On November 1, 2005, SIXTY YEARS SINCE THE END OF WORLD WAR II, THE LIBERATION OF THE AUSCHWITZ EXTERMINATION CAMP BY THE SOVIET ARMY, AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE UN, finally, the UN that in major part came about because of the fact that the world realized that walking in the ashes caused by anti-Semitism and other isms, is not the will of the human race; the UN was created to learn from that experience – but did it? It took 60 years, the creation of the State of Israel, the travails of Zionism is Racism abomination, and one strong Ambassador of humanity to the organization – US Professor/ Senator/Ambassador Moynihan, to start to beat the anti-Semitic UN steel into compliance.

—————

UN Designates International Holocaust day
November 1, 2005, release:

The UN General Assembly has decided by acclaim to designate January 27 as international Holocaust Day.

This is the first time ever that a resolution introduced by Israel has been adopted by the UN General Assembly. Some not inconsiderable distance has been traveled from the infamous “Zionism is Racism” resolution to this resolution. At least, the world can be united in condemning genocide, even if “Zionists” propose the initiative. The vision of Austria and Germany co-sponsoring and approving of such a resolution is certainly heartening to the surviving victims of Nazi persecution, to the Jews, gypsies and others whose families died in the Holocaust and to the state of Israel.

Unfortunately, it is not at all certain how some countries will mark this day. Some of the rhetoric of the UN discussion is ominous: Several Muslim and Arab governments expressed “reservations.” Some countries believe that the Holocaust, in which a state turned against noncombatant civilians, was the same as bombing the cities of enemy countries at war. In many of the countries that approved of this resolution and even among those whose representatives spoke kind words about humanitarianism, Mein Kampf and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are best sellers. Some of those countries have been accessories after the fact to genocide, or committed it themselves. In those countries, every day is Holocaust day. From the remarks of the Ukrainian representative, you would not know that the Jews of the Ukraine were rounded up by Ukrainian SS, or that the gas chambers at Auschwitz were run by a Ukrainian nicknamed “Ivan the terrible.”

What public activities will mark Holocaust day in Iran, where President Ahmedinejad has called for a world without Zionism and America? In Syria, a book about the Blood Libel (the accusation that Jews kill Christian children in order to use their blood for baking Matzot) was written by the former minister of Defense. Syria also made notable contributions to the history of racial persecution in its treatment of the Kurds. Will Syria mark this day in sympathy with the victims, or will they celebrate it by showing, perhaps, a screening of Lenni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will? Will this day become an occasion for so-called “anti-Zionists” to trot out Holocaust denial and accusations that Israel is committing a Holocaust against the Palestinians, or that the Zionists collaborated with the Nazis?

Will the world again stand aside at the next genocide, as it did in Rwanda, and as it did for a very long time in Darfur, and as it continues to do in Tibet? In the discussion, each state was quick to accuse others of genocide, but unwilling to accept responsibility for crimes of their own states and governments. The Venezuelans spoke about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Chinese alluded to Japanese crimes. The Ukrainians alluded to Soviet crimes. The discussion would have more meaning if the Americans had spoken about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Chinese had spoken about their activities in Tibet, the Japanese had spoken the rape of Mongolia and the Turks had spoken of the Armenian genocide.

The implementation of the resolution will be of more consequence than the paper or the words themselves,  and the reality of the actions of states will be more important than either.

The proliferation of vile Web sites and articles about the “Holocaust Myth,” claiming the Holocaust never happened and is yet another Jewish plot, points up the urgent need for this day of remembrance.

Alert readers of what was said that say will note some bitter ironies in the remarks of representatives of some states, whose people and governments were active collaborators or passive accessories in the crime of the Holocaust.

The date – January 27 – was picked as that was the date the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination machine was closed by the Soviet army. http://www.zionism-israel.com/news/holocaust_day.htm

The first commemoration was held at the UN in 2006 and this year we have thus the fifth such event – or actually a series of events, that traditionally start on the Saturday before the actual date with a ceremony at the Park East Synagogue located on Manhattan’s East Side – Midtown.

