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.

It’s Time to Rethink Kyoto Protocol.

Newsday - Long Island, N.Y.
Author: Oran R. Young.
Date: Aug 1, 2001
Start Page: A.31
Section: VIEWPOINTS
Text Word Count: 672

Abstract (Document Summary)

Needed as well is a much-improved steering system. Because emissions of greenhouse gases come from many sources, we need a sophisticated and credible system for tracking not only aggregate concentrations of these gases in the atmosphere but also trends in emissions from a variety of sources. Linked to this is the need for flexible procedures for adjusting the rules regarding climate change that do not require protracted ratification procedures. Here, too, there is much to learn from the experience of addressing the problem of ozone depletion.

Nonetheless, the effort to address the problem of climate change at the international level has run into a brick wall.

Upbeat stories coming out of Bonn recently cannot hide the impasse over the Kyoto Protocol.

The United States, the source of almost 25 percent of worldwide carbon emissions, flatly refuses to accept the Kyoto rules.

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

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

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

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

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

      Scottish parliament agrees tougher 42% target to cut emissions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

——————-

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

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

MSPs voted in favour of legislation that commits Scotland to:

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

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

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

—————
To the Editor:

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

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

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

•

To the Editor:

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

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

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

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

•

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

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

Doors open 20 minutes before the presentation starts.

Aylin McNamara

Zoological Society of London
Regent’s Park
London NW1 4RY
tel: +44 (0)20 7449 6287  fax: +44 (0)20  7722 2852
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Self-selection process for private sector observers to the Climate Investment Funds
from Barbara Black to Climate

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

María Mendiluce
Energy Manager, Energy & Climate

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

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

Algae Farm Aims to Turn Carbon Dioxide Into Fuel.

By MATTHEW L. WALD
The New York Times, June 28, 2009

Algenol Biofuels
Algenol grows algae in troughs filled with saltwater that becomes saturated with carbon dioxide.

Dow Chemical and Algenol Biofuels, a start-up company, are set to announce Monday that they will build a demonstration plant that, if successful, would use algae to turn carbon dioxide into ethanol as a vehicle fuel or an ingredient in plastics.

Because algae does not require any farmland or much space, many energy companies are trying to use it to make commercial quantities of hydrocarbons for fuel and chemicals. But harvesting the hydrocarbons has proved difficult so far.
The ethanol would be sold as fuel, the companies said, but Dow’s long-term interest is in using it as an ingredient for plastics, replacing natural gas. The process also produces oxygen, which could be used to burn coal in a power plant cleanly, said Paul Woods, chief executive of Algenol, which is based in Bonita Springs, Fla. The exhaust from such a plant would be mostly carbon dioxide, which could be reused to make more algae.

“We give them the oxygen, we get very pure carbon dioxide, and the output is very cheap ethanol,” said Mr. Woods, who said the target price was $1 a gallon.

Algenol grows algae in “bioreactors,” troughs covered with flexible plastic and filled with saltwater. The water is saturated with carbon dioxide, to encourage growth of the algae. “It looks like a long hot dog balloon,” Mr. Woods said.

Dow, a maker of specialty plastics, will provide the “balloon” material.

The algae, through photosynthesis, convert the carbon dioxide and water into ethanol, which is a hydrocarbon, oxygen and fresh water.

The company has 40 bioreactors in Florida, and as part of the demonstration project plans 3,100 of them on a 24-acre site at Dow’s Freeport, Tex., site. Among the steps still being improved is the separation of the oxygen and water from the ethanol. The Georgia Institute of Technology will work on that process, as will Membrane Technology and Research, a company in Menlo Park, Calif. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory, an Energy Department lab, will study carbon dioxide sources and their impact on the algae samples.

Algenol and its partners are planning a demonstration plant that could produce 100,000 gallons a year. The company and its partners were spending more than $50 million, said Mr. Woods, but not all of that was going into the pilot plant. The company had applied to the Energy Department for financing under the stimulus bill, but would build a pilot plant with or without a grant, he said.

With a stimulus grant, he said, the division of spending would be slightly more than 50 percent from the private sector, although the normal level was 20 percent. The project would create 300 jobs, he said, adding that Algenol and Dow were “incredibly hopeful” of getting the grant, partly because they had a combination of an innovative start-up company, a major company with extensive experience in industrial processes, a university and a national laboratory.

At Dow, Peter A. Molinaro, a spokesman, said that the ethanol was “intriguing to us as a feedstock, because the chemistry is simple.” Dow is already working on using ethanol from Brazilian sugar cane as a replacement for natural gas as an ingredient in plastics.

When Congress created a tax subsidy for ethanol, it raised the price for nonfuel users like Dow, he said. “We’re looking at options, and this is one,” he said.

