Chanukah is a Jewish “Fourth of July” and a most Zionist holiday. that was the only reference I found by putting to google the task “A Jewish Fourth of July” “The Jewish Week” - this even though the paper had such an article in its July 3, 2009 issue. That was quite a pitty because the column under Jewish Intelligence - Jinsider was actually very good.

The missing column was by Jinsider legal intern Zack Eisner and Rabbi Simon Jacobson and should have been available also at www.meaningfullife.com - but was not.

It starts by saying that though the Founding Fathers doid not go to Hebrew School, nevertheless Jewish wisdom can be found in the Declaration of Independence and in the US Constitution - and then goes through the following four points:

Unalienable Human Rights via “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.” That is clearly based on the Torah saying that all human beings are created in the image of God and are equal as persons - so it would also imply equality between men and women.

Faith via the Declaration of Independence and the First Commandment implying there is a creator even when going after the separation of church and state.

Justice via the 15th Amendment calling for due process of law, and the scriptures: “Hear both small and great alike. Do not be afraid of man for judgement belongs to God.”

Free Speech via the 1st Amendment, and in the scriptures the greatest men and women of faith spoke out and even challenged God.

We liked that column as it shows how the paper is moving away from self-centerd positions to issues of general interest by linking to the American society at large. This being stressed further in this week’s editorial dealing for the first time with the issue of Climate Change and a very good editorial it was indeed.

 ———-

First Step On Climate Change

The Jewish Week, by The Editor, July 3, 2009

Climate change is a difficult issue to grasp. There is overwhelming scientific evidence that the planet is warming and that the emission of greenhouse gases are a cause, but it’s hard to identify the milestones of these changes in our everyday lives.

Seriously addressing climate change will require sacrifices from all of us, never a popular notion with politicians in our democracy. And there are too many vested interests determined to fight any real attempt to reverse climate change before it is too late.

That’s why last week’s House passage of the American Clean Energy and Security Act was such a landmark. The legislation is hardly comprehensive, and passage in the Senate is by no means assured, but it represents the first  real attempt by political leaders to deal with the root causes of climate change. Perhaps more importantly, it is an important first step in altering a national mindset that puts today’s economic comfort ahead of the planet’s future.

We are pleased to note that several Jewish groups, led by the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA) and the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, were active players in the fight for passage. The Orthodox Union played a role in ensuring that religious groups would get a share of the funding for environmental upgrades.

Addressing the crisis in a practical but aggressive fashion is crucial to giving future generations a chance for the security and prosperity we have enjoyed in our lifetimes. It is related to the essential drive for energy independence that will greatly affect Israel’s as well as our own nation’s future. It is a matter of social justice, since the world’s poor are being more adversely affected by the early consequences of climate change. And time is running out, many scientists warn, with the potential costs of inaction reaching genuinely perilous levels.

“We have only been given one world to live in and for too long humanity has not done its part to ‘till and tend’ the earth for future generations,” said JCPA president Rabbi Steve Gutow. “We must do a better job in reducing air pollution, cleaning up rivers and streams, and protecting the wilderness. Congress’ vote to move forward with the climate bill was a good first step.”

We agree. {Concludes Gary Rosenblatt - The Editor}

———–

Furthermore, this week’s Middle East political topics take into account Mr. Sarkozy encouraging Mr. Netanyahu to make changes in his government by returning Tzipi Livni to the office of Foreign Minister, which would mean replacing the Avigdor Lieberman party with Kadima in his governing coalition. There are reports on the Ehud Barak-George Mitchell meeting in New York, and on the ways the Obama Administration might figure its near future moves in the Middle East - these presentations - obviously with Israel at heart - are nevertheless seen from an angle that says what is best for the US.

———

So why are we excited?

For years (at least for the last eight years) The Jewish Week, like the Israeli government, had all its eggs in the Washington Administration basket when it came to questions of climate change/global warming as they were interrelated with a Washington sold all to the oil interests - and the Jewish lobby like the Israeli government, thought that it would serve them best by being on the side of oil and not stir the pot.

The climate change article/editorial is not just a first in Washington’s acceptance of a pro-climate bill,  but a first article of this kind in The Jewish Week - sort of an independence of having to look over the shoulder at what the oil lobby - Jewish and otherwise - wants them not to say. we would like to hope that now Jewish organizations will find that basically all what the scientists and the ethicists are saying on environment in general, and on climate change in particular, has been put in the scriptures a long time ago. The Torah asks us to take care of God’s creation - not just to get funded from stimulus money!

It boggles our mind how all these years the Jewish lobby, and the State of Israel as well, did not speak up on the issue of making the world less addicted to oil - there is no state on the planet that had actually more interest then Israel in reducing this addiction of the world economy to petroleum. We understood the politics and why they kept away from it - so this issue of The Jewish Week marks to us not just Amerca’s Independence Day - but you bet - the independence of the Israeli people as well, and we hope they will now start looking at what Israeli governing coalition would serve their interests best.

———

Having said the above, for some sort of balance, I want to add what “The Week” of July 3-10, 2009 quotes from Tony Judt, Professor at NYU and usually viewed as unfriendly to Israel, who wrote those things for The New York Times.

He says: Every Mideast peace plan presumes that Israel will have to disband its settlements in the West Bank,  but there is just one catch understood in Israel but not in Washington: “The settlements will never go.”

He proceeds and tells us that with 500,000 residents in those settlements, or 10% of the Jewish inhabitants of all of Israel, and with Maale Adumim now at 35,ooo and taking in more land than Manhattan, simply put, Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu will never dismantle them - so he asks - why does Washington pretend otherwise?

What above says is that a new start is neded for the handling of the Middle East negotiations - the building of a future by starting with negotiated final borders, and interestingly, it was the President of Arab-Americans who suggested recently that in order to allow for a start of negotiations - vertical increase of settlements could be acceptable for the time being, but not further horizontal structures.

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

•

Heart health at the tip of your finger
By Karin Kloosterman
July 01, 2009

 http://www.israel21c.org/bin/en.jsp?enDi…;

Whoopi Goldberg tried the EndoPAT heart test on her finger during a recent episode of The View and came out smiling. After 15 minutes, the Israeli developed device was able to give her heart a passing grade. At least for the next seven years.

Developed by Itamar Medical, an Israeli company traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, the EndoPAT has been popular not only with celebrities, but also gets a seal of approval from America’s doctors, and prestigious medical institutions like the Mayo Clinic.

Earning FDA status in 2003, the EndoPAT can measure the health of your heart using two small probes that hook up to each index finger. While there are other tests on the market like ultrasound tests to help clinicians assess if a patient has the early onset of heart disease, the EndoPAT looks further into the future — up to seven years, sensing whether or not your arteries are losing elasticity.

Like a blood pressure test on your finger

“The test I’m talking about - a 15 minute test - is a probe on the finger and basically it works the way you take blood pressure,” says Dr. Dov Reuven, the company’s CEO. “We do the same thing and measure the stress of the arteries in the fingertips.”

Used over 150,000 times in the US, the recent vote of confidence from the Mayo Clinic, which tested the EndoPAT on an independent study of healthy volunteers - part of the Framingham Heart Study — tells doctors that it’s a good addition to their toolkit for assessing heart disease.

“That’s the beauty of this. That’s why it is revolutionary,” Reuven tells ISRAEL21c. “The EnoPAT is the easiest detector of this disease. All other devices work within about one, two or three years. There is a test in the US that looks for carotid plaque. The point is once there is a buildup of plaque, it is too late in the cycle. A patient is not going to turn around that much. Ours can already see arteries that are less distensible.”

This means that people who may get a clean bill of health from doctors, can look deeper into their future, to know if they are at risk for heart attack seven years down the road. If you discover you are at risk, a regimen for improving health can be developed with a doctor. Changing one’s diet and exercise, or taking statins, may be a course of action.

Applications in understanding erectile problems

It also has become an interesting test for understanding erectile dysfunction, and can help a doctor decide whether or not to prescribe erection-enhancing drugs like Cialis, says Reuven.

The same device that tests for heart health can also tell urologists whether or not to prescribe medicine. “It could protect them from malpractice,” says Reuven.

Essentially, using this device doctors have a much better way now to control a patient’s health to determine if they are at risk of a heart attack. “The importance of the Mayo Clinic story is that today when you go to your physicians or cardiologist, they will ask you seven questions, or risk factors for heart disease, like cholesterol levels, if you smoke, or are overweight,” says Reuven.

Sometimes there are people who are considered completely low risk based on these basic questions, but nevertheless are at risk for heart disease. The study examined 240 people who are “specimens of health”, tacking them over time, and recording cardiac events, such as chest pains or heart attacks.

The efficacy of the test was confirmed by doctors at Mayo. The clinic writes: “Results of a Mayo Clinic study show that a simple, non-invasive finger sensor test is ‘highly predictive’ of a major cardiac event, such as a heart attack or stroke, for people who are considered at low or moderate risk, according to researchers.”

Mayo’s seal of approval

The device is now available at doctors’ clinics in the US, including the clinic of The View’shouse doctor Dr. Stephen Lamm.

Endorsing the product, Lamm says he uses it on every patient, translating to about 200 times a month.

On the show, Whoopi scored a 1.9, “and she was excited,” says Reuven. “The real truth is the arterial sclerosis process starts early on in life. This will become part of the screening and treatment process,” he adds, mentioning that China is taking a serious look at the device too. “They can’t afford heart bypasses and stents.”

The EndoPAT has applications in wellness and holistic medicine as a means to quantify if a treatment is working.

The company has a second device, a product that functions like a mini sleep lab used to detect the severity of sleep apnea. Called the WatchPAT it resembles a ski or diving watch. It removes the need for people to spend uncomfortable nights in a sleep lab.

Traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, the largest investor in Itamar Medical is Medtronic. The company employs about 160 people worldwide.

The Funniest News In The Business (SM)
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Iraq Opens Bids For Oil Drilling To The World
But the information is seemingly based on 2008 data!

Posted in Business News, US News Now, World News: Iraq’s oil minister Monday opened international bidding on six oil fields that could increase the country’s oil production by 1.5 million barrels per day.