The list of this year’s events at the UN, as provided to parties outside the UN – and published on our website is:
 http://www.sustainabilitank.info/2010/01…

But besides the UN itself, the fact that the UN has thrown the light upon the Holocaust atrocities, and the world’s need to remember these atrocities by having an International day of Remembrance, it is now that even in unexpected places in the civilized world, we find events being organized for the purpose of remembering and of learning from that experience. We thought thus to mention here one such event in a place we hardly expected to find it – the main Carnival city of the North-East of Brazil – Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil.
 http://www.sustainabilitank.info/2010/01…

We will be reporting on this year’s week-long series in several postings that will involve also other related events – for now we will put up the clear Jewish angle to the comemoration – as it reflected in the Park East Sybagogue events and in the political official presentation at the UN main event of January 27, 2010

REMARKS AT PARK EAST SYNAGOGUE IN MEMORY OF THE VICTIMS OF THE HOLOCAUST

by H.E. Srgjan Kerim President of the 62nd session of the United Nations General Assembly.

Park East Synagogue
New York, 26 January 2008

Rabbi Schneier,
Excellencies,
Members of Park East Synagogue,
Dear Friends,

I am very grateful to Rabbi Schneier for inviting me to the Park East
Synagogue – a historic architectural treasure in the heart of
Manhattan.

I am sure that you are all very proud of Rabbi Schneier for his
commitment and spiritual leadership that has brought this synagogue
international recognition.

It was only five years ago that I had my first opportunity to attend
and participate in a Jewish ceremony, here at the Park East Synagogue.
The experience inspired me to write a poem entitled ‘Temple’. I would
like to share a short extract with you today. I hope you will
appreciate it;

Nowhere in the world is it possible
To find such a grandiose temple
That would keep for ages
The layers of human sin
And all our shame.

I’ve always believed
There’s nothing greater in a temple
Than the final sounds melting
In the concluding Amin
Until I heard the word
Of a great friend of mine
Who walked in the steps of Moses
And is called a Rabbin.

Park East Beit Knesset,

I wish there would not have been such an occasion for me to address
you today. However, as we all know the Holocaust happened. It is
definitely one of the darkest pages in the history of mankind.

Unfortunately, we are still facing some lonely, desperate attempts to
blur the horrifying dimensions of the Holocaust.

We gather here today to remember and pay homage to those who lost
their lives in the Holocaust; the atrocities that they were subjected
to can never be forgotten.
The perpetrators of the Holocaust fed man’s ego with delusions of
supremacy and tried to erase the bonds that all human beings share.

The liberation of the Nazi concentration camps over 60 years ago
revealed one of the most evil crimes against humanity. The
consequences still reverberate in the present.

Elie Wiesel – Nobel Laureate, a Holocaust survivor and champion of
moral responsibility – has best put this into perspective:

“Let us remember, let us remember the heroes of Warsaw, the martyrs of
Treblinka, the children of Auschwitz. They fought alone, they suffered
alone, they lived alone, but they did not die alone, for something in
all of us died with them.”

We must also remember to pay tribute to those who survived and bravely
carried on with their lives – and in doing so inspired others. I would
like to salute the strength and perseverance of all Holocaust
survivors and their families.

I know that some of you are with us today.

Not only have you survived, but you have rebuilt communities all over
the world, become stronger, and enabled future generations to thrive.
You just have to look around at all the people gathered here today to
recognize this fact.

The recognition of this day of Holocaust remembrance by the
international community heralded a change of tide at the United
Nations; and, a step forward in the collective memory and conscience
of our world.

Dear Friends,
Remembrance of the Holocaust is more than the recognition of a tragic
past – or the darker side of human nature.

Remembering is an ethical act; it has ethical value in itself.

