The problem was the 51 cents/gallon of ethanol from sugar-cane tariff, the US imposes against imports from international producers of bioethanol – so they do not compete with US agro-ethanol.

We are cynics by nature and wonder if the release today has anything to do with Shell Oil Company having announced last weekend that they will invest over a billion dollars in the production of sugar-cane ethanol in Brazil. So, did we have to wait until an oil company steps heavily into this area – so we finally allow US door to be opened to a non-petroleum liquid fuel?

WE ARE VERY PARTIAL TO THIS TOPIC BECAUSE BACK IN 1978 AT UNIDO IN VIENNA, AND IN 1979 IN NEW ORLEANS, I WAS PERSONALLY INVOLVED IN BRINGING THIS SUBJECT TO THE ATTENTION OF THE LIQUID FUEL HUNGRY WESTERN WORLD. IN VIENNA WE SHOWED THE CUBAN EXPERIENCE AT A UN – AUSTRIA – SWEDEN EVENT. IN NEW ORLEANS THIS WAS “THE FIRST INTER-AMERICAN CONFERENCE ON RENEWABLE SOURCES OF ENERGY” THAT I HELPED ORGANIZE. OBVIOUSLY – TO LOUISIANA WE COULD NOT BRING THE CUBANS – BUT BRAZIL, ARGENTINA AND MANY OTHERS WERE PRESENT UNDER THE FRIENDLY EYES OF THE US DEPARTMENT OF STATE. ETHANOL BECAME A RECOGNIZED FUEL, BUT US AGRICULTURE MADE SURE IT WILL BE US CORN AS FEEDSTOCK. WE COULD NOT EVEN GET PREFERENTIAL TREATMENT FOR IMPORTS FROM FRIENDLY COUNTRIES BECAUSE OIL AND AGRICULTURE – SOME OF THE STRONGEST LOBBIES IN WASHINGTON – WOULD NOT ALLOW IT , EVEN AFTER THE INTERVENTION OF US REPUBLICAN SENATORS LIKE FRANK CHURCH, JACOB JAVITS, CHARLES PERCY – SO WHAT WILL IT BE NOW? WILL THOSE TARIFFS COME OFF?

—————-
EPA Reaffirms Sugarcane Biofuel is Advanced Renewable Fuel with 61% Less Emissions than Gasoline.
Brazil Sugarcane Update – Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Welcomes U.S. EPA’s Renewable Fuels Rules.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has confirmed that ethanol made from sugarcane is a low carbon renewable fuel, which can contribute significantly to the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. As part of today’s announcement finalizing regulations for the implementation of the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS2), the EPA designated sugarcane ethanol as an advanced biofuel that lowers GHG emissions by more than 50%.

“The EPA’s decision underscores the many environmental benefits of sugarcane ethanol and reaffirms how this low carbon, advanced renewable fuel can help the world mitigate against climate change while diversifying America’s energy resources,” said Joel Velasco, Chief Representative in Washington for the Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association (UNICA).

Sugarcane ethanol is a renewable fuel refined from cane that grows typically in tropical climates. Compared to other types of ethanol available today, using sugarcane ethanol to power cars and trucks yields greater reductions in greenhouse gases and is usually much cheaper for drivers to purchase. Brazil has replaced more than half of its fuel needs with sugarcane ethanol – making gasoline the alternative fuel in that country and ethanol the standard.  Many observers point to sugarcane ethanol as a good option for diversifying U.S. energy supplies, increasing healthy competition among biofuel manufacturers and improving America’s energy security.

The RFS2 will help the United States meet energy security and greenhouse gas reduction goals sought by the Energy Security and Independence Act of 2007 (EISA). The new regulations establish minimum biofuels consumption in the U.S. of more than 12 billion gallons (45 billion liters) in 2010, rising to 36 billion gallons (136 billion liters) in 2022, of which 21 billion gallons per year would have to be one of three types of advanced biofuels: cellulosic, biomass diesel, and “other advanced,” that meet required GHG reduction thresholds as determined by the EPA.

Today, EPA affirmed that sugarcane ethanol meets the “other advanced” category in the RFS2, although with a GHG reduction level that exceeds the requirement for all categories as well.  Specifically, EPA’s calculations show that sugarcane ethanol from Brazil reduces GHG emissions compared to gasoline by 61%, using a 30-year payback for indirect land use change (iLUC) emissions.

“We are pleased that EPA took the time to improve the regulations, particularly by more accurately quantifying the full lifecycle greenhouse emission reductions of biofuels. EPA’s reaffirmation of sugarcane ethanol’s superior GHG reduction confirms that sustainably-produced biofuels can play a important role in climate mitigation. Perhaps this recognition will sway those who have sought to raise trade barriers against clean energy here in the U.S. and around the world. Sugarcane ethanol is a first generation biofuel with third generation performance,” noted Velasco.

Last year, UNICA submitted comments to EPA with abundant scientifically credible evidence showing that – even including indirect emissions – sugarcane ethanol has a reduction of GHG emissions of 73-82% compared with gasoline, on a 30- or 100-year time horizon respectively. The RFS2 requires the use of at least 4 billion gallons (over 15 billion liters) of “other advanced” renewable fuels a year by 2022. In 2010, the RFS requires 200 million gallons of this type of advanced renewable fuels.

“While we are reviewing the final rule, it is clear that EPA has incorporated many of the comments that UNICA and other stakeholders made during the public process. EPA should be congratulated for the way it upheld the Obama’s goals of transparency and scientific integrity in the environmental rulemaking. And we hope that other governments should take note of the manner that EPA has handled this process,” concluded Velasco.

Brazil is a leader in the production of sugarcane ethanol, which is widely considered as the most efficient biofuel available today. In 2009, Brazil produced over 7 billion gallons of sugarcane ethanol, most of which is used in Brazil in flex fuel vehicles. As a result of Brazil’s innovative use of sugarcane ethanol in transportation and biomass for cogeneration, sugarcane is the leading source of renewable energy in the nation, representing 16% of the country’s total energy needs. In fact, gasoline has become the alternative in Brazil, reducing the country’s dependence on fossil fuels lowering emissions. A recent study in the November 2009 edition of the journal Energy Policy indicated that since 1975, over 600 million tons of CO2 emissions have been avoided thanks to the use of ethanol in Brazil.

———

ABOUT UNICA. The Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association (UNICA) represents the
top producers of sugar and ethanol in the country’s South-Central region, especially the
state of Sao Paulo, which accounts for about 50% of the country’s sugarcane harvest
and 60% of total ethanol production. UNICA develops position papers, statistics and
specific research in support of Brazil’s sugar, ethanol and bioelectricity sectors. In 2008,
Brazil produced an estimated 565 million metric tons of sugarcane, which yielded 31.3
million tons of sugar and 25.7 billion liters (6.8 billion gallons) of ethanol, making it the
number-one sugarcane grower and sugar producer in the world, and the second-largest
ethanol producer on the planet, behind the United States.

—————-

Brazil Hopes Shell-Cosan Can Boost Ethanol Exports

Date: 04-Feb-10, Reuters from Brazil
Author: Inae Riveras – Analysis

SAO PAULO – Brazil’s ethanol industry, which invested heavily to boost output of the cane-based biofuel, is counting on a tie-up between sugar and ethanol producer Cosan and Royal Dutch Shell Plc to revive its prospects after exports fell short of expectations.

“Shell chose ethanol as the renewable fuel they want to be in and it chose Brazil. Whether this will mean more exports will depend on a series of circumstances beyond the companies’ control,” said ethanol expert Eduardo Pereira de Carvalho.

The slow rate of growth for ethanol exports has disappointed Brazil, where more than 450 mills joined the ethanol sector’s expansion drive in recent years.

Some analysts say any growth in ethanol exports will depend on oil prices more than other factor.

“The deal itself does not raise or reduce the economic viability of blending anhydrous ethanol in gasoline. This will be determined by the oil market,” said sugar and ethanol analyst Julio Maria Borges, director at Job Economia.

In 2008, when oil prices reached record highs of $147 per barrel, Brazil exported 5.1 billion liters of ethanol, up sharply from 3.5 billion liters the previous year. Countries simply bought more of the fuel to replace gasoline.

But oil prices tumbled as the global credit crisis intensified, and there was a similar decline in foreign interest for the cane-based fuel. Brazilian ethanol exports in 2009 slipped to 3.3 billion liters despite extremely low prices on the Brazilian market.

STEADY SUPPLIES, TARIFFS

If ethanol is economically viable compared to oil, however, Brazilian ethanol exports should benefit from Shell’s global infrastructure, commercial relationships and know-how.

Shell, with distribution centers and 45,000 filling stations around the world, will have access to annual supplies of 2 billion liters of Cosan ethanol.

“Shell will be able to strike long-term deals with clients around the world, something that currently hardly exists, as it will be backed by a big provider,” Borges said.

“It’s difficult to predict (when exports could rise)… but the strategic meaning of a company the size of Shell to invest here is the most important point,” Carvalho said.

Just back from a breakfast at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, a New York firm active in Brazil for 30 years – Mergers & Acquisitions and Private Equity, Bankruptcy and Restructurings, Project Finance and Capital Markets – in short – the works.

The topic was – BRAZIL: ECONOMIC, INVESTMENT and POLITICAL OUTLOOK.