————

See also:

“The Alga Dunaliella” editors - Ami Ben-Amotz, Jurgen E.W. Polle, D.V. Subba Rao, Science Publishers, Enfield (NH), Jersey, Plymouth, printed in India, 2009 - 555p. - www.scipub.net

————————–

New York Times Editorial
The House and Global Warming.

Published: June 25, 2009

American politicians, from both parties, insist that they want to combat global warming and reduce this country’s dependence on fossil fuels. Members of the House will soon have a chance to show they mean it. Voters should watch carefully to see what they do.

The American Clean Energy and Security Act would, for the first time, put a price on carbon emissions. The bill has shortcomings. But we believe that it is an important beginning to the urgent task of averting the worst damage from climate change. Approval would show that the United States is ready to lead and would pressure other countries to follow. Rejection could mean more wasted years and more damage to the planet.

The outcome depends on perhaps 30 Democrats who fear higher energy costs for businesses and consumers, and a dozen or so Republican moderates who also worry about costs and who have been pressed by their leadership not to give President Obama a victory.

We urge all to examine several recent studies showing the costs of the legislation to be minimal.

The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office projects average costs of $175 a year per American household by 2020 — vastly lower than the $3,000-plus figure bandied about by Republican leaders. We also urge them to read the scientific analysis forecasting the catastrophic costs to the planet, this country’s security and its economy if global warming is left unchecked.

The centerpiece of the legislation is a provision that aims to cut America’s production of greenhouse gases by 17 percent by 2020 and 83 percent by midcentury — the minimum reductions scientists say are necessary to avert the worst consequences of climate change.

Its mechanism for doing so is a cap-and-trade system that would place a steadily declining ceiling on emissions while allowing emitters to trade permits, or allowances, to give them flexibility in meeting their targets. The point is to raise the cost of older, dirtier fuels while steering investments to cleaner ones.

The two seasoned politicians behind this bill — Henry Waxman of California and Ed Markey of Massachusetts — have also insisted on provisions that would mandate more efficient buildings, require cleaner energy sources like wind power and provide subsidies for new technologies. They have tried hard to shield poor consumers from higher energy costs. The C.B.O. estimates that, with rebates, the bottom 20 percent would actually come out ahead.

They have bent over backwards — too far backwards, according to some critics — to ease the cost of compliance for polluters by giving them relatively inexpensive ways to satisfy their emissions quotas before they have to invest heavily in cleaner energy sources and new technologies.

The C.B.O. (Congressional Budget Office) did not factor in the potential cost savings to consumers from other parts of the bill — the energy efficiency provisions, for instance. Nor was it asked to quantify the costs of doing nothing.

But we know the answer to that. By any measure — drought, famine, coastal devastation — the costs of inaction, of clinging to a broken energy policy, will dwarf the costs of acting now. It is this truth that the House must keep firmly in mind as it votes.

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

by Jess Smee
24 June 2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hat in Hand

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

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

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

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

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

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

Links:    Original article at www.spiegel.de

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…

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.

The Tennessean, May 1, 2009
Global warming strongly divides Christian clergy

By Bob Smietana

When the Rev. James Merritt wants to talk about the environment, he does what any good Baptist preacher would do. He picks up the Bible.

“The first assignment that God gave to Adam was to take care of the Garden,” said Merritt, who was president of the Nashville-based Southern Baptist Convention from 2000-02. “As far as I know, that job has never been revoked.”

While most Christian ministers agree that human beings are to care for creation, they disagree on the details. That’s especially true about the topic of global warming.

A new survey from Southern Baptist-owned LifeWay Research found a split between mainline ministers, like Episcopalians and Methodists, and evangelicals like Southern Baptists. Mainline ministers believe that climate change is manmade and want to take action. Evangelical ministers, on the other hand, remain skeptical.

For full story, visit:

 http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modul…

The National Museum of the American Indian presents a public symposium on Saturday,

June 27, 2009 from 2:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.

Mother Earth: Confronting the Challenge of Climate Change

Please join us after the symposium for an Indian Summer Showcase Concert featuring Andes Manta performing traditional music from the Andean Highlands at 5:00 p.m. at the Museum’s Welcome Plaza.

These events are free and open to the public.

Symposium information:
Native peoples are responding to the urgent challenge of climate change in creative ways, calling on traditional knowledge and adapting new technologies to craft solutions to this planetary crisis. Join us at this important symposium for engaging presentations and lively discussion about innovative indigenous strategies, from the Arctic to Amazonia. Speakers include Patricia Cochran (Inupiat), chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council; Robert Gough of the Intertribal Council on Utility Policy (Intertribal COUP); Miguel Pinedo-Vasquez (Ribereño/Caboclo), director of international programs, Center for Environmental Research and Conservation (CERC), Columbia University; and Deborah Tewa (Hopi), renewable energy specialist and educator. Moderated by José Barreiro (Taino), assistant director for research, National Museum of the American Indian.

