from Richard J.T. Klein <richard.klein@sei.se> date Sun, Aug 1, 2010 subject Deadline for abstracts extended to 10 August: ‘Climate Adaptation in the Nordic Countries’

Due to technical problems with the abstract submission system we have extended the deadline for submitting abstracts to Tuesday 10 August. Abstracts can be submitted online at http://nordicadaptation2010.net/

Abstracts are invited on all issues relevant to climate adaptation in the Nordic countries, including (but not limited to) the following:

- Theory and methods for adaptation research
- Scenario-based impact studies
- Vulnerability assessment and vulnerability indicators
- Adaptation as a social process (including cultural factors, values, institutions)
- Climate information, climate services
- Adaptation planning and decision tools
- Adaptation policy development
- The economics of adaptation
- Adaptation in urban regions
- Adaptation in rural areas
- Adaptation and natural resources (forests, agriculture, water, marine environment)
- Adaptation in the tourist sector
- Adaptation and human health
- Insurance, finance and adaptation
- The role of non-state actors in adaptation (civil society, private sector)
- Gender perspectives on adaptation
- Nordic adaptation within an EU and global context
- Links between adaptation and mitigation

We also welcome your suggestions for parallel sessions, especially those that bring together knowledge from multiple locations and research projects. Session proposals should include a description of the session (topic, motivation, format). Please send your session proposal, together with abstracts for each suggested presentation, by email to nordicadaptation.content@sei.se no later than 10 August. All parallel sessions will be 90 minutes long.

As communicated earlier, the international conference ”Climate Adaptation in the Nordic Countries: Science, Practice, Policy’ will take place in Stockholm on 8–10 November 2010. Please note that we are unable to provide financial support to participants. Any requests to this effect will be ignored.

Should you have any further questions, do not hesitate to contact us at nordicadaptation.content@sei.se.

Richard Klein

—
Professor Richard J.T. Klein
Stockholm Environment Institute
Kräftriket 2B
10691 Stockholm, Sweden
http://web.me.com/rjtklein/

 http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/PressRelea…

Not Enough Hours in the Day for Endangered Apes.

A study on the effects of global warming on African ape survival suggests that a warming climate may cause apes to run ‘out of time’.

The research, published today in Journal of Biogeography, reveals that rising temperatures and changes in rainfall patterns have strong effects on ape behaviour, distribution and survival, pushing them even further to the brink of extinction.

The researchers, from Roehampton University, Bournemouth University and the University of Oxford used data from 20 natural populations to model the effects of climate change on ape behaviour and distribution. The results suggest that rising temperatures and shifts in rainfall patterns alone may cause chimpanzees to lose up to 50% and gorillas up to 75% of their remaining habitats.

This loss of habitat, according to the researchers, is caused by the fact that apes run out of time, as with increasing environmental temperatures apes will have to spend more time resting to avoid over-heating, making some habitats uninhabitable.

The study further suggests that chimpanzees will also experience a shift in diet from containing predominantly fruits to leaves.

Lead author Julia Lehmann, from Life Sciences at Roehampton University, said: ‘In reality, the effects of climate change on African apes may be much worse, as our model does not take into account possible anthropogenic effects, such as habitat destruction by humans and the hunting of apes for bushmeat.’

‘Our results highlight that solving the direct local threats, such as hunting and habitat loss due to human activities, may not be sufficient to prevent the extinction of African apes.

Ensuring safe havens in optimal habitat must be a critical component of any conservation strategy, lest all current conservation efforts prove to be in vain.’

This research carried out by staff and students from the Centre of Research and Evolutionary Anthropology (CREA) at Roehampton features regularly in the popular and scientific media. CREA was founded in 2002 in recognition of the strengths in evolutionary aspects of biological anthropology at Roehampton.

——————————

“COMMON WEALTH:  Economics for a Crowded Planet.”

by Prof. Jeffrey D. Sachs

A New York Times Bestseller

Penguin Books, 2008

ISBN 978-1-59420-127-1  (hc.)

ISBN 978-0-14-311487-1 (pbk.)

386 p.

==============================================

The obligatory textbook for any would-be policy maker in the Twenty-first Century.

Don’t elect any one to Congress unless he testifies that he has read this book.

==============================================

We have a crowded planet and there are common challenges – it does not matter where you live.
We all get nourished from a source of common wealth that we must learn to honor as Environmental Sustainability.

We tried to draw a system in our own “Promptbook on Sustainable Development For The World Summit in Johannesburg August 2002,” but Professor Sachs did a much better job then I was able to do and I tip my hat before him.

Professor Sachs, with his knowledge, and with the tremendous resources of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, clearly achieved a much larger scope then we could have attempted – his book is full of data and still readable – even by policy makers that are not economists.

“Lucid, quietly urgent, and relentlessly logical . . . this is Big think with capital B.” says the New York Times Book Reviewer quote on front cover – and he is right.

——————————————————————————-

Let us start from the realization that the 20th Century saw the end of European dominance of global politics and economics and the 21st Century will witness the decline and end of American dominance.

The world is passing to new powers – China, India and Brazil.

Our own estimate is that Europe could have held on for a little longer had the European Union succeeded in creating a real Union – but in the form of the present cloud of competing States it is finished. The US, had it presented a united leadership, it could also have competed for a while longer, but as we heard today, from Senator Kerry on the Fareed Zakaria show, with the ongoing obstructionism in US Senate, we just watch how China has moved from 5% of the global production of solar panels – just two years ago, to the global production in 2010 of 60% of those panels, and this week’s announcement that the US Senate is incapable of gathering 60 votes for a Climate & Energy Bill this year – and hearing just one day after that the Chinese say that they are going to cap carbon emissions – this means that “WE WILL BE RIPPED OUT OF THE MARKET PLACE – WE ARE CUTTING OUR OWN THROAT HERE,” concluded Senator Kerry.

And why does this happen? The established economies grow fat and complacent – the world turns to new ideas from large and hungry Nations that are ready to learn fast and innovate and grow. They push the old mush to the sideways. Can the obfuscating politicians understand this?


——————————————————————————

The mush starts from the refusal to recognize that resources are scarce, there are environmental stresses, and there will be large areas that become eventually uninhabitable leading again to great mass migration, clashes of civilization, warfare and mayhem. The above will be reinforced by the human created climate change, that gets super imposed on the power change to new Mega-Nations of more then a billion people each, and we must note that the world population has risen by 4 billion people in the span of just 60 years since 1950 – the Korea War – that came after what was thought to be the start of a post WWII peace.

For the world to save itself we must recognize the Anthropocene, when human activity became the dominant driver of the natural environment, and look for Global Solutions to Climate Change and Water Needs – to start a new strategy of Economic Development, end poverty traps, and create economic security in this changing Globalized World.

Our leaders must rethink Foreign Policy in the light of Global Goals which Prof. Sachs ends up as defining as “The Power of One.”

He points out that we are not only the subjects of history, carried along by blind forces, but agents of history.

Further, we have to gird ourselves against the unholy trinity of reactionary rhetoric identified by the great development economist Albert Hirschman. He noted that every new idea for constructive change is met with three attacks.

The first is futility: the course of reform cannot work because the problem is unsolvable.

The second is perversity: any attempt at solution will actually make matters worse.

The third is jeopardy: attempting to solve the problem will take attention and resources away from something even more important.

This negativism is a state of mind, not a view based on facts.

Relentless acceptance of the status quo is not acceptable in the face of the challenges we confront.

Hugo Chaves, with rampant inflation in his country and a tanking economy, threatened that if Colombia pursues his friends of the FARC, he will stop exports of oil to the US.

So what? Did he think it over what he said? He exports 44% of Venezuela’s oil to the US which gets just 6% of its imports from Venezuela – this at a time there is plenty of oil in the world market and there will be ample competition to sell to the US.

15% of Venezuela GDP comes from the sales to the US that make up for 25% of its foreign currency in-flow that amounts to $80 million/day. Nothing to sneeze at!

So, will Venezuela tie itself for the long haul to China – the far away market – rather then ponder to the US – the next door buyer?

If he wants to do that – call his bluff now and let him dry on his own words. He just is no armed Ahmedi-nejad less he forgot that – and there is no chance he ever can become one!

1500 FARC rebels are in Venezuela.

——————

Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
(Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – FARC).

Established in 1964 as the military wing of the Colombian Communist Party, the FARC is Colombia’s oldest, largest, most capable, and best-equipped Marxist insurgency. The FARC was governed by a secretariat, led by septuagenarian Manuel Marulanda (a.k.a. “Tirofijo”) and six others, including senior military commander Jorge Briceno (a.k.a. “Mono Jojoy”). In March 2006, Alberto Gonzales, the Attorney General of the United States, announced in conjunction with Drug Enforcement Administration and United States Department of Justice officials that the US State Department had placed a $5 million dollar reward on Tirofijo’s head, or for information leading to his capture.^[3] But ‘Marulanda’ was never apprehended, and died of a heart attack on March 26, 2008. He was replaced as commander-in-chief by ‘Alfonso Cano‘.

Cano, now chief of FARC said in a video posted this week on an affiliated website. “We are still dedicated to looking for political exits. We hope that the government will reflect, that it won’t deceive the country anymore.”

Cano’s message is his first public reaction to the election of Santos, who as defense minister under President Alvaro UribeRaul Reyes delivered some of the biggest blows against the FARC, including a 2008 air strike in Ecuador that killed Raul Reyes, the guerillas’ No.2 leader.

The FARC is organized along military lines and includes several urban fronts.

In February 2002, the group’s slow-moving peace negotiation process with President Andres Pastrana’s administration was terminated by Bogota following the FARC’s plane hijacking and kidnapping of a Colombian Senator from the aircraft. On 7 August 2002, the FARC launched a large-scale mortar attack on the Presidential Palace where President Alvaro Uribe was being inaugurated. High-level foreign delegations—including the United States—attending the inauguration were not injured, but 21 residents of a poor neighborhood nearby were killed by stray rounds in the attack. President Uribe never forgot this and will pursue them to the last day of his Presidency that ends in 2010. What if he indeed bombs the FARC that hide across the border in Venezuela?

If Chaves reacts as he says – that will be great for alternative energy as well – even with the Republicans howling in US Congress. Will they stand up for Hugo Chaves.

Go Uribe!   Go Chaves!   GREENS are with both of you!

“Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Wednesday that the country’s economy would expand by 7% this year. ‘We project an economic growth of no less than 7% in 2010 and we intend to create 2.5 million jobs,’ the President said. According to him, such a high growth expectation is possible due to the growing domestic market, the country’s solid banks and the government’s anti-cyclic policies. The President reaffirmed the need for reforms of the international financial institutions in order to prevent another financial crisis. ‘It is necessary to end lenient standards and repress the financial speculation in the international commodities market,’ the President said.”
 The Banking & Capital Markets Committee of the Brazil-American Chamber of Commerce invites you to attend a panel discussion on:

Hosted By:

919 Third Avenue (at 55th Street), 35th Floor
New York City
Program Moderator:
Paulo Vieira da Cunha, Chairman, Banking & Capital Markets Committee, Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce, Inc. and Partner & Head of Research – Emerging Markets, Tandem Global Markets Fund.

Speakers:
• Chris Garman, Managing and Practice Head, Latin America, Eurasia Group
• Marcel Kasumovich, Founder and Partner, Woodbine Capital
• Marcelo Salomon, Director and Brazil Chief Economist, Barclays Capital
• Paulo Sotero, Director, Brazil Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center