But the oil ministry continues to negotiate short-term no-bid contracts with several U.S. and European oil companies, including Exxon Mobil Corp., Royal Dutch Shell, Total SA, Chevron Corp., and BP — a step recently criticized by two U.S. lawmakers.

Oil Minister Hussein Shahrastani announced Monday that 35 international oil companies can bid on long-term contracts for redeveloping the six oil fields, as well as two natural gas fields.

Then based on old data that also mentioned the number 35 in relation to the accepted companies for the bidding process:

The Iraqi Ministry of Oil says that 35 companies from a list of 120 companies that submitted registration documentation have pre-qualified to participate in the first licensing round for field development contracts. The qualified companies are Anadarko Iraq Company, BG International, BHP Billiton Petroleum Pty Ltd, BP, Chevron Iraq Ltd, CNOOC China Ltd, CNPC, Conoco Phillips, Edison International SPA, ENI, ExxonMobil, Hess Corporation, Inpex Holdings, Japex, JSC Gazprom Neft, Kogas, Lukoil, Maersk, Marathon International Petroleum Ltd, Mitsubishi Corporation, Nexen Inc., Nippon Oil, Occidental Petroleum, ONGC, Petronas, Pertamina, Premier Oil, Repsol, Shell Iraq, Sinochem, Sinopic Group, StatoilHydro, Total, Wintershall Basf Group and Woodside Petroleum.

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.

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.

———

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?

Public Companies in All Sectors: Now’s a Good Time to Look at Climate Change-Related Disclosures (and D&O Coverage)
June 2009
by   Mia Mazza of Morrison and Foerster.

Recent and upcoming developments underscore the need for public companies, and their directors and officers, to consider whether they may have exposure to a newly emerging source of disclosure-related litigation.

There is a growing, organized effort on various fronts to get every public company to voluntarily disclose information about its “carbon footprint” and about the other ways in which climate change may affect its business in the future.  As discussed below, not only are significant investor groups demanding this information, but the peer pressure to make voluntary climate change-related disclosures is also becoming strong enough to get the attention of public companies across all sectors.  If your company is beginning to discuss the possibility of making voluntary disclosures, or is already making them, there are potential liabilities — and directors’ and officers’ liability insurance coverage issues — to consider.

Why Every Public Company Is Potentially Affected.

Investors are becoming increasingly interested in understanding the “carbon footprint” of each of their investments, sometimes for altruistic reasons and always for financial ones.  A company’s “carbon footprint” typically includes the total set of greenhouse gas emissions caused directly and indirectly by its operations.  Investors are concerned that future developments in the government regulation of greenhouse gas emissions will have a significant financial impact not only on companies that emit large amounts of greenhouse gases, but also on those who do business with large emitters.

For example, if new government regulation causes the price of coal-based electricity to increase substantially, that regulation might have a substantial financial effect on a company that has traditionally relied on the low price of coal-based electricity to run its operations profitably.  By comparison, a company that has become more energy efficient, or that has moved to renewable sources of energy such as solar and wind, may be in a better position.  Moreover, the future physical effects of global warming, such as an increased scarcity of water resources, could bring substantial financial risk to companies that neither emit nor do business with emitters.

In light of the Obama administration’s June 16, 2009, release of a scientific report on climate change that argues for fast action against global warming,[1] and the upcoming December 2009 United Nations summit on climate change in Copenhagen, Denmark, it seems likely that some kind of new regulation is on the way.

An Increasing Demand for Voluntary Disclosure.

On June 12, 2009, 41 leading global investors sent a letter to President Barack Obama’s new Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Mary L. Schapiro, urging the SEC to take steps to improve public companies’ disclosure of climate change-related risks in securities filings.[2]  The letter’s signatories, representing approximately $1.4 trillion in assets under management, include treasurers, comptrollers, controllers, asset managers, and institutional investors such as the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), and the New York City Employee Retirement System (NYCERS).

This June 2009 letter is the latest development in an accelerating effort, by interest groups like those signing on to the letter and others, to promote an increase in climate change-related disclosure.  On May 26, 2009, a working group that includes the International Federation of Accountants and all of the “big four” global accounting firms released an Exposure Draft of a Global Reporting Framework for climate change-related disclosure.[3]  This framework, proposed by the recently-formed Climate Disclosure Standards Board (CDSB) (a non-governmental organization), is intended for “voluntary” use by all companies in compiling their “mainstream financial reports.”[4] The CDSB Exposure Draft, and proposals from these other interest groups,[5] suggest that every public company provide information on a wide variety of topics, for example:

Direct and indirect energy consumption, and energy saved due to conservation and efficiency improvements;
The company’s actual direct and certain indirect emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, expected future increases in emissions, strategies the company is taking to reduce and/or offset emissions, results of those strategies to date, and the expected effect of those strategies on future emissions;
The company’s stance on whether climate change is a company priority and whether the company has a responsibility to address the issue;
Corporate governance actions taken to address climate change;
Financial risks the company faces because of the physicalimpacts associated with climate change; and

Significant actions the company is taking to maximize opportunities associated with climate change.
To Voluntarily Disclose or Not?  No “Right” Answer.

Today, U.S. public companies are not necessarily required to make these disclosures in their regular financial reports.[6]  As a result, many companies may decide to say nothing about climate change in their financial reports or otherwise; after all, “silence, absent a duty to disclose, is not misleading” under the federal securities laws.[7] A company that makes a voluntary disclosure on a climate-related topic could be opening itself up to a future claim that the disclosure was somehow misleading.[8]  Non-disclosure is a particularly appealing strategy in light of the lack of unified standards for disclosure, or even for the measurement of carbon footprints.

But the pressure for public companies to make “voluntary” climate change-related disclosures is increasing, and will continue to do so over time.  Companies that make no disclosure at all may find that their investors believe them to have insufficient awareness of climate-related risks or even to be hiding something.  This is particularly the case for companies whose competitors do elect to make some disclosure.  The likelihood of a poor comparison is increased by the fact that many companies voluntarily report certain information about their respective carbon footprints in venues other than their periodic securities filings, such as a separate “Corporate Social Responsibility” report, or in the annals of various non-governmental organizations such as the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP).[9]  Indeed, on June 15, 2009, NASDAQ introduced a “Global Sustainability 50 Index” (Nasdaq:QCRD), which tracks the performance of “companies that are taking a leadership role in voluntarily disclosing sustainability performance information,” including carbon footprint and energy usage.[10]

Of course, with disclosure — especially disclosure in the absence of a commonly-used framework — comes the specter of future litigation against a company and its directors and officers for material misrepresentation.  Shareholder plaintiffs will be all too eager to sue if a company’s stock price happens to drop at the same time that the company increases or recalculates its reported carbon footprint, reports an increase in regulatory exposure related to climate change, or even makes a first-time disclosure that is significantly higher than what the market would have guessed.  Even the most frivolous case will inevitably give rise to significant legal fees and pressure to settle the case to avoid costly discovery.

D&O Insurance Ramifications.

Directors’ and officers’ liability insurance is the safety net that companies rely upon to protect them in the case of disclosure-related shareholder litigation.  Unfortunately, many existing D&O insurance policies will not respond if the subject of the disclosure at issue is climate-related risk.

The normal concerns about a D&O policy — such as the accuracy of the application and whether misstatements in it may give a carrier cause to rescind a policy — exist for climate-related disclosure suits too.  It is typically the case that a company’s periodic securities law disclosure is part of the application for D&O insurance.  As a result, a serious concern would be whether evolving standards of disclosure in publicly-filed documents could lead to the situation of earlier-filed documents later seeming to be misleading in light of new standards and norms.

In addition, D&O insurers have long included what they would refer to as a standard “pollution exclusion” in their policies.  To be sure, a D&O insurance policy is not intended to respond directly to an actual pollution claim.  However, all too often a D&O policy’s pollution exclusion is drafted so broadly that there may be a dispute as to coverage for typical disclosure-related securities class action suits if the subject of the disclosure relates to climate risk.  Indeed, a typical pollution exclusion begins to look particularly ominous, vis-à-vis potential climate-related disclosure suits, in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling, in Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. 497 (2007), that greenhouse gases are “air pollutants” covered by the Clean Air Act.

A skilled insurance broker will help a company negotiate language that provides coverage for disclosure-related claims concerning climate risk.  A prudent insurance buyer will ensure that the company’s broker has done just this.  In addition, it is worth discussing program structures that might provide coverage for climate disclosure-related litigation where a company’s primary D&O insurance carrier refuses to do so.  For example, this may be a reason to purchase Side A Difference in Condition D&O policy.  Finally, care should be taken to ensure that whatever gains in coverage are negotiated for a company will apply to suits brought outside the United States, including through locally-admitted D&O policies.

Other Actions to Consider.

Here are some additional proactive steps that you can take, if you haven’t already done so, in starting to consider whether and to what extent your company should make voluntary disclosures on climate change-related issues:

Determine what disclosures your company is already making about climate change.  You may find that you are disclosing more today than you would have anticipated.  Of course, you may want to review the company’s SEC filings, website, and official Corporate Social Responsibility reports.  But beyond those venues, you may find disclosures elsewhere, such as the CDP website, which contains a number of different reports in which hundreds of public companies have made disclosures regarding their respective carbon footprints.  If the company has an internal group in charge of “sustainability” or “corporate responsibility,” be sure to find out what kinds of disclosures they have been making, and to whom.

Understand what kinds of voluntary climate-related disclosures might be appropriate for your company.  There may be simple, non-controversial disclosures you can make comfortably to avoid giving a false impression that your company is hiding something or out of touch.  Reviewing the disclosures of your competitors and companies listed in CDP reports or the NASDAQ QCRD index, and looking at suggestions made by organizations in which your company’s largest institutional shareholders are members, can be helpful in this regard.

Initiate a discussion with your board of directors regarding what level of commitment, if any, the board thinks is appropriate for the company with respect to climate change and environmental issues.  Discussions of this sort may fall within a board’s fiduciary duty obligations.  In addition, good documentation of these discussions may be helpful to a board’s defense if the board is later accused of breaching its fiduciary duties in this regard.