Please help spread the word.
Mother Earth: Confronting the Challenge of Climate Change
Saturday, June 27, 2009, 2:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
National Museum of the American Indian
Elmer and Mary Louise Rasmuson Theater
4th Street and Independence Avenue, SW
Washington, DC

Metro: L’Enfant Plaza, Maryland Avenue/Smithsonian Museums exit
For further information, please contact  NMAI-SSP at si.edu

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?

————

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.

————–

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.

——————-

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).

 THE ECONOMIST, June 11, 2009 -

http://www.economist.com/world/internationl/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13825201

had an article “Secretary-general of the UN - The score at half-time - Ban Ki-moon has turned in a mixed performance so far. He needs to improve.”

This article prompted questioning on the part of Matthew Russell Lee at the Press Conference at the UN and this resulted in an interesting posting on InnerCityPress.

UN’s Ban Questioned on Record, on Sri Lanka, Half Time Pep Talk -all this as there is an ECONOMIST evaluation of the Ban Ki-moon UN at half-time of his First Term.
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis

UNITED NATIONS, June 11 — Half way into the five year term as UN Secretary General he was awarded in 2006, Ban Ki-moon on June 11 tried to defend low grades he has received for his management of the UN and not “speaking truth to power.”

At Mr. Ban’s press conference for June, his spokesperson Michele Montas pointedly did not call on Inner City Press. Only a week before she had said the UN should be able to regulate the Press, after a memo revealed her attendance at a May 8 meeting at which legal threats and “complaining to Google News” about Inner City Press was discussed. On June 11, she looked elsewhere to award the right to question.

But CNN’s longtime correspondent, characteristically classy, yielded his question to Inner City Press. {Video posted on that website} To inquire into Ban’s views on his Spokesperson’s and top officials’ seeming underlying of freedom of the press, while necessary and to later be asked, had to take a back seat to a bigger picture question. From the UN’s transcript, the question and then Ban’s annotated answer:

Inner City Press: There is an article in today’s Economist, called “Ban Ki-moon - the score at half time”. It reviews half of your first term. I want to ask you to respond to it. Under the rubric “truth to power” they give you a three out of ten, and they use the example of Sri Lanka - they say that Mr. Ban denied that the UN had leaked grim civilian casualty figures. On management they give two out of ten. There are some better grades, I acknowledge. On management, they say there is a problem with communicating with senior staff, that you have to show more leadership in drumming up peacekeepers.

I might add to that, protection of whistle-blowers and free press. I just wanted to know, do you agree with any of this critique, are there things you intend to do better in a second term? What do you make of this piece in the Economist assigning those two grades?

SG: I would regard it as the judgment of the Economist. There may be a different judgment on my performance. First of all, during the last two and a half years, I had three priorities. First of all, to catalyze a global response to critical global issues – like climate change, managing the consequences of the international economic crisis, global health and global terrorism. On climate change, you may agree with me that from almost dead - if not dead, a dormant status - this issue has risen to the level of leaders of the world. It has become a top priority issue of this world. I am going to really work hard to seal the deal in Copenhagen in December. I am working for all humanity, for the future of Planet Earth.

more on this please read at:  http://www.innercitypress.com/ban09june2…

and we hope indeed that our readers will indeed be interested to go to the referenced originals. We clearly have difficulty with the credits the UNSG avails himself on the climate change issue - just because folks that are not too familiar with the issues did indeed say some good things about areas they are less interested in.
for www.SustainabiliTank.com, the Economist’s evaluation of the UNSG involvement on Climate Change is much too high at a 8/10 grade. We would not give him personally more then a 4/10 as we think that (a) there was really no progress whatsoever and (b) whatever the advances in the public’s  perception of the problem came from the UK initiative at the UN Security Council and from the President of the UN General Assembly, Definitely not from the UNSG or from his staff at the UN Department of Public Information that to our evaluation worked basically against the dissemination of climate change information. To them - those interested in the subject are plain hot headed NGOs.

Further, as we and those in the know say, hyping up Copenhagen will not bring real results in December - as important as that meeting is indeed.

We got insensed enough to actually post a comment on the ECONOMIST’s web - as follows:

 PincasJ wrote:June 12, 2009 21:14
The 8/10 score for “The bigger picture” - “To his credit, climate change was Mr Ban’s early priority” is just wrong and too high. I had the chance to ask Mr. Ban Ki-moon questions on climate change, at the Asia Society, back in October 2006, when he was still campaigning for the job, and was not impressed that he understood the implications fully, or what was started under his predecessor Kofi Annan.