The Breakfast Seminar was organized by the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce, Inc. (BACC) - www.brazilcham.com, Chaired by Paulo Vieira da Cunha, Partner & Head of Research – Emerging Markets at Tandem Global Markets Fund, and Chairman, Banking and Capital Markets Committee, BACC.

His panel included Lisa Schineller, Director, Sovereign Ratings, Standard & Poor’s; Tony Volpon, Senior Economist, Nocura Securities International Inc.; Geoffrey Dennis, Managing Director and Global Emerging Markets Strategist Analyst, Citigroup (CIRA); Demian Reidel, Founding Member of QFR Capital Management, LP with previous important positions at Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, background in Petroleum and Nuclear strategy in Argentina and economics at Harvard, who replaced as speaker the Founder of QFR, Jose Luis Daza; and Chris Garman, Managing and Practice Head, Latin America, Eurasia Group.

As expected, there was lots of talk about macroeconomics, how Brazil moved in the last years to the point that assets exceed debt; how Brazil survived well this last World Crisis. The present low indebtedness with a combination of FDI and equity and great export markets stretching from Asia to the US and the EU. They have managed very well the newly found oil wealth and the hope is that they can continue to manage it well and not open the country up too much to the international oil companies.    A main key is not to start to increase, without solid plans, the expenditures so they get addicted to that oil money as it happened in Mexico. The presentations were informative and very calculated as expected. But I really did not come for this.

What brought me to this early morning event was the expectation that there will be a presentation of the Political Outlook, specially as Brazil will have Presidential Elections this year – and I had my fill in the last presentation – the one by Mr. Garman.

As I am keeping coming back to it on our website – Brazil is the only “BRICS” from Latin America, actually in this world the third BRIC in size – after China and India. Brazil may not be able to match their 1,3 billion population each, but it clearly has more Natural Resources then either of them, and being in the Western Hemisphere, it is the one and only BRIC that shares space with the US – albeit – at quite a distance – and that is an advantage. If you wish – you may see this as sort of an anti pod to the US – about equal in size and potential and tied – even though the US is slow to admit – in a future love-hate relationship that will be main factor of the development of both countries the moment the US has realized that its addiction to Afro-Asian oil has lead to its downfall. Past mischief North Americans have committed in Brazil is hopefully over, and solid and wise cooperation could be in the cards with the people in that room as potential movers of the economic links.

{Facts: On October 3, 2010, Brazilian citizens eligible to vote will choose the successor of current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, of the Workers’ Party. If none of the candidates receives more than a half of the valid votes, a run-off will be held on October 31, 2010. According to the Constitution, the President is elected directly to a four-year term, with a limit of two terms. Lula is not eligible, since he was elected in 2002 and re-elected in 2006. This will mark the first time since 1989 that he will not run for President.

Lula is backing his Chief of Staff Dilma Rousseff of his Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) – her main opponent is Sao Paulo State Governor Jose Serra, of the Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira (PSDB). Usually elections in Brazil are very lively and the event is third in importance to the Carnival and a good soccer game.}

Now to the Garman presentation: Actually for 15 years, even with changes in Government, Brazil showed an amazing continuity that led to the present growth.There is low inflation for the last 7 years and all of this came about with industrial policy and macroeconomics that made President Lula get approval ratings of 80%. Had he been able to run again the Brazilians would have gone for him, but in his absence, they still would like with an 80% majority to see his policies continued. Nevertheless, there is a problem with his choice for his replacement – it is not a strong choice – so there is not going to be a coronation but an election. This allows for the possibility that Brazilians might decide to take more risk then expected under Lula. This is more risk at fiscal policy. Thanks to the discovery of the pre-salt oil deposits there is more fiscal room and the Government driven policy of Petrobras might loosen up.  So – it is now clear that actually the elections do matter, and the contest has to be watched. The real question is – what do the voters want? Or let me put it differently, are they so bored with success that they want change?

Now I had my chance and ceased it without thinking twice. When the time for questions came, my question was right there. “Could foreign policy have an impact on the outcome of the elections in Brazil? With Brazil trying to get a seat at the UN Security Council and with its economic situation and growth having become a BRIC, would it not be the right thing for President Lula to suggest Brazil take a leadership position on the Haiti issue. Brazil is actually already involved with troops in Haiti – has even taken loses – why not claim the leadership position. There are many points of similarity in background, sugar cane etc.?”

So, having written earlier that “Brazil could lead if asked” this turned now into “Brazil should ask to lead in order to do good not only to others but also to its own Administration.” Even economic analysts of Brazil can see that this makes sense.

 http://www.alternet.org/blogs/workplace/…

Has Disaster Profiteering Already Begun in Haiti?

Posted by Jeremy Scahill, on Alternet, Rebel Reports on January 18, 2010.

He says: “The Orwellian-named International Peace Operations
Association didn’t waste much time in offering the “services” of its
member companies to swoop down on Haiti.”

The Orwellian-named mercenary trade group, the International Peace
Operations Association, didn’t waste much time in offering the
“services” of its member companies to swoop down on Haiti for some old
fashioned  humanitarian assistance disaster profiteering. Within hours
of the massive earthquake in Haiti, the IPOA created a special web
page for prospective clients, saying: “In the wake of the tragic
events in Haiti, a number of IPOA’s member companies are available and
prepared to provide a wide variety of critical relief services to the
earthquake’s victims.”

While some of the companies specialize in rapid housing construction,
emergency relief shelters and transportation, others are private
security companies that operate in Iraq and Afghanistan like Triple
Canopy, the company that took over Blackwater’s massive State
Department contract in Iraq. For years, Blackwater played a major role
in IPOA until it left the group following the 2007 Nisour Square
massacre.

In 2005, while still a leading member of IPOA, Blackwater’s owner Erik
Prince deployed his forces in New Orleans in the aftermath of
Hurricane Katrina. Far from some sort of generous gift to the
suffering people of the US gulf, Blackwater raked in some $70 million
in Homeland Security contracts that began with a massive no-bid
contract to provide protective services for FEMA. Blackwater billed US
taxpayers $950 per man per day.

The current US program under which armed security companies work for
the State Department in Iraq — the Worldwide Personal Protection
Program — has its roots in Haiti during the Clinton administration.
In 1994, private US forces, such as DynCorp, became a staple of US
operations in the country following the overthrow of Jean Bertrand
Aristide by CIA-backed death squads. When President Bush invaded Iraq,
his administration radically expanded that program and turned it into
the privatized paramilitary force it is today. At the time of his
overthrow in 2004, Aristide was being protected by a San
Francisco-based private security firm, the Steele Foundation.

What is unfolding in Haiti seems to be part of what Naomi Klein has
labeled the “Shock Doctrine.” Indeed, on the Heritage Foundation blog,
opportunity was being found in the crisis with a post titled: “Amidst
the Suffering, Crisis in Haiti Offers Opportunities to the U.S.” “In
addition to providing immediate humanitarian assistance, the U.S.
response to the tragic earthquake in Haiti earthquake offers
opportunities to re-shape Haiti’s long-dysfunctional government and
economy as well as to improve the public image of the United States in
the region,” wrote Heritage fellow Jim Roberts in a post that was
subsequently altered to tone down the shock doctrine language. The
title was later changed to: “Things to Remember While Helping Haiti.”

————————————–
Jeremy Scahill is the author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s
Most Powerful Mercenary Army.

The above and the bellow  are about reformulation and reformation of the American Republicans.

The following is another amazing piece of information about the way the Republican party is attempting to come back from the boondocks.

Indeed, there is an increasing noise being heard from the various Dick Cheney compadres. This article focuses on the Sarah Palin American phenomenon and her nebulous advance towards the 21st US Tea Party version that she would like to see made up of all right wingers of the nation; but this article just shows that not all right is equal – so now what?

 http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/14502…

Tea Party Split Between Libertarian Faction and Religious Right? This tension matters a great deal — the former wants smaller government; the latter wants bigger government to discriminate against people they don’t like.

Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly  on January 8, 2010.

After a series of bizarre, and often offensive, rallies in D.C., the Teabaggers are apparently going to get together in about a month for a convention.

The Tea Party Nation is gearing up for its first ever convention, to be held at the famed Opryland Hotel in Nashville next month. It’s a confab designed to help the tea parties from across the country organize, with an agenda that sounds a lot like an attempt to form an official third party.

Organizers ask for local groups to “select their best to meet with their peers from across the nation” and who “have the most desire to move this process of organizing to the next level.”

They’ll have a workshop about “the importance of becoming Precinct Committee Chairs.”

“Please join us, make and form strong bonds, network, and make plans for action. We are doing what we could not do alone, to preserve that which we value,” organizers write.

The three-day event scheduled for the first weekend in February is already rubbing some conservative activists the wrong way — the Tea Party Nation gathering is charging $549 per person. That’s significantly more expensive than tickets to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) — traditionally the biggest right-wing event of the year — which will be held two weeks later just outside D.C.

Of course, one explanation for the steep costs is Sarah Palin — the former half-term governor will reportedly receive as much as $100,000 to speak to Tea Party Nation, while CPAC does not pay any of its speakers. (Palin was invited to appear at CPAC, but declined, perhaps because there was no money in it.)