Think about starting to measure.  Even if your company doesn’t plan on disclosing anything at this time, it may still be wise to start the process of measuring the company’s “carbon footprint.”  Keep in mind, however, that you may become obligated to disclose the results.  If you don’t have a group in charge of taking a look at these issues, consider starting one.  Or, a consultant may be useful in helping you to scope out a plan for a future measuring effort.  If you do start measuring your carbon footprint, keep an eye out for near-term financial benefits that can be gained — for example, you may find pockets of energy inefficiency that can be addressed quickly and easily to reduce costs.

If you do decide to make voluntary climate change-related disclosures, be sure to work with your attorneys, accountants, and environmental experts to make sure those disclosures are accompanied by appropriate caveats and specific information about methodology.  For example, you may decide to tell investors the precise basis for any statements the company makes, and about the many uncertainties affecting the company’s ability to make any accurate measurements or predictions at this time.

Even if you don’t decide to make climate change-related disclosures, consider incorporating climate-related information into your risk factors.  This will increase the likelihood that, if sued, your company will fall within the safe harbor that applies to forward-looking statements that are accompanied by meaningful cautionary statements.[11]

This legal update was co-authored by Priya Cherian Huskins, Esq., a partner at Woodruff-Sawyer & Co., a full-service insurance brokerage. Priya specializes in D&O liability and insurance issues and can be reached at  phuskins at wsandco.com or (415) 402-6527.

Footnotes

[1]  Mooney, Alexander, “White House Report Warns of Climate Change Effects” (June 16, 2009).
[2]  CERES press release, “Investors with $1.4 Trillion in Assets Call on the SEC to Improve Disclosure of Climate Change and Other Risks” (June 12, 2009).
[3]  The Climate Disclosure Standards Board Reporting Framework, Exposure Draft (May 2009).
[4]  “Mainstream financial reports” is defined as including a company’s “collective primary financial statements, along with notes,” as well as the “management discussion and analysis or MD&A” that typically accompanies those statements.  Id. at 15.
[5]  See, e.g., Global Reporting Initiative, Sustainability Reporting Guidelines (2006); CalPERS Global Principles of Accountable Corporate Governance (2008); American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), Financial Disclosures Attributed to Climate Change (2008); see also In the Matter of Xcel Energy Inc.,Attorney General of the State of New York, Assurance of Discontinuance Pursuant to Executive Law § 63(15) (Aug. 26, 2008).
[6]  Current SEC rules and accounting standards, such as Reg S-K and FASB Statement No. 5, may already require some companies to make certain climate change-related disclosures in their SEC filings.  The question whether and when those existing standards require you to make climate change-related disclosures should be discussed with your accountants and attorneys and is outside the scope of this article.  Also outside the scope of this article is the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed mandatory greenhouse gas reporting rule for major sources of emissions (74 Fed. Reg. 16,606, published April 10, 2009).
[7]  Basic v. Levinson, 485 U.S. 224, 239 n.17 (1988).
[8]  See Securities Exchange Act of 1934, section 10(b) (15 U.S.C. § 78j(b)); SEC rule 10b-5 (17 C.F.R. § 240.10b-5).
[9]  http://www.cdproject.net/.  CDP’s Carbon Disclosure Leadership Index includes companies in both “carbon-intensive” and “non-carbon-intensive” sectors.
[10]  NASDAQ press release, “NASDAQ OMX and CRD Analytics Launch New Index Tracking Corporate Sustainability Performance” (June 15, 2009).
[11]  See 15 U.S.C. § 78u-5.

HELP SAVE THE EARTH, TIME TO SUBSITUTE HEMP FOR OIL
By Dara Colwell, AlterNet
Every man-made fiber we wear, sit on, cook with, drive in,
are by-products of the petroleum industry — all of which
could be replaced by hemp.
 http://www.alternet.org/water/140739/hel…

EATING MEAT IS NOT NATURAL
By Kathy Freston, AlterNet
Eating meat is a relatively recent phenomenon in human
evolution. And our bodies have never adapted to it.
 http://www.alternet.org/story/140643/eat…

from:  Cicerone, Brett

BUSINESS STRATEGIES FOR ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY
Location:
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Program Dates:
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Application Deadline: September 14, 2009

Listen to Professor Bill Barnett describe the challenges facing executives in business, government, and nonprofit organizations with an environmental purpose. Preparing Environment Conscious Leaders.

As a friend of the Stanford Center for Social Innovation, we wanted to make sure you were aware of our pioneering executive education offering, Business Strategies for Environmental Sustainability. Drawn from a multidisciplinary curriculum and delivering strategies to gain competitive advantage through environmentally sustainable practices, Business Strategies for Environmental Sustainability is the first of its kind program designed to advance environmental responsibility across sectors.
Hosted at the Stanford Sierra Conference Center, Business Strategies for Environmental Sustainability offers executives a camp-like retreat where they can explore what it means to turn sustainable business practices into competitive advantage. The program is designed to cover a range of issues that are central to those who are leading sustainability initiatives in their roles as leaders in business, government, public agencies, and environmental advocacy organizations. Key takeaways include: frameworks to understand how organizations can strike a balance between business and environmental objectives while managing complex stakeholder relationships, and leadership skills to enable action as an internal change agent.
If you or someone you know would benefit from this program, please visit us online at www.gsb.stanford.edu or contact Brett Cicerone directly.

The silence of the powerful media about the UN.

Josep Xercavins i Valls *

“The Conference on the crisis: a key moment for the future of the UN” and/or “The silence of the powerful media about what is happening at the UN”

In a few days the “UN Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and Its Impact on Development” will take place in the United Nations Headquarters in New York, from 24 to 26 June 2009.

It is currently impossible to say how this conference is going to end. However, according to the process that led to this conference -with two main experts like D’Escoto and Stiglitz - and to the contents of its negotiation, we can probably say that it will mark a moment in history. On the one hand, for the future actions that will be carried out to put an end to the global crisis. On the other, for the impact it may produce on the future of the UN, especially (or not) on its future role in financial and economic governance. Last but not least, in relation to the crucial performance of the media when having to report about these subjects. This text discusses the power of the media and the future of the UN.

Above observation about the Press and the UN sounds like a joke.

Please see what we e-mailed to Mr. Gary Fowlie as we wanted to cover exactly this event - we were not honored with a reply as to-date.

***

To:  Mr. Gary Fowlie, Chief, Media Accreditation and Liaison Unit, United Nations Department of Public Information.

From: Pincas Jawetz, editor-in-chief The Sustainable Development Media Think Tank servicing www.SustainabiliTank.info

Date: June 16, 2009

Subject: Accreditation for the purpose of covering the June 24 - June 26, 2009, United Nations Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and Its Impact on Development to be held at UN Headquarters in New York.

Dear Mr. Fowlie,

As per UN published material - I quote and attach bellow - you are personally in charge of the accreditation process - and with the history of your full knowledge of my own person and the media outlet that I have helped create, the fact that I am actually the editor in chief at www.SustainabiliTank.info - a worldwide recognized online media outlet - I apply directly to you in this e-mail to obtain the above mentioned accreditation.

a. I am the appointing officer of our media and I appoint myself - So this is my self-accreditation letter and letter of assignment.

b. My photocopies of Press card and Passport are - I trust - in your files - if you do not have them anymore they clearly will be provided in person.

c. I understand the need for an on-line accreditation form, but if I do not get your OK for my accreditation - according to history - it will just turn into a waste of time if I start the usual way.

d. As you know above UN meeting is on the top of interest priorities of our global readership, and it would be nice to serve them direct information from covering this from within the UN building.

Sincerely yours,

Pincas Jawetz

***

——————

The  Josep Xercavins i Valls * follows:
“The silence of the powerful media about what is happening at the UN”

What a pity! There were, there are and there will be so many things to explain, to analyze and to discuss in connection to the current crisis that I can not but claim against one of the worst manipulations of our times: the “unbearable” silence of the media about this UN Conference. An especially unbearable silence since it is only “heard” on the side of the richest and most powerful. Two extremely opposite examples prove these statements:

1. The powerful media could not do anything against the conference. On May 24, the New York Times published a very harsh article by Neil MacFarquhar, in which D’Escoto was described as “a ranking Sandinista and the fractious president of the United Nations GA”. Anyone can read it and form an opinion about it. The article gets quite distorted when it says that D’Escoto bases his proposals on a report by the Stiglitz Commission (not that caricaturable), a statement that the reader can only find at the end of the article - in an article that is hard to read.

What is really interesting, though, is the fact that -surprisingly- the article was not echoed by other media. They probably preferred to ignore it rather than vilify it. In my opinion, it was more dangerous for their interests to spread the word about the conference: they would then run the risk that someone may talk about its contents and even get excited about it.

2. An article of the author writing these lines, only published in the Other News of Roberto Savio (whose motto I’m “copying” now is a phrase appeared on the wall of Barcelona’s old Customs Office, at the beginning of 2003: “What walls utter, media keeps silent”), has appeared in some thousands of Spanish-speaking web pages (the English version was late and then I did not deem it appropriate to distribute it - what I now regret). The article was called: “From the G20 to the G192 -the UN- : At last, a real answer to the crisis?”

Obviously, in this case, the reason of this self-spreading over the Net was not the author’s name (totally unknown); it must be the interest for the subject itself. Therefore, and to use the terminology surrounding the crisis, there was and there is “market” for the subject. ¡Of course! In short, once again, the strategy has been to avoid talking about the conference and its contents, in order to avoid thinking a real alternative to the mentioned hegemony.

Apart from the seriousness of such silence, what is really alarming is that the citizens all over the world have been deprived of the necessary information to form their own opinion and to put pressure or not, in any direction, with regards to what is being discussed these days at the UN. As a result, the governmental representatives are busy in one of the most important processes in recent times, and yet in the dark. The only information about it is offered by the civil society organisations that, under the name of the “Global Social and Economic Group Crisis Group”, try to do the follow up, to lobby and inform about what is happening in the New York headquarters. This is allowing me, for instance, to write this article but, unfortunately, the power of the public opinion will not arrive in time.