Remembrance is also a means through which we can understand ourselves:
an engine for change that should enable us to create and sustain a
better, more just future.

I am reminded of my father and his family. During the Second World War
he bravely helped to save and protect the family of Isac Sion – his
school friend – amidst the terror of occupation.

At the age of twenty my father and Isac subsequently joined the
National Liberation Movement of Macedonia to fight for freedom,
against the Nazi dictatorship, alongside the Allies.

Isac Sion subsequently went on to become Vice-governor of the Central
Bank of the Former Yugoslavia and following this was appointed as
Yugoslavia’s trade representative to the United Kingdom.

My father and many others like him served the Jewish people in their
hour of need. Their actions epitomize the practical meaning of
something profound that the famous Irish politician and philosopher
Edmund Burke once said, and I quote;

“All that is needed for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

When I had my first opportunity, in some small way, to redress the
atrocities committed during the Holocaust – as foreign Minister of
Macedonia – in 2000, I appointed Elie Wiesel as our first Special
Envoy and Goodwill Ambassador. He then became the United Nations
Messenger of Peace for Human Rights and the Holocaust.

And, in honour of the Jewish community, my country will soon complete
the construction of a Holocaust Memorial Centre. This is a symbolic
gesture to bring back the memory of the victims from Treblinka to
Skopje.

Looking back at the turbulent history of the Balkan region there are
some bitter lessons that we must learn: war begins when the perception
of the pain of others ends. We can also turn this around to say that
when the perception of the pain of others begins there is no room for
war.

We must remember that every religion and culture must be tolerant of
the legitimate right for others to assert their difference in freedom.

Furthermore, intolerance of other religions or cultures is often a
sign of the degree of intolerance within a particular religion or
culture.

Dear Friends and members of Park East Beit Knesset,

The United Nations was founded on the ashes of the Holocaust, when the
world was in need of hope for a better future.
It was created to embody that hope as a promise to humanity. However,
most disturbingly, since the Holocaust there have been genocides and
serious crimes against humanity in Cambodia, Rwanda, and Yugoslavia.

That these atrocities occurred is not necessarily the failure of the
United Nations as an organization; but rather, represents the lack of
collective will of its Member States to take the decision to act or
intervene.

Even while we gather here, there are places – like Darfur – where
people suffer from the very crimes, which, time and time again, we
have vowed would never again happen.

For the dignity of all humanity, we must strengthen our ability – our
collective resolve – to prevent such atrocities, whenever and wherever
they might occur.

Indeed, terrorism, violence, rape, murder, poverty and discrimination
on the grounds of race or religion continue to be part of the everyday
lives of many people. This fact alone should jar us with indignation.

Despite the tragic failures of the international community to prevent
crimes against humanity since the founding of the United Nations,
there is hope – failure is not an option.

In 2005, the General Assembly passed a resolution that included the
‘Responsibility to Protect’. In doing so, all nations signaled their
commitment to take action – to hold themselves accountable – to
recognize that with sovereign rights come responsibilities to their
peoples.

In fact all of us here today can add our voice, with the United
Nations, to ensure that this new paradigm within international
relations comes to life.

Rabbi Schneier offers us an example of what we can do. He has been a
great advocate for human rights, and the promotion of religious and
ethnic tolerance. He has worked tirelessly to strengthen ties with
communities from different faiths and backgrounds through his good
works and publications.

In 2003 we jointly organized the first ever South East European
regional conference on ‘Dialogue among Civilizations’, at Lake Ohrid
in Macedonia.

In this spirit, and as we have just celebrated the life of the great
Martin Luther King Jr., I think it is fitting that I should recount
something he once said. It captures the same call to action that needs
to be instilled in the world today if we are to prevent a repeat of
the Holocaust;

“injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere….. Whatever
affects one directly, affects all directly.”