And speaking of Palin, the guest list for Tea Party Nation is what drives home just how radical a group we’re talking about here.

In addition to Palin, attendees will hear from, among others:

* World Net Daily’s Joseph Farah

* Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.)

* Former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore

* Religious right leader Rick Scarborough

This is not a group of mainstream Americans. Farah’s conspiracy-driven website has taken the lead in peddling Birther nonsense; Bachmann is mad as a hatter; Moore is a theocrat who doesn’t believe the Bill of Rights applies to the states and was removed from office for ignoring federal court orders he didn’t like; and Scarborough is a radical preacher best known for being a Jerry Falwell acolyte, writing a book called Liberalism Kills Kids, and trying to establish his own mini-theocracy in Texas several years ago.

With that in mind, the speakers’ list offers some hints about the direction of this “movement.” There have been fissures between the libertarian-minded factions and religious-right-style theocrats whose agenda expands well beyond taxes and “socialized medicine.”

Indeed, the tension between the factions matters a great deal — the former wants smaller government in all instances; the latter wants bigger government to prevent abortions and discriminate against minority groups right-wing activists don’t like.

It appears Tea Party Nation and its high-profile participants are signaling the success of the religious-right contingent in taking the lead. But that’s likely to make the fissures more pronounced in the coming months.

——————-

Steve Benen is “blogger in chief” of the popular Washington Monthly online blog, Political Animal. His background includes publishing The Carpetbagger Report, and writing for a variety of publications, including Talking Points Memo, The American Prospect, the Huffington Post, and The Guardian. He has also appeared on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation,” MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow Show,” Air America Radio’s “Sam Seder Show,” and XM Radio’s “POTUS ‘08.”

========

But please do not think that all religious people from the heart of America belong to the Tea Party. Please see what I also got today – and this from my friend Gail who sent me material from the EDF – The Environmental Defense Fund.

Religion and Climate Change

January 8, 2010

The president of a religious institution isn’t the first person you think of as a likely EDF spokesperson. But in a recent television ad sponsored by EDF, Dr. Dan Boone, the president of Trevecca Nazarene University in Tennessee, made an impassioned plea for Congress to pass climate change legislation. “Please somehow find a way to let this global concern rise above partisan politics,” Dr. Boone said.  He’s descended from frontiersman Daniel Boone—clearly the pioneering spirit lives on.

The conflict between politics, religion and science has been with us for centuries; think of Copernicus, Galileo, Darwin. Today there is rampant confusion between faith, something you believe in, and science, something that requires only connective leaps between hypotheses and demonstrable evidence. We seem to have lost our trust in the authority of scientists, no matter how impressive their level of training and achievement. A fascinating new Pew poll showed that Republicans are overwhelmingly less likely to “believe” the science of climate change than Democrats, who aren’t entirely persuaded either.

With every passing week, the scientific data gets more precise, and more frightening. Yet this has proven insufficient to move people to action. All the more fascinating, then, to watch the growing movement among religious leaders who use their pulpits to venture into environmental action. More than 10,000 congregations of Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist and other faiths are working in 30 states as members of Interfaith Power & Light (IPL). These religious leaders are clearly having an impact on people across the country who would never call themselves environmentalists.

IPL sees climate change as a profound moral issue, a matter of values—something many environmentalists have been wary of addressing, preferring to focus on technological or economic solutions as being less politically charged and ultimately more effective. But no matter what our approach, we all have something to learn from faith communities about how to bridge divisions and instruct, inspire and mobilize people.

— — —

Portrait of a Preacher (mind you – she is no Sarah Palin! – a PJ comment): The powerful message of Interfaith Power and Light—one that unites all faiths—is that people have a duty to be stewards of the earth. In loving God, we must love his creation. This is not, as some critics claim, about turning environmentalism into a religion; that is a perversion of what is actually happening. The fact is, in order to succeed in significantly altering the global course of climate change, we are going to have to harness all the power we have, whether it is the power of the market, the power of technology, or the power of heart and soul.

IPL is the brainchild of the Reverend Sally Bingham, a priest in the Episcopal Diocese of California. Bingham is also a trustee of EDF. She founded The Regeneration Project whose mission is to deepen the connection between ecology and religion. IPL is the primary campaign and is a religious response to global warming. State chapters respond to a call to action: they agree to give sermons that explain the danger of climate change, reduce their own emissions, support public policy that cuts greenhouse gases, and promote the adoption of renewable energy technologies.

“Most people want to do the right and moral thing,” Bingham wrote to me recently in an email. “They just don’t sometimes know what that is. It is for that reason that religious leaders have such an important role. We need to take this issue out of the hands of the politicians and get it into the hands of the people at the grass roots level. Clergy can do this.”

Communities of faith, in other words, can provide moral leadership, something we desperately need amplified from many quarters. Think of the two major moral issues in America’s past – civil rights and slavery; the fight over these issues was led by communities of faith, united on moral grounds. “There are millions of people who don’t listen to politicians and who are skeptical of science, but who will listen to their clergy,” notes Bingham.

“The powerful message that unites all faiths is that people have a duty to be stewards of the earth.”

This amazing article was penned by Fidel Castro himself, then later we watched how Presidents Morales of Bolivia and Chavez of Venezuela spoke in the Copenhagen plenary similar words to these, in the name of the ALBA group of Latin and Caribbean States, on that very important Friday-the eighteenth.

Today, when finally writing about this, I also wonder if besides Simon Bolivar and Jose Marti, Chavez is not ready to accept also Abraham Lincoln as a third member of a historic triumvirate intended to set the Western Hemisphere apart from global machinations, provided President Obama does indeed stretch out a friendly hand to Cuba? I believe that this is within the realm of possibilities, and perhaps the easiest way for the US to free itself of the tyranny of oil and the influence of the oil lobby of Washington. I believe that our times start looking more and more like the pre-WWII days. The Abraham Lincoln Brigade that went to Spain had among its people some of the best the US had to offer. They were not stupid and recognized the Stalinist stealth-riders, as well as the fascist opponents, and remained true to democracy ideals that brought them there. Climate change provides the world the same opportunity as fighting for democracy did in those years. If Obama is ready to rein in the US extremists when it comes to economic relations with the countries of the Southern part of the Western Hemisphere, new line-ups are possible based on new agreed common goals of helping in the sustainable development of these countries, rather then continuing to regard them only as source of raw materials. Had the US done so earlier the world might have been a friendlier place to America – at least in that part that fell into the geopolitical Western Hemisphere Monrovian design.

Clearly, Castro and Chavez will criticize the US when being held at bay by the stick of US corporations, but when approached as partners for change they might actually be ready for political compromise. The reality is that even though they do not apply democracy to their States, the did eradicate analphabetism, hunger, and established health care systems, ahead of the US. Venezuela can help fund such positive activities thanks to its income from oil, but they seem ready to help fund also other positive activities if offered a place at the American table. The way they show pride in their baseball culture that derived from the US via Cuba, shows to me that I am not dreaming about pie in the sky.

———–
 http://monthlyreview.org/castro/2009/10/…

Reflections of Fidel: The ALBA and Copenhagen.

The festivities associated with the 7th ALBA Summit, held in the historic Bolivian region of Cochabamba, showed the rich culture of the Latin American peoples and the joy elicited in children, young people and adults in general by the singing, the dancing, the costumes and rich expressions of the human beings of all ethnic groups, colors and shades: aborigine, black, white and mixed people. We could see there thousands of years of human history and precious culture that explain the determination with which the leaders of various Caribbean, Central and South American peoples convened that summit.

The meeting was a great success. Bolivia was the venue. I recently wrote on the excellent prospects of that country, an heir to the Aymara-Quechua culture. A small group of peoples from that area are bent on proving that a better world is possible. The ALBA – created by the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and Cuba, inspired by Bolivar’s and Marti’s ideas, as an unprecedented example of revolutionary solidarity- has showed how much could be done in barely five years of peaceful cooperation. This started shortly after Hugo Chavez’s political and democratic victory. Imperialism underestimated him, and deliberately tried to oust him and remove him. The fact that for a good part of the 20th century Venezuela had been the world’s largest oil-producer, practically owned by the Yankee transnationals, made the chosen path particularly rough to pursue.

The powerful adversary had neoliberalism and the FTAA [Free Trade Area of the Americas]; two instruments of domination always used after the Cuban Revolution to crush resistance in the hemisphere.

It is irritating to think of the shameless and disrespectful way in which the US administration imposed the government of millionaire Pedro Carmona and tried to have elected President Hugo Chavez removed, at a time when the USSR had disappeared and the People’s Republic of China was a few years away from becoming the economic and commercial power it is today, after two decades of over 10 percent growth. The Venezuelan people, like that of Cuba, resisted the brutal thrust. The Sandinistas recovered, and the struggle for sovereignty, independence and socialism gained ground in Bolivia and Ecuador. Honduras, which had joined the ALBA, was the target of a brutal coup d’etat inspired by the Yankee ambassador and propelled from the US military base in Palmerola.

Today, there are four Latin American countries that have completely eradicated illiteracy: Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua. A fifth country, Ecuador, is quickly advancing towards that goal. The comprehensive healthcare programs are underway in the five countries at an unprecedented pace in the Third World. The programs of economic development with social justice have become projects of these five states, which already enjoy great prestige in the world for their brave position in the face of the empire’s economic, military and media power. Three English speaking Caribbean countries of black ancestry, determined to fight for their development, have also joined the ALBA.