It is not the moment to go into this in depth, but it is becoming clearer and clearer the urging need to fight for the freedom and the right to truthful and plural information about what is happening in the world.

“The Conference about the crisis: a key moment for the future of the UN”

The present global crisis is so important that also offer a window of opportunity in terms of global governance. At least, the crisis is playing and will play a substantial role in determining which “institutional” actors, which multi-polar international relations, which multilateral organisations, etc. will be more or less well placed in the political section of the “financial and economic tsunami”.

For the rich and most powerful countries -where the crisis, its causes and its first consequences were born and developed- the better would have been that nothing had changed in the political arena.  With a “dead” Bush, our current French “Napoleon”, Sarkozy, organised the first “party” of the G20, to pretend that things would change so that, as always, nothing changes.

An extraordinary meeting of the G8 would have been much more appropriate. These states (some more than others) were responsible for the crisis and, therefore, it was their duty to assume responsibilities and arrange things in their own homes.

Before the G20 meeting, one statement by the Forum UBUNTU raised some of the details of the situation:

1. Our perplexity, because the main protagonists who have worked to impose this model over the last 25 years, the G7 and the Bretton Woods Institutions (the IMF and the WB), are now taking on the role of saviours in this disaster, when they should rather be seen as the guilty parties to a large degree, and should consequently accept the responsibilities that pertain to them.

2. Our indignation regarding the meeting called for 14 November in Washington for, among others, the following reasons:

a. That precisely Washington, home of the Government and Organisations most responsible politically for what is now happening, is the one calling the meeting.

b. That invitations to the meeting have been issued in a totally arbitrary and discriminatory form. As if, for example, the poorest countries, those who have suffered most from this model and will probably suffer most from the consequences of the current debacle, had nothing to say about what to do now and in the future.

c. That it not only fails to take advantage of but even overshadows the Doha Conference on Financing for Development to Review the Implementation of the Monterrey Consensus, scheduled for 29 November to 2 December, especially when this Consensus includes a section on systemic - structural issues, which have been worked on for months in the United Nations’ most pluralistic and transparent framework, and which, appropriately reviewed and extended in the current context, could contribute to opening the way to a new world economic and financial model.

The G20 went by, above all, as a big media circus to stop any possible alternative movement, and the Doha Conference 2008 came, unfortunately despite predictably enough, to nothing.

However, history has its own ins and outs. The General Assembly of the UN is been presided since last September - although the appropriate election was carried out months earlier - by Father Miguel D’Escoto. Because of his strong determination, he dared to open a new approach, different of the G20’s one, to look, analyze and to propose about the crisis: the “Stiglitz Commission” (created, by the way, just a few weeks before the first meeting of the G20) and he also managed to introduce the following article on the Doha Declaration 2008:

79. The United Nations will hold a Conference at the highest level on the world financial and economic crisis and its impact on development. The Conference will be organised by the President of the UN General Assembly and its modalities will be defined by March 2009 at the latest.

It was not in March, nor the first week of June, but now it seems impossible that the Conference does not take place the last week of June. We will later have more time to relate all the obstacles that were overcome to get to this end.

Although d’Escoto managed to get approved an article (the above article) whose  restrictive reading would prevent the Conference to treat further matters other than the effects of the crisis on development - an argument repeatedly used at the negotiations’ table by, amongst others, the US and Europe -, our ‘Father D’Escoto’ has grabbed the opportunity and put all his energy in, precisely, transforming the Conference into a milestone, possibly ‘historic’, that can place the UN at the front of the world financial and economic governance.

In an interview with Cuba’s official newspaper Gramma (which denotes either a certain naivety or an excess of confidence…), Father D’Escoto explains:

We are facing a totally unprecedented situation. We have to remember that it is been always prohibited for the General Assembly to discuss or intervene in international financial affairs, such matters were reserved to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (WBG) and the World Trade Organisation (WTO). But this situation cannot continue like this… So this summit to be held in June will be the first opportunity in the history of the United Nations to tell everyone: ‘come and lets all talk’. We are -and we must be - in the 21st Century, the Century of Reconciliation and of inclusive democracy. We do not want only the G-8 or the G-20 to be the ones that speak or take decisions, we will respect their criteria (opinions), we will listen, but in a real democracy, the majority decides, that is why I have started to insist that the voice of the G-192 must be THE voice, that of all members of the United Nations. There are good feelings about the meeting, convened at the highest level, because this battle has to be made at the United Nations in order to participate democratically in the design of a new financial, economic, monetary and trade architecture. That is what we pretend to do. I think that the meeting in June will be considered as the first session of a meeting that will be kept open.

It is indeed the role of the United Nations what really is under discussion these days, about its role in governing financial and economic issues. It is therefore an incredible window of opportunity, in the short and medium term, to achieve a UN different from what it is today. That is, from a UN that is the complex and contradictory result of:

a) a physical place where the Security Council hosts the winners of the Second World War; b) the main reference of international law around the various Human Rights Declarations; c) a necessary humanitarian agency, although with a lot to improve, as it is normally the case in all human endeavours; d) etc.

to a UN that is a real institution of world democratic governance (which can only be achieved and exerted when politics decide over finances and economy). A UN that is the real expression of consensus-building capacity - whenever it is possible - amongst the states of the world, or else the result of democratic majorities reached in the General Assembly. Despite the usual criticisms about the democratic legitimacy of the UN General Assembly where each member state has a vote - something that must be corrected, but that this text will not deal with -, the reality tends to correct it as key decisions reflect the relative positions of the biggest current groupings (US, Europe, G77 and China, Russia, etc.).

And finally, if I write these lines today and now, it is because I see some signs for hope:

1) a certain re-composition of the G77 (the group of 140 countries that normally negotiates together as the voice of the developing countries) that, having recovered those members who shared tablecloths with rich and powerful countries in the G20 meetings, is now together behind proposals such as the creation of a Economic Security Council or the review of the harmful agreement (and original sin of the multilateral international organisations) between the UN and the Bretton Woods Institutions to bring them back under the real and effective supervision and coordination of a strengthened ECOSOC; and

2) the feeling that the Obama US, even with a confused Europe, has not put up much resistance to debating and negotiating all these issues given the strength -immeasurable and maybe immaterial- of “our Father D’Escoto”.

——————————

*Josep Xercavins i Valls, Professor at Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC); former coordinator of the UBUNTU Forum Secretariat

As per Earthjustice e.Brief  - to my horror, four months into the Obama Administration - we just found out that:

After years of delay and denial from past administrations, the Environmental Protection Agency is finally taking steps to declare that greenhouse gas emissions threaten the public’s health and welfare - which means they have not done it yet!The time has come for this action, and we need to encourage the EPA to move swiftly on it.

The EPA is proposing two historic findings under the Clean Air Act: that greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, endanger public health, and that emissions from motor vehicles contribute to climate change. This is a critical first step for the EPA to take in order to tackle climate change pollution.

The findings follow a decision by the Supreme Court which said the EPA has authority to regulate pollutants responsible for global warming under the Clean Air Act. Earthjustice argued the case at the appellate level in 2005.

While the EPA’s current proposal is a necessary first step, there are additional steps the EPA can take, such as setting actual standards to regulate greenhouse gases, particularly from motor vehicles in the U.S., which contribute 4 percent of climate change emissions, and from other mobile sources such as ships and airplanes, which contribute another 4 percent.

We know that the EPA is hearing from polluters in the fossil fuel industry who want to keep the status quo, stop the EPA from moving forward, and protect their record-breaking profits. We can’t let them go unchallenged.

Please join with people across the nation and tell EPA to formally embrace these findings, and then act without delay to regulate greenhouse gas polluters.

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.

Mr. Ban Ki-moon, with the obvious exception of some US judges, is now the main relic left from the appointments backed by the US Administration  of former President G.W. Bush. It is obvious that President Obama’s people will have to take a serious look at this if they would like to see a more forthcoming UN as part of their view of the World. We said so quite a while ago, and wonder how this slowly trickles now into the main media. This is specially interesting when the newspaper which we hold in highest esteem is pointing out this issue in such clear terms:

UN disquiet puts Ban’s second term in doubt.
By Harvey Morris at the United Nations
The Financial Times,  June 17 2009
Pervasive criticism of Ban Ki-moon’s performance as United Nations secretary-general, from within the organisation and among envoys assigned to it, is raising doubts about his prospects of a second term, according to senior officials and diplomats.

In an untypically robust defence of his stewardship, Mr Ban acknowledged last week that there had been negative assessments. However, he also drew attention to the challenges he had faced since he took the post as a compromise candidate at the start of 2007.

Approaching the mid-point of his first five-year term, Mr Ban told a press conference it was up to UN member states to decide whether he should serve a second.

“When the time comes, I hope the member states will judge what I will have achieved by that time,” he said. He complained that UN states were not backing him. “It is just impossible. I need more political support. I need more resources by the member states.”

In his own defence, Mr Ban said: “I have been working as the voice of the voiceless people, and defend those people who are defenceless.” But aides fret that his voice is not being heard loudly enough.

The questioning of Mr Ban’s record has become a staple of conversation among staff at the UN’s New York headquarters and of diplomatic chatter among the foreign missions that crowd midtown Manhattan.

The decisive judgment on his performance, however, will be that of member states, and specifically of the five permanent members of the Security Council that have a veto on a second term.

He received their unanimous backing in 2006 when the experienced South Korean career diplomat and former foreign minister offered a safe pair of hands to undertake the task of reforming a 60-year-old bureaucracy that the US and others regarded as dysfunctional. But Mr Ban expressed his frustration at the slow pace of internal reform: after spending 30 months in office he has only just got his senior management team in place.

On the world stage, however, he has left a shallow footprint, with his performance often contrasted with that of Kofi Annan, his predecessor.

His natural preference for conciliation - whether over Israel’s invasion of Gaza or Sri Lanka’s suppression of Tamil Tiger rebels - has been interpreted as appeasement by human rights groups and even by UN staff members.