When he got the job, he brought in a new USG for Information - Mr. Akasaka to replace the Kofi Annan appointee Shashi Tharoor - and the UN Department of Public Information, under Director Fawzi, and Press Accreditation Chief Fowlie, started to remove from the whole UN system all those interested in climate change - saying these are just hot NGOs. If a journalist was asking those days about Darfur in context of climate change, that was a cause to remove the journalist as his question was deemed inappropriate - and that might have been the one journalist who indeed understood the subject - and that might be today accepted knowledge

In short, it was in 2007, the UK under their previous Prime Minister, at the time of their Presidency of the Security Council, that saved climate change as a topic in the UN of Ban - his trip to visit Korean scientists at the Antarctica or similar excesses aside.

On the “bigger picture” I would rather give Mr. Ban a 4/10 and this in part for when approached personally he still did not intervene with his staff. The World deserved and probably should get better.

PincasJ (Pincas Jawetz of www.SustainabiliTank.info)

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So, what is this all in our view:  The UN’s secretary-general - His score at half-time?

THE ECONOMIST article of June 11, 2009 - http://www.economist.com/world/internati…

and they have also a series of comments -   http://www.economist.com/world/internati…

those on top of the reaction at the UN to that article as we posted based on the Inner City Press.

We hope our readers will go to the original article and we will just concentrate at what was actually the one solid positive remark of which we are really quite unenthusiastic as we think it is just inaccurate. That is the so called “Bigger Picture” score -  that The Economist posted right after the “Truth to Power” evaluation;

The original from THE ECONOMIST:

Truth to power: 3/10 There is nothing wrong with quiet diplomacy if it gets the job done. Mr Ban’s low-profile efforts got humanitarian aid into Myanmar after the cyclone where others failed. All the same there is a sense that he ducks too easily, too often.

After a tough word with Robert Mugabe produced a tongue-lashing in return, say insiders, Mr Ban did his darnedest never to upset Zimbabwe’s despot again. Similarly he tries not to cross the Russians, who are also prone to throwing tantrums.

Mr Ban is hoping for re-election; indeed, he keeps score of the miles he travels and the hands he shakes. Partly for that reason, say UN-watchers, he tries not to offend China over the conflict in Darfur, and over efforts by the International Criminal Court to arrest Sudan’s president, an ally of China’s, on war-crimes charges. Not wanting to annoy America, Israel’s chief ally, Mr Ban also largely kept his head down over the fighting in Gaza.

After Sri Lanka’s war ended, Mr Ban denied that the UN had leaked grim civilian casualty figures (indeed, some UN officials reportedly sought to suppress the toll). That obscured his other responses—such as an appeal to aid the Tamil refugees. With Sri Lanka’s government shielded by China, India and others at the Security Council and at the UN Human Rights Commission, human-rights groups had hoped Mr Ban would speak up more for the victims.

•   The bigger picture: 8/10 To his credit, climate change was Mr Ban’s early priority. He brought together government heads and nudged their officials along when agreement seemed elusive, putting his best Secretariat brains to work on the issue. When the food crisis erupted, he quickly knocked heads together so that various bodies, including the World Bank and the World Food Programme, could co-operate and help vulnerable countries. Yet the credit crunch has again pushed the UN to the sidelines.

We clearly agree to the 3/10 assessment of “Truth to Power” but completely disagree with the 8/10 score on “The Bigger Picture” - here it should have been in all honesty just 4/10 and no more.

We made our case in previous paragraphs and in our post at THE ECONOMIST. Keeping one’s head down in order to get reelected = the hallmark of good diplomacy - is in effect dooming the UN from becoming a serious institution.

———–

We expect to meet the UNSG this coming WEdnesday when he and former US President Bill Clinton get from the US Foreign Policy Association the  Global Humanitarian Awards at the Global Philanthropy Awards Dinner.
The St. Regis, New York City
June 17, 2009 6:30 PM - 9:30 PM

Following, Paolo Scaroni, Chief Executive Officer, ENI, and Brendan Dougher, Managing Partner, New York Metro Region, PricewaterhouseCoopers will receive the Foreign Policy Association’s Corporate Social responsibility Award.

The Foreign Policy Association’s Corporate Social Responsibility Award is given to individuals and companies who are committed to good corporate citizenship in the communities they serve.

Recent recipients of the Corporate Social Responsibility Award include Paul S. Otellini, president and CEO, Intel Corporation; and David M. Cote, chairman and CEO, Honeywell International; and John J. Conroy, chairman and CEO, Baker & McKinsey.

We assume that President Clinton gets the Global Humanitarian Award for the terrific amount of work he did in his post-Presidency era.

We can thus assume that UNSG Ban Ki-moon gets his Global Humanitarian Award as an encouragement for good deeds in the remainder of the time he will lead the World body.

We will report on what we learn from the aura at the FPA, the speeches given, and the important folks in the hall.