This alone would be a great political merit if in today’s world that were the only big problem of man’s history.

The economic and political system that in a short historical period has led to the existence of more than one billion hungry people, and many more hundreds of millions whose lives are hardly longer than half the average of those in the wealthy and privileged countries, was until now the main problem for mankind. But, a new and extremely serious problem was strongly discussed at the ALBA Summit: climate change. A danger of such magnitude had never been known in human history.

As Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales and Daniel Ortega waved the people goodbye in the streets of Cochabamba yesterday, Sunday, that same day, according to news spread by BBC World, Gordon Brown was chairing in London a session of the Major Economies Forum mostly made up by the highest developed capitalist countries, the main culprits for the carbon dioxide emissions, that is, the gas causing the greenhouse effect.

The significance of Brown’s remarks is that they have not been made by a representative of ALBA or one of the 150 emerging or underdeveloped countries on the planet but of Great Britain, the country where industrial development started and one of those which have released most carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. The British Prime Minister warned that if an agreement is not reached at the UN Summit in Copenhagen, the consequences will be ‘devastating.’

Some of the ‘catastrophic’ consequences would be floods, droughts and lethal heat waves claimed the environmental group Nature World Fund referring to Brown’s assertion. “The climate change will be out of control within the next five to ten years if the CO2 emissions are not drastically cut down. There will not be a plan B if Copenhagen fails.”

The same news source claims that: “BBC specialist James Landale has explained that not everything is happening as expected.”

Newsweek reported that “it seems more unlikely every day that the states will commit to something in Copenhagen.”

According to reports from the major American press outlet, the chairman of the session, Gordon Brown, said that “if no agreement is reached, there is no doubt that the damage of the uncontrolled emissions will not be repaired with a future agreement.” He then went on to mention such conflicts as “unchecked migration and 1.8 billion people afflicted by water shortage.”

Actually, as the Cuban delegation claimed in Bangkok, the United States led the highest industrialized countries most opposed to the necessary reduction of emissions.

At the Cochabamba meeting, a new ALBA Summit was convened. The timetable will be: December 6, elections in Bolivia; December 13, ALBA summit in Havana; December 16, participation in the UN Copenhagen Summit. The small group of ALBA nations will be there. The issue is no longer “Homeland or Death”; it is truly and without exaggeration a matter of “Life or Death” for the human race.

The capitalist system is not only oppressing and plundering our countries; the wealthiest industrial nations wish to impose to the rest of the world the bulk of the burden in the struggle on climate change. Who are they trying to fool with that? In Copenhagen, the ALBA and the Third World countries will be struggling for the survival of the species.

Fidel Castro Ruz
October 19, 2009
6:05 PM

Healthcare Reform
SATURDAY, NOV 7, 2009
WAR ROOM at Salon

One Republican votes for House Dems’ health bill.
Both sides lobbied hard to win over Louisiana Rep. Joseph Cao, but he ultimately crossed the aisle.
BY ALEX KOPPELMAN

House Republicans have been remarkably unified this year, sticking together on all of the big votes and ensuring that Democrats don’t have any bipartisan cover whatsoever. But when the House votes on the Democrats’ healthcare reform bill Saturday night, things could be different.

Multiple outlets are reporting that both sides of the aisle are lobbying aggresively to win over Rep. Joseph Cao, R-La. Cao has reportedly told colleagues he’s undecided, and the White House is getting involved in the fight for his vote as a result. According to ABC News, even White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has spoken with Cao.

Cao was born in Vietnam, in Ho Chi Minh City. Cao,  and came to America at age 8. Before being elected to Congress, he had never before held public office.

After earning a degree in physics and attending seminary with the intention of a life in the priesthood, Cao became a lawyer focusing on immigration issues. But when both his home and his law office were destroyed during 2005’s Hurricane Katrina and he dealt with the storm’s aftermath, and the government’s response to it, Cao turned to politics.

Cao’s district voted 75%-23% for Barack Obama in 2008, but Cao was able to beat Jefferson in a December election (held at that time because of the rescheduling of some Louisiana Congressional elections, due to a hurricane). Cao had held out on voting for this bill — he is strongly pro-life and wanted full assurances that abortion would not be funded — but his vote for final passage, the 220th vote aye, after the passage of the Stupak Amendment, could give him a positive card to play with his Democratic constituents.

Ironically, right after Cao was elected in December 2008, the House GOP boasted of his upset win as a sign of the GOP’s comeback, and that he presented a path to future victories. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) declared: “The Future Is Cao.” Little he knew how right he was.

Cao is in a unique position, because he’s a first-term congressman who represents a heavily Democratic district. As a result, he’ll have a hard time getting reelected as it is, and though the GOP base would undoubtedly rise up against him, Cao can use a little bipartisan credibility with the Democrats in his district. The only reason he was able to win election in the first place is because he was running against Rep. William Jefferson, who was under indictment on federal corruption charges at the time of the vote; Jefferson has since been convicted on a majority of the counts against him.

Update: Whether due to Emanuel’s infamous gift for arm-twisting, his district’s blueness or something else, the Democrats won over Cao. He crossed the aisle to provide the bill with its 220th “aye.”

By DARREN SAMUELSOHN, ClimateWire
Published: May 22, 2009

Thirty-five members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee gained a new title last night: global warming ambassadors.

In voting to adopt comprehensive legislation to cap U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, the 34 Democrats and one Republican now embark on the difficult task of convincing their fellow House colleagues to support sweeping new environmental legislation in tight economic times.

“We really need to be emissaries to the caucus, talking to them about how we were able to find some good common ground, and how it’s a good bill,” said Rep. Diane DeGette, a Democrat from Denver who said she would focus in the coming months on her fellow Western and urban lawmakers.

Rep. Mike Doyle, a Democrat who represents Pittsburgh, has already gotten started, albeit in a very subtle way. He brought up the climate bill over breakfast yesterday with a wavering lawmaker from the South.

“It was more of a conversational thing,” said Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.). “He was explaining how he’d become a convert. I’ll just leave it at that. He did not try to twist my arm or influence my vote in any way.”

As DeGette, Doyle and many other Democrats are already seeing, their job will not be easy. It is going to take more than just one breakfast conversation to explain the intricacies of a 946-page climate bill that was long ago branded by Republicans as an “energy tax.”

“As this bill is now out there in the public domain, I think people will understand the extraordinary cost that this will impose to business and working families,” House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said yesterday. “And at the end of the day, that will be what will kill this bill.”

“If they don’t want to change it, then they’ll have to find the votes some other place,” Peterson said. “In my district, a ‘no’ vote would be a good vote.”

Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-N.D.), a member of the Agriculture Committee and the Blue Dogs, a group of moderate and conservative Democrats, said defections among committee members and Blue Dogs would make for “rough sledding” on the floor for the climate bill given the widespread GOP opposition.

“I don’t think [Peterson] is bluffing,” Pomeroy said. “He has got the support he says he has.”

A plan in progress:

Speaking to reporters last night after the final passage vote, Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) said he would do what it takes to get the measure across the finish line.

From:      beledeles at yahoo.com
Subject: Rush Limbaugh Wants to Know Why Women Don’t Like Him
Date: February 27, 2009
To:      pj at sustainabilitank.com

Recently, Rush Limbaugh said he’d convene a “summit” to determine why he’s not popular with the ladies. Rush, however, is a guy thing, and here’s why:

Everyone has known an older person who longs for simpler days when up was up and down was down, when life was slower and gentlemen wore hats and you would hold the door open for a lady and she wouldn’t think you were a chauvinist. It was a time when everyone understood who the bad guys were, and someone didn’t get it, well, they were the misfits.

They were the misfits and everybody knew it. It was a time when people obeyed the boss, and the boss was white.

The boss was white, and the boss was a man.  

You know that old saying, “You learn something new every day.” Well, there was a time, so the legend goes, that you didn’t have to learn something new every day. You could stick with what you had always known, the things you’ve known since you were a young white boy, and as such, it was understood that people like you, people who looked like you, were going to get the biggest piece of cake. That was your world, and that’s how it had always been.

And suddenly that saying, “You learn something new every day,” is everywhere you go.   Nowadays, you can’t count on anything. This Indonesian guy named Osama Hussein is President of the whole f**king United States. Not Vice President, but President. Suddenly, that pantsuit-wearing baby killer wife-of-a-cheat Hillary is Secretary of State. So you want to wake up in the morning and start the day by screaming “Stop. Just stop, right now.” There was a time that a white man of means could stand up and say “Shut the f*** up” and get some respect.

Not long ago, the men who did the work, the men who built this country, who drove the trucks and laid the pipes and built the cars and fixed the roads and fixed the toilets – we got respect. We didn’t have to wade through all this political correctness just to get what was ours without some pinhead whining about it.

And there was a time when you knew where the communists were. They were in Russia, not in the White House.

And you could count on the respectable people to ferret out the rest. Now you got socialists and communists running everything, telling us we have to spread the wealth, telling us that what is ours is not really ours. Who the f*** let them in, anyway?