One UN-watcher noted, however, that Mr Ban’s caution in speaking out firmly on some pressing issues was matched by a lack of resolution by the Security Council.

“The secretary-general’s leadership is crucial, but the failures must be brought home equally to the Security Council. On issues like Sri Lanka, where civilian suffering has been immense, the . . . council cannot even agree to put Sri Lanka on its regular agenda,” said Carne Ross, a former UK diplomat who heads Independent Diplomat, a New York-based non-profit advisory group.

“While there have clearly been some disappointments, a lot rests on Ban’s ability to deliver on his selfproclaimed number one priority: ’selling the deal’ on a new climate agreement in Copenhagen [in December],” Mr Ross said.

The European permanent members of the Security Council - the UK and France - are at best neutral towards Mr Ban, while the administration of Barack Obama, US president, is yet to reveal its hand on how it regards Mr Ban, a candidate appointed with the support of the previous Bush administration.

* Japan decided yesterday to tighten its sanctions against North Korea, stemming the trickle of exports that flows to the isolated communist state and introducing further restrictions on travel there. The decision was made ahead of a meeting yesterday between Lee Myung-bak, South Korea’s president, and Barack Obama in Washington.

—————

and further from the UN:

UN’s Ban Hit With Staff “No Confidence” Vote, on Asbestos, G to P, Tamil Protest

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press: News Analysis

A UN GC City, June 16 — Reeling from low grades from the Economist and questions of viability in the Financial Times, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday was hit with a vote of “no confidence” from the UN Staff Union regarding implementation of the Capital Master Plan and the management of human resources.

The resolution criticizes Ban and his team for relocating staff to “swing space buildings before the security risk assessments were done,” for the manner of asbestos removal and for stifling meritocracy and “career advancement including the leap from G to P” — from general to professional staff.

Each of these issues has been festering for months, and most can be attributed back to the UN Department of Management, headed by Angela Kane. Ms. Kane herself has acknowledged a failure to communicate about the postponement of the National Competitive Exam, but similar issues exist around the G to P exam.

  The resolution was voted for by over 200 staff members at a meeting on June 16, with no opposition, one abstention. According to one attendee, “the mood was one of distrust, of Angela Kane, Michael Adlerstein and Ban Ki-moon. It was stated again and again that Management is not acting in a responsible, safe or appropriate manner.”

CMP chief Michael Adlerstein first said the security risk assessments were done, then referred all questions to the Department of Safety and Security, whose Bruno Henn “no commented” the issue.

Ms. Angela Kane, beyond an icy relationship with the UN Staff Union, has lashed out at the press, specifically and generally, first proposing for the first time in the history of UN Headquarters to charge journalists money to cover it, then trying to subject whistleblowers to exposure.  The pretext is an open office plan which the resolution notes was “never negotiated with the staff representatives.”

Ms. Kane has complained that the UN’s responses are not published, while telling the Press that she has no time to answer questions.

The Economist magazine gave Mr. Ban a failing grade of two out of ten on management. When Inner City Press asked Mr. Ban for his response, his statement was passionate, but largely laid the blame elsewhere. But this new “no confidence” vote does not bode well.

Additionally, as Inner City Press previously reported, Ban may be subject to a rare street protest on the night of June 17, 2009, - that is tonight - when he and Bill Clinton are slated to receive a “global humanitarian award” at the St. Regis Hotel.

Further - Tamils who watched the bloodbath on the beach in Northern Sri Lanka and the UN withholding casualty figures and satellite photos blame Ban. 

UN Secretary General, in his effort to get the Democrats in Washington to have a favorable view of his eventual reappointment effort to a second term at the helm of the UN, just caught a big fish - he got Former President Bill Clinton to accept his offer to be the be his Special Representative to Haiti and a Press Conference was held at the UN June 15, 2009 - please read about it on www.innercitypress.com - things that you will not pick up in the conventional media.

“The depths of Haiti’s problems emerged at Bill Clinton’s UN press conference on Monday. After Clinton spoke of the need to make a registry of non-governmental organizations to better coordinate their work, Inner City Press asked about the lack of registration of the children that are born, particularly in rural Haiti. Seemingly it is known at the UN that the lack of registration leads to illegal adoptions and even the sale of babies for organs, one Permanent Representative told Inner City Press, urging that this too be asked of Clinton. He was responding to Inner City Press’ June 12 question, at a briefing on child labor, about Haiti’s restavek system.

{A restavèk is a Haitian child who becomes a house slave when she is turned over by her parents to a family which agrees, in principle, to care for the child, provide schooling, food, shelter, and clothing in exchange for domestic labor. Neither the child’s nor the parents’ hopes are usually fulfilled. The restavèk instead spends her formative years isolated from parental love and care, and nurturing contact with siblings, deprived of schooling and subject to long days of work with no pay and living conditions inferior to those of the overseer’s family. She performs whatever services the overseer requires under a constant menace of physical and verbal abuse, often meted out as a matter of routine by members of the household.

Today in Haiti, according to NGOs, an estimated one out of every ten children is a restavèk. These children are such a common part of the social fabric that rare is the Haitian who has not had some association with a restavèk. Some have given away a child or taken one in as a restavèk, or they know a family that has; others have been a restavèk themselves. This familiarity has affected the way most Haitians take these children for granted.}

After Clinton’s opening statement, Inner City Press asked about restavek, the registration of new borns, and the UN’s failure to disclose any discipline meted out to the more than 100 UN peacekeepers repatriated from Haiti to Sri Lanka after being accused of sexual abuse and exploitation. On punishment for sexual impropriety, Clinton said he would not answer, that Secretary General Ban Ki-moon would.

But on restavek, he said he knew well of the problem. He said, parents were promised their children would be educated in exchange for work, but the schooling never happened. Some restavek victims are in the United States, he said. He will try to work on the problem. So - here is hope for a Clinton involvement.

   On sexual abuse, Mr. Ban said the UN has received assurances that some discipline took place after repatriation. But the UN has never said what this was. Inner City Press asked Haitian Foreign Minister Alrich Nicolas, also present, but he did not know, either. How can the UN claim a zero tolerance policy when it won’t report this basic information? We will continue on this writes Matthew Russell Lee from Inner City Press.

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So, what we see from the above is infered as the lack of interest on part of the UN Secretary General about the problems of Haiti - the only country of the Western Hemisphere that is among the 50 poorest countries of the World.

Bringing in President Clinton is a great move - provided that Mr. Clinton will also take to task the UN itself - a need  demonstrated by the way the UN hires so called peace-making troops from poor countries, by paying large sums of money to - in many cases - authoritarian governments that pocket the money and then dish out small salaries to their troops. Sometimes these third quality military forces plainly misbehave, and the Sri Lankans in Haiti were such a case in point with the UN winking away the whole issue. Many such cases were known also among “UN Peace Keepers” in Africa. If President Clinton takes his job seriously, he is to remove the cover over these issues, and leave the UN to be seen in its lack of leadership/ nakedness. If he continues in the future also to pass on these sort of problems to his UN boss without investigating the issue - this would be a let down to us.We hope thus that he will not just be a feather in Ban Ki-moon’s cap.

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from the same UN Press Conference, The Chritian Science Monitor, from Washington rather then New York,  has different news:

Bill Clinton can’t help himself, holds forth on Netanyahu speech: Former President Jimmy Carter, too, offered comments about the address during a tour of the Middle East.

By Howard LaFranchi | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
from the June 15, 2009 edition

WASHINGTON - The setting had nothing to do with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech about the Middle East peace process. It was a press event at the United Nations in New York Monday to announce that Bill Clinton would be taking the post of special envoy to Haiti.

But even as UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon’s spokesperson was trying to cut the questions short, the former president could not resist going off-topic – baited, of course, by reporters.

He started by saying that he had not gotten his talking points in the morning from the State Department – read, his wife, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Nonetheless, Mr. Clinton hailed Mr. Netanyahu for “going on the record as open to some two-state solution,” though he added that the conditions the prime minister set would be “completely unacceptable to the Palestinians.”

But drawing on his own experience with the Middle East conflict, Clinton said no one should take Netanyahu’s speech as the final word. “You should see this as opening moves … to not alienate the US and keep the ball rolling.”

Employing the silver tongue for which he is known the world over, he added, “This is the opening play … and it’s a drama that will have a few more acts.”

The reaction of another former US president, however, was less positive. Jimmy Carter has been in the region during the past week, during which time he met with the Hamas leadership in Gaza – one of the few Western leaders who has done so. While visiting the Israeli parliament Sunday, he said: “My opinion is [Netanyahu] raised many new obstacles to peace that had not existed under previous prime ministers.”

“He still apparently insists on expansion of existing settlements, he demands that the Palestinians and the Arabs recognise Israel as a Jewish state, although 20 percent of its citizens here are not Jews. This is a new demand,” Mr. Carter added.

But he said there remains opportunity for compromise. “I have to say that in spite of the differences between my president, Barack Obama, and Prime Minister Netanyahu, greater differences existed between myself and then-prime minister Begin,” Carter said.

Carter, Menachem Begin, and Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat were able to agree to the Camp David Accords, which led to a peace deal between Israel and Egypt in 1979.

For his part, current US President Obama hailed Netanyahu’s address Monday, saying, “I thought that there was positive movement in the prime minister’s speech.”

While the UN ran two more weeks of climate change hot air in Bonn, the US and China negotiated for real in Beijing. As we keep saying - the answer is in Washington and Beijing all the rest is really a waste of time on that road to Copenhagen. Will there be a US-China agreement before December? At least an agreement to make sure that by 2010 there will be a solid new Framework?

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America and China talk climate change
Heating up or cooling down?
Jun 11th 2009 | BEIJING
From The Economist print edition
The big two emitters try to stop finger-pointing and save the planet

THOUSANDS of officials from all over the world this week neared the end of two weeks of difficult talks in Bonn under the United Nations’ climate convention. But they were conscious that even more difficult and probably more important negotiations were under way in Beijing. America’s most senior climate-change officials were meeting their Chinese counterparts. The two countries are by far the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases. They will determine whether a worthwhile global treaty to limit emissions can be concluded as planned in Copenhagen in December.

