but essential equipment and supplies – including their whiskey. No lives were lost.

A Norwegian explorer, Roald Amundsen, was first to reach the South Pole two years later, in 1911.

As for what the future holds for Shackleton’s whiskey, there are international treaties preventing the removal of artifacts from Antarctica, but Paterson wrote on his blog that he hopes to get his hands on at least a sample of the whiskey, if not a couple bottles.

“What you all want to know is: How will it taste?” Paterson wrote. “To which the answer is: Cold.”

ON THIS DAY – On Dec. 21, 1988, a terrorist bomb exploded aboard a Pan Am Boeing 747 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people; now, 21 years later, remembering what addiction to oil can do to us, the New York Times starts to discern a path to a better future for the planet.

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL OF December 21, 2009
Copenhagen, and Beyond.

The global climate negotiations in Copenhagen produced neither a grand success nor the complete meltdown that seemed almost certain as late as Friday afternoon. Despite two years of advance work, the meeting failed to convert a rare gathering of world leaders into an ambitious, legally binding action plan for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It produced instead a softer interim accord that, at least in principle, would curb greenhouses gases, provide ways to verify countries’ emissions, save rain forests, shield vulnerable nations from the impacts of climate change, and share the costs.

The hard work has only begun, in Washington and elsewhere. But Copenhagen’s achievements are not trivial, given the complexity of the issue and the differences among rich and poor countries. President Obama deserves much of the credit. He arrived as the talks were collapsing, spent 13 hours in nonstop negotiations and played hardball with the Chinese. With time running out — and with the help of China, India, Brazil and South Africa — he forged an agreement that all but a handful of the 193 nations on hand accepted.

Mr. Obama aside, there were two keys to the deal. One was a dramatic offer of $100 billion in aid from the industrialized nations to poorer countries to help them move to less-polluting sources of energy and to deal with drought and other consequences of warming. The offer had an instant soothing effect on many poorer nations that had been threatening to walk out all week.

The other was China’s willingness to submit to a verification system under which all countries would agree to report on their actions and — assuming details could be worked out — open their books to inspection. Transparency is a huge issue in Congress, and Mr. Obama made clear in his opening remarks on Friday that he would not agree to a deal unless China gave ground.

An enormous amount of work lies ahead, both for the president and for the other signatories to what is now being called the Copenhagen Accord. In order to deliver on his promises to reduce America’s greenhouse gas emissions by 17 percent by 2020 and provide a chunk of that $100 billion in aid, Mr. Obama must persuade the Senate to approve a cap-and-trade bill — a huge task.

Meanwhile, there can be no letup by the rest of the world’s negotiators, no matter how tired and beat up they may be. These talks have been so chaotic and contentious that some people believe the United Nations machinery has outlived its usefulness, and real progress will henceforth be made in smaller gatherings of the big players.

There may be some truth to this, but at the moment it is hard to see how many of the arrangements agreed to in principle at Copenhagen — the verification system, for instance — can be made to work without detailed agreements. There must also be some mechanism that holds all countries responsible for doing everything they can to tackle climate change. As it is, the pledges now on the table, from both rich and poor countries, are nowhere near enough to keep atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide from rising above dangerous levels.

But for the moment it is worth savoring the steps forward. China is now a player in the effort to combat climate change in a way it has never been, putting measurable emissions reductions targets on the table and accepting verification. And the United States is very much back in the game too. After eight years of playing the spoiler, it is now a leader with a president who seems to embrace the role.

NEW YORK TIMES RECENT FURTHER ARTICLES ABOUT THE UN FRAMEWORK CONVENTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE

Mixed Bag for Obama on Climate Change Deal Amid the Recession

By JOHN HARWOOD

A victory for President Obama in Copenhagen will not necessarily help his popularity at home.

December 21, 2009

MORE ON THE UNFCCC AND: FOREIGN AID, GLOBAL WARMING, UNITED STATES ECONOMY, GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS, PELOSI, NANCY, OBAMA, BARACK, KERRY, JOHN

An Air of Frustration for Europe at Climate Talks

By JAMES KANTER

Caught off guard by the Copenhagen accord, European leaders felt pressure to back it even though they thought it did not go far enough and had a process in which they had little influence.

December 21, 2009

MORE ON THE UNFCCC AND: GLOBAL WARMING, COPENHAGEN (DENMARK),EUROPEAN COMMISSION

Copenhagen’s One Real Accomplishment: Getting Some Money Flowing

By JAMES KANTER

The accord in Copenhagen was “a big step forward” after previous talks offered no financial support mechanisms, Ban Ki-moon, the U.N. secretary general, said.