The above rant is the product of a mind who cannot grasp that black-and-white, us-and-them viewpoints no longer work. The world of simple questions (“Are you for America or against it?” “Do you love free enterprise or hate it?”), has been replaced by shades of grey. Now you have to deal with people that say, “I love my country enough to criticize it, I love my country, but can’t support it when its wrong.” The Rush Limbaugh mind rejects these equivocations as signs of moral laxness. You either love America or you hate it.

The rush Limbaugh mind does not have to participate in the world of nuance, the world of qualified support, the Limbaugh mind despises the politics of “yes, but except….”, or anything that reeks of compromise. The rush Limbaugh mind lives in the bliss of absolute certitude. Certitude is a powerful anesthetic. Certitude provides almost a physical “high” because all of one’s energies can work towards pushing a cause, rather than having to rethink it, or having to pause long enough to consider you might be wrong about something. The Rush Limbaugh mind never has to stop to consider much of anything. The Rush Limbaugh mind can scream and yell and rant and swear at its enemies because it is very clear who the enemies are.

In Rush’s world, the enemies never “have a good point or two.” They are always wanna-be politically-correct socialist commie cowards with pussies for dicks. The Rush Limbaugh brain embraces a type of certitude that never lets any air in. It is a closed system. If you question one of the basic tenants, for example, thinking that in some cases, higher taxes might be needed, or that, in some cases, a Democrat might have a good idea, then according to the Rush Limbaugh mind, you are showing weakness. Self-questioning is not seen as a healthy way to check your facts, to improve and mature your viewpoint, but rather, as sign of a weak will, of being contaminated by the vacillation of little men. To the Rush Limbaugh brain, if you are a leader, then you never question.

———-

(As editor of www.SustainabiliTank.info I did not change even a coma in this article, all what I do is to break up paragraphs and use highlighting for emphasis. I hope that both – the author and Rush Limbaugh – who years ago ranted for a whole day against a letter of mine printed in the New York Times – dealing with ethanol as the octane enhacer of choice to gasoline – and on taxing the use of oil products – will find that our representation of their views is completely accurate.

My thanks to Barry Edeles for his contribution – Pincas Jawetz, editor SustainabiliTank.info)

The original article continues:

———

In the post-consumer age, which is where we are headed, hierarchical thinking is doomed. The mindset of “I am right and you are wrong, I am high and you are low,” is not compatible with the epoch we are entering. Our problems are universal, and not limited by boundaries. The crises we must solve are never again going to stay on one side of the tracks. Fortress America cannot hide from overproduction of manufactured goods, global warming and deforestation, a dwindling oil supply and overpopulation. Everyone will have to weigh in, everyone will have to participate, and everyone will have to feel vested in and be part of the solutions.   Leaders in today’s world must view themselves as the center of a web, like the hub of a bicycle wheel with spokes moving outward. This mindset is vastly different from the traditional hierarchical style of leadership. Hierarchical leadership, with power imposed from the top downward, is no longer a good model for solving the world’s problems. Rush Limbaugh’s thinking resembles the out-of-control male parent who comes home from work, says to the family “My word is law. If you don’t like it, then get the hell out.” The leadership we need today is more maternal, recognizing that what matters in family disputes is the outcome, what matters is that the next morning, people can still look each other in the eye and live peacefully under the same roof. To the maternal mind, “winning” a dispute is measured only by the degree to which family members are able to cooperate after the dispute is over. Such is the kind of leadership required for human survival in an age of dwindling resources, which is our future. Leadership Limbaugh-style is a vestige from a soon-to-be dead age, the age of consumption, and much like the early hominids you see on those ape-to-man evolutionary charts, as transitional as an ape with a spear.

Natives Hope Obama Will Be Their President, Too.

By Haider Rizvi from IPS

NEW YORK, Nov 24 (IPS) - During his election campaign, Barack Obama repeatedly said that he cared about the issues facing Native American communities and insisted that they could trust him — pledges that Native leaders are now watching closely as the president-elect appoints a new cabinet and fills other key federal posts.

So far, Obama has named six native political figures to his transition team — half of them assigned to assist in Interior Department policy, budget and personnel changes.

“We’re lucky to have such stellar representatives with people with whom Indian Country has really good relationships,” said Jacqueline Johnson-Pata, executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, a nonprofit organisation that represents more than 250 tribes.

Native advocates Mary Smith, Mary McNeil and Yvette Robideaux have been assigned to work on justice, agriculture and health issues, while three current and former attorneys with the Native American Rights Fund — John Echohawk, Keith Harper and Robert Anderson — will advise Obama on changes proposed within the Interior Department.

The Natives, also known as “American Indians”, have their own sovereign governments, which the United States recognises in accordance with its constitution and under treaty obligations. However, as the Native leaders observe, their communities have always suffered from inattention during the transition and early years of past U.S. administrations.

“If appointments and major policy decisions are delayed for extended periods, the long-term issues in Indian Country are left unaddressed and handed on to the next administration,” said Johnson-Pata. .

In her view, “any significant reform efforts must be planned during the transition and start at the beginning of an administration if they are to succeed.”

As he continued to reach out to new voting blocs past summer, Obama made a campaign stop at an Indian reservation in Montana, where he told the audience that, as an African-American, he identified with their struggles.

“I know what it’s like to not always have been respected or to have been ignored and I know what it’s like to struggle and that’s how I think many of you understand what’s happened here on the reservation,” Obama said.

In his speech, Obama added: “A lot of times you have been forgotten, just like African-Americans have been forgotten or other groups in this country have been forgotten.”

Statistics show that the indigenous communities, which constitute about one percent of the U.S. population, are among the most marginalised sections of society with regard to health care, education and employment.

In March 2006 and again in March 2008, a panel of U.N. experts analysed the U.S. government’s treatment of indigenous Americans and ruled that it was guilty of racial discrimination.

In its 2008 report, the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) also urged the U.S. to sign onto the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which the current administration has continued to reject despite the fact it has been approved by a vast majority of the U.N. member states.

“Obama has stood with us and it is now time that we stand with him,” he said in a statement, describing the Natives’ interest in the political process as unprecedented. “Indian country has responded to the Democratic message of change and the need for urgency.”

“We have many who go without because our leaders have failed us. This election means much to them. Obama understands this while others remain oblivious. Let us, as Native people, help him.”

On the campaign trail in Montana, Obama was adopted as an honourary member of the Crow tribe, a ceremony that native activists say is reserved for special dignitaries. On that occasion, he was given a new name, “Barack Black Eagle”.

Many activists fighting for the rights of indigenous people say they are hoping that the Obama administration would also re-examine the case of Leonard Peltier, the legendary hero of the American Indian Movement who has been behind bars for nearly four decades.

“Until the law is harnessed to protect the victims of state violence and racism, it will serve as an instrument of repression, just as the slave codes functioned to sustain and legitimise an inhuman institution,” Peltier wrote in the letter.

***

Still, Obama has reached out more to the Native community than most others with presidential aspirations.

“That’s the commitment that I’m making to you, and since now I’m a member of the family, you know that I won’t break my commitment.” he said. The question many Natives are now asking is: Will he?  

Bailout or Bust: How to Save the Big Three From Themselves?

Opinion by: Titus Levi, Truthdig, Thursday, November 29, 2008.

CEO’s of the big three automakers were on Capital Hill Wednesday requesting a bailout. (Photo: Getty Images)
The American automobile industry occupies a near-mythic status in the nation’s cultural and economic imagination. President-elect Barack Obama echoes the sentiments of many when he says that Detroit is “the backbone of American manufacturing.” If it is-Detroit’s economic importance is great but now occupies a lesser role than it did before it entered a slow-but-steady decline in the 1970s-then it suffers from acute and advanced damage that will require major surgery. And like any major surgery, treating Detroit’s malaise will be a complicated affair with no assurance of success. However, doing nothing may be worse, especially for the state of Michigan.

According to Bureau of Labor Statistics’ figures for September 2008, Michigan’s labor force was about 4.9 million, with about 4.5 million holding jobs. That’s a significant decline from September 2007, when the labor force numbered just over 5 million, with 4.6 million employed. The state lost roughly 149,000 jobs in the period and saw unemployment rise from 7.3 percent to 8.7 percent, which is 2.2 points higher than the national average. The rate would have been even higher if people hadn’t dropped out of the labor force altogether.

The Big Three trimmed thousands of jobs in the state during that period, which no doubt triggered additional job cuts among automotive subcontractors and suppliers, various retailers, and even homebuilders and home improvement firms. These job losses keep politicians, business leaders and citizens up late at night. As Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm recently quipped: “Forget ‘Drill, baby, drill.’ Here it’s ‘Jobs, baby, jobs.’ “

All told, General Motors, Ford and Chrysler employ somewhere around 500,000 people, many of them outside Michigan. However, these figures underestimate the total employment impact, since at least 3 million Americans rely on the U.S. auto industry for their jobs, with the highest concentration in and around Michigan. The Center for Automotive Research calculates much higher estimates: about 7 million jobs directly and indirectly tied to the industry, with 2.5 million hanging in the balance in the event of a 50 percent contraction in output from the Big Three.

This brings us to a simple cost-benefit analysis: $25 billion in loans for the industry that will save millions of jobs and about $150 billion in economic activity in 2009 alone. So it’s a no-brainer, right? Well, not exactly.