The treaty is to replace the Kyoto protocol, which expires in 2012. Some 180 countries will take part in the negotiations, but many feel that, on this issue more than any other, China and America make up a “G2” that determines the global post-Kyoto agenda. Shortly before traveling to Beijing, America’s climate-change envoy, Todd Stern, said that, though China may not be the “alpha and omega” of the international process, it was close. His delegation included President Barack Obama’s science adviser, John Holdren, and David Sandalow, the assistant energy secretary.

Details of the talks were scanty. Mr Stern was able to call them “a step in the right direction on the road to Copenhagen”. But progress is painstaking. Zha Daojiong, an energy-security expert at Peking University, says that, although he himself disagrees, many Chinese still feel the world’s original big polluters should be the first to pay for cleaning things up. Others suspect American critics see the issue as yet another stick in a relentless campaign to bash China. As one American official acknowledges, climate change is emerging as the biggest issue in bilateral relations, supplanting trade and human rights.

For their part, American critics of China make much of the rapid growth in its energy consumption. Indeed, in 2007 China overtook America as the world’s leading carbon emitter, with an estimated 1.8 billion tonnes of fossil-fuel emissions. As it decides how America should curb its own emissions, Congress remains keenly aware that potentially painful and costly steps will mean little if China stays on anything approaching its current trajectory.

China asserts its simple right to develop rapidly and make progress towards attaining Western living standards. It also points out that its consumption and emission levels per head remain a mere fraction of America’s. Moreover, a large chunk of its emissions come from producing goods consumed by rich developed nations, which have exported much of their manufacturing industry to China.

Lastly, China points to its impressive improvements in energy efficiency and coal-plant cleanliness in recent years, and its increasingly ambitious commitments to invest in renewable energy sources. According to Deborah Seligsohn, based in Beijing for the World Resources Institute, an American think-tank, China has received too little credit for the steps it has already taken and its commitment to do more. Others argue that China’s leaders have decided both that the Obama administration is serious about climate change, and that China, especially in its drought-prone north, will be a big loser from global warming. On this analysis, they may adopt even more ambitious energy-efficiency targets, if not emissions limits.

Mr Zha urges America to refrain from browbeating China into accepting distant targets for future reductions. That, he said, would be a narrow and empty victory, since it is too late for vague visionary principles. What is needed instead, he argues, is a workable timetable under which America agrees to rethink restrictions on sophisticated exports to China, and Beijing reduces tariffs to encourage the import of cutting-edge green technology.

In this context, another development in Sino-American relations strikes a discordant note. Sichuan Tengzhong, a private Chinese company, is to buy the division of General Motors, a beleaguered American carmaker, that makes the Hummer, a gas-guzzling hulk. There could be few clearer illustrations of the shifting contours of the quarrel between rich and poor countries over who is more to blame for climate change and who should do more to arrest it. Looking more like a tank than a car, the Hummer for years seemed to embody the worst excesses of American consumerism. Now, unless Chinese regulators reject the deal, as they may, it will become another symbol of China’s commercial clout and polluting potential.

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and from Bonn - the usual hot air:

UN Climate Talks Advance, Poor Urge More CO2 Cuts

Date: 15-Jun-09
Reuters, Alister Doyle and Gerard Wynn

BONN, Germany - Climate talks made progress on Friday toward a new U.N. treaty to curb global warming but ended far short of calls by developing nations for the rich to make deeper cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

Four years of talks to widen the existing Kyoto Protocol have struggled to agree on how to share the cost of efforts to curb greenhouses gas mainly emitted by burning fossil fuels.

The United States and Europe warned in closing remarks on Friday that the private sector would finance the climate fight, not their governments.

“I look back on this as a significant session that has advanced our work in important ways,” Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, told a news conference at the June 1-12 talks among 183 nations in Bonn.

He said governments staked out far clearer views after their first review of a draft legal text of the treaty due to be agreed in Copenhagen in December to succeed Kyoto.

But developing countries called for more, despite the global recession.

“We finally managed to have a positive exchange on the numbers” for developed nations, China’s climate ambassador Yu Qingtai told Reuters. “But still we hear repeated statements resisting calls for further meaningful cuts.”

China and many developing nations want the rich to cut by at least 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 to avoid the worst effects of global warming such as droughts, floods and rising sea levels.

Offers made by developed countries so far work out at cuts of between 8 and 14 percent below 1990, according to the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

The United States and Europe poured cold water on hopes for major public funds, such as the 1 percent or more of national wealth demanded by many poor nations to help them avoid a model of high-carbon growth dominant since the Industrial Revolution.

“The key issue is not the number,” said Jonathan Pershing, head of the U.S. delegation, referring to “marginally” bigger investments to improve efficiency or to install low-carbon instead of polluting coal plants.

“We’d like to change that” view of developing countries that governments would bankroll the fight against climate change, he said, adding that carbon offset markets could play a big role.

The European Union also underscored that private finance would dominate in the climate change fight.

Pershing said progress in Bonn had been “slow,” and the European Commission’s Artur Runge-Metzger said “enormous effort” was required to get a deal in Copenhagen in December.

The United States expected China to undertake action, such as setting renewable energy targets, but not be legally bound to prove curbs. China and the United States are top emitters.

“We have advanced perhaps a couple of miles toward Copenhagen. We still have thousands to go,” said Jennifer Morgan of the London-based E3G think-tank. The next meeting will be in Bonn in August.

Outside the talks in a Bonn hotel, protesters brought along two live camels and laid out some sand to illustrate fears of creeping desertification. “We spit on weak targets,” one banner said, another said: “Shrinking targets, growing deserts.”

The chair of a group looking at new actions to curb emissions by all countries said a draft text had swollen with new ideas from about 50 pages to 200. Big breakthroughs were likely to happen only in Copenhagen, he said.

“This is like the evolutionary process in reverse. The Big Bang comes at the end,” said Michael Zammit Cutajar, of Malta.

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and on the New York Times an article is full of optimism which is fine with us, but at this stage might be misleading like that famous pot that puts the lobster to sleep.

Climate Change Treaty, to Go Beyond the Kyoto Protocol, Is Expected by the Year’s End.

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published, the New York Times, June 12, 2009.
The world is on track to produce a new global climate treaty by December, the top United Nations climate official said Friday as delegates from more than 100 nations concluded 12 days of talks in Bonn, Germany.

The delegates issued a 200-page document that they said would serve as the starting point for treaty negotiations that open in Copenhagen in December.

“Time is short, but we still have enough time,” the official, Yvo de Boer, who is the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, said at a briefing. “I’m confident that governments can reach an agreement and want an agreement.”

The goal is a climate treaty that would go beyond the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, a climate-change agreement that set emissions targets for industrialized nations. Many of those goals have not been met, and the United States never ratified the accord.

The document issued Friday outlines proposals for cutting emissions of heat-trapping gases by rich countries and limiting the growth of gases in the developing world. It also discusses ways of preventing deforestation, which is linked to global warming, and of providing financing for poorer nations to help them adapt to warmer temperatures.

But many environment advocates and politicians suggested that delegates had not made enough progress in winnowing down those options. “Of course we have to respect the way the United Nations works,” Denmark’s minister for climate and energy, Connie Hedegaard, said in a statement after the talks ended. “But to me, there is no doubt that things are moving too slow.”

Representatives of poor countries complained repeatedly in the talks that developed nations had not made an adequate commitment to reduce their emissions. They expressed particular dismay over Japan’s announcement this week to reduce emissions by only 8 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.

Shyam Saran, India’s envoy on climate change, called such targets “unsatisfactory.” China and other developing countries have demanded that richer nations reduce emissions by 40 percent below 1990 levels in that period.

Experts described some of the back-and-forth as predictable jockeying in the months leading up to the make-or-break talks to negotiate a treaty in December.

Jonathan Pershing, who led the American delegation at the Bonn talks, said the discussions had unfolded about as fast as could be expected given the number of nations involved and the size of the task. He predicted a treaty would emerge in December.

He said that American negotiators acknowledged at the talks that “climate change is an urgent problem and it needs a global and immediate response.”

Despite the shortage of specific commitments, environmentalists took heart from the strong involvement of many nations, especially the United States and China, which jointly produce 40 percent of the world’s heat-trapping emissions. (In declining to ratify the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the United States cited China and India’s lack of participation.)

“There are a lot of options to work out, but we have come a long way,” said Alex Kaat, a spokesman for Wetlands International, which fights the destruction of rainforests and decaying bogs. “There is now text on paper, and that’s progress.”

Bigger isn’t Better        

by Peter A. Victor
Culture Change, 12 June 2009

There’s nothing like a good crisis to make us rethink old ideas. The depression of the 1930s led to the rejection of the prevailing idea that unemployment would right itself if only people would work for lower wages.

Governments could do very little to help. These ideas were overthrown by experience… and by the invention of modern macro economics by British economist, John Maynard Keynes. By the end of World War II, most Western governments had adopted Keynesian economic policies designed to ensure that total expenditures were sufficient to maintain full employment.
Keynesian economists soon discovered that full employment today meant a bigger economy tomorrow because some of the investment expenditures required to keep unemployment down: on infrastructure, buildings and equipment, also expanded the productive capacity of the economy. So does an expanding population and labour force. Initially, governments pursued economic growth to meet the more pressing concern of maintaining full employment, but this soon changed. In the 1950s, economic growth became the number one economic policy objective of governments and all others, such as productivity, innovation, free trade, competitiveness, immigration, even education, became a means to that end.

Until a year or so ago all seemed to be going reasonably well. Then came the breakdown in the financial sector followed quickly by a recession that through globalization, spread further and faster than swine flu. Now governments are congratulating themselves for acting together to stimulate spending to get the economies back on course, much as Keynes might have recommended. But times have changed since his day. World population has increased almost three times, world economic output has increased ten times and with this massive expansion of the human presence on earth, we are confronting limits to the availability of cheap energy, to fresh water, and to the capacity of the atmosphere to absorb increasing emissions of greenhouse gases. At the same time we are destroying the habitat of numerous species of flora and fauna and the security of our own food supplies is threatened.