Dear Friends,

On the occasion of the International Day of Commemoration in memory of
the victims of the Holocaust, as well as of the 60th Anniversary of
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, let us embrace our
diversity, and honor our interdependence, as the only path to peace
and justice.

Together, it is our common challenge to eliminate all distorted
notions that deepen barriers and widen divides: for they all originate
in the discriminatory practices of the mind.

We can achieve this by promoting intercultural dialogue and
cooperation for peace as a means to replace misunderstanding with
mutual respect and acceptance.

But we must also move from words to action, from principled intentions
to deeds that promote human security, human rights, the responsibility
to protect and sustainable development. For herein lies the hope of a
new culture of international relations with the United Nations as its
centerpiece.

Members of Park East Beit Knesset,
And, all those gathered here today,

Let me wish all of you and the wider community peace, health and prosperity.

Let all our thoughts honour the victims of the Holocaust, and let us
spare no effort to ensure that we never again witness such evil. We
may not be able to change the past, but we must have the courage and
vision to change the future.

In order to do so, it is not enough to reiterate solemn gestures; we
must do everything possible to transform our attitudes to have full
regard for the dignity of all individuals, communities and nations.

Thank you. Shalom.

————–

But that was the last President of the UN General Assembly to be welcome

to speak before a Jewish Audience – in those 5 years. Before him were: Mr. Jan Eliasson of Sweden #60,

and Sheikha Haya Rashed Al Khalifa of  Bahrain #61.

Now it is UNGA’s 64th session: On 10 June 2009, Ali Abdussalam Treki

of Libya was elected by acclamation at a plenary meeting of the

192-member body of the United Nations General Assembly.

Treki assumed office as president of the 64th session on 15 September 2009,
succeeding General Assembly president, Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann of
Nicaragua who was 63rd President of the UNGA. Both these gentlemen
have made anti-Israeli statements and were also mentioned in this
context as plain anti-Semites, thus making it impossible to listen to
their linguistic expressions when it comes to the commemoration of the
liberation of Auschwitz. Thus, these last two years, the presentations
at the UN, it was Vice Presidents of the UNGA that spoke in their
place, and the UN General Assembly as such was not represented at the
Saturday pre-commemoration service at the Park East Synagogue.

But in 2009, The Park East Congregation had the honor to host the UN
Secretary General.

—————-
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
24 January 2009

Remarks at Holocaust Remembrance Day Ceremony at the Park East Synagogue:

Thank you very much, Rabbi [Arthur] Schneier, for that kind introduction.

I especially appreciate you for calling me a mensch. With apologies to
those of you who do not speak Yiddish, I have to say: thank goodness
he didn’t call me meshugenah.

To all, I wish you Shabat Shalom.

Excellencies, distinguished Ambassadors to the United Nations,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Today we mark the International Day of Commemoration honoring victims
of the Holocaust. This is a most important and solemn occasion.

As you know, my friend, the late Tom Lantos, died shortly after last
year’s observance. Some of you may have met him when he came to this
Synagogue. He was dear to me, as he was to you. He made an
extraordinary journey from a Nazi labor camp to the halls of Congress.
He became a leading champion of truth and justice. Like those of you
who also lived through the Holocaust, he was never defeated by the
unspeakable horrors that he survived.

I can only imagine what he endured. Yet I, too, have witnessed man’s
inhumanity to man. I have seen it as Secretary-General, traveling in
places torn by war. And I saw it as a six-year old boy fleeing to the
mountains to escape fighting in my own country.

The UN helped South Korea to recover. Like Tom Lantos, like many of
you, I came to believe in the transformative power of the United
Nations.

Today, the UN is on the cusp of a great transition. Never have global
challenges been so large. Climate change, terrorism, the global
financial crisis – these troubles transcend borders. They affect all
countries, rich and poor. They will be overcome only when all
countries come together in response. That’s why we have a United
Nations.