———————————————————————————————————————————

Also an Afternoon Presentation the following day by Eduardo Giannetti da Fonseca, Ph.D., Economic Advisor to Ms. Marina da Silva’s (Green Party) Presidential Campaign.
	Special Events at the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce.
Event Time:	4:00 PM – 6:00 PM
Event Date:	Thursday, July 22, 2010
Location:	Crowell & Moring LLP    (map) 590 Madison Avenue, 22nd Floor New York City
—————————————————————————————————————————————————— ================================================ So what did we learn from the presentations? We will not regard the presentations as separate – but rather as a pair of partially opposites – but not really. Nevertheless, we endeavor to say that we learned a lot about what might trip Brazil, if though nobody was brave enough to present it this way. In fact, the best update to THE NEW BRAZIL we found in a special insert to The Financial Times of June 29, 2010 – something that also normal people can understand – not just Wall Street undertakers.   FT special report at http://www.ft.com/newbrazil is also a mixed bag with various interests pushing forward from their own angles but we will pick as starter for our report the one by Martin Wolf who says that Brazil may have achieved stability, but its economy lacks the dynamism of the other BRICS and then says that it is indeed an IC world – this for India and China not the BRICS. ——– The New Brazil Why Brazil must try harder. By Martin Wolf Published: June 28 2010. Brazil is the country of the future – and always will be. So goes an old joke. But is it a joke on the world at last? Has Brazil – anointed by Goldman Sachs as the B in Brics – at last become a country of the present? The answer is yes, but only up to a point. Brazil is still a long way from matching the performance of India and China. It can, and should, do far better. From the among the other 11 articles of The Special Report, the FT EDITOR’S CHOICE are: South America’s giant comes of age – Jun-28 Who will lead Brazil? – Jun-28 The power set: five influential Brazilians – Jun-28 Brazil’s challenge: fuel for a nation – Jun-28 A nation’s destiny – Jun-28 Brazil’s great achievements of the past decade and a half are those of stability – political and economic. Under the presidencies of Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995-2003) and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-), it has achieved stable democratic rule. The era of military rule, which ended in 1985, seems distant; so, too, do the days of inflation, which peaked at an annual rate of 2,950 per cent in 1990. Under the “real plan” launched by Cardoso in 1994, inflation was at last tamed. After lowering inflation via a quasi-fixed exchange rate, a currency crisis in 1999 drove Brazil to adopt a floating exchange rate. Since then, the central bank has reduced the interest rate from 45 per cent to a low of 8.75 per cent in 2009. Buttressing this stability has been the accumulation of foreign currency reserves, which reached $235bn by February 2010, up from $33bn in January 1999. Yet stability is not dynamism. Growth averaged only 2.9 per cent a year between 1995 and 2009. While the contraction in 2009 was modest, at a mere 0.2 per cent of GDP, the International Monetary Fund forecasts growth from 2010-13 at an average of 4.5 per cent, far below rates in China and India. At least as important a failing is Brazil’s inequality of income. According to the World Bank, its distribution of income is among the most unequal in the world. Even if growth were to accelerate, most of the benefits are likely to go to the richest part of the population. In 1980, China’s GDP per head (at purchasing power parity) was just 7 per cent of Brazil’s, while India’s was 11 per cent. By 1995, these ratios had reached 23 per cent and 17 per cent, respectively. By 2009, they had reached 63 per cent and 28 per cent. Between 1995 and 2009, the increase in Brazilian GDP per head was only 22 per cent, against 100 per cent for India and 226 per cent for China. As a result, Brazil’s share of world output, at purchasing power parity, declined from 3.1 per cent in 1995 to 2.9 per cent in 2009. Over the same period, China’s jumped from 5.7 per cent to 12.5 per cent and India’s from 3.2 per cent to 5.1 per cent. This, then, is the rise of the “ICs”, not the Brics. {But} Brazil is a paradigmatic example of countries that have fallen into what economists call the “middle-income trap”. Can it do better in future? If the answer is to be yes, Brazil must overcome huge structural disadvantages. Most important is its extremely low level of savings. In 2008, according to the World Bank, its gross savings were a mere 17 per cent of GDP, against India’s 38 per cent and China’s incredible 54 per cent. Unless this is raised to at least 30 per cent of GDP, the chances of sustained and fast growth in living standards are low. Moreover, only 45 per cent of Brazil’s merchandise exports were manufactured goods in 2008, against 63 per cent for India and 93 per cent for China: industrialisation through trade will be hard to achieve. Brazil has also suffered a massive appreciation of the real exchange rate, estimated by JP Morgan at 156 per cent between October 2002 and April 2010. In addition, the ratio of trade to GDP was 28 per cent in 2008, against India’s 51 per cent and China’s 65 per cent. The appreciation of the real exchange rate makes a rise in the economy’s openness to trade unlikely. The challenge then is clear and daunting: to move from today’s stability to tomorrow’s growth. With a population of 192m in 2008, Brazil cannot become as big a player in the world as the two Asian giants, but it could still achieve something far more important than power and influence in the world – a prosperous society at home. Much still has to change if that dream is to become reality. —————————- As it is obvious that our website is very much in Brazil’s corner, as I had personal many past involvement in Brazil since the 70s,  and I saw that Brazil is capable of innovation and progress, it hurt me that in the two New York events it seemed that much more attention was paid to what is good for Wall Street then on what is actually better for the Brazilians. ————————– The above was about the economy – and how is it with the politics going into the October 3, 2010, Presidential elections? Who will lead Brazil? By Jonathan Wheatley Published: June 28 2010. Charismatic leader: Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, president of Brazil, visits a building project of the government’s accelerated growth programme in Rio de Janeiro If any one figure personifies the New Brazil, it is surely Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, President since January 1 2003 – and whose Presidency will end December 31, 2010. His childhood journey from rural poverty in Brazil’s hard-scrabble north-east to the industrial rust belt around São Paulo is one that millions of his compatriots have made themselves. His ascendancy from shoeshine boy to lathe operator, from union leader to founder of one of Brazil’s biggest political parties and thence to the presidency, mirrors Brazil’s own extraordinary progress over the past decade and a half. His charisma and popularity – his support in opinion polls has hardly dipped below 70 per cent during two four-year terms – are the perfect symbol for the exuberance and confidence of Brazil’s rising consumer classes. But Lula da Silva’s time is almost up. Four months from now, in October, Brazilians must choose a new president. The FT EDITOR’S CHOICE extends now to four additional articles from that report: South America’s giant comes of age – Jun-28 The power set: five influential Brazilians – Jun-28 Brazil’s challenge: fuel for a nation – Jun-28 Why Brazil must try harder – Jun-28 A nation’s destiny – Jun-28 To some, the election makes little difference. “Sincerely, I really don’t think markets are worried,” says Rogério Schmidt of CLP, a São Paulo political think-tank. “There is a sense that whoever wins, there will be a mix of orthodox and heterodox policies.” That view is supported by the fact Brazil has enjoyed broad continuity in macroeconomic policies for the past 16 years. The inflation-busting reforms that laid the basis of today’s prosperity were introduced in 1994 by Fernando Henrique Cardoso, then finance minister and subsequently president from 1995 to 2002. When Lula da Silva was elected to succeed him, Brazil’s borrowing costs soared as investors worried that the former firebrand leftwinger would lose control of public finances and lead Brazil into default. But Lula da Silva moved quickly to calm such fears, by promising no rupture with the past and by installing trusted pro-market figures at the finance ministry and central bank (the former lost to a corruption scandal in 2006; the latter still in office today). Many observers expect similar or greater continuity when the president hands over to his successor in January. Others are less sanguine. They worry that investors take too much comfort from the ease of transition last time around and risk becoming complacent about Brazil’s future prospects. “It worries me that people think this election doesn’t matter,” says Jim O’Neill, chief economist at Goldman Sachs and one of Brazil’s most vocal champions over the past decade. “People are getting carried away.” He says he has no view on who would make the best presidential successor, as long as that person ensures current macro policies stay in place. Contender for the presidency: José Serra The frontrunners in opinion polls are José Serra and Dilma Rousseff. He was governor of São Paulo state (Brazil’s biggest) and she was Lula da Silva’s chief minister until both stood down in April to qualify as candidates.It is often supposed that Serra is the more market-friendly candidate while Rousseff is more inclined to enlarge the role of the public sector in the economy to the detriment of the private sector. Serra was a highly successful health minister under Cardoso who has earned a reputation for managerial efficiency and fiscal austerity, not least as governor of São Paulo. If, as his centrist opposition party, the PSDB, has argued, what Brazil needs most is a dose of good management, he could be the man for the job. But Rousseff is also billed as a master of management, although with the emphasis on central planning rather than a minimal state. Lula da Silva calls her “the mother of the PAC [the government’s flagship growth acceleration programme]” and she is closely associated with what Brazilians call “developmentalism” – a drive for growth and income distribution above all else that pays less attention to the need for fiscal reform and an overhaul of Brazil’s tax system and labour laws. This suggests a broad distinction: Serra more orthodox, Rousseff more populist. Yet this classification does not hold up to much scrutiny. The bastion of orthodoxy in the Lula government has been the central bank, led by Henrique Meirelles, a former head of Bank Boston and a former member of Serra’s PSDB. Although the bank is not independent by law, it has been given operational independence, adjusting interest rates in pursuit of the government’s annual inflation targets, often in the face of fierce criticism from all sides, both inside and outside government. Serra – who was moved to health from the planning ministry under Cardoso after disagreements with the finance ministry and central bank – is among the most vocal critics of Brazil’s high interest rates. It could be argued that he would tackle the fiscal problems that have kept them high for so long. But he has a reputation as an interventionist and in recent interviews has done little to dispel a concern among many economists that he would attempt to reduce interest rates at the stroke of a pen. This, many observers fear, would not only undermine the credibility of monetary policy but also cause a mass walk-out of the central bank’s most competent directors. The impact on investor confidence could be disastrous. Candidate: Dilma Rousseff Rousseff has gone out of her way to emphasise that if she wins, the three pillars of stability – inflation targeting, a floating exchange rate and gradual reductions in public debt – will be untouched. She is also close to Meirelles and to Antonio Palocci, the Lula government’s first finance minister who, in terms of economic policy, is probably to the right of Serra.Does this mean that Rousseff is the investor’s choice after all? Perhaps, but perhaps not, for a number of reasons. One is that she is not Lula da Silva, and may lack the political clout to defend the central bank or to hold in check the statist instincts of other leaders of their leftwing party, the PT (and which some commentators say she also shares). Another is that Serra, while erratic on monetary policy, shows every sign of being far more hawkish on fiscal issues – and a dose of fiscal hawkishness would be to Brazil’s benefit as evidence mounts that the economy is overheating, partly due to the exaggerated presence of the public sector. Perhaps doubts such as these will be clarified as campaigning starts after the World Cup. But, again, perhaps not. Orthodox economic policies have been good for the Brazilian people but they have rarely gained much popularity, perhaps because of an enduring belief in the beneficial influence of the state. If the opening salvos in the pre-campaign period have been any guide, the election will come down to a dispute over who is best suited to continue the work of Lula da Silva. With the most popular president in Brazilian history making it the declared priority of his final year to get her elected as his successor, Rousseff has got to be the one to beat. ———————————- What above article is missing is the candidacy of Marina da Silva, the Candidate of the Green Party and also a friend of President Lula. The issue is that though she does not have the votes it takes to win, she does have enough votes to influence who of the two above does win. It seems safe to accept that she will b part of a government established by whoever among the two front runners does win. ——————————- Our last article on deepwater drilling for oil – http://www.sustainabilitank.info/category/latin-america/brazil/#17264 has obviously as well interest to our readers about Brazil. Oil groups view the reality of upcoming tougher US rules on drilling. How will Canada, Brazil, the UK, Norway and Australia react? What will ExxonMobil, Chevron, Total, ConocoPhillips and Shell do? Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 22nd, 2010 by Pincas Jawetz ( PJ at SustainabiliTank.com) —————————– From the two days at the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce Inc. I will start with the second say – this was the presentation by Dr. Eduardo Giannetti da Fonseca, a San Paulo based economist of high standing who is also an Economic Advisor to Ms. da Silva’s Presidential Campaign – on a Green Party line. Mr. da Fonseca is important and, we will not be surprised if Ms da Silva ends up in next government and so Mr. Gianetti da Fonseca. Marina da Silva’s childhood spent in the rain forest taught her the most valuable lesson anyone can learn: the love for the environment. She says she gets lost in any city in the world, but never in the forest. Already, when she was very young she knew she wanted to save her home, the rainforest, from the destruction by illegal loggers . 2003-08 Minister of Environment Maria Osmarina Marina da Silva Vaz de Lima. Normally known as Marina Silva, she was elected Senator in 1994. Presidential Candidate for the Green Party in 2010. (b. 1958-). She has had to fight hard to reduce deforestation in the Amazon by 75 % and because of her, today, Brazil has the strictest environmental laws in the world. She resigned her position as Minister on May 14, 2008 after losing several key battles in her fight to rein in destruction of the Amazon rainforest. Her resignation was a blow to the Lula Government. If the government had any global credibility in environmental issues, it was because of Minister Marina,” Jose Maria Cardoso da Silva, vice president of Conservation International-South America, told Reuters. She only learned how to read and write when she was 16 years old and moved to the closest town, 70 km away – to Rio Branco. In the forest she was part of rubber trees tappers and worked as a child as there was no school nearby. When she came to Rio Branco she worked all day as a maid, and studied hard at night. She graduated in history in 1985 and soon became involved as a leader in a syndicate, defending workers. She became in 1994 the youngest female senator ever to be elected. When she resigned from her position of Minister of the Environment it was said that “Brazil is losing the only voice in the government that spoke out for the environment,” Sergio Leitao, director of public policy for Greenpeace in Brazil, was quoted as saying by the Associated Press. “The minister is leaving because the pressure on her for taking the measures she took against deforestation has become unbearable.” In Brazil, and  internationally, she is a  recognized hero – small in stature but long in spirit. She has no chance to win in the elections, but is considered a potential coalition member by either of the two front runners. As we understood from Mr. Giannetti, she might be favored more by Mr. Serra for balancing purpose. Mr. Giannetti himself is not a Paul Krugman, not even a Jeffrey Sachs or Joe Stiglitz. Nevertheless, in the Brazilian context he is is advanced, and we dare to say of exactly the mind-set that put together the Financial Times insert we mentioned above. Mr. Eduardo Giannetti da Fonseca born in Belo Horizonte, in 1957, studied in Sao Paulo, received his doctorate in economics from the University of Cambridge, where he was also a professor from 1984 to 1987. From 1988 to 2001 he taught at the FEA/USP (School of Economics, Business and Accounting of the University of São Paulo). He is currently a full-time professor at IBMEC (Instituto Brasileiro de Mercado de Capitais) São Paulo. He came through as a basically enlightened conventional economist who has serious criticism of the Brazilian government. He said that huge part of the private sector relies on protection, subsidies etc. This helps the government to neutralize opposition. Business leaders will thus not speak up against the government in order not to be excluded from the ongoing system. In this respect it is clearly worse then the US State Socialism as here the lobbies fight for the share of public funding but never stop criticizing the government that feds them. Giannetti has helped shape the intellectual debate in Brazil by pointing at things as I just noted and this is what makes him important in the public discourse. His target is the Brazilian Complacency – and the effects of Growth with Imbalances. In the 90s Brazil used to be hypersensitive to global shocks – now it absorbed the shock without any major effects. Much of this is credited to the fact that it has $250 billion in foreign reserves insurance – this up from $39 billion in 2003. In 1970 it was about zero. How did it happen? This was thanks to a very dynamic export sector that led to the big turn around in current accounts. There is a positive balance also for the Public Sector – no debt. There was an increase in minimum vages and improvement of credit to the lower income masses. The continuity of government public policy and monetary stability – this for 12 years – since the second Cardozo government – created the confidence that things are under control. For Brazil, during the recent crisis – it was a clear first. While the world was in crisis – Brazil reduced interest rates whereas in the past it would have acted the other way around and devalued the currency on top. Now, Brazil has a strong currency – maybe too strong. Even though the public was buying less, there was an increase in expenditures by the public sector and an aggressive program to keep credit flowing – Brazil had a “good” crisis compared to others. Ergo – his optimism for the future of Brazil. But not so fast – he wants us to remember that it was the same during the second half of the 50′s under the Juscelino Kubitschek government’s growth of 10% consistently – but that was not sustained! They tripled the monetary base in 5 years to build Brasilia – this could not be sustained. Similarly – in the mid 70′s, when there was the oil crisis, Brazil was an island of prosperity in a sea of turbulence, but it also turned around This because the external debt that was fueled by OPEC money surplus and it ended in a 80′s-90′s collapse. He is warning of this series of failed stabilization cycles and we must learn from the errors and he proceeded to talk of the threats and the problems. He says we (Brazil) must learn from errors.  With 7.5% growth per year expectation of inflation is growing. We face now for the first time since 2007 a current account deficit. It can be managed if it is done correctly. The danger is Overheating the economy. The way the government makes money available as implicit subsidy to the public enterprise. The government does not provide consistent figures but the treasury charges a fraction on this debt. This support for business amounts to $8 billion – more then the expenditures on social problems. His criticism of the government is that the expenditures are obscure and he feels not answering democracy and transparency. That is serious criticism and any next government will have to take a long look at it. On the other hand, the true driving force of growth was consumption. It is by families – this added to private investment and government investment – but we know you cannot do it all at the same time – that causes Overheating and Increased Imports. He went so far as to say that the Brazilian Government is like a brain with two hemispheres not connected – a Fiscal Side part and a Monetary Side part. Then he moved to education. His complaint that there is no number for measuring human capital build up. His estimate is 1.8% in this area and says 5-6% of GDP are needed for the long run. This creates a distortion in ways of long term business in Brazil. 