It is time to rethink the old idea that the solution to all our problems lies in the incessant expansion of the economy. Rich countries like Canada should explore alternatives, especially if poorer countries are to benefit from economic growth for a while in a world increasingly constrained by biophysical limits. Some deny or simply ignore these limits and argue that economic growth in rich countries is necessary to stimulate growth in poorer ones. Others say that with ‘green’ growth we can expand economic output as we reduce the demands we place on nature through more efficient production, better designed products, fewer goods and more services, compact urban forms, and organic agriculture. While these measures may well help in a transition they are an unlikely prescription for the long term. What is required is a radical rethinking of our economies and their relation to the natural world.

Although no 21st century Keynes has emerged to prepare the intellectual ground for such a change in thinking, we do have a body of knowledge built up over many decades and now thriving under the name of ‘ecological economics’. Ecological economists understand economies to be subsystems of the earth ecosystem, sustained by a flow of materials and energy from and back to the larger system in which they are embedded. It is understandable that when these flows were small relative to the earth they could be ignored, as they have been in much of mainstream economics. Economists are not alone in treating the economy as a self-contained, free standing system largely independent of its environmental setting. It is a widely held view that environmental protection is just one among multiple competing interests to be traded off against the economy. And anyway, this mainstream perspective teaches that if resource and environmental constraints are encountered, scarcities will be signaled by increases in prices that will induce a variety of beneficial changes in behaviour and technology. Should this system of scarcity, price, response fail then economists can estimate ’shadow’ prices which can be imposed directly through taxes or used indirectly through policies based on cost-benefit analysis to fix the problem.

To ecological economists, this is an inadequate response to the myriad problems of resource depletion, environmental contamination and habitat destruction confronting humanity in the 21st century. They question the pursuit of endless economic growth and contemplate a very different kind of future.

In my own work, I have examined whether and under what conditions a country like Canada could have full employment, no poverty, much reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and maintain fiscal balance, without relying on economic growth. Using a comparatively simple model of the Canadian economy I have explored scenarios in which these objectives are met. The ingredients for success include a shorter work year to reduce unemployment yet retain the advantages of technological progress, a carbon price to discourage greenhouse gas emissions, and more generous anti-poverty programs.

In such an economy, success would not be judged by the rate of economic growth but by more meaningful measures of personal and community well-being. We would adjust to strict limits on our use of materials, energy, land and waste, guided by prices that provide more accurate information about real rather than contrived scarcities. We would enjoy more services and fewer but more durable and repairable products, and we would value use over status when deciding what to buy. Rampant consumerism would be history, advertising would be more informative and less persuasive, and new technologies would be better screened to avoid problems to be fixed later, if at all. Infrastructure, buildings and equipment would be more efficient in their use of energy and we would think and act more locally and less globally. With more free time at our disposal we would educate ourselves and our children for life not just work.

Is all this simply wishful thinking of a sort that flourishes in troubled times? I think not. The undercurrent of discontent with modern life is rich with ideas for a better future, one that is not dependent on economic growth. For example, in March of this year the UK’s Sustainable Development Commission delivered its report “Prosperity without Growth?” to the British Government endorsing and amplifying many of the ideas expressed here. The Centre for the Advancement of a Steady State Economy based in the USA has obtained over 3000 signatures on its position statement designed to help change the goal of the economy from growth to sustainability. At the local level, Transition Towns has spread in less than four years from the UK to many countries including Canada, to raise awareness of sustainable living and to build local resilience in response to the combined threats of peak oil and climate change. Even mainstream economists are moving with the tide. Nobel Laureate economist Robert Solow said last year: “It is possible that the US and Europe will find that either continued growth will be too destructive to the environment and they are too dependent on scarce natural resources, or that they would rather use increasing productivity in the form of leisure.” Let’s add Canada to the list and go from there.

* * *

Economist Peter A. Victor is Professor in Environmental Studies at York University and author of Managing without Growth: Slower by Design, not Disaster, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2008. “Bigger isn’t Better” first appeared in the Ottawa Citizen  www.ottawacitizen.com).

David Rothkopf -From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

David J. Rothkopf (born 24 December 1955) is a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, specializing in U.S. foreign policy and economic strategy, as well as an international business consultant and professor. He served as the Deputy Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade during the administration of Bill Clinton. After leaving Commerce, Rothkopf became managing director of Kissinger and Associates in January 1996.

As a Carnegie fellow, he wrote Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power. In addition, he is chairman and CEO of The Rothkopf Group, LLC, a consulting firm, and Garten Rothkopf LLC, a firm that focuses on emerging markets.

He previously was a founder and CEO of Intellibridge, a strategic analysis firm in Washington D.C., United States. A prolific writer, Rothkopf has authored more than 150 articles on international issues for a variety of publications, most recently for the Washington Post and Intellibridge’s Homeland Security Monitor. He is a 1977 graduate of Columbia College and attended Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

 http://rothkopf.foreignpolicy.com/posts/…

David Rothkopf’s blog  -  http://rothkopf.foreignpolicy.com/blog/4…

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Turn the U.N. into Condos  - You can’t spell unproductive without the letters “U” and “N”…
Thu, 06/11/2009

I’m one of those guys that the conspiracy theorists love to hate says David Rothkopf.
I not only believe that we need stronger global governance mechanisms, I believe that the reinvention of our global governance system is one of the great shared missions of the world for the century ahead. Whether it is strengthening institutions that regulate trade or climate, finance or proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, or whether it is creating multilateral enforcement mechanisms with real teeth, the international system of nation states and very weak multilateral mechanisms we currently have is showing its age and is simply not up to satisfying the obligations of the social contract in the global era. In the eyes of the conspiracy maniacs … weakened by too much time staring at anti-Bilderberg, anti-Davos, anti-World Jewish Conspiracy Web sites … this makes me a world government guy and a threat to the natural order. (Which apparently is manifested in a libertarian fantasy land of white guys living in shacks and RVs far from the influence of any cultural tradition but their own. The notion of one nation under Toby Keith seems a little dubious to me, but then again, most of these guys think people like me would best serve as hood ornaments.)

Having said that, watching the UN continue its kabuki theater concerning North Korea makes me want to shut the place down, convert it to condos and remit the funds to the former member states. Even in a down New York real estate market it is almost certain to be a better return on investment for the dollars poured into that white elephant on the East River than “outcomes” like the proposed sanctions on Pyongyang. This is particularly tragic since containing and ultimately eliminating the threats posed by states like North Korea and other proliferators seems to me a vital role for the UN or at least for some international mechanism. But you can’t stand up to the bad guy without a spine and the UN has been an invertebrate by design since it first crawled out of San Francisco Bay in April 1945.

No one wanted anything like a strong world governance structure back then and so they built a talking shop that makes most freshman philosophy seminars look like decisive drivers of global change. Basically the organization was designed along the lines of the conflict resolution sessions my daughters’ elementary school used to use when students got into a fight. The combatants would be sat down in a room, asked to explain the problem, and then told to apologize and make up or else. Of course the “or else” was the equivalent of the great parental technique of counting to three, you didn’t know what might happen once you got to the point of no return but you were sure it was bad.

To my eldest daughter’s credit at one point she got into a fight with a budding bitchlet from the grade ahead of her and when asked to say they were friends, she refused. She sensed that there would be no repercussions. Who knew that my adorable little cupcake and Kim Jong-Il would have that much in common.

He must be sitting there with his 26 year-old son, Kim Jong-Un, his recently anointed successor, in their badly paneled rumpus room full of tapes of old American movies playing their favorite video game (Grand Theft Plutonium) and cackling at the wimps on Manhattan Upper East Side. Seriously, I can hardly understand how in a city in which every cab driver is prepared to get all up in your grille about the most casual comment, these UN folks can manage to negotiate the basics of daily life. It takes more gumption than they have ever displayed to get a waiter to bring you a menu at most Manhattan coffee shops. (I’ve seen “Gossip Girl.” I know how that part of town works. Blair Waldorf would have Ban Ki Moon braiding her hair and carrying her books to school within seconds of their first meeting.)

In essence, the new tough stand of the UN, orchestrated by the United States, has two parts. In the first, we essentially reiterate what we’ve said in the past about interdicting shipments of weapons materials. But this time, folks, we say it with feeling. There is no commitment by anyone to actually stop or inspect North Korean ships and there is no UN mechanism obligating or even sanctioning the use of force. We also plan to cut off financing options for the starving country … except those that pertain to humanitarian or development needs. Of course, money is fungible and the government has shown a real willingness to spend on arms in the past while letting its people eat grass, so why we think this tactic won’t just produce more humanitarian and development needs … which in turn will be met … is beyond me.

In all the articles on these developments, the usual suspects at think tanks and in the diplomatic community say all this matters because this time the Russians and the Chinese are really pissed off. Yes, maybe. But apparently not pissed off enough to actually collaborate in the production of anything that might actually change North Korean behavior. (Their approach, written on the package every North Korean bomb comes seems to have been lifted from a shampoo bottle: Threaten…negotiate/buy time for program development…win aid packages…repeat as necessary.) How was it all described by that UN expert from Stratford-on-Avon? “A lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” (They didn’t call it the Globe Theater for nothing.)

Further - writing from India, David Rithkopf continues: Also, for the record, on the broader point of this blog, despite my being a very big fan of this wonderful country (India) and a big supporter of it having a much bigger role on the international stage and in America’s foreign policy priorities, I don’t like the nuke deal we cut with them either.

I’ve said it before and I will say it again, the world’s complacency on proliferation will produce one or more of the great tragedies of the century ahead. (As in the North Korea case, the international community has developed and seems to be sticking to a three-speed plan on proliferation these days: cooperate with proliferators, cut them a lot slack or cut them a little slack. Just in case you wanted to know what was responsible for that ticking sound you hear…)

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David Rothkopf has previously expressed his feelings against nuclear proliferation. In this article from his blog, we realize that he thinks US policy is on nuclear issues equal to that on the banks and other financial institutions - that is the TOO BIG TO FAIL - OR CALL IT TOO ADVANCED IN THE SINKING-IN-THE-MUD FEELING TO BE PUNISHED.