There is no guarantee that throwing money at Detroit will save these companies and the network of jobs that they sustain. Even if the companies do survive, we can almost certainly anticipate steep job losses anyway. Job losses will be increased if GM and Chrysler’s parent company, Cerberus Capital Management merge. But will cutting jobs now spare jobs in the long run? That question dominates all others in the conversation.

Focusing on jobs moves us from an argument about nostalgia for American manufacturing prowess and bailouts of large, and largely incompetent, firms to the more meaningful conversation about livelihoods. Doing so takes us beyond purely economic analysis, since the value of a job exceeds its economic value to individuals, their families and their communities. Livelihood includes paying for basics like food and shelter, but also touches upon important, if hard to measure, assets like one’s sense of identity and the health of neighborhoods and towns.

Applying a cold, hard economic calculus would probably throw cold water on the idea of a bailout for Detroit. First, the companies may well be beyond hope. They have been slow to change, they repeat the same mistakes and they turn out products that too often do not compete successfully with imports. Quality, safety, durability and customer satisfaction numbers remain spotty. Moreover, the so-called “bridge” funding that Detroit hopes to receive may be a bridge to nowhere: It will take years to work off the debts that weigh down consumers and governments, which will constrain spending for several quarters if not years.

Once we emerge from this hole, Americans may renounce our spendthrift ways and that could leave the entire automobile market much smaller over time. In short, the demand side of the market may not rebound sufficiently to resuscitate Detroit. The supply side looks no better: Over time, Detroit will face tough competition on many fronts. Japanese, German, Korean-and it had to happen-Chinese and Indian automakers will battle American carmakers tooth-and-nail. Simply put, the amount of money that Detroit can earn over the next 10 years may not cover the “loans” they want from the Feds. Taxpayers will likely end up footing the bill.

But if Detroit doesn’t get an infusion of cash, then what? The companies could declare bankruptcy, but so far they have stubbornly refused to consider that possibility-with good reason. Market research shows that 80 percent of consumers will not buy cars from insolvent firms. Therefore, GM’s leadership equates bankruptcy with liquidation. However, this view may well be somewhat overwrought. Bankruptcy would likely allow some leaner, meaner and more durable versions of GM and/or Ford to survive. (Chrysler looks like a dead duck; the only reason GM has any interest in the firm is its $11 billion cash stash.) Overcapacity could be pared back more rapidly under the watchful eye of bankruptcy courts and the companies could shed various obligations. This bodes ill for livelihoods and communities and must be carefully managed to lessen the damage to both. However, while going the bankruptcy route may make short-term economic sense, it may be too high a price to pay in terms of the devastation it would inflict on jobs, families and communities.

So what to do? No shortage of ideas have floated through the media, the blogosphere (The Huffington Post has been especially active on the subject, including articles by Neil Young, GM family man Ricky van Veen, and Raymond J. Learsy), broadcasters’ letters’ sections, and probably over many a kitchen table conversation, including my own, where friends engaged in a spirited examination of Detroit’s tendency to confuse novelty-releasing “new models” each year-with genuine innovation.

First, let’s put together a careful cost-benefit analysis. To begin with, Detroit must open its books to thorough scrutiny, and that includes the tight-lipped Cerberus. As a taxpayer, I’m sick and tired of the leap-before-you-look approach to taking action. I’m equally exasperated with Detroit’s tired claims of “trust us, we’re professionals” in demonstrating genuine recalcitrance to changing its organizational culture.

Second, we need to produce a no-holds-barred assessment of the managerial dysfunction at these firms and come to terms with what needs to be done to improve performance and change organizational cultures for the better. Given the track record of these firms, and their reaction to the bad news that immediately had them pulling back on innovation and new product development, I’m not sanguine about the quality or nimbleness of the current leadership. They have to go as part of this process.

Third, jettison utterly hopeless brands and initiatives like Hummer while focusing on integrating innovative ideas into GM’s R&D, design and production systems.

Fourth, engage in a thoughtful analysis of what individuals, families and communities lose in an environment of sweeping job losses and what can be done to ease the pain. This is especially important in places like Michigan, which will suffer near-Great Depression levels of unemployment and disruption, at least in the short run.

Fifth, Detroit could become a public-private partnership built around encouraging innovative and viable ideas in transportation technology. This would allow the automakers to readily leverage the research going on in the U.S. on various fronts and to create systems for developing ideas into commercially viable packages and processes. Even if the Little Two lose some money, they will provide jobs and harness economic benefits that will accrue across the country and even the world.

Finally, if GM and Ford do go into bankruptcy, they probably need to be given some federal support in the form of debtor-in-financing, since financial markets will not back Detroit given the conditions of banks and the auto industry.

My instincts as an economist tell me to cut the Big Three loose, letting them go into bankruptcy so that “the market” can decide their fate, but my heart tells me that we must do something to assure that communities most dependent on the automotive industry and its jobs do not suffer as post-Katrina New Orleans-or pre-Katrina New Orleans-has. After all, that city suffered through a century of decline before its final humiliation and abandonment. Parts of Michigan have endured long-term decline as well, and this experiment in market adjustment has produced far too many losers to regard as anything like a successful treatment.

As a nation and as an economy, we probably can survive the loss of cities like Detroit and Flint, but letting that happen will likely bring on human losses that do not show up in economic statistics. As we decide the automobile industry’s fate, we need to consider something else in this process: What kind of lives will we consign the people of Michigan to living? What kind of people have we become when we plan for, and perhaps execute, the demise of whole cities and even states? How can we prevent genuine harm from coming about and begin the healing process for those who have been and will continue to be displaced by the shrinking of the U.S. automobile industry? How can we, to borrow a sentiment from Albert Camus, strive our utmost to be healers?

 http://www.carbonsolutionsamerica.com

Why Carbon Solutions America?
Carbon Solutions America is an independent climate change consulting and project management firm. We specialize in conducting carbon footprints, overseeing the design and implementation of greenhouse gas reduction and sustainability strategies, and managing the generation of carbon, energy efficiency and renewable energy credits.

***

 This is obviously in anticipation of a changing us attitude.

What to expect: The energy policies of President Barack Obama – they write.
President-elect Barack Obama intends to proceed with his ambitious energy plan that could reduce US CO2 levels 80% below 1990 levels by 2050.   Obama hopes to strengthen the fledgling US CO2 trading market and keep CO2 prices in the US competitive with prices in the EU.   Among his climate and energy proposals:
·   Obama will enact an aggressive plan to reduce electricity demand by 15% from the DOE’s projected 2020 levels, saving consumers $130 billion, and reducing carbon emissions by five billion tons through 2030.
·   The administration will set a goal to ensure that all new buildings are carbon neutral by 2030, and implement a national goal of improving energy efficiency in new buildings by 50%, and existing buildings by 25%, over the next decade.
·   Obama will require 10% of US electricity to be generated with renewable sources by 2012, and 25% by 2025.
·   Obama will invest heavily in the national electricity grid, implementing smart metering, distributed storage, and other energy requirements to accommodate a new energy mix. He will also “flip” incentives so that utilities and their shareholders will make more money for being efficient and reliable than they do now by increasing capacity. (This is often referred to as “de-coupling”).

Registered With – The World Bank Carbon Finance Unit. We expect that this organization, based in Florida and Louisiana, is intent on getting involved in sugar-cane ethanol.

Contact Info
Phone :
561-953-8960

Fax:
561-953-8961

E-mail:
 info at emailcsa.com

The Termites That Sank New Orleans.

Mother Jones posting

A new study in American Entomologist suggests termites damaged New Orleans dikes enough for Hurricane Katrina to knock them over. The researchers first noticed termite trouble five years before Katrina struck. They found Formosan subterranean termites in floodwall seams made of bagasse—the residue from processed sugarcane. Formosan termites love the stuff.

After the 2005 breaches, the researchers inspected 100 seams, including three areas with major breaks. Seventy percent of the seams in the London Avenue Canal had been attacked by insects, and two major dike breaks occurred there during Katrina. Twenty-seven percent of seams in the ravaged 17th Street Canal also showed termite damage.

The Formosan subterranean termite is an invasive species native to China, where it damages levees. Besides eating at bagasse seams, the termites may have contributed to the destruction of the levees of New Orleans by digging networks of tunnels that funneled water and undermined the levee system. Ooops. . . The authors suggest that New Orleans’ 350 miles of levees and floodwalls be surveyed for termite damage.

Julia Whitty is Mother Jones’ environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the Kiriyama Prize and the John Burroughs Medal Award.

India’s humble rickshaw goes solar.
by Elizabeth Roche Mon Oct 13, 2008.   NEW DELHI (AFP) – It’s been touted as a solution to urban India’s traffic woes, chronic pollution and fossil fuel dependence, as well as an escape from backbreaking human toil. A state-of-the-art, solar powered version of the humble cycle-rickshaw promises to deliver on all this and more.

The “soleckshaw,” unveiled this month in New Delhi, is a motorised cycle rickshaw that can be pedalled normally or run on a 36-volt solar battery.

Developed by the state-run Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), prototypes are receiving a baptism of fire by being road-tested in Old Delhi’s Chandni Chowk area.