December 21, 2009

MORE ON THE UNFCCC AND: GLOBAL WARMING, ENERGY AND POWER,COPENHAGEN (DENMARK)

Compromising on 2 Issues, Obama Gets Partial Wins

By PETER BAKER

From Copenhagen to Capitol Hill, the president determined the outer limits of what he could accomplish on climate change and health care and decided that was enough, for now.

December 20, 2009

MORE ON THE UNFCCC AND: GLOBAL WARMING, HEALTH INSURANCE AND MANAGED CARE, REFORM AND REORGANIZATION, OBAMA, BARACK

A Grudging Accord in Climate Talks

By ANDREW C. REVKIN and JOHN M. BRODER

After delays, theatrics and deal-making, climate talks ended with an agreement to “take note” of a pact shaped by five nations.

December 20, 2009

MORE ON THE UNFCCC AND: GLOBAL WARMING, TREATIES

• Science and Politics of Climate Change
• Who’s at the Climate Talks, and What Do They Seek?
• Climate Change Conversations

U.N. Climate Talks ‘Take Note’ of Accord Backed by U.S.

By ANDREW C. REVKIN and JOHN M. BRODER

The agreement left open the question of whether the accord would gain the full support of the countries involved in the talks on limiting the risks of climate change.

December 20, 2009

MORE ON THE UNFCCC AND: COPENHAGEN (DENMARK)

• Science and Politics of Climate Change
• Who’s at the Climate Talks, and What Do They Seek?
• Climate Change Conversations

———————————————————————————————————-

Off to the Races

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

A competitive Earth Race led by America can be a more self-sustaining way to reduce carbon emissions than a festival of nonbinding commitments at a U.N. conference.

December 20, 2009

MORE ON THE UNFCCC AND: GLOBAL WARMING, GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS, UNITED STATES, UNITED NATIONS

———————————————————————————————————

Updated Dec. 18, 2009

Representatives of 192 nations gathered in Copenhagen to seek a consensus on an international strategy for fighting global warming, in a series of meetings between Dec. 7 and Dec. 18, 2009.

Leaders concluded a climate change deal the Obama administration called “meaningful” but which fell short of even the modest expectations for the summit. The maneuvering that characterized the final week of the talks was a sign of their seriousness; never before have global leaders come so close to a significant agreement to reduce the greenhouse gases linked to warming the planet.

President Obama injected himself into a multilayered negotiation that was far more chaotic and contentious than anticipated – frozen by longstanding divisions between rich and poor nations and a legacy of mistrust of the United States, which has long refused to accept any binding limits on its greenhouse gas emissions.

The accord drops what had been the expected goal of concluding a binding international treaty by the end of 2010, which leaves the implementation of its provisions uncertain. It is likely to undergo many months, perhaps years, of additional negotiation before it emerges in any internationally enforceable form.

Read More…

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: christine campeau <christinecampeau@yahoo.com>
Date: Fri, Oct 30, 2009 
Subject: How to reduce your emissions by more than 40% by 2020: Practical examples from Scotland

Dear colleagues,

Caritas Internationalis and SCIAF (Caritas Scotland) are pleased to invite you to attend “How to reduce your emissions by more than 40% by 2020: Practical examples from Scotland”, an event to be held in Barcelona on Tuesday November 3rd, from 9h00 – 10h30 in Room 5 of the convention centre.

Scotland has recently passed legislation that commits it to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 42% by 2020 and 80% by 2050, with at least 80% of these reductions coming from domestic sources. Please join us to hear Scotland’s Minister for Climate Change and Scottish NGO and business leaders discuss how they plan to meet these targets in practice.

For more information, please contact:

Christine Campeau, Caritas Internationalis (ccampeau@caritas-internationalis.com)
Rowan Popplewell, SCIAF (rpopplewell@sciaf.org.uk)

—————

Also, don’t forget that Barcelona is the capital of Catalunya Government – another well advanced Regional Government in Europe. The latter had a very interesting event at the UN – sponsored by UNU – see our posting on that event. In the US this sort of activity can be found in the State of California. Proof that States, Regions, provinces, large cities, can come up with better and faster legislation then cumbersome governments that are UN Member States.

Qaddafi met Mr. Brown dressed in White silk suit and wearing knee high boots, and surrounded female bodyguards that wore a blue uniform with gold epaulettes. Quite the showman he is thanks to his sitting on marketable barrels of oil.

In the photos we saw, his outfit when meeting other leaders, including President Obama, was more African-desert like.