39% of GDP is mediated by the State and the investment capacity of the private sector is extremely low – there is only 2.1% that comes out of this as capital formation. OECD countries statistics covering 57 countries, puts Brazil as 54th – and this is because of the human capital deficit. From her he moved to the Business Environment and pointed out that the Underground Economy in Brazil is 1/3 of the total economy. This is another big problem. In the World Bank estimates of 1`83 countries Brazil is 129th in the complexity of its tax system causing an absurd situation of the labor market. The government rellies on PAY-ROLL TAXES and 9% of GDP comes from this. The result is that hiring in the labor open market is dangerous to businesses in litigation terms. it takes 2600 hours/year to calculate and collect taxes while similarly outside Brazil it takes 138 hours. These labor and taxation laws become prohibitive and push businesses into the underground economy. CONCLUSION – In the Short Term Prospects in Brazil are Good – In the Long Term More Difficult. ——- The elections: Marina da Silva, his candidate, only dreams. Serra – has monetaristic views of the policy. Here, if it gets difficult – interest rates are risen. He thinks the currency is already absurdly overvalued – so you really cannot increase interest rates. Dilma – here he sees as problem that she will just continue the policy as she gets at the end of the Lula Administration. Giannetti thinks the State has infrastructure problems and is afraid that Dilma will start from the belief that the State can provide the way to attract private enterprise. ——- The chair remarked that there is agreement that the tax system must be overhauled but there is no agreement on how to do it. He also mentioned that labor is ready to go along with elimination of the labor courts – how can these things be helped by change of Presidency? A. The political consensus can help in the change. All see that there is a clear need to reduce payroll taxes in order to increase hiring – but then he said education and other things are paid for from these taxes. This is thus counterproductive! You can improve things when you incorporate the informal economy. To achieve this you must mobilize support. The underground economy has no access to credit, to technology – there is need for leadership to reel this all in! —— Question on the structural problems – lack of adequate infrastructure that was answered that the Central Bank has to do changes. The sad thing is that in Brazil – Words replace Acts, and we may have reached a state that a World double-dip helps Brazil. If that is salvation – what is damnation? – Question on the potential growth rate based on May data. A. We again rely on external savings and to some extent they are welcome – but this must be done carefully. —— NOW WE HAVE REACHED THE POINT WHERE I WAS ABLE TO PLACE MY OWN QUESTION, AND THIS WILL ALSO EXPLAIN WHY I STARTED MY REPORTING WITH MR. GIANNETTI FIRST: Based on the presentations of the previous day, where to a question of mine I was told that Brazil need the income from Petroleum in order to pursue things like education, it is that the public in Brazil will not be ready to address the possibility of a blowout like it happened in the Gulf of Mexico. I was left feeling like I was the outside kid who simply said the King is naked. Clearly, we will get back to the above, but let me say that here I started my question from the idea we heard that EDUCATION IS PAID FOR FROM LABOR TAX-ROLLS and mentioned that though Mr. Giannetti also did not touch even in passing the money-making of PETROBRAS, or the Environment, nevertheless, if the money is not really used for the causes he was talking about, then could we take an honest look at the potential damages from deepwater drilling for petroleum? A. The idea is for using the oil money in a fund established outside Brazil to fund the development of Brazil.  What he is most afraid of for Brazil is that this money falls into the hands of a populist government that gets hold of Brazil – like it happened in other countries of Latin America. It could even turn Brazil to OPEC. In short – he described the well known “curse of oil.” Giannetti agred with me that the production of oil will become much more expensive in the wake f the Gulf Coast blow-out. —— To another question he answered that there is no clear analysis of the Brazilian economy by private enterprise because of the fact that most are being subsidized by government and they would not want to fall out of line because that would translate in their losing the subsidies – We have a very diligent bureaucracy that enforces its own codes of unanimous opinion-making. There are 40 million pay checks that go to 120 million people dependent on them – and that is the real governing power in Brazil he implied. To the idea of increasing savings in order to create funds for investment – he said it must be all voluntary – he dreads compulsory credit and wants voluntary credit. ============================== June 10, 2008, Mr. Jose Sergio Gabrielli, President and cEO pf Petroleo Brasiliero S.A. – Petrobras -  was the speaker at a BACC breakfast at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in New York City. His line was then: “While some of the world’s largest oil producers, including Mexico and Iran, are struggling to remain exporters, Brazil is moving in the opposite direction. (?? – he said that.) A huge underwater oil field discovered late last year has the potential to transform South America’s largest country into a sizable exporter and win it a seat at the table of the world’s oil cartel …” He was optimistic that the company could develop the oil — “We think we can develop the oil faster than we thought at the beginning,” Mr. Gabrielli said then. “We don’t think we have any insurmountable challenge on the technology side.” At the time it was an oil company CEO making his presentation before a room-full of potential Wall Street investors. We neither heard there the government of Brazil making a political case, nor any other case of national economic significance. I remembered this episode when I heard from Professor Giannetti that some in Brazil might contemplate joining OPEC. So, here I found the right reference to Petrobras – a mainly government owned company that is supported fully by the government, though it was known in the past of going against Brazil government policy. On this I make reference to the Petrobras resistance to the original Proalcol – or National fuel-ethanol program. Above, the Brazilian ethanol issue, has been swallowed up now by Petrobras which sees in it another good avenue for profits, and is in the process of turning ethanol into feed for large tanker-ships to be moved overseas. Whatever, Petrobras rules by now over Brazilian energy and by its mere size, over the Brazilian economy as well. We are sure that they do not need anymore to come to Wall Street in order to advertise their potential – it is now Wall Street that chases after Petrobras. Nevertheless, it is a bit surprising that speakers on Brazil’s economic and political future manage somehow not to mention Petrobras in their presentations. ============================== Brazil Update: Tight Race for the Presidency Mateo Samper and Valeria Cruz July 29, 2010, http://www.as-coa.org/articles/2566/Brazil_Update:_Tight_Race_for_the_Presidency/ Brazilians head to the polls on Sunday, October 3, to choose a new president who will lead the country for the next four years. The top contenders are Dilma Rousseff of the Worker’s Party (PT) and José Serra of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB). A third candidate, Marina Silva of the Green Party (PV), trails third in the polls but could be a key player in the likely scenario that neither of the frontrunners wins the requisite 50 percent of ballots in the first round. If necessary, the runoff would be scheduled for October 31. Rousseff began closing a 20 percent gap with Serra starting in December. However, for the past three months, the two have been technically tied in the polls. One recent survey shows Rousseff ahead by eight points, but another places Serra on top by just one percentage point. Marina Silva, who has been gaining ground, polls at 10 percent. The Candidates in Brief Lula’s Campaign? What’s Next? The Candidates in Brief President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva handpicked Rousseff as his successor. She worked as a member of his cabinet since the beginning of his presidency in 2002, first as minister of Energy and Mines and then as chief of staff starting in 2005. If elected, she will be Brazil’s first female president. Prior to serving in the president’s cabinet, Rousseff worked for the city of Porto Alegre’s Treasury Department and for the state of Rio Grande do Sul as state secretary of Energy. She was also active in the restructuring of the center-left Brazilian Labor Party after the end of the military dictatorship in the 1980s. Rousseff has never been elected to public office, but she now rides high on Lula’s popularity and promises to continue his policies. As she said: “President Lula left me a legacy—to take care of the Brazilian people. I am going to be a mother for all the Brazilian people.” Observers expect her to maintain market friendly economic policies paired with continued federal intervention in the economy. Internationally, she’s expected to pursue a left-leaning agenda, keeping close ties with Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and the Castro government in Cuba, as well as to work closely with emerging markets. Until March 2010, Serra was the governor of the state of São Paulo, the most industrialized state in the country, accounting for over 31 percent of the Brazilian GDP. A U.S.-trained economist with a doctorate, he has been a congressman and a senator, as well as the mayor of São Paulo (2004-2007). He also served as planning minister (1995-1996) and health minister (1998-2002) under President Fernando Henrique Cardoso. Serra disputed and lost the presidency to Lula in 2002. Considered a center-right pragmatic administrator with pro-market views, the PSDB candidate would continue Lula’s subsidy programs targeting the poor but favors less economic intervention. Serra has Regionally, Serra is stronger in the south and southeast, while Dilma is favored in the northeast, north, and midwest of the country—where Lula is also more popular. been stepping up his criticisms against the Lula administration, questioning Brazil’s alignment with countries such as Venezuela and Iran. Given the state of the economy and the popularity of the current president, Serra could have a difficult time trying to convince voters   that he represents a better alternative to Rousseff’s continuity. Green Party candidate Marina Silva is a former senator and world-renowned environmentalist. Silva, who stepped down as Lula’s environment minister in May 2008, proposes to cut taxes and social security benefits, urging a reform of the country’s costly pension system. The PV candidate also indicated that she would continue many of Lula’s policies, such as poverty reduction programs. Rather than promoting handouts, she has pledged to encourage mobility through better education and more job opportunities. Lula’s Campaign? In little over six months, Rousseff has surged in the polls, increasing the chances that the PT will remain in power. There are two explanations behind Rousseff’s rising support: the economy and Lula’s huge popularity, which is now close to 78 percent. Brazil has been steadily growing in recent years while keeping inflation low, allowing 13 million people to rise out of poverty from 1995 to 2008. In the midst of the global economic crisis, the country recorded only a mild slowdown. Its economy is expected to grow at around 7 percent this year, which could lead to the creation of thousands of new jobs. Moreover, expanded subsidy programs for low-income families, particularly in the north of the country, has made President Lula hugely popular and helped Rousseff boost her numbers as she promises to continue Lula’s policies and efforts. An Ibope poll shows that, due to Lula’s strong social policies to fight poverty with programs such as Bolsa de familia, Rousseff has an 11 percent advantage over Serra among minimum-wage earners. But Lula’s involvement in the presidential race has raised eyebrows. He has used his political influence to promote and openly campaign in favor of his chosen candidate, earning him several fines from the electoral authority. He is now under the investigation of the deputy electoral attorney general, Sandra Cureau, who is studying the possibility of an action before the Brazilian Federal Election Commission against Lula for abuse of political and economic power. In that case, President Lula would garner additional fines and face sanctions, such as the inability to pursue public posts for as many as eight years. In Brazil, presidents can endorse candidates, but what seems less clear is to what extent. PT lawyer Márcio Luiz Silva argued that the president can campaign when the event is not financed or organized by the federal government. He has also said that, as an affiliated member of the PT, Lula has the right to participate in campaign events in support of his candidate. What’s Next? Although television debates and radio commercials do not start until August 17, many of the candidates have begun debating online, as well as hosting campaign rallies. However, Rousseff said she would only participate in four of several planned presidential debates on television, prompting opponents and other analysts to posit that she is ill prepared for debates with Serra and Silva. Rousseff countered that her tight agenda limited her availability for debates and she would be open to interviews in Brasilia. In spite of the debate dispute, many analysts forecast that, barring a very poor performance in the debates or a major gaffe in what’s left of the campaign, Rousseff will emerge the victor in October. See more in: Brazil, Democracy & Elections ————————————————————-==================================——————————————— Backing now into the July 21, 2010 Seminar on Brazil’s Economic and Political Outlook presented Midyear 2010, but in clear view of the October 3, 2010 Presidential elections, we listened to the following two panels: A, The Post-Crisis Election Macro Economy: Policy Challenges and Investment Opportunities. With Marcelo Salomon, Director and Chief Brazil Economist at Barclays Capital and Marcel Kasumovich, Founding Partner at Woodbine Capital Advisors. B. The Electoral Landscape, Platforms, Likely Outcomes: Lula’s Legacy and Shadow 2012-2016. With Christopher Garman, Director and Head of the Latin America Practice Eurasia Group, and Paulo Sotero Marques, Director Brazil Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center. The welcome remarks were by host Michael J. Gilespi, Partner of Debevoise & Plimpton, LLP our hosts. and the Introductory Remarks by Paulo Vieira da Cunha, Chairman of the Banking and Capital Markets Committee of the BACC Inc. and Partner & Head of Research – Emerging Markets Tandem Global Partners. ——- From the above, we see that all except Paulo Sotero Marques are economists and as this was going on with a Wall Street audience in New York, it became quite clear from the start that this was more about what Wall Street would like to see happen in Brazil, then what is best for Brazil. The point was that if post crisis – The US, China and the EU all grow, Brazil will have to compete in this capital market. Then, if Brazil continues as now, it will have a two tier money lending market and the formal banking system will be more aggressive in order to be able to accommodate growth. – Kasumovich looked at the young population with good potential for new household formation that will lead to growth. He sees the continuation of Microbased policies to facilitate this. He evaluates the situation as being helped by the crisis in the developed world that helped Brazil to avoid superheating. It regulated the normal cyclic expansion mechanism. POORER COUNTRIES RAISE THEIR STANDARDS AND HELP FINANCE THE US – THAT IS THE TRANSITION IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY. THE CURRENCY CRISES OF THE PAST WERE I THE FINANCING OF THE US DEBT.  This does not impact the foreign investment in Brazil. The likelihood for a vicious cycle in Brazil is low. The above may change if US troubles go away. He further said that Petrobras has growth potential and is hampered by management. I cringed thinking what if Petrobras might not want to grow fast? Actually thet are Brazil Government owned and what does the government think? I promis to get back to this point. – Salomon said the missing link is the challenge of growing with savings. He wants sustainable growth. He finds an excellent monetary policy in Brazil, that eliminated inflation, but does not see the effort to answer: “Where do we get the money for investment.” Will it come from foreign savings only? Internal savings is now 14% but 10% more are needed. He asked: “Where the Wild Things Are? – Who will finance the infrastructure investments for the 2014 World Cup, The 2016 Olympics, the Pre-Salt oil extractive business?      —-   IS KEYNES REALLY DEAD – OR HE JUST MOVED TO BRAZIL, he asked.” Fiscal spending is increased by BNDES and he does not see things discussed during the present crisis as part of the election process. – Garman said there is more at stake: He sees no macroeconomic policy split between Serra and Dilma, but sector specific industrial policy differences. He specifically noted very different views on how to develop Brazil’s oil sector – with repercussion to growth he said. This will influence utilities, telecom, mining as well. He finds that the main difference between Serra and Dilma is in the industrial area. This gave me the clear feeling why the room was rather in Serra’s corner. – Sotero, as I said earlier, was different. He is a Journalist and had the longest resume of the four speakers. Paulo Sotero was the Washington correspondent for Estado de S.Paulo, the Gazeta Mercantil, for the last seventeen years. He has been also a regular commentator and analyst for the BBC radio’s Portuguese language service, Radio France Internationale, and the Brazilian Rádio Eldorado.He started He is a native of Sao Paulo, stated his career at the Veja weekly in 1968, held positions in Recife, Paris, Lisbon, Sao Paulo, and Brasilia. He is a frequent lecturer on Brazilian affairs at US universities, and think tanks. Since 2003 he has been an adjunct lecturer at Georgetown University, both in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and at the Center for Latin American Studies of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. Sotero has a BA in history from the Catholic University of Pernambuco, Brazil, and an MA in Journalism and Public Affairs from The American University in Washington, D.C. In 1987, he received the prestigious Maria Moors Cabot Award Special Citation from the Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University. He is also the recipient of the 1993 Distinguished Visiting Lecturer award from the Foreign Service Institute of the U.S. Department of State. In Brazil, he was awarded the 1978 “Prêmio Abril de Reportagem” for Veja magazine’s cover story on Paraguay and for an investigative report on the assassination of Chilean General Carlos Prats in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC and at Princeton University, September 2006, appointed Sotero , as the director its Brazil Institute. He is clearly the kind of person that could evaluate not just the US interest in Brazil, but also what the people of Brazil would want to see happen to them. Dilma is clearly more ideological, and she has Lula’s backing in a country that loves Lula because he leaves the State in much better shape then he found it. Under her, there will be a clear supervision of exchange rates as her advisors will not want to see the currency appreciate – so the make-up of the Central Bank will be at play. Serra on the other hand will rather watch expenditures. 2010 is a dream year to run on a platform of continuity and Lula’s legacy and shadow will extend to the 2012-2016 years. It is clear – there is an enormously popular president, a satisfied population, an impressive economic achievements’ record and a prommissing economic outlook. ———– At Q&A time, and having heard about the reliance on income from oil as a way to fund development projects, while the oil is indeed of deepwater drilling source, and these being the days of the US BP Gulf disaster I decided to ask if in Brazil people read the papers about what can happen with this sort of oil production? From Mr. Garman I got a clear answer that it is of no concern to the Brazilians – specially as the economy is based on this income and people want education and education needs money … In this respect please see why I started the review from the following day’s presentation by Mr. Giannetti who said that education is paid from the taxes taken from labor. So – here goes out the argument that Brazil economy is based on that oil. Further o – Mr. Sotero picked up my question also and said that 25% of all investments in Brazil will go to oil & gas – this is the BNDES (the National Bank) forecast. That would tie down Brazil in many respects. In effect, the choice is to do it slower in order to develop other sectors of the economy – that will bring gains slower. But I clearly felt that this is more sustainable. Further, in private, one of the participants told me that the water currents are such that if there is an accident – the oil will go south to Argentina and will not hurt the Brazilian beaches – Well that is nice to know. We hope the Argentinians read this also. ———– The bottom line perspective of this end of July report of Brazil going to the October 3, 2010 elections, It seems the future may hold a presidency that will try to continue the achievements of the Lula eight years and it will be led by Ms. Dilma Rousseff with the support of Ms. Marina da Silva. We hope that this Brazilian Administration will clamp down on Petrobras and hold back somewhat from the development of oil beyond what is best for the Brazilian economy. The best one can hope for is that they continue to do it by themselves, at low speed, and do not look for outside companies that might be more inclined to lead them to disaster. The government will have to supervise the Petrobras accounting and indeed get the income from this that the government needs in order to build up the consumer society to help in Brazil growth as justified by its effort to grow along China and India. The official campaigning starts August 17th and provided there is no “September surprise” above is our estimate as of today.