One of the city’s oldest and busiest markets, dating back to the Moghul era, Chandni Chowk comprises a byzantine maze of narrow, winding streets, choked with buses, cars, scooters, cyclists and brave pedestrians.

“The most important achievement will be improving the lot of rickshaw drivers,” said Pradip Kumar Sarmah, head of the non-profit Centre for Rural Development.

“It will dignify the job and reduce the labour of pedalling. From rickshaw pullers, they will become rickshaw drivers,” Sarmah said.

India has an estimated eight million cycle-rickshaws.

The makeover includes FM radios and powerpoints for charging mobile phones during rides.

Gone are the flimsy metal and wooden frames that give the regular Delhi rickshaws a tacky, sometimes dubious look.

The “soleckshaw,” which has a top speed of 15 kilometres (9.3 miles) per hour, has a sturdier frame and sprung, foam seats for up to three people.

The fully-charged solar battery will power the rickshaw for 50 to 70 kilometres (30 to 42 miles). Used batteries can be deposited at a centralised solar-powered charging station and replaced for a nominal fee.

If the tests go well, the “soleckshaw” will be a key transport link between sporting venues at the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi.

“Rickshaws were always environment friendly. Now this gives a totally new image that would be more acceptable to the middle-classes,” said Anumita Roychoudhary of the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment.

“Rickshaws have to be seen as a part of the solution for modern traffic woes and pollution. They have never been the problem. The problem is the proliferation of automobiles using fossil fuels,” she said.

Initial public reaction to the “soleckshaw” has been generally favourable, and the rickshaw pullers have few doubts about its benefits.

“Pedalling the rickshaw was very difficult for me,” said Bappa Chatterjee, 25, who migrated to the capital from West Bengal and is one of the 500,000 pullers in Delhi.

“I used to suffer chest pains and shortage of breath going up inclines. This is so much easier.

“Earlier, when people hailed us it was like, ‘Hey you rickshaw puller!’ Police used to harass us, slapping fines even abusing us for what they called wrong parking. Now people look at me with respect,” Chatterjee said.

Mohammed Matin Ansari, another migrant from eastern Bihar state, said the new model offered parity with car, bus and scooter drivers.

“Now we are as good as them,” he said.

Indian authorities have big dreams for the “soleckshaw.”

India’s Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal who hailed the invention for its “zero carbon foot print” said it should be used beyond the confines of Delhi.

“Soleckshaws would be ideal for small families visiting the Taj Mahal,” he told AFP.

At present battery-operated buses ferry people to the iconic monument in Agra — but their limited numbers cannot cope with the heavy tourist rush.

CSIR director Sinha said he hoped an advanced version of the “soleckshaw” with a car-like body would become a viable alternative to the “small car” favoured by Indian middle class families.

“Greenhouse gas emissions are showing an increasing trend year on year and 60 percent of this comes from the global transport sector.

“In the age of global warming, the soleckshaw, with improvements, can be successfully developed as competition for all the petrol and diesel run small cars,” Sinha said.

From:  jaiganesh09 at gmail.com
Subject: 2nd Regional Training Course on Climate Risk Management: Science, Institutions, and Society
Date: September 9, 2008

2nd Regional Training Course on Climate Risk Management: Science, Institutions, and Society.

Greetings from ADPC!

The Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC) will offer the Second Regional Training Course on Climate Risk Management: Science, Institutions, and Society from 17 to 28 November 2008 in Bangkok, Thailand. The course aims to build the capacity of professionals to manage risks associated with climate variability, change, and extremes. It builds upon ADPC’s two decades of experience in disaster management, facilitating regional cooperation and building capacities of disaster management institutions, disaster management practitioners, and communities, and a decade of experience in institutionalizing climate information applications for disaster mitigation. It incorporates case studies and sectoral examples from climate risk management programs and projects all over Asia.

Upon completing the course, participants will be able to:

1) design early warning systems for climate-related risks;

2) design climate risk management, climate forecast applications, and climate change adaptation projects, and

3) develop tools to integrate climate risk management practices into development programs and policies.

The first CRM course offering was completed in May 2008 with 27 participants from 14 countries. For more details, please check out the course brochure at http://www.adpc.net/v2007/Downloads/2008…. Please contact me ( jaiganeshm at adpc.net) or my colleague Ms.Kareff Rafisura ( kareff at adpc.net) if you have any questions.

Jaiganesh Murugesan
Disaster Reduction Specialist
Climate Risk Management / Early Warning Systems
Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC)
979/66-70, 24th Floor
SM Tower, Paholyothin Road , Samsen Nai, Phayathai,
Bangkok, 10400
Thailand
Tel : (66-2) 298 0682-92 (Ext-205 )
Fax : (66-2) 298 0012-13
URL: www.adpc.net

Regional Integrated Multi-Hazard Early Warning Center
P.O. Box 4, Klong Luang,
Pathumthani, 12120
Thailand
Tel : 02-5165900-03
Fax : 02-5245350,60

Arctic Melting Shows Global Warming Serious – Expert.

CANADA: September 4, 2008

OTTAWA – The incredibly rapid rate at which Canada’s Arctic ice shelves are disappearing is an early indicator of the “very substantial changes” that global warming will impose on all mankind, a top scientist said on Wednesday.

Researchers announced late on Tuesday that the five ice shelves along Ellesmere Island in the Far North, which are more than 4,000 years old, had shrunk by 23 percent this summer alone.
The largest shelf is disintegrating and one of the smaller shelves, covering 19 square miles (55 square km), broke away entirely last month.

“Climate models indicate that the greatest changes, the most severe changes, will happen earliest in the highest northern latitudes,” said Warwick Vincent, director of the Centre for Northern Studies at Laval University in Quebec.

“This will be the starting point for more substantial changes throughout the rest of the planet…. Our indicators are showing us exactly what the climate models predict,” he told Reuters in an interview.

Global warming is forecast to generate more damaging weather extremes such as hurricanes, cyclones and floods.

The peak temperature the team recorded was 67.5 degrees Fahrenheit (19.7 degrees Celsius), far above the average of 46 degrees Fahrenheit.

***

Vincent said he had no doubt that global warming was caused in part by human activity.

“I think we’re at a point where it is not stoppable but it can be slowed down. And if you think about the magnitude of effects on our society, then we really need to buy ourselves more time to get ready for some very substantial changes that are ahead,” he said.

Ellesmere Island was once home to a single enormous ice shelf totaling around 3,500 square miles. All that is left today are the four much smaller shelves that together cover little more than 300 square miles.

“More and more, we’re realizing that it is microscopic life that really dominates the biodiversity of planet Earth … we really need to understand what that biodiversity is,” said Vincent.  

Palin’s Alaska Reaps the Windfall Profits McCain Decries.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008.

by: Robert Scheer, Truthdig, distributed by Truthout.
 http://www.truthout.org/article/palins-a….

Thanks to Robert Scheer for having researched the US Alaska Oil-State. We knew all of that but were too lazy to do the research and write it up in an orderly way. Now we have it right here.

*- * -*———

*   *
“Welcome to the People’s Republic of Alaska, where every resident this year will get a $3,200 payout, thanks in no small measure to the efforts of Sarah Palin, the state’s Republican governor. That’s $22,400 for a family of seven, like Palin’s.

Since 1982, the Alaska Permanent Fund, which invests oil revenues from state lands, has paid out a dividend on invested oil loot to everyone who has been in the state for a year.

But Palin upped the ante by joining with Democrats and some recalcitrant Republican state legislators to share in oil company windfall profits, further fattening state tax revenue and permitting an additional payout in tax funds to residents.

No wonder she is popular with voters in a state whose residents pay no income or sales taxes but are blessed with state coffers rolling in cash at a time when all other states are suffering. Indeed, when the oil companies pay more taxes to the state of Alaska, they get to write that off against their federal tax obligation, leaving the rest of us to make up the shortfall.”

***

The state of Alaska owns most of the oil-producing land and was getting upward of 85 percent of its budget from the oil companies that lease the fields, even before Palin helped increase the state’s cut.

While other states fire schoolteachers because of the economic downturn, Alaska has, as Palin indicated in accepting John McCain’s offer to join him on the GOP ticket, more money than it knows what to do with.

In a display of plucky arrogance at her coming-out press conference, Palin boasted deceptively that if Alaskans wanted that infamous bridge to nowhere, “we’d build it ourselves.”

She originally had supported having U.S. taxpayers finance that boondoggle, before McCain and others in Congress blasted it.
***
Not that I blame Palin for wrangling for her state a bigger cut of oil company windfall profits; it’s just not an option that will work wonders for states without oil. Of course we can remedy that by having a federal windfall profits tax of the sort that Barack Obama dared propose, and which McCain and his fellow congressional Republicans have managed to quash. Their argument, rejected quite pointedly by Palin for Alaska, is that it would discourage oil companies from investing in boosting oil field yields.

McCain derided Obama’s call for the windfall profits tax, saying it would “increase our dependence on foreign oil and hinder exactly the same kind of domestic exploration and production we need.” I am far more interested in how McCain handles the contradiction between his and Palin’s position on windfall oil profits than whether he properly vetted her on her family-values commitment to the abstinence-only teenage sex education program.