Yes, the UN has its imperfections. It’s not perfect. Because of this,
from day one since I took office, I have pushed to change it. I have
insisted on a new culture of transparency and accountability. I have
worked to make the UN more efficient, effective, modern. In short, we
have tried to make it a better instrument to serve mankind.

We are here to mark the Holocaust. Like you, the United Nations is
determined to tell its timeless lessons.

Precisely two years ago, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution
condemning, without reservation, any denial of the Holocaust. I quote:
“Ignoring the historical fact of those terrible events increases the
risk they will be repeated.”

With you, I stand in saying: never again. Never. When I paid tribute
to Holocaust victims at Yad Vashem, I wrote in the book there, “Never
again. Never.”

Memory speaks. That is why it must be preserved and passed to future
generations.

Our Holocaust Outreach Program sponsors exhibits, workshops and panel
discussions. The aim: to confront deniers, or those who would minimize
the importance of the Holocaust.

When President Ahmadinejad of Iran declared that Israel should
“disappear,” or be “wiped off the map,” I strongly condemned his
remarks – twice.

We at the United Nations stand for human rights.

We stand for democracy and the rule of law. By working for economic
and social development, we build the foundations for peace.

We have a new instrument in our hands. It is called the Responsibility
to Protect – the idea that every nation has a legal obligation to
protect its people from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and
crimes against humanity. Where nations fall short, the international
community has the right to take collective action.

Yes, it is difficult in practice. But I assure you. This is a major
advance in safeguarding mankind from crimes against humanity.

My friends,

Today is not simply a time for remembering. The Holocaust has lessons
for us, here and now. Let us heed them.

My job can sometimes be terribly painful. I see unbelievable hardship,
the worst human suffering. You are familiar with the grim catalogue of
names and places: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Darfur,
Somalia and, of course, the Middle East.

I am just back from the region. I went to push for a cease-fire. More,
I went in search of a lasting peace.

The recurring violence between Palestinians and Israelis is a mark of
collective political failure – by both sides and by the international
community.

I saw first-hand what most people saw on television. I met a child and
his parents in Sderot, southern Israel, traumatized by falling
rockets. Never for one moment have I forgotten that a million people
in southern Israel live in a daily state of terror and fear.

In Gaza, I saw the most appalling devastation. I saw the UN compound,
still burning.

I said to all I met, on both sides: This must stop.

I left the region more determined than ever to work toward a world
where two States, Israel and Palestine, live side by side in peace and
security. War can never be an answer. We need to strengthen the forces
of peaceful coexistence and dialogue.

No one sees this more clearly than your own Rabbi Schneier. He has
devoted his life to overcoming hatred and intolerance.

You all know him as the founder and president of the Appeal for
Conscience Foundation. What you may not know, and what I am very
grateful to him for, is his pioneering work for the UN’s Alliance of
Civilizations.

He knows first-hand that no one man or nation has all the answers. He
knows the sacred value of tolerance. He has survived the greatest
trials that life can hurl at a man or a woman and emerged not only
with his humanity and spirit intact but stronger. He survived the
Holocaust. Like others among you, he never lost sight of man’s
essential humanity, our capacity for good, our inherent dignity.

So, let us be frank. We must recognize the limits of power and
goodwill. We here know that we can never entirely rid the world of its
tyrants and its intolerance. We cannot turn all extremists to the path
of reason and light. We can only stand against them and raise our
voices in the name of our common humanity.

Tom Lantos was fond of saying that even the littlest actions, the
smallest of our daily deeds, can do much to leave this earth better,
less evil, less selfish, less monstrous than we found it. And he
stressed that doing these things, even in a modest way, gives you the
energy to keep moving forward. On this day of days, that seems to me
to be good advice.

As we remember the victims of the Holocaust, let us reaffirm our faith
in the dignity of humankind and our extraordinary resilience – our
moral strength – even amid history’s darkest chapters.

Thank you very much.