Andrew Breitbart – the scum of the earth – a blogger bent on destroying America’s true achievements in order to promote the worst of the Tea Party.

Critics Say White House Intimidated on Race – Leading black commentators suggest the administration was cowed by the right in its handling of the Shirley Sherrod affair.

The fountain of venom flows at http://biggovernment.com/abreitbart/2010… THE www.BigGovernment.com blog of that master operator Andrew Breitbart – Scum of the Earth – and Badge of Dishonor of the USA 2010 media. The way he falsified the clear statements of lily-white pure black woman Shirley Sherrod caused some weak minded Democrats to falter and take steps they should not have taken – this because of the power of shadows that “The worst of The Tea Party” is having over them. Could they not learn that going down fighting the revival of American fascism is much less dishonorable then giving in to them?

See, the intent of the America Extreme Right is to derail the Obama Administration like they did to the Clinton Administration, in hope that the weak-minded will vote for return to prehistory. We think that what the country needs is a President that concentrates on issues of the EPA, the Sustainable Economy of the Future, Displacement of dependence on oil and coal. and pure patriotism that is based on pursuing the real interests of the US in the world rather then the contrived chase for oil.

To be able to do those things Washington must make sure that the civil war and the fight for civil rights are behind us, and that the US has a unified country that stands behind an acceptable honest difference in Congress between economic interests – not the contrived deviations engineered by the Fox and individuals like Breitbart. If the media does not go after the real dishonest opinion mongers, the whole media system is lacking. These days it is the whole US conventional media that is lacking because of the attention they lobe only on Vilsack and forget to point out that he was simply a weakling manipulated by Breitbart. If someone should be put on the cross that is Breitbart, if someone should be fired – that is Vilsack.

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Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times.

There’s a Battle Outside and It Is Still Ragin’

By FRANK RICH

Published: July 24, 2010
www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/opinion/25rich.html

This is just one arresting moment — no others will be mentioned here — in the first episode of the new “Mad Men” season premiering tonight. Like much in this landmark television series, the scene haunts you in part because of what people don’t say and can’t say. “Mad Men” is about placid postwar America before it went smash. We know from the young woman’s reference to Goodman — one of the three civil rights activists murdered in Philadelphia, Miss., in June 1964 — that the crackup is on its way. But the characters can’t imagine the full brunt of what’s to come, and so a viewer in 2010 is left to contemplate how none of us, then or now, can see around the corner and know what history will bring.

This country was rightly elated when it elected its first African-American president more than 20 months ago. That high was destined to abate, but we reached a new low last week. What does it say about America now, and where it is heading, that a racial provocateur, wielding a deceptively edited video, could not only smear an innocent woman but make every national institution that touched the story look bad? The White House, the N.A.A.C.P. and the news media were all soiled by this episode. Meanwhile, the majority of Americans, who believe in fundamental fairness for all, grapple with the poisonous residue left behind by the many powerful people of all stripes who served as accessories to a high-tech lynching.

Even though the egregiously misleading excerpt from Shirley Sherrod’s 43-minute speech came from Andrew Breitbart, the dirty trickster notorious for hustling skewed partisan videos on Fox News, few questioned its validity. That the speech had been given at an N.A.A.C.P. event, with N.A.A.C.P. officials as witnesses, did not prevent even the N.A.A.C.P. from immediately condemning Sherrod for “shameful” actions. As the world knows now, her talk (flogged by Fox as “what racism looks like”) was an uplifting parable about how she had risen above her own trials in the Jim Crow South to aid poor people of every race during her long career in rural development.

The smear might well have stuck if the white octogenarian farmer saved by Sherrod 24 years ago was no longer alive and if he didn’t look like a Norman Rockwell archetype. Only his and his wife’s testimony to her good deeds on CNN could halt the lynching party. Tom Vilsack, the secretary of agriculture who fired Sherrod without questioning the video’s patently spurious provenance, was far slower to reverse himself than the N.A.A.C.P. Good for him that he seemed genuinely chagrined once he did apologize. But an executive so easily bullied by Fox News has no more business running a government department than Ken Salazar, the secretary of interior who let oil companies run wild on deepwater drilling until disaster struck. That the White House sat back while Vilsack capitulated to a mob is a disgraceful commentary on both its guts and competence. This wasn’t a failure of due diligence — there was no diligence.

Even now, I wonder if many of those who have since backtracked from the Sherrod smear — including some in the news business who reported on the video without vetting it — have watched her entire speech. What’s important is not the exculpatory evidence that clears her of a trumped-up crime. What matters is Sherrod’s own story.

She was making the speech in Georgia, her home state, on March 27, the 45th anniversary of her father’s funeral. He had been murdered when she was 17, leaving behind five children and a wife who was pregnant with a sixth. Sherrod had grown up in Baker County, a jurisdiction ruled by a notorious racist sheriff, L. Warren Johnson, who was nicknamed “Gator” for a reason. Black men were routinely murdered there but the guilty were never brought to justice. As Sherrod recounted, not even three witnesses to her father’s murder could persuade the grand jury to indict the white suspect.

Sherrod had long thought she’d flee the South, but had an epiphany on the night of her father’s death. “I couldn’t just let his death go without doing something in answer to what happened,” she said. So she made the commitment to stay and devote her life to “working for change.” She later married Charles Sherrod, a minister and co-founder of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, whose heroic efforts to advance desegregation, including his imprisonment, PBS.org.” href=”http://www.pbs.org/thisfarbyfaith/witnesses/charles_sherrod.html”>can be found in any standard history of the civil rights movement.

None of this legacy, much of it accessible to anyone who wanted to look (or ask), prevented the tarring of Shirley Sherrod last week. And it all unfolded while the country was ostentatiously marking the 50th anniversary of “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

If we are to learn anything from this travesty, it might help to retrace the racial soap opera that immediately preceded and provoked it. That story began on July 13, when the N.A.A.C.P. passed a resolution calling on the Tea Party to expel “racist elements” in its ranks. No sooner had Tea Party adherents and defenders angrily denied that such elements amounted to anything more than a few fringe nuts than Mark Williams, the spokesman and past chairman of the Tea Party Express, piped up. He slapped a “parody” on the Web — a letter from “colored people” to Abraham Lincoln berating him as “the greatest racist ever” and complaining about “that whole emancipation thing” because “freedom means having to work for real.”

Williams had hurled similar slurs for months, but now that the N.A.A.C.P. had cast a spotlight on the Tea Party’s racist elements, he was belatedly excommunicated by the leader of another Tea Party organization. In truth, it’s not clear that any group in this scattered movement has authority over any other. But one thing was certain: the N.A.A.C.P. was wrong to demand that the Tea Party disown its racist fringe. It should have made that demand of the G.O.P. instead.

The Tea Party Express fronted by Williams is an indisputable Republican subsidiary. It was created by prominent G.O.P. political consultants in California and raises money for G.O.P. candidates, including Sharron Angle, Harry Reid’s Senate opponent in Nevada. But Republican leaders, presiding over a Congressional delegation with no blacks and a party that nearly mirrors it, remain in hiding whenever racial controversies break out under their tent. “I am not interested in getting into that debate,” said Mitch McConnell last week.

Once Williams was disowned by other Tea Partiers, Breitbart posted the bogus Sherrod video as revenge under the headline “Video Proof: The NAACP Awards Racism.” To portray whites as the victims of racist blacks has been a weapon of the right from the moment desegregation started to empower previously subjugated minorities in the 1960s. But its deployment has accelerated with the ascent of a black president. The pace is set by right-wing stars like Glenn Beck, who on Fox branded Barack Obama a racist with “a deep-seated hatred for white people,” and the ever-opportunistic Newt Gingrich, who on Twitter maligned Sonia Sotomayor as a “Latina woman racist.”