———-

From The London Times, July 10, 2009

Gordon Brown asks for help from Colonel Gaddafi

Philip Webster, Political Editor, in L’Aquila
 www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/wo…

Gordon Brown today asked Muammar Gaddafi to intervene in the case of a British child abducted by her Libyan father as the Libyan leader was finally brought in from the cold by the world’s richest nations.

Britain is seeking the repatriation from Libya of six-year-old Nadia Fawzi, who was taken from her mother Sarah Taylor, of Wigan, in 2007.

Mr Brown raised her case when the two leaders met at the G8 summit in L’Aquila, Italy, today and told Colonel Gaddafi that it remained the case that Britain wanted Nadia to be reunited with her mother.

Col Gaddafi, who as usual brought a Bedouin style tent and a contingent of female bodyguards with him for his visit, undertook to look into the case and see what he could do as soon as possible, said a Downing Street spokesman.

Mr Brown and Col Gaddafi met ahead of talks between the G8 states – Britain, the US, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Canada and Russia – and African leaders on measures to improve food security in the world’s poorest countries. Col Gaddafi is present as chairman of the African Union.

Today’s meeting is the first time Mr Brown has met Col Gaddafi, who was an international pariah for years following the Lockerbie bombing, for which Libya was blamed.

His predecessor Tony Blair famously flew to Libya in 2004 to meet Col Gaddafi in his desert tent after he gave up his weapons of mass destruction capability and accepted responsibility for the attack.

Mr Brown reiterated his “admiration and gratitude” for Col Gaddafi’s “brave” decision to scrap the WMD programmes.

The meeting took place in a small room in the financial police barracks where the summit is being held. Col Gaddafii spoke in Arabic and Mr Brown in English. Each had three aides with them and there was some banter when Col Gaddafi realised that Simon McDonald, Mr Brown’s foreign affairs chief and a slightly rusty Arabic speaker, was picking up on everything that he was saying.

Col Gaddafi wore a shiny white silk suit with a black undershirt, a black cape and scarf and knee high boots. His bodyguards wore a blue uniform with gold epaulettes. Behind the leaders was a Union Flag and a plain green Libyan flag.

In an apparent reference to Iran and North Korea, Mr Brown said that, following the decision to hold a nuclear non-proliferation summit next spring, it would be necessary to try to persuade other countries to follow Libya’s example.

During their 40-minute discussion, the two leaders talked about the current volatility in oil prices – which recently hit $75 a barrel.

They agreed on the need to maintain close dialogue between the major oil-consuming countries and producers like Libya, as well as the need for greater transparency in the oil markets.

Col Gaddafi raised the case of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, who is appealing against his conviction and seeking return to Libya, but Mr Brown said that it was a matter for the Scottish Government.

Mr Brown also raised the case of Wpc Yvonne Fletcher, who was shot dead outside the Libyan embassy in 1984. No one has been convicted for her murder, though the Libyan government has accepted that its agents were responsible.

Mr Brown and Col Gaddafi had a long discussion on Africa and their “strongly shared view” that the continent needs better representation in international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, said Downing Street.

The Prime Minister made the point that Africa was not responsible for the current global recession and should be protected from its consequences.

This was not the time for rich nations to retreat from their commitments to assist the poorest, said Mr Brown.

He offered British help in developing Libya’s healthcare system, which Col Gaddafi accepted.

A Downing Street spokesman said: “Throughout the conversation, there was agreement that the relationship between the UK and Libya was a strong relationship and had grown significantly since 2003 and that it would grow stronger still in the years to come.”

Col Gaddafi met Barack Obama last night and enjoyed his first handshake with a US president since his long years of isolation.

Mr Brown has already pledged to devote $1.8 billion dollars of Britain’s international aid to agriculture and hopes other G8 leaders will make similar promises today as part of a drive to make Africa self-sufficient in food.

The global downturn has led to a sharp increase in food shortages, with the numbers of chronically hungry estimated to be growing at a rate of around 275,000 a day throughout 2008.

 I was just watching on C-Span the start of the Senate debate on Energy and Climate. I heard Senator Imhofe who chaired the killing sessions in several previous years. Now he is not chairman anymore – but he still is not convinced that climate change is for real, and witnesses like republican Governors Association Chairman from Mississippi, the Hon. Haley Barbour will help him slow the procedures. There will be talk of drilling – here, there, and everywhere – of cleaner coal, of cleanest nuclear – you name it it will be there. The best you can expect will be another Christmas tree that will have to be matched up in conference with the Waxman/Markey product – then you bet – it will be too little and too late to satisfy the Europeans and anyone else.