Why is it a good thing for the folks up in Alaska to get a cut of exorbitant oil company profits, but not the rest of us, if we are all part of one nation? Didn’t taxpayers from across the U.S. buy the place from the Russians? Isn’t it our federally collected tax dollars that have been subsidizing Alaska more lavishly than any other state, both before and after the bonanza of oil?

***

Just witness the success of Palin, who, as mayor of the hamlet of Wasilla, hired a big-time lobbying firm intimately connected with the state’s now-indicted Republican Sen. Ted Stevens and thus obtained $27 million in federal earmarks during her tenure. As The Washington Post calculated in a devastating report on Mayor Palin’s assault on the federal treasury, her home town of Wasilla (with about 6,000 inhabitants in 2002 when she was mayor) received $6.1 million, or $1,000 per resident in earmarks, almost as much as Boise, Idaho, got this year with a population that is 30 times larger.

***

It obviously helped to have Alaska’s now-indicted senator as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. And despite McCain’s claims that Palin distinguished herself by breaking with Alaska’s discredited Republican establishment in February, the governor sent Stevens a request for $200 million to support various state projects.

With representatives like that, it’s no wonder that Alaska, despite its oil boom, is still at the top of states subsidized by federal dollars, receiving $1.84 back from Washington for every $1 that Alaskans pay in federal taxes. (California receives 78 cents for every $1.)

Unfortunately, looking to Palin for advice on helping the rest of us during the oil crunch, as McCain has promised, is a bit like asking a Saudi oil minister or Russia’s Vladimir Putin to provide a model for our nation’s economic woes. They hardly feel our pain at the pump.

———

Robert Scheer is author of a new book, “The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America.”

From:  newsdesk at brownrudnick.com
Subject: Brown Rudnick: The Case for Energy Efficiency Portfolio Standards & Tradable White Certificates ATTORNEY ADVERTISING
Date: September 3, 2008

Energy efficiency has long been a great idea; however, not until the recent convergence of higher sustained energy prices and demand for carbon footprint reduction has the case for widespread adoption of energy efficiency measures become so compelling.

In the attached article, by Peter Fusaro and Howard Siegel, Howard L. Siegel, Co-Leader of our Energy and Utilities Practice Group, discusses how today’s technology is better, more reliable and ready to be massively deployed in a new trading market based on energy efficiency portfolio standards and white certificates. Peter Fusaro got into this two decades ago.
If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact your Brown Rudnick attorney or Howard L. Siegel at  hsiegel at brownrudnick.com / 860.509.6519.

Learn more about Brown Rudnick at www.brownrudnick.com.

• Download the PDF here:
• brown-rudnick-energy-efficiency-and-white-certificates-utilipoint-8-08.pdf

Op-Ed Columnist Thomas Friedman, The New York Times, September 3, 2008 (written September 2, 2008)

.
AND THEN THERE WAS ONE.
As we emerge from Labor Day, college students are gathering back on campuses not only to start the fall semester, but also, in some cases, to vote for the first time in a presidential election.

There is no bigger issue on campuses these days than environment/energy. Going into this election, I thought that — for the first time — we would have a choice between two “green” candidates.

That view is no longer operative — and college students (and everyone else) need to understand that.

With his choice of Sarah Palin — the Alaska governor who has advocated drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and does not believe mankind is playing any role in climate change — for vice president, John McCain has completed his makeover from the greenest Republican to run for president to just another representative of big oil.

***

Given the fact that Senator McCain deliberately avoided voting on all eight attempts to pass a bill extending the vital tax credits and production subsidies to expand our wind and solar industries, and given his support for lowering the gasoline tax in a reckless giveaway that would only promote more gasoline consumption and intensify our addiction to oil, and given his desire to make more oil-drilling, not innovation around renewable energy, the centerpiece of his energy policy — in an effort to mislead voters that support for drilling today would translate into lower prices at the pump today — McCain has forfeited any claim to be a green candidate.

So please, students, when McCain comes to your campus and flashes a few posters of wind turbines and solar panels, ask him why he has been AWOL when it came to Congress supporting these new technologies.

***

“Back in June, the Republican Party had a round-up,” said Carl Pope, the executive director of the Sierra Club. “One of the unbranded cattle — a wizened old maverick name John McCain — finally got roped. Then they branded him with a big ‘Lazy O’ — George Bush’s brand, where the O stands for oil. No more maverick.

“One of McCain’s last independent policies putting him at odds with Bush was his opposition to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge,” added Pope, “yet he has now picked a running mate who has opposed holding big oil accountable and been dismissive of alternative energy while focusing her work on more oil drilling in a wildlife refuge and off of our coasts. While the northern edge of her state literally falls into the rising Arctic Ocean, Sarah Palin says, ‘The jury is still out on global warming.’ She’s the one hanging the jury — and John McCain is going to let her.”

Indeed, Palin’s much ballyhooed confrontations with the oil industry have all been about who should get more of the windfall profits, not how to end our addiction.

***

Barack Obama should be doing more to promote his green agenda, but at least he had the courage, in the heat of a Democratic primary, not to pander to voters by calling for a lifting of the gasoline tax. And while he has come out for a limited expansion of offshore drilling, he has refrained from misleading voters that this is in any way a solution to our energy problems.

I am not against a limited expansion of off-shore drilling now. But it is a complete sideshow. By constantly pounding into voters that his energy focus is to “drill, drill, drill,” McCain is diverting attention from what should be one of the central issues in this election: who has the better plan to promote massive innovation around clean power technologies and energy efficiency.

Why? Because renewable energy technologies — what I call “E.T.” — are going to constitute the next great global industry. They will rival and probably surpass “I.T.” — information technology. The country that spawns the most E.T. companies will enjoy more economic power, strategic advantage and rising standards of living. We need to make sure that is America. Big oil and OPEC want to make sure it is not.

***

Palin’s nomination for vice president and her desire to allow drilling in the Alaskan wilderness “reminded me of a lunch I had three and half years ago with one of the Russian trade attachés,” global trade consultant Edward Goldberg said to me. “After much wine, this gentleman told me that his country was very pleased that the Bush administration wanted to drill in the Alaskan wilderness. In his opinion, the amount of product one could actually derive from there was negligible in terms of needs. However, it signified that the Bush administration was not planning to do anything to create alternative energy, which of course would threaten the economic growth of Russia.”

So, college students, don’t let anyone tell you that on the issue of green, this election is not important. It is vitally important, and the alternatives could not be more black and white.

Sarah Palin’s appointment by the advisers to Senator McCane created the initial hurricane. The outfall is not clear – it is actually possible that this selection, with all its blunders, might be actually what brings home to the GOP those that might have decided that McCaine has sacrificed the party base in order to increase his popularity.

The series of moving hurricanes that are a result of the waters of the Gulf having heated up thanks to global warming/climate change will be discarded for their reason, and turned into a worship of leadership – that is the leadership in the five states of the south – Florida (Gov. Charlie Christ), Alabama (Gov. Bob Riley), Mississippi (Gov. Haley Barbour), Louisiana (Gov. Bobby Jindal), Texas (Gov. Rick Perry), all blessed Republican Governors under a Republican President sitting in the White House. It is this group of executives that this time around – three years after Kathrina – had prepared evacuation plans and acted upon them. The concept of “mandatory evacuation,” when accepted by the people, made for good TV reception. Then four of the five governors, those from the outer States – that is except Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana who had his hands full of work because of the Gustav visit – made grandiose statements to First Lady Laura Bush and Aspiring First Lady Cinthy McCain.

Mrs. Bush noted that the gulf state governors “all happen to be Republicans,” and Mr. Rick Perry, Governor of Texas, said “the Republican Governors in Republican States were doing a fabulous job of taking care of citizens. That’s what we do.” Which reminded me of last night’s event at the BBKing in New York City where Kinky Friedman said that Governor Perry has done nothing for his state. (Please see our posting of earlier today.)

The flip side of the above is an article in the New York Sun of Tuesday September 2nd, “After Gustav a Different Recovery.” It is written by Daniel Rothschild of the George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia. He is the director of the Gulf Coast Recovery Project at the University. He and his school are surely good Republicans, but he is not a person easily fooled. He points out that the real lesson that the people on the ground learned from Kathrina and they applied by themselves in this case – was that “when the forces of nature come calling, you cannot rely on statements from officials to make your plans.”

The honest facts are thus that “Despite the rhetoric from officials, the evacuation of New Orleans and surrounding parishes was largely voluntary, and by the time Mayor Nagin and other local leaders ordered that mandatory evacuation, most people had already made their plans to leave.” So much for Republican and media hype.
That article is scanned in at the bottom of our own article.

Our last Hurricane mention in the series is President Bush himself. He was clearly amazing – we wonder if he was left with any capacity to reason things out.

The President spoke to the effect of the still ongoing hurricane – Gustav – saying that what he has learned is that we must continue to develop the US oil resources for the sake of energy independence. That is – the President that performed so poorly on Kathrina – came out now to use Gustav in order to push for more oil drilling.

We will not further elaborate – this out of respect to the office of the Presidency. Suffice only to say that the McCaine team and the people in St. Paul were relieved thanks to Gustav from having to listen and see the president on the opening day of the convention. Now, as Gustav turned out to be much less of a monster as it was feared, and as the GOP convention was restarted, the President will make on Wednesday, a much shortened video presentation only.