Even the civil rights hero John Lewis has been slimed by these vigilantes. Lewis was nearly beaten to death by state troopers bearing nightsticks and whips in Selma, Ala., just three weeks before Sherrod’s father was murdered 200 miles away in 1965. This year, as a member of Congress, he was pelted with racial epithets while walking past protesters on the Capitol grounds during the final weekend of the health care debate. Breitbart charged Lewis with lying — never mind that the melee had hundreds of eyewitnesses — and Salon.com about Breitbart’s video challenge of Lewis’s story.” href=”http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/joan_walsh/politics/2010/04/13/andrew_breitbart_misleading_video”>tried to prove it with a video so manifestly bogus that even Fox didn’t push it. But he wasn’t deterred then, and he and others like him won’t be deterred by the Sherrod saga’s “happy ending” as long as the McConnells of the conservative establishment look the other way and Fox pumps racial rage into the media bloodstream 24/7.

“You think we have come a long way in terms of race relations in this country, but we keep going backwards,” Sherrod told Joe Strupp of Media Matters last week. She speaks with hard-won authority. While America’s progress on race has been epic since the days when Sherrod’s father could be murdered with impunity, we have been going backward since Election Day 2008.

We don’t know what history will bring next. But we might at least address the chilling question prompted in “Mad Men” by the horrific events of 46 summers ago — “Is that what it takes to change things?” — before our own summer comes to a boil again.

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Open letter from Dr. James Hansen, published in Aftenposten, May 19, 2010

Dear Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg

As you know, I am fond of Norway, and have great respect for your country and its citizens, as well as for your personal ambitions to protect global climate. Your recent rainforest initiative is a splendid example of leadership the world desperately needs. And your commitment at the Copenhagen climate talks to reduce Norway’s emissions 40 per cent by 2020 was exemplary.

However, and especially in light of that, I am disappointed to learn that Statoil, Norway’s state-owned oil company, has taken such backward strides through its strategic decision to invest in Canada’s destructive tar sands industry. As the most energy-intensive source of oil, this project represents the worst of what humans are doing to the planet in a quest to prolong our global addiction to fossil fuels.

It is still feasible to stabilize the climate, but only if we leave the tar sands in the ground. The massive greenhouse gas amounts from the tar sands surely would cause the climate system to pass tipping points, while also trampling on the human rights of Canada’s First Nation communities and greatly damaging the Canadian boreal forest.

Prime Minister Stoltenberg, the world has reached a critical juncture in the climate debate. We can either move into the production of the most damaging fossil fuel, or we can begin to address our destructive addiction. We desperately need leadership at this time. I am confident that you could provide that leadership. Please do not prove me wrong.

In your capacity as owner or more than two-thirds of the shares in Statoil, I urge you to end Norway’s involvement in this dangerous, dirty and destructive project. I ask that you support the resolution at Statoil’s upcoming AGM on May 19th, that Statoil show environmental leadership and pull out of the Canadian tar sands. Statoil may pride itself on being a more responsible company than others, but that will not be enough in the tar sands. If we extract and use the tar sands, there can be no sustainable future for young people.

I look forward to my visit to Norway in June. I hope that it can be a time to celebrate Norwegian leadership in responsible environmental policies

Dr. James Hansen
James E. Hansen is member of the National Academy of Sciences, an adjunct professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University and at Columbia’s Earth Institute, grandfather and winner of the Sophie Prize 2010.
James E. Hansen will visit Norway June 22 and 23 2010 to receive the Sophie Prize.

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The answer from the Government:

Dear Mr. Hansen,

Thank you very much for your e-mail to the Prime Minister, which was forwarded to the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy as the governmental body responsible for Statoil ownership issues. Let me first take this opportunity to congratulate you on being awarded the Sophie-prize for 2010. I know a lot of people are looking forward to your visit to Norway, and I hope you will enjoy your stay here.

On behalf of the Government, I am pleased to say that we hold your work on climate change in high esteem, and further, that we appreciate your engagement and your views on Norway’s efforts to find good sustainable solutions to the global climate challenges.

As you now know from the results of the Statoil Annual General Meeting, we see Statoil’s oils sands investment as a commercial decision which is within the Statoil board’s area of responsibility. We are of the opinion that such decisions should not be overturned by the AGM. It is our opinion that this is in line with good corporate governance, a view that is also shared by a vast majority in the Norwegian Parliament. I can however assure you that we will continue our offensive stance on climate change issues both at home and abroad, and we look forward to your continued engagement.

Yours faithfully
Robin Martin Kåss
Statssekretær, Olje- og Energidepartementet
Deputy Minister, Ministry of Petroleum and Energy
Postboks 8148 Dep, 0033 Oslo, Norway

Fra: Jim Hansen
Sendt: 24. mai 2010 14:08
Til: Postmottak SMK
Kopi: Jim Hansen
Emne: Climate Change and the Tar Sands Development Vedlegg: Hansen text for ad and letter in both languages.doc

Dear Prime Minister Stoltenberg,

I understand that you may have missed my open letter to you published in Aftenposten, so for your convenience I have attached it here.

My wife Anniek and I are looking forward to visiting your beautiful country in June.
With kind regards,
James E. Hansen

————–

AND THE – Message from Sophie Prize Winner.

I am grateful to Jostein Gaarder and the Sophie Foundation for the opportunity to discuss the state of Earth’s climate, the implications for people and nature, and action that is needed.

Our planet today is close to climate tipping points. Ice is melting in the Arctic, on Greenland and Antarctica, and on mountain glaciers worldwide. Many species are stressed by environmental destruction and climate change. Continuing fossil fuel emissions, if unabated, will cause sea level rise and species extinction accelerating out of humanity’s control. Increasing atmospheric water vapor is already magnifying climate extremes, increasing overall precipitation, causing greater floods and stronger storms.

Stabilizing climate requires restoring our planet’s energy balance. The physics is straightforward. The effect of increasing carbon dioxide on Earth’s energy imbalance is confirmed by precise measurements of ocean heat gain. The principal implication is defined by the geophysics, by the size of fossil fuel reservoirs. Simply put, there is a limit on how much carbon dioxide we can pour into the atmosphere. We cannot burn all fossil fuels. Specifically, we must (1) phase out coal use rapidly, (2) leave tar sands in the ground, and (3) not go after the last drops of oil.

Actions needed so that the world can move on to the clean energies of the future are possible and practical. The actions would restore clean air and water globally, assuring intergenerational equity by preserving creation – the natural world — thus also helping achieve north-south justice. But the needed actions will happen only if the public becomes forcefully involved.
Citizens can help by blocking coal plants, tar sands, and mining the last drops of fossil fuels from public and pristine lands and the deep ocean. However, fossil fuel addiction can be solved only when we recognize an economic law as certain as the law of gravity: as long as fossil fuels are the cheapest energy they will be used.

Solution therefore requires a rising fee on oil, gas and coal – a carbon fee collected from fossil fuel companies at the domestic mine or port of entry. All funds collected should be distributed to the public on a per capita basis to allow lifestyle adjustments and spur clean energy innovations. As the fee rises, fossil fuels will be phased out, replaced by carbon-free energy and efficiency.
Governments today, instead, talk of “cap-and-trade-with-offsets”, a system rigged by big banks and fossil fuel interests. Cap-and-trade invites corruption. Worse, it is ineffectual, assuring continued fossil fuel addiction to the last drop and environmental catastrophe.

We need a simple honest flat rising carbon fee across the board. It should be revenue neutral – all funds distributed to the public – “100 percent or fight”. It is the only realistic path to global action. China and India will not accept caps, but they need a carbon fee to spur clean energy and avoid fossil fuel addiction.

But our governments have no intention of solving the fossil fuel and climate problem, as is easy to prove: the United States, Canadian and Norwegian governments are going right ahead developing the tar sands, which, if it is not halted, will make it impossible to stabilize climate.

Our governments knowingly abdicate responsibility for young people and future generations. I have been disappointed in interactions with more than half a dozen nations. In the end, they offer only soothing words, “goals” for emission reductions at far off dates, while their actual deeds prevent stabilization of climate.

The Sophie Prize provides a new opportunity to draw attention to the actions that are needed to stabilize climate. Norway may be the best place, with its history of environmentalism. I can imagine Norway standing tall among nations, taking real action to address climate change, drawing attention to the hypocrisy in the words and pseudo-actions of other nations.

So I wrote a letter to the Prime Minister suggesting that the government, as the majority owner of Statoil, should intervene in planned tar sands development. I appreciate the polite response, by letter, from the Deputy Minister of Petroleum and Energy. The government position is that the tar sands investment is “a commercial decision”, that the government should not interfere, and that a “vast majority in the Norwegian parliament” agree that this constitutes “good corporate governance”. The Deputy Minister concluded his letter “I can however assure you that we will continue our offensive stance on climate change issues both at home and abroad”.

A Norwegian grandfather, upon reading the Deputy Minister’s letter, quoted Saint Augustine: “Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue.”

The Norwegian government’s position is a staggering reaffirmation of the global situation: even the greenest governments find it too inconvenient to address the implication of scientific facts. Perhaps our governments are in the hip pocket of the fossil fuel industry – but that is not for science to say.

What I can say from the science is this: the plans that governments, including Norway, are adopting spell disaster for young people and future generations. And we are running out of time.

Stabilizing climate is a moral issue, a matter of intergenerational justice. Young people, and older people who support the young and the other species on the planet, must unite in demanding an effective approach that preserves our planet.

Because the executive and legislative branches of our governments are turning a deaf ear to the science, the judicial branch may provide the best opportunity for redressing the situation. Our governments have a fiduciary responsibility to protect the rights of young people and future generations. I look forward to working with young people and their supporters in developing the legal case for young people and the planet.

To the young people I say: Stand up for your rights, for your future. Demand that the government be honest, admit and face the consequences for you from their policies.

To the old people I say: we are not too old to fight. Let us gird up our loins and prepare to fight on the side of young people for protection of the world they will inherit.

I look forward to standing with the youth of the world as they demand their proper due and fight for nature and their future.

————————

Other Recent Publications by Dr. James Hansen:

2010. Obama’s Second Chance on the Predominant Moral Issue of this Century. Op-ed on Huffington Post, Apr. 5.

2010. Only a carbon tax and nuclear power can save us. Op-ed in The Australian, Mar. 11.

|

from Eban Goodstein <nti.eban@gmail.com> date Fri, Jul 30, 2010 subject C2C Launch Conference! Building a Climate Network, Williams College 9/24

C2C/The National Climate Seminar

Amidst the wreckage of climate legislation in DC, one thing is clear. This is not the fight of a day, of a year or of a decade. Even had the Senate acted, changing the future would still have required a vibrant, engaged global citizenry, pushing every day of every year, for the next 40 years, to decarbonize the planet.

www.bard.edu/cep

**************

C2C is the e-bulletin of the public policy initiatives of the Bard Center for Environmental Policy.

What makes a good UN story? We hinted at the Kevin Rudd idea earlier but we were still waiting for further developments.

Are we seeing here rumors because of infighting in Australia on the way to their National elections August 21, 2010?

Are we on the trail of rumors intended to save the Ban Ki-moon reelection to a second term?

Are we watching an Obama approach to create a new environment to save negotiations on climate?

Kevin Rudd would be an excellent choice to extricate the UN from the hole it created in the “Seal the Deal” charade when every child could have seen that the G192 is no environment to talk about Sustainable Energy options.

Australia is no good example either – but Kevin Rudd was ready to step out of his nation’s “is” and aim for a better future.

He got punished for this and perhaps is now ready for revenge by working on a global level that will then sweep with him his own country as well.

With his experience as Australia’s Prime Minister with-vision that was cut short from bringing his own country into the group of real leaders for tomorrow, he can work with President Obama and perhaps the other four leaders that hammered out the Copenhagen platform that is not dependent on all climate mongers of the UN circuit. As a fresh figure, he could perhaps sit down with the ALBA folks and take the best ideas they have and incorporate them also in a new recipe under the SUSTAINABILITY big sky of the future.

Will the UN accept him as a new Super Czar of a combined  UNCSD and UNFCCC – or let him form a new structure so these older structures will just wilt away into oblivion slowly? Who knows? But let us follow this new world hype.

The subject having slowly boiled in the PRESS has reached also www.UNelection.org – so it is time for us to try out the waters ourselves also. This then reinforced the UNelections interest in the issue as per added -
http://unelections.org/?q=node/2056

=================================================
 http://unelections.org/?q=node/2052

 http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/special…

Click here to read “Kevin Rudd could be offered UN role before end of election campaign” – Herald Sun, July 29, 2010

Kevin Rudd talks with UN secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon / AP Source: AP

KEVIN Rudd’s new United Nations post could be announced before the end of the election in what looms as another major embarrassment for Julia Gillard.

The Herald Sun can reveal the UN body Mr Rudd is being considered for is being set up under the working title High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability.

Mr Rudd is believed to have been backed for the post by the UN’s chief climate adviser, Janos Pasztor, and is odds-on to be offered the job.

Diplomatic sources said the decision could be made within weeks, which raises the spectre of an appointment before the election.

“It’s on the cards,” a source said of a pre-election announcement.

The Herald Sun believes Mr Rudd is favoured in part because he will have direct access to resources paid for by the Australian taxpayer.

This is on the assumption that the former prime minister is re-elected to Federal Parliament on August 21, 2010.