—————–

On January 23, 2010, before a full house at Park East Synagogue, the
main speaker for Saturday Pre-Commemoration of the International
Holocaust Remembrance Day was  Ambassador Susan Rice of the USA, and
at the actual ceremony at the UN General Assembly Hall was German
Ambassador to the UN H.E. Peter Wittig.

The remarks were:
 http://usun.state.gov/briefing/statement…

 http://www.newyorkun.diplo.de/Vertretung…

At the Park East Service this year, a further Honored Guest was Rabbi Ricardo Di Segni, the Chief Rabbi of Rome, who has been visited at his Synagogue by the Pope, also as part of this year’s Holocaust Remembrance.

Also present were Ambassador Thomas Mayr-Harting of Austria, Ambassador Peter Wittig of Germany, Ambassador Gerard Araud of France, Ambassador Anastassis Mitsialis of Greece, Ambassador Marta Horvathne Fekzi of Hungary, H.E. Most Reverend Celestino Migliore the Permanent Representative of the Vatican, Ambassador Yukio Takasu of Japan, Ambassador Cesare Maria Ragaglini of Italy, Ambassador Mohamed Loulichki of Morocco, Ambassador Jim McLay of New Zealand, Ambassador Andrzey Towpik of Poland, Ambassador Juan Antonio Yanez-Barnuevo of Spain, Ambassador Rayko S. Raytchev of Bulgaria, Ambassador Kim Won-soo, from the UN Secretary General’s Office, and about further twenty top Diplomatic Representatives. But I must remark that from all the Islamic and African Countries only Morocco was present – and from the newly emerging States only Brazil and China were present.

Two Great Articles in the LIFE & ARTS Section of the Martin Luther King Weekend’s Financial Times.

They are about the BRICS (Brazil, India, China, and South Africa) Economies that we keep on our website on the separate buttons for Russia and the IBSA (India, Brazil, and South Africa.

The Term Brics or BRICS was coined in 2001 by Jim O’Neill of Goldman Sachs who by the end of the first decade of the 21st century also spoke about a lost decade – but the decade was not lost by everybody – See how O’Neil’s idea did not colapse as the credit crisis hit – actually the Brics emerged relatively well from it and can thus continue their strive for greater development.

The article about the Moscow formerly domesticated dog’s return to a semi-status of human dependent wolfs hit us as another example of strive to sustainability. The Muscovite’s respect for these animals embodying a mutual relationship that can be viewed also in terms of the evolution of the power of the BRICS. We just posted the article that Brazil can be expected to take on a leading position after the Haiti catastrophe. The US can be expected to be more and more in a special relationship with the IBSA and, as we wrote about it earlier – the EU might some day include also Russia as one of its top tier members.

————–
 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/112ca932-00ab-…

The story of the Brics.
By Gillian Tett
Published: January 15 2010 17:01 | Last updated: January 15 2010 17:01

On the desk of Jim O’Neill, chief economist for Goldman Sachs, stand four flimsy flags. They look out of place among the expensive computer terminals of the investment bank’s plush London office, like leftovers of a child’s geography homework or cheap mementos from backpacking trips to exotic parts of the world. But these flags hint at a more interesting story – of the latest way in which money and ideas are reshaping the world. The small scraps of fabric are pennants for big countries: Brazil, Russia, India and China. And almost a decade ago, O’Neill decided to start thinking of them as a group – which he gave the acronym Bric.

It was a simple mental prop. The bolder move was to predict – publicly, and in Goldman’s name – that by 2041 (later revised to 2039, then 2032) the Brics would overtake the six largest western economies in terms of economic might. The four flags would come to represent the pillars of the 21st-century economy.

At the time, many scoffed at this idea. The predictions turned conventional western wisdom on its head; and O’Neill hardly seemed an obvious champion of the concept. A large man with working-class Manchester roots, he does not exude the aura of any globetrotting elite. His office is decorated with splashes of cherry red memorabilia from Manchester United Football Club, and he still speaks with the thick, flattened vowels