 Very sad again!

But, out of nowhere flew into my hands today’s Financial Times article by two very centrists Professors of Law – and see what they say:  

How Obama could introduce a petrol tax.
By Michael Levine and Mark Roe
an Opinion in Financial Times, July 7 2009

Last month, a major climate change bill began winding through Congress. Meanwhile, carmakers, environmental regulators and the Obama administration announced with great fanfare a plan to raise the fuel efficiency of new vehicles – and energy secretary Steven Chu announced that a petrol tax was “not on the table” politically.

Yet almost everyone who has studied the subject – including Mr Chu before his latest job – agrees that a petrol tax would be much superior to directives such as those announced last month. It is hard for the government to choose the right fuel efficiency targets; and when consumers see fuel is cheap it encourages them to drive big, fuel-hungry cars and to drive them further. A petrol tax would help consumers to make choices that face the environmental facts, instead of having the government nag them to do the right thing.

If a petrol tax is as good an idea as the consensus takes it to be, why is it so politically dangerous that US politicians will not touch it? Four political forces combine to kill off significant petrol taxes.

The average consumer hates it. It is too painful to see those numbers on the pump every time you fill up. Politicians fear that if they were seen to raise petrol prices by a tax of a dollar or two, voters would not forgive them.

The second big strike against a tax is that heavy users of petrol, including people who live in the west, have powerful lobbying groups or senators who would derail it in Congress.

The auto industry makes more money selling gas guzzlers than small cars – so count on senators from car-producing states to oppose a tax.

The energy industry makes its money by selling energy – so senators from energy-producing states would oppose it too. Strikes three and four.

But wait – if a petrol tax would really make us better off as a nation, there ought to be a way to get there.

Facts and politics are changing. It may now be possible to get three of the four groups to support a petrol tax – or at least not oppose it vigorously. A window of opportunity is opening. We do not know how long it will stay open and the Obama administration ought to take advantage of it now.

Consider first a textbook move to get the public to accept a costly change in policy: give voters their money back through another channel. If they got a tax credit or refund for the amount of the average voter’s petrol usage, they would see that they were no worse off. They could keep the money and drive less or buy a more economical car.

Here is how it would work: Suppose you are the average driver, driving 12,000 miles a year in a 15 miles-per-gallon car. A $2 per gallon tax would cost you $1,600 a year. You would be unhappy about that. Sure, you would drive less if taxed and next time you would buy a car with better petrol mileage. But you would be so annoyed at the tax that you would not forgive your congressman for voting for it. But if you got a $1,600 cheque or a visible rebate on your taxes, you would understand that you were even: you might even think that with a little life adjustment, you could beat the game and come out ahead.

Your rebate would not change if you used less petrol. So you would have an incentive to keep some of that $1,600 by driving a little less often in a more fuel-efficient car. The country would import that much less oil, produce less carbon dioxide and get that much more freedom to manoeuvre in the international arena.

Heavy users would still have the motive and means to kill the bill in Congress. Taxi drivers and truckers, for example, use more fuel than average, so they would still strongly oppose a heavy tax. Suppose that each is powerful enough to kill the bill alone and that, if they acted together, no rational member of Congress would even propose a petrol tax.

They can be bought: the rebate concept could be extended to each identifiable, definable veto group. Let us say that taxi drivers drive 50,000 miles per year in 15 mpg cars. A little arithmetic has a $2 per gallon tax costing them $6,667; for truckers it works out at $32,500. That would be their rebate. Taxi drivers would have an incentive to use less petrol, for example by using hybrid cars. The California Air Resources Board has estimated that truckers could burn 7 per cent less fuel just by installing aerodynamic fairings. Payback would be quick. Politicians might even grease the wheels a little by giving them a bit more.

Auto manufacturers would be faced with customers who wanted more economical cars and could make money selling to them. They would also be faced with a government that now has power to help them re-adjust their thinking.

Energy companies might be a problem, but they would be outnumbered. Done properly, with some inspired political salesmanship, the average citizen, as well as heavy users of petrol, could all be at the forefront of supporting the petrol tax in Congressional testimony.

Yes, it would require some deft packaging to make it work. People would have to be helped to understand how the changes could work for them. But this president has a gift for explanation and we have a White House with Larry Summers and Rahm Emanuel. They should be able to make a plan and sell it convincingly to the public and Congress.
——————–
Michael Levine is a law professor at New York University School of Law. Mark Roe is a law professor at Harvard Law School