Related Coverage

• Cabinet leakers face the axe Daily Telegraph, 6 hours ago
• Kevin Rudd signs off on nomination Adelaide Now, 1 day ago
• Why Labor fears a vengeful Kevin Rudd NEWS.com.au, 2 days ago
• Rudd ‘not fit’ to be in Labor Cabinet Perth Now, 6 days ago
• Man tackled at Gillard speech Herald Sun, 7 days ago

Climate change reform will be the centrepiece of the panel, virtually guaranteeing conflict with a Gillard government, assuming Labor is re-elected.

Sources said it would be created to look at climate change in the context of broader sustainable development, and would be part-time.

Mr Rudd has declined to say whether the appointment would be paid.

If he were to be paid, this could raise allegations he would be a part-time MP.

Mr Rudd’s spokesman directed questions to the UN, declining to say whether he already had accepted the position.

Mr Rudd has previously said he would serve a full term in Parliament and that any UN position would be part-time.

“It is a matter, of course, for the United Nations Secretary-General to clarify what roles would be played by any individual on such a panel,” Mr Rudd said on July 22.

The biggest political risk for the Government is that the UN body clashes on climate change policy backed by Ms Gillard.

Mr Rudd previously backed a 5 per cent emissions cut on 2000 levels by 2020 as well as a so-called cap-and-trade scheme, which involves setting limits on carbon emissions but allowing heavy polluters to buy permits to allow them to emit more carbon.

Mr Rudd dropped his legislation this year when it was blocked by the Coalition in the Senate and his handling of the issue was considered crucial to him being dumped as PM.

Climate Extremes Fuel Hunger in Guatemala.
By Danilo Valladares

GUATEMALA CITY, Jul 28, 2010 (IPS) – “Three-quarters of the fields are still under water. Maize, plantains, okra and pasture are all lost,” José Asencio told IPS at the village of Santa Ana Mixtán in southern Guatemala, the area worst affected by tropical storm Agatha.

The villagers have been working for food in order to survive. “We’ve been shoring up the banks of the Coyolate and Mascalate rivers, and the mayor has been giving us food rations, although we haven’t received any for the past two weeks because supplies have run out,” he said.

Asencio said that food shortages and unemployment, caused by the extreme weather and the floods, have worsened the plight of the 373 families in the village, which is part of the municipality of Nueva Concepción in the department (province) of Escuintla, in the far south of the country.

The same dramatic situation is seen in Madronales, a village in the coastal municipality of Ocós in the southwestern province of San Marcos. “The fields sown with maize and plantain are flooded; we need food aid,” community leader Amparo Barrios told IPS.

Tropical storm Agatha flooded the crops that are the mainstay of 210 families, and “the little that was spared was destroyed by Atlantic storm Alex,” which hit the country a month later, she complained.

Agatha departed from Guatemala May 30, leaving behind 165 people dead and over 100,000 affected by destruction of their homes, crops or livelihoods. One month later, Alex added two more to the death toll and 2,000 to the number of material victims, according to the National Disaster Reduction Coordination agency (CONRED).

The storms also hit El Salvador and Honduras, where at least 29 people died and thousands were left homeless, according to disaster relief agencies.

But the worst hit by the double whammy of the storms was Guatemala, one of the poorest countries in Latin America, where half the population live on incomes below the poverty line and 17 percent are extremely poor, according to United Nations statistics.

“Climate change is exacerbating the conditions of poverty and extreme poverty in the country, and above all is complicating the lives of the most vulnerable,” Carlos Mancilla, head of the Climate Change Unit at the Environment and Natural Resources Ministry (MARN), told IPS.

Flooding is not the only concern. Paradoxically, one of the main chronic problems in Guatemala is drought, in the “dry corridor” in the north and east of the country.

“Adapting to drought is not as easy as coping with floods. How can the social fabric destroyed by a drought be repaired? What happens when the head of a family has to migrate? In contrast, if a bridge is washed away by the rains, it can simply be rebuilt,” Mancilla said.

The General Directorate of Epidemiology reported that at least 54 children died of hunger in 2009 because of the drought, which was described as the worst in 30 years. Meanwhile, 2.5 million people went hungry due to the food crisis, the U.N. reported.

Just under 50 percent of children in Guatemala are malnourished, the highest rate in Latin America and one of the highest in the world, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

But in Mancilla’s view, adaptation to climate change must be broader in scope than just dealing with the food crisis, because inappropriate location of human settlements and the construction methods used compound the risks.

In addition to its economic vulnerability, Guatemala has unstable geology, with a high risk of disasters from volcanic activity, geological faults and its many mountains and rivers.

For example, the Pacaya volcano, 30 kilometres from the capital, erupted May 27 and rained ash over Guatemala City, killing one person and affecting thousands of others.

Among the government measures taken to adapt to the climate emergencies, Mancilla mentioned the creation of an inter-institutional Climate Change Commission, made up of 17 secretariats and ministries, that is “assessing the impact, including on food production, within the different sectors.” In this way “we examine how each one can contribute” to overcoming the challenge, he said.

Sucely Girón, coordinator of the non-governmental Observatory on the Right to Food Security (ODSAN), told IPS that the country “is not investing in prevention,” in spite of having passed a law on food and nutrition security.

“The main thrust of the reconstruction budget is replacing infrastructure. They forget that Agatha and Alex left people with no crops and no jobs that would enable them to buy food,” she said, referring to the announcement by the government of social democratic President Álvaro Colom that it needs one billion dollars to reconstruct the country.

Girón said that crop diversification and alternative economic activities need to be promoted, in order to reduce Guatemala’s dependence on agriculture.

She mentioned tourism, fish farming and craft making as possible ways of earning incomes for families whose crops have suffered from climate change impacts.

The programme on Strengthening Environmental Governance in the face of Climate Change Risks in Guatemala, an initiative of government and non-governmental organisations, community organisations and international aid agencies, aims at sustainable agriculture.

Leonel Jacinto, coordinator within the project for the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), told IPS that food security for the population is being sought through agricultural best practices.

In the central province of Baja Verapaz, affected by drought, the programme encourages avoidance of slash-and-burn techniques, and promotes agroforestry (combining trees and shrubs with crops and/or livestock) and preserving and making use of stubble, in order to improve water retention in the soil.

The project, which is to benefit 791 families directly and another 100,000 families indirectly, promotes the recycling of water used for washing clothes to irrigate vegetable plots. It also encourages energy generation in biodigesters, which produce biogas from organic waste materials.

Jacinto said programmes like this one can change the face of agriculture in Guatemala and make it more resistant to climate change. But it needs to be extended across the country and to be sustained over time, he stressed.

WORLD NEWS – JULY 29, 2010
 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB40001424…

Climate report shows Earth has heated up over 50 years.

Which in the printed Wall Street version was rechristened – “CLIMATE STUDY CITES 2000 as WARMEST DECADE.” This appropriate to the US inward look of New York, while the above title is clear better positioned for the world at large -

By GAUTAM NAIK

A new assessment concludes that the Earth has been getting warmer over the past 50 years and the past decade was the warmest on record.

The State of the Climate 2009 report, published Wednesday as a special supplement to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, was compiled by 300 scientists from 48 countries and drew on measures of 10 crucial climate indicators.

Seven of the indicators were rising, including air temperature over land, sea-surface temperature, sea level, ocean heat and humidity. Three indicators were declining, including Arctic sea ice, glaciers and spring snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere.

“Each indicator is changing as we’d expect in a warming world,” said Peter Thorne, senior researcher at the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites, a research consortium based in College Park, Md., who was involved in compiling the report.

The report’s conclusions broadly match those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body, which published its last set of findings in 2007. The IPCC report contained some errors, which further stoked the debate about the existence, causes and effects of global warming.

The new report incorporates data from the past few years that weren’t included in the last IPCC assessment. While the IPCC report concluded that evidence for human-caused global warming was “unequivocal” and was linked to emissions of greenhouse gases, the latest report didn’t seek to address the issue.

The report “doesn’t try to make the link” between climate change and what might be causing it, said Tom Karl, an official at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration involved in the new assessment.

The report said, “Global average surface and lower-troposphere temperatures during the last three decades have been progressively warmer than all earlier decades, and the 2000s (2000-09) was the warmest decade in the instrumental record.” The troposphere is the lowest layer of the atmosphere.

The scientists reported that they were surprised to find Greenland’s glaciers were losing ice at an accelerating rate. They also concluded that 90% of planetary warming over the past 50 years has gone into the oceans. Most of it had accumulated in near-surface layers, home to phytoplankton, tiny plants crucial to virtually all life in the sea.

A new study has found that rising sea temperature may have had a harmful effect on global concentrations of phytoplankton over the past century.

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BUT THE WALL STREET JOURNAL IS VERY ANEMIC ON CONTENT OF ABOVE NEWS – IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT REALLY HAPPENED, AS MOSTLY ALMOST – GO TO THE FINANCIAL TIMES. HERE YOU FIND FIONA HARVEY’S FULL ARTICLE – SHE  CONTRIBUTES TO THE EDITORIAL SECTION AS WELL. YOU WILL BE IN THE CLEAR ABOUT THE MACHINATIONS IN WASHINGTON AS WELL.

You will also see there the Washington rot as in the following: “Myron Ebell, of the Competitive Enterprise Institute in the US, formerly in charge of energy with the powerful CSIS, said the new report would not change people’s minds. “It’s clear that the scientific case for global warming alarmism is weak. The scientific case for [many of the claims] is unsound and we are finding out all the time how unsound it is.”

You will find that there was no doubt about the implication that it is humans who did it except in the words of that outspoken minority of industry lobbyists that hold power over Washington.

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 http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/author…

NOAA finds “human fingerprints” on climate

July 28th, 2010  by Fiona Harvey

 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6d1fd25c-9a69-…

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 http://planetark.org/wen/58965

Developing Nations See Cancun Climate Deal Tough.

A Reality Show – Climate Change is dead in the US this November. A full Opinion Page in The New York Times explains the Spin of the Washington Cowards. The facts are that industry and the people were against it and The President obliged. The Planet does not vote.

Op-Ed Contributor from the center – the Rockefeller Family Fund.

Four Ways to Kill a Climate Bill

By LEE WASSERMAN
Printed – The New York Times Op-Ed page, July 26, 2010.

But with climate change a stated priority for President Obama and Congress, how did they fall so short? By weaving four coordinated threads into a shroud of inaction. This began long before President Obama took office, but rather than rip up the old pattern — as he advocated during the campaign — the president quickly took his place at the loom.

Thread No. 1: Climate is out; green jobs are in. Despite climate change being the greatest challenge of our time, with millions of people facing inundation, starvation and conflicts over scarce resources, the White House directed advocates not to discuss it. At a meeting in April 2009 led by Carol Browner, the White House coordinator of energy and climate policy, administration message mavens told climate bill advocates that, given the polling, they should avoid talking about climate change and focus on green jobs and energy independence.

Had Lyndon Johnson likewise relied on polling, he would have told the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to talk only about the expanded industry and jobs that Southerners would realize after passage of a federal civil rights act. I could imagine Dr. King’s response.

The urge to avoid the topic of climate change is not new. While Bill Clinton and Al Gore have done noble work on climate since leaving office, when they had the presidential megaphone they did little to educate the public about the wolf at our door. President Obama has followed suit, and our national comprehension of climate change continues to stagnate. Virtually the only public officials working to shape opinion on this over the past two years have been those committed to misrepresenting the science.

Thread No. 2: Devising a bill for historic polluters, not the American people. Remember the president’s campaign pledge to represent the people, not the lobbyists? That’s not what he’s done on this issue.

For several years the Beltway wisdom has been that it is impossible to pass a bill without the approval of historic polluters, particularly the utilities, which run coal-burning power plants, the nation’s single largest source of climate-changing pollution. The administration and Congress did their best to get the industry’s permission for new regulations. They proposed handing power companies hundreds of billions of dollars worth of allowances to pollute, additional billions to subsidize the development of technology to sequester carbon from coal-fired plants, and evisceration of federal authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate carbon. Peter Orszag, the budget director, said giving away pollution permits would be “the largest corporate welfare program that has ever been enacted in the history of the United States.” But no matter — it wasn’t enough.

Thread No. 3: A Rube Goldberg-policy construction. Because Congress built a policy machine designed for special interests, most proposals were chockablock with policy contraptions impossible to even explain, much less put into effect. Provisions included pollution allowances for favored corporations, carbon credit-default swaps, complicated worldwide offset provisions to enable avoidance of actual pollution reductions at home and loopholes to extend the life of the dirtiest coal plants. By the end of the process, even Campbell Soup demanded a special deal for the carbon-intensive job of making chicken noodle soup.

This rush to the trough was inevitable once President Obama ditched his plan to push a simple market-based bill that would have required polluters, rather than citizens, to pay for switching from fossil fuels to renewable forms of energy.

Thread No. 4: The public sits it out. American history has few examples of presidents or Congresses upending entrenched interests without public pressure forcing their hand. Teddy Roosevelt is on Mount Rushmore for a reason.

Citizens wouldn’t support an approach they couldn’t understand to solve a problem our leaders refused to acknowledge. Even the earth’s flagging ability to support life as we know it couldn’t stir a public outcry. The loudest voices insisted that leaders in Washington do nothing.   —-   They obliged.

Looking at Europe’s ENERGY PORTAL - http://www.energy.eu/ – we found the recent posting:

German power plant testing CO2-scrubbing algae .

Swedish energy group Vattenfall launched a major pilot project on July 22nd using algae to absorb greenhouse gas emissions from a coal-fired power plant in eastern Germany.

The two-million-euro trial run, which will continue until October 2011, in the Lausitz mining region is one of several experimental attempts in the sector using algae to slash carbon dioxide output.

“The microalgae use climate-killing CO2 to create valuable biomass,” the chairman of Vattenfall Europe Mining and Generation, Hartmuth Zeiss, said in a statement. “Moreover the new technology will bring useful know-how to the Lausitz and increase its importance as a region for energy production.”