Now, as if Rothkopf had anticipated my above revelation, he hapily provided further hints about moves of the Obama Presidency in another of his blogs:

“Can the Obama administration really believe that merging Chrysler into Fiat
is actually going to help either? Chrysler’s best minds left after their last merger with Daimler Benz. Fiat doesn’t have one single leading international brand. Is it really credible that if one of the world’s most successful auto companies (Daimler Benz) couldn’t save Chrysler that a combination of one of the world’s most mediocre (Fiat) and a bunch of government guys who don’t know anything about cars plus some union members who helped screw things up in the first place are going to do it?

Here in India, taxi drivers talk with palpable pride at the advent of the Tata Nano, a tiny car that is a source of great national pride. Business executives cite the ease with which they meet much higher average gasoline mileage targets than posed in the United States. I mean, I get it, this is a very poor country with a wide range of desperate needs (over 40 percent of Indians don’t have access to electricity yet). But you’ve got to ask which way the trends are pushing us…and you also have to ask why the United States has not made a more urgent priority of dramatically strengthening relations with this country. Such a relationship could not be more central to containing the threat in Pakistan, counter-balancing China, promoting democracy and managing a whole host of global threats from climate to proliferation. To be perfectly honest, I think a lot more real and lasting (rather than symbolic and likely to be fleeting) good would be likely to come from President Obama making a trip to the land of Gandhi than his recent trip to the land of Mubarak and Nasser.”

——————-

Before concluding above post, I observed also an e-mail from the UN that was happily informing us that the US House of Representatives has voted to pay all arrears since 1999 to the UN, and in hope that the Senate will decide in a similar way - the UN will now get all those funds that the previous Administrations thought were for expenditures that were not in the US interest. It says:

Dear Pincas,

Great news! This week, the House of Representatives took a significant step forward in strengthening our relationship with the UN.

By passing the Foreign Relations Authorization Act (HR 2410), developed by Chairman Howard Berman, the House Foreign Affairs Committee is authorizing full payment of all debt the U.S. has accumulated at the United Nations since 1999.

….

Besides addressing U.S. debts to the UN, this comprehensive legislation would:

Support the U.S. payment of UN dues on time (or at least not 9 months late!); lift the arbitrary legislative cap on peacekeeping contributions; and meet its ongoing financial commitments to the UN and other important international organizations.

Maintain robust support for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR); build training capacity to support rapid deployment of UN peacekeepers; and allow the U.S. to join other nations in helping make critically needed helicopters available for UN authorized peacekeeping missions.

Authorize critical resources for the State Department and USAID to help prevent, mitigate, and peacefully resolve crises; and create new incentives for Foreign Service Officers to serve in posts focusing on multilateral diplomacy and human rights.

But while this is an important victory, more work lies ahead.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee must craft and pass its own bill before any legislation can be sent to the President. To make sure your voices are being heard, the Better World Campaign has met with the Committee to emphasize the need to include UN language in its version of the Foreign Relations Authorization bill.

Of course, it will take some time to draft this bill, but we wanted to keep you in the loop.

….

So stay tuned, and thank you for your help in strengthening U.S.-UN relations!

Best,

Your friends at Better World Campaign
 http://www.BetterWorldCampaign.org/

 From: Mirjam Harmelink of Harmelink Consulting -   post at harmelinkconsulting.com

IEPEC 2010 “Counting on Energy Efficiency-It’s Why Evaluation Matters!”
Paris, France - June 8-10, 2010.

European Call for Abstracts open to anyone working in the evaluation fields including scholars, practioners, policymakers, and students. To submit your abstract please visit: http://tinyurl.com/IEPECParis

The call for abstracts is open.  Please visit our website at http://www.iepec.org and follow the links in the left hand navigation bar for IEPEC Paris.

Examples of Topics:
•   Evaluation design, implementation and results
•   Evaluating programme performance
•   Evaluating behavioural change programmes, including
1. Advertising campaigns
2. Advice provision
3. Websites
•   Evaluating energy supplier obligations and certification schemes
•   Linkages between performance management (outputs) and evaluation (outcomes) to develop effective programmes
•   Using evaluation to develop more effective policy and strategies
•   Using evaluation to inform national savings estimates

BACKGROUND
Energy efficiency and climate change are an increasingly important focus of policy for national, regional and local governments throughout Europe. Everyone recognises that effective evaluation is crucial; however, approaches differ between nations and programmes. The first IEPEC Europe-based Conference will be held in 2010. The conference will bring policymakers and evaluators from Europe and North America together to share best practice and to establish a strong and vibrant evaluation community.  EPEC Europe will be modelled on the successful non-profit North American IEPEC conference which has been a central feature of evaluation in North America since 1984.

THE PLANNING TEAM
The conference chairs will be Nigel Jollands (International Energy Agency) and Paolo Bertoldi (European Commission) and the organising committee includes policymakers and evaluators from throughout Europe.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND
The conference will be held in Paris between June 8 2010 and June 10 2010. It is particularly suitable for:

1. Policymakers with programmes to improve energy efficiency and address climate change who will be able to:
•   Meet and share experience with other policymakers who are interested in evaluation
•   Meet experienced evaluators
•   Learn about effective evaluation approaches taken in Europe and North America
•   Share experience with others regarding the use of evaluation to inform policy and deliver improved outcomes

2. Evaluation professionals involved in energy efficiency and climate change who will be able to:
•   Meet and share experience with other evaluation professionals
•   Meet policymakers with an interest in evaluation
•   Learn about the developing European energy policy environment and the implications for evaluation

WHAT IS IEPEC
The International Energy Program Evaluation Conference (IEPEC) is a biennial professional conference for energy program implementers, evaluators of those programs. The purpose of the conference is to provide a forum for the presentation, critique and discussion of objective evaluations of energy programs. The Conference advances the goals of conserving natural resources and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by helping to overcome one of the key barriers to implementing energy programs - the lack of confidence in the reported results.

The core product of this conference is the documentation of unbiased, peer-reviewed evaluations that establish the basis for accurate information and provide credible evidence of program success or failure.  Researchers will find the IEPEC website to be an outstanding resource as almost all past proceedings are posted there and are available for searching at no cost.  IEPEC is a non-profit organization and has been run almost entirely by dedicated, volunteer,  evaluation professionals since 1984.

We are delighted to be able to come to Europe and applaud the efforts of many including Nigel Jollands of IEA.  For a complete list of our current planning members, please see below.

SEARCH OVER 600 PAPERS…
IEPEC is pleased to offer, at no charge, a new service for energy evaluation professionals.  We have posted the complete set of papers from our 1984, 1985,  1989, 1991, 1997, 1999, 2001, 2003, 2005 and 2007 conferences on our website.  Feel free to search these files and use the information to improve or add efficiency to your work. This service is made possible by the support of our sponsors.
Step One:  Go to www.IEPEC.org
Step Two:  Bookmark this site as a Favorite (Ctrl D)
Step Three:  Navigate to “Past Program Papers”
Step Four:  Select the year you want to search
Step Five:  Dig in…

CONFERENCE TIMELINE
Call For Abstracts:  June 2009–closes November 2, 2009 Posting of Selections:  February 2010 Registration Opens:  February 2010

Conference Schedule (2010)
Workshops/Networking Social:  June 8
Opening Session:  June 9
Poster Reception:  June 9
Final Session: Late Afternoon June 10.

JOIN OUR SPONSORS
We are currently recruiting sponsors for the 2010 European version of IEPEC’s North American based program.  If interested, please contact Ed Vine at  Ed.Vine at UCOP.edu or Nigel Jollands at  Nigel.Jollands at IEA.org

CURRENT SPONSORS
American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy Alliance to Save Energy Databuild Dethman and Associates Energy Markets Innovation Inc.
European Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy International Energy Agency International Energy Program Evaluation Conference Research Into Action Summit Blue Consulting, LLC Tecmarket Works

PLANNING TEAM  2010
Paolo Bertoldi, European Commission
Didier Bosseboeuf, ADEME
Ben Bronfman, Quantec
Kirsten Dyhr-Mikkelsen. Ea Energy Analyses Mirjam  Harmelink, Harmelink Consulting Ken Double, Energy Saving Trust Pierre Landry, Southern California Edison Kevin Lane, Environmental Change Institute Guido Mattei, European Consutling, Brussels Charles Michaelis, Databuild Jennifer Otoadese, Oxford University Centre for the Environment Marcel Paven, Autorità Energia Federica Stabile, ENEA Iris Sulyma, BC Hydro Bobbi Tannenbaum, KEMA Ed Vine, California Institute for Energy and Environment Harry Vreuls, Senter Novem

You are invited to a side event hosted by IISD:

A Phased Approach to a Safe Climate: Encouraging Developing Country Participation in a Future Climate Change Regime.

Hosted by IISD

Side Event

Wednesday, 10 June 2009
18:00 - 19:30
Room Tram (MOT)

IISD recently completed a report, Encouraging Developing Country Participation in a Future Climate Change Regime. The report proposes a possible post-2012 climate change regime: A Phased Approach to a Safe Climate.

This side event will include a presentation on the results of IISD’s research, and perspectives on the proposed Phased Approach from respondents from developed and developing countries

Agenda

Opening Remarks and Presentation of Research
•   Deborah Murphy – Associate, IISD
•   John Drexhage – Director, Climate Change & Energy, IISD
•   Dennis Tirpak – Associate, IISD

Respondents
•   Branca Bastos Americano, Technical Advisor,  Ministry of Science and Technology, Brazil
•   Eric Thu, Professional Staff Member, United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works
•   Fernado Tudela, Vice Minister for Planning and Environmental Policy and Principal Negotiator on Climate Change Issues in Mexico
•   Kim Chan-woo, Director General , Ministry of Environment, South Korea
•   Micheal Martin , Chief Negotiator and Ambassador for Climate Change, Canada
•   Yang Hongwei, Director, CDM Project Management Center, China