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The above does not surprise us as we wrote about it after the Fortaleza, Ceara, Brazil, presentation by Professor Ben Amotz of Israel, who did this kind of work, successfully, at the Reading Power plant outside Tel Aviv.

Using the search button at www.SustainabiliTank.info for Ben Amotz see the following of our postings:

under - http://www.sustainabilitank.info/?s=Ben+…

Dow Chemical and Algenol Biofuels, a start-up company, are set to announce today 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. We wish to remind of “The Alga Dunaliella” that we wrote about in the past – as per Professor Ami Ben-Amotz of Israel.
Monday, June 29th, 2009
Posted in Brazil, California, Florida, Global Warming issues, Green is Possible, Israel, Reporting from Washington DC, The US States |

Israel has some of the most advanced algae research in the world. Now the Fletcher-Lauder Fellowship at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya is offering a Post-doc on bio-sequestration of carbon dioxide from carbon-rich sources, e.g., power plants, through algae production. We described the work that was done by Prof. Amos Ben-Amotz as he presented it to the Green Chemistry meeting in Fortaleza, Brazil, and we announced also his new book release.
Tuesday, May 19th, 2009
Posted in Futurism, Global Warming issues, Green is Possible, Israel, Job Offers, Massachusetts, New York, Reporting from Washington DC |

GLOBAL SUSTAINABILITY REQUIRES DECREASED DEPENDENCE ON FOSSIL CARBON.
Thursday, March 27th, 2008
Posted in Africa, Brazil, European Union, Futurism, Global Warming issues, Green is Possible, Islands & SIDS, Latin America, Real World’s News, Reporting From the UN Headquarters in New York, Reporting from UNFCCC Meetings, Reporting from Washington DC, UN Commission on Sustainable Development, Uncategorized |

Two Conferences in Brazil that The UN Secretary-General Has Missed. We submit that the Meeting on “Green Chemistry” in Fortaleza, Ceara, and the Meeting on “Fair Trade and Responsible Tourism in context of Solidarity and Sustainability For The Amazonas” in Belem, Para, Would Have Taught Him More Then Visits With The Korean Scientists and the Chilean Military in Antarctica, and With The Brazilians At The Central Political Capital.
Tuesday, December 4th, 2007
Posted in Argentina, Brazil, Futurism, Germany, Global Warming issues, Green is Possible, IBSA, Israel, Italy, Reporting From the UN Headquarters in New York, Reporting from UNFCCC Meetings, Reporting from Washington DC, UN Commission on Sustainable Development |

1st Brazilian Workshop on Green Chemistry, Fortaleza, Ceara, Brazil, November 18-21, 2007.
Sunday, November 11th, 2007
Posted in Argentina, Brazil, Future Events, Futurism, Germany, Global Warming issues, Green is Possible, Italy, Latin America, Reporting from Washington DC

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www.energy.eu

Dexia Tower in Brussels. 150,000 LEDs displaying the EU symbol. ————————————————————-

Europe’s Energy Portal: Shedding a light on European Energy Developments Europe’s Energy Portal is a commercial organization, strongly rooted within the EU, but run independently from the European Union. The portal is ran by the undersigned, together with a small team of professionals from the energy and environmental sector. The portal was founded in 2006 and has grown into a real online beacon, a trusted environment where professionals go for their energy-related news, key statistics and energy prices. Europe’s Energy Portal business model is to provide customized energy data, statistics and surveys related to the European Union. The portal is operated from two locations, one office location in the Netherlands and one in Brussels. The Brussels office serves as a meeting point, the Dutch one as a data center. Yours truly, Michael Zwanenburg Editor-in-Chief

WHEN: Wednesday, July 21, 2010,  11:30 a.m.

WHAT: American Meat Institute annual Hot Dog lunch to celebrate National Hot Dog Day. Speakers: House Agriculture Chairman Collin Peterson, D-Minn.; Rep. Frank Lucas, R-Okla.; and former professional baseball players: Dale Murphy (Atlanta Braves), Lee Smith (Chicago Cubs), and Ron Guidry (New York Yankees)

WHERE: Rayburn Horseshoe, Rayburn House Office Building.

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I know you missed that – but what about the real stuff of Thursday, July 22nd, 2010?

–

WHEN: 9:30 a.m.

WHAT: Woodrow Wilson Center (WWC) discussion on “Emerging Trends in Environment and Economic Growth in Latin America and the Caribbean.” Speakers: Christine Pendzich, technical adviser on climate change and clean energy for U.S. Agency for International Development; Eric Olson, senior adviser at the WWC’s Mexico Institute; Judith Morrison, senior adviser of the Social Sector, Gender and Diversity Unit at the Inter-American Development Bank; and Maria Carmen Lemos, associate professor of natural resources and environment at the University of Michigan.

WHERE: WWC, One Woodrow Wilson Plaza, Ronald Reagan Building, 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, 6th Floor Flom Auditorium, Washington, D.C.

CONTACT: 202-691-4000; web site: http://www.wilsoncenter.org

RSVP: Email James Hodges at james.hodges@wilsoncenter.org

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WHEN: 10:00 a.m.

WHAT: Environmental and Energy Study Institute briefing on “Oil Independence: Is it Possible?” Speakers: Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore.; David Greene, corporate fellow at Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Robbie Diamond, president of Securing America’s Future Energy; Arlee Reno, senior vice president of Cambridge Systematics; and Alan Krupnick, senior fellow at Resources for the Future.

WHERE: SVC-203/202, U.S. Capitol

CONTACT: 202-628-1400; web site: http://www.eesi.org

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WHEN: 10:00 a.m.

WHAT: Employment and Workplace Safety Subcommittee hearing on “Workplace Safety and Worker Protections at BP.”

Witness(es): Steve Flynn, vice president of health, safety, security and environment at BP Global in London, U.K.

WHERE: 430 Dirksen Senate Office Building

CONTACT: 202-224-5375; web site: http://help.senate.gov

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WHEN: 12:00 p.m.

WHAT: Center for American Progress (CAP) discussion on “Why the World Needs U.S. Climate Action” and how U.S. leadership on the reduction of carbon pollution will jump start a global race to create markets in clean energy technology that will benefit all.

Speakers: Jiahua Pan, executive director of the Research Centre for Sustainable Development at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; Arabinda Mishra, director of the Climate Change Division at the Energy and Resources Institute in New Delhi, India; Andrew Pendleton, senior research fellow on the Global Change Team at the United Kingdom’s Institute for Public Policy Research; Marie Parramon of IMBEWU Sustainability Legal Specialists in South Africa; and Andrew Light, CAP senior fellow

WHERE: CAP, 1333 H Street NW, 10th Floor, Washington, D.C.

CONTACT: 202-741-6246; web site http://www.americanprogress.org

NOTE: RSVP required

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WHEN: 12:30 p.m.

WHAT: Cato Institute discussion on “The Implications of the U.S.-India Nuclear Agreement.” Speakers: Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute; Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center; and Stephen Cohen, senior fellow in foreign policy studies at Brookings Institution

WHERE: B-339 Rayburn House Office Building

CONTACT: 202-789-5200, events@cato.org; web site: http://www.cato.org

NOTE:  Register online by 12:30 p.m. July 21

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WHEN: 12:30 p.m.

WHAT: Henry L. Stimson Center workshop to discuss the diplomatic initiatives that might follow the release of the Obama administration’s “National Space Policy.”

Highlights:

– 12:30 p.m.: Peter Marquez of the National Security Council delivers keynote remarks

– 1:45 p.m.: Panel on “space diplomacy initiatives, past and future”

– 3 p.m.: Panel on “how best to pursue space diplomacy initiatives”
– 4 p.m.: Panel on “international perspectives on space diplomacy”

WHERE: Stimson Center, 1111 19th Street NW, 12th Floor, Washington, D.C.

CONTACT: Sam Black, 202-464-2676, sblack@stimson.org

NOTE: RSVP required

—-

WHEN: 12:30 p.m.

WHAT: Don Blankenship, chairman and CEO of Massey Energy Company delivers an address at a National Press Club Newsmaker Luncheon.

WHERE: National Press Club, 14th and F Streets NW, Ballroom, Washington, D.C.

CONTACT: Melinda Cooke, 202-662-7516, mcooke@press.org

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WHEN: 4:00 p.m.

WHAT: Woodrow Wilson Center (WWC) book discussion on “The U.S. Congress: A Very Short Introduction.” Speaker: author Donald Ritchie, historian of the U.S. Senate; and Donald Wolfensberger, director of WWC’s Congress Project

WHERE: WWC, One Woodrow Wilson Plaza, Ronald Reagan Building, 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, D.C.

CONTACT: 202-691-4000; web site: http://www.wilsoncenter.org

—————————–

If you want to know how much Congress spent on Coffee last year:

$84,794
Spent on companies that specialize in coffee.
 http://www.aolnews.com/house-money/artic…

Eli Kintisch is reporter for Science Magazine and author of “Hack the Planet” released by Wiley April 19, 2010.

Bill McKibben, author of “EARTH: MAKING A LIFE ON A TOUGH NEW PLANET” and co-founder of 350.org, an organization that our readers know that we hold in very high esteem,  wrote about “HACK THE PLANET:”

“Anyone who considers themselves scientifically literate had better get versed in the new discipline of geo-engineering — or planethacking, as Eli Kintisch calls it in his nuanced and useful new account. This discussion is not going to go away anytime soon!”

Once the stuff of science fiction, geoengineering has come into the mainstream, with top scientists, the National Academy of Science and Congress investigating this radical concept.

please look at www.hacktheplanetbook.com

and if you need a contact – the book’s publicity is with Erin Beam of  ebeam at wiley.com

———————–

I got a few minutes late to the library’s lower level and so a nice size roomful of very mixed crowd – from the young shoeless intellectual in the front row to the spectacled white hair retiree in the back row. They all listened very intent and at the end asked good questions.

As my usual way, I went directly to the table loaded with the books for sale, took one and stood next to the wall – leafing from cover to cover. That is how I learned that the book starts with old-time friend Academician Yuriy Izrael from Moscow with whom I shared before the Rio Summit of 1992 two weeks in Fortaleza, Ceara, Brazil, where local Professor Jose Oswaldo Carioca was preparing for a Brazilian submission to the upcoming UN Conference on Environment and Development. Since then I visited with Academician Izrael a couple of times in Moscow – the last time in Moscow during the September 29 – October 3, 2003 World Climate Change Conference where he was the head of the local organizing scientific committee and co-chair of the Conference, with Mr. A. N. Illarionov (Andrey Nikolayevich), the Adviser of then Russia President Vladimir Putin. Bert Bolin of Sweden, a pioneering climatologist and the first chairman of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), was the foreign co-chair of the event.

That was a very important meeting, with participants from over 100 countries, because it dealt with the crucial question – Will Russia Ratify the Kyoto Protocol? At the time Putin was relying on Yu. Izrael and Andrey Nikolayevich, and the world still thought that the KP is imperative for a Multilateral approach to Climate Change. With the US clearly out – Russia became all important in order to reach the magic number of ratifications so the KP gets into effect. Eventually it became Putins decision to say – DA – YES – while his two advisers still said NO!
That was real drama.

Somehow I still have my stash of papers from that meeting and I was looking now at hints at geoengineering in Russia’s position. But I did find a list of 10 questions Illarionov did put before the conference in his presentation that had the title: “Antropogenic Factors in Global Warming: Some Questions.” It was Bert Bolin, chair emeritus of IPCC, who gave the two answers with the last one answering to “How much will it cost.” This is fascinating history from the days we thought we had a plan – but the Russians seemingly were already convinced then that we really had no plan.

Strangely, when I looked up Google I found there on first page for Illarionov -

Answers to the questions raised by A.N. Illarionov during his talk …

File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat – Quick View
Answers to Questions by A. Illarionov (Adviser of the President of Russian Federation). Moscow – World Climate Change Conference 2003 …
www.sysecol.ethz.ch/Articles_Reports/Illarionov_QandA_WCCC_2003.pdf

further: As a senior advisor to Russian President Putin, Illarionov was outspoken against Russia’s ratification of Kyoto. Despite Illarionov’s vocal opposition, Putin ratified the Kyoto Protocol in 2004. In October 2006, Illarionov was appointed senior researcher of the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity of the US libertarian think tank Cato Institute in Washington, DC.

————

The above was just an aside and I will get back to it after doing full justice by reading “Hack the Planet” as I am convinced that some form of geoengineering will eventually become part of humanity’s effort to put a lid – cap in BP’s language – in order to control the runaway increase of concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Yuriy Izrael was talking of placing sulfur compounds in the upper atmosphere – others may have various sun deflectors in mind,
I for one may think that the Peter Glazer idea of concentrating sun light in outer space and beaming it back to earth might be a way to provide clean solar energy for our needs. I have no trust in the Carbon Capture and Sequestration concept – this because I do not think that we know how to do it and I mistrust those that promote the idea as it feels rather like an attempt to keep us away from research in positive directions that can wean us from our dependence on oil and coal. Further, it is clear that just companies like Haliburton and large oil companies will be the only ones to be able to implement these programs if there is ever some success with these ideas. This is also a geoengineering concept. Changing fish population in a pond is a case of forced change of nature and we have many examples that led to negative results because of unintended consequences.

Anyway – this is a large topic that serves our attention, so after talking to the great family of presenter Eli Kintisch – he was there with both his parents and kid brother – all knowledgeable in the subject – and to one of the people that asked questions, I continued to Piermont.

There it was all fun, but my connection to the book presentation is clear to me. It will eventually take a revolution to break down the Bastille walls of the anti-progress interests when dealing with climate change.

I saw in Piermont a friend from the UN, bought two interesting T-shirts and went home.

I still visited a great cooperative gallery – The Piermont Flywheel Gallery – that was about half works of Howard Berelson – a colorist with many scenes from East Africa.

He has a great painting from the Serengeti Plain in Tanzania – “Death in the Garden of Eden.” Was that bull failed also because of the high heat? Are the colors of the Hudson River Odyssey – another painting – so that we are reminded of the turning of our area into another hot Africa?

————————————

and if someone is interested in contacting Academician Izrael:

Yuri IZRAEL
Institute of Global Climate and Ecology
Glebovskaya str., 20B
107258 Moscow
RUSSIA
Tel: +(7 095) 1692430
Fax: +(7 095) 1600831
E-mail:  Yu.Izrael at g23.relcom.ru

and as an appetizer see the following:

The journal Russian Meteorology and Hydrology recently published a new kind of geoengineering study whose lead author is the journal’s editor, the prominent Russian scientist Yuri A. Izrael.

Izrael and his team of scientists mounted aerosol generators on a helicopter and a car chassis, and proceeded to blast out particles at ground level and at heights of up to 200 meters. Then they attempted to measure just how much sunlight reaching Earth was reduced due to the aerosol plume.

This small-scale intervention was effective, the Russian scientists say. And in an accompanying article on geoengineering alternatives, Izrael and colleagues note that “Already in the near future, the technological possibilities of a full scale use of [aerosol-based geoengineering] will be studied.”

——————

Above leads to brain storming:

Billionaire airline tycoon Richard Branson baldly told the press last year, ‘If we could come up with a geoengineering answer to this problem, then Copenhagen wouldn’t be necesary. We could carry on flying our planes and driving our cars.’

And what do you know – there is already a clear reaction to the geoengineering ideas:

But on the eve of this year’s UN-designated International Mother Earth Day, over 60 national and international organizations launched Hands Off Mother Earth (H.O.M.E.). The global campaign, now supported by the Ecologist, includes a website  handsoffmotherearth.org) where signatories upload photos of themselves with their hands up in a ‘stop’ gesture.

The campaign insists that a halt be placed on geoengineering experiments and that the ‘rights’ of Planet Earth be respected. ‘Not just human beings have rights, but the planet has rights,’ asserts Evo Morales, Bolivian president and host of the recently concluded Cochabamba Climate Change Conference in Bolivia. The first right, he says, is ‘the right for no ecosystem to be eliminated’. The second, ‘for Mother Earth to live without contamination’. The final statement by the 35,000 people attending Cochabamba called out geoengineering as a false solution to the climate problem.

The UN FOUNDATION has a question to you. They want to know if you think that climate change is everybody’s business, and then traps you into having to decide to let the money be distributed by the UN, as a help  to its member State Governments.

We thought that this is a really interesting question and that our readers may have ideas of their own which we hope you could pass to the UN Foundation for consideration.

• The UN Secretary-General and his climate finance advisers are exploring private financing options to deliver resources to combat climate change. Developing countries pledged “fast-start” financing — $10 billion per year for the next three years, growing to $100 billion annually by 2020 — for those nations least responsible for, and most affected by, climate changes. Should private donors contribute to aid to mitigate the effects of climate change in developing countries?

	Yes — it is everyone’s responsibility
	No — governments should find their own financing

Fareed Zakaria reminded us that Warren Buffet says that for the economy to grow government spending must grow. But we know that by 2014 the US debt will reach $14 Trillion or $47,000 debt for each US citizen. This will cost $650-750 Billion in yearly interest.

Of this debt China holds now $920 Billion.

Then, Tuesday, President Obama said he would nominate Jacob Lew, currently a deputy secretary at the State Department, as the next director of the White House Office of Management and Budget–a job he previously held during the Clinton administration. Obama’s first OMB chief, Peter Orszag, is leaving a long stretch of government life (he previously ran the Congressional Budget Office) on July 30 to become a visiting fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations, presumably a bridge to the more lucrative private sector.

Lew, whose nomination  still needs to be confirmed by the Senate, has his work cut out for him. The U.S. federal budget deficit is currently $1.4 trillion, and the country’s debt is on track to account for 90% of GDP by 2020 under the president’s most recent budget request.

Just last month, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke warned that “failure to achieve fiscal sustainability will, over time, sap the nation’s economic vitality, reduce our living standards, and greatly increase the risk of economic and financial instability.”

The McLaughlin Group on CBS was talking about the idea of cutting debt 3% yearly for the next 5 years and Pat Buchanan said that Congress will tel Obama – NO WAY!

Mortimer Zuckerman was positive so far as he said -  the US is not yet Greece and we do not want to become Greece to which Elinor Clift retorted: “WE CAN PRINT MONEY AND GREECE CAN’T – SO WE WILL NOT BECOME GREECE.”

Now – that is really the problem in a nutshell – we can try to get the whole world pay for our standard of living – but for how long can this go on really in the 21st century?

Fareed Zakaria had on his program four very divers and all excellent – Brits:

Daniel Finkelstein from the London Times – the most conservative on the panel,

Polly Toynbee, th grandaughter of the famous historian, from The Guardian, the most to the Left on this panel.

Anne McElvey from The Evening Standard,

and Martin Wolf from The Financial Times.

She show must have been taped already on July 11. 2010 when Fareed was in London, though it was shown only on the 18th.
 http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/fareed.z…

Finkelstein started by saying that it is the fact that there is an Obama Administration in Washington that made it possible to have the present coalition government in London that decided for the UK to cut spending and not taxes. It is obvious that the UK has to do something about balancing the budget so it is the conservative way that it must be done even though it is clear that this might bring back a Labor government in the spirit of the cycle – Labor increases services and spending – the Conservatives rein in spending by decreasing services though trying to make them more efficient.

Toynbee points out that with coffins returning from where soldiers were sent, there is less excitement from following the US foreign policy and McElvoy said that there is less clarity about what the US foeign policy really stands for.

Martin Wolf still says that Obama would have won the UK elections but it is true that the UK will emerge from the crisis with smaller armed forces and thus less of a potential ally to US policy.

Finkelstein said flatly that Cameron, the new Prime Minister is skeptical about Europe and Iraq.

McElvoy said that it still isn’t “Little England” – the UK still has ambitions – it will not turn isolationist – and Finkelstein asked if the sun is setting for The British Empire?

Fareed mentioned the book that Martin Wolf wrote “Fixing Global Finance” where he said that the Conservatives will do now the heavy lifting and pave the way for the return of Labor.

Fikelstein says that much of the money that was spent on Public Services was not effective, people saw this and decided to back the cuts now. To this McElvey added that Thatcher looked decisive, Cameron must learn fast to look like he knows what he is doing.

Toynbee disagrees – she says that the cuts may not happen because much of it is not plausible – she declared that she is well paid – “come and get me.” She believes that increased taxation is needed – not just decreased spending. There is a flow in conservative planning. Fareed smoothed it out by saying “She is Queen of Leftist Journalists.”

Finkelstein concluded by saying that every Labor government distributes money we do not have – then come the Conservatives to power.

Whatever this discussion in London does for the UK, we felt it actually shows clearly what is missing in the US!

The US just does not have a solid Conservative movement that people can live with – this because the conservatives are spread between the to US parties in a way that yes – they do not like taxes, but then they also work on increasing spending with the only difference between the two parties in the US being that the Conservatives increase spending to the benefit of the rich and nobody really allows for spending increase for services. In the end – what is missing in the US is a Labor Party to come to power from time to time and increase social spending so the system can be balanced.

From our angle, we expect the UK, under the present coalition government, to have it easier then the Democrats in Washington have it on climate and energy issues. We expect the UK to pull out from Energy Wars and leave them to the US to indulge in – this while obviously backing BP as this is a British based oil company after all, but also promoting energy efficiency programs at home.

Russia swelters in heatwave, many crops destroyed

Date: 19-Jul-10
Country: RUSSIA
Author: Dmitry Solovyov, Gleb Bryanski and Alexander Reshetnikov
Soaring temperatures across large swathes of Russia have destroyed nearly 10 million hectares of crops and prompted a state of emergency to be declared in 17 regions.

————

World simmers in hottest year so far

Date: 19-Jul-10
Author: Alina Selyukh
The world is enduring the hottest year on record, according to a U.S. national weather analysis, causing droughts worldwide and a concern for U.S. farmers counting on another bumper year.

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Period of a El Nino weather pattern is being blamed for the hot temperatures globally.

“We had an El Nino episode in the early part of the year that’s now faded but that has contributed to the warmth not only in equatorial Pacific but also contributed to anomalously warm global temperatures as well,” Lawrimore said.

Abnormally warm temperatures have been registered in large parts of Canada, Africa, tropical oceans and parts of the Middle East.

Northern Thailand is struggling through the worst drought in 20 years, while Israel is in the middle of the longest and most severe drought since 1920s. In Britain, this year has been the driest since 1929.

Also, Arctic sea ice has melted to its thinnest state in June.

However, as cooler temperatures may set in later this year, it remains to be seen whether 2010 will overtake 2005 as the hottest year overall.

————-

Numerous cities across Japan recorded temperatures above 35 degrees Sunday, with Tatebayashi, Gunma Prefecture, logging 36.3, the Japanese Meteorological Agency said.

New Power Capacity from Renewables Tops Fossil Fuels.

07/16/2010  – SustainableBusiness.com News
http://www.sustainablebusiness.com/index.cfm/go/news.display/id/20692
——–

UN ADVISORY GROUP SEEKS TO ENHANCE PUBLIC-PRIVATE LINKS TO BOOST ACCESS TO ENERGY.

The potential of new public-private partnerships to enhance energy access and efficiency topped today’s discussions by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s high-level advisory group on the nexus between energy and climate change.

“Governments alone will not be able to deal with the challenges,” said Kandeh K. Yumkella, Director-General of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), at the latest meeting of the Energy and Climate Change Advisory Group.

“We need a commitment from all sectors of society, including the private sector, academia and civil society, as well as from international organizations and NGOs [non-governmental organizations],” he added.

The meeting in Mexico City was hosted by Carlos Slim Helú, Mexican businessman and one the world’s wealthiest people, who is also a member of the Group, set up by Mr. Ban last year and comprising 20 business leaders, academics and representatives of the UN and civil society.

In April, the Group launched a report calling on nations to commit themselves to two complementary goals.

First, it urged universal access to modern energy services that are reliable, affordable, sustainable, and, if possible, from low-emissions sources by 2030.

It also underlined the need to slash global energy intensity, measured by the quantity of energy per unit of gross domestic product (GDP).

Currently, some 3 billion people worldwide rely on traditional biomass for cooking and heating, resulting in adverse health effects if used in inadequately ventilated buildings, with 1.6 billion having no access to electricity.

“This is why we are looking at launching a worldwide campaign to ensure that access to modern energy services no longer represents a barrier to development,” Mr. Yumkella said. “A reliable, affordable energy supply is the key to economic growth and the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals [MDGs],” the eight anti-poverty targets with a 2015 deadline.

Private companies, he pointed out, already have the technology needed to make global energy systems less dependent on fossil fuels, while many governments are offering financial incentives and support for this transition.

“What we need today is to forge strong public-private partnerships to tackle these goals,” the UNIDO chief, who chairs the Advisory Group, said.

Today’s meeting, co-hosted by Mexican Energy Minister Georgina Kessel Martínez, drew top UN officials and business executives, while representatives of Sharp and other corporations presented some of the latest renewable technologies.

In a related development, a new report launched today by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) found that the United States and Europe have added more capacity to their electricity supplies from renewable sources, such as wind and solar, for the second consecutive year.

In 2009, renewables accounted for 60 per cent of newly-installed capacity in Europe and more than 50 per cent in the USA.

“The sustainable energy investment story of 2009 was one of resilience, frustration and determination,” said UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner.

The sector was able to weather the global financial downturn, but faced setbacks given that last December’s UN climate change conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, did not achieve the targets that had been hoped for, he noted.

“Yet there was determination on the part of many industry actors and governments, especially in rapidly developing economies, to transform the financial and economic crisis into an opportunity for greener growth,” the official said.

* * *

TODAY’S GLOBAL CRISES HIGHLIGHT NEED TO PROMOTE HUMAN SECURITY – BAN.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has emphasized the need to promote the concept of human security, noting that the challenges facing the world today threaten the lives of millions and undermine development efforts.

“Everyone has a right to enjoy freedom from fear…freedom from want…and freedom to live in dignity,” Mr. Ban said in a video message for a symposium on human security taking place in Tokyo.

“These mutually reinforcing aspirations are at the heart of human security and our mission to build a better world for all,” he stated.

More than ever, “we live in an interconnected world,” where crises transcend borders and threaten the lives and livelihoods of millions of men, women and children, he noted.

“They increase human insecurity and undermine progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs),” he added, referring to the targets world leaders have pledged to achieve by 2015, ranging from ensuring quality education and a clean environment to reducing hunger and disease.

He said the symposium can help inform and advance discussions at the high-level summit he will be convening in New York in September at which world leaders will gather to push for further progress on the MDGs.

The landmark 2005 World Summit referred to the concept of human security, recognizing that “that all individuals, in particular vulnerable people, are entitled to freedom from fear and freedom from want, with an equal opportunity to enjoy all their rights and fully develop their human potential.”

In May, the General Assembly held its first formal debate on human security, during which Mr. Ban presented his report on the issue.

Addressing that meeting, he had stressed that “we must ensure that the gains of today are not lost to the crises of tomorrow,” calling for actions focusing on “people-centred, comprehensive, context-specific and preventive strategies at every level.”

Such an approach, the report pointed out, helps address both current and emerging threats, as well as their causes. The report also emphasized the need for strong and stable institutions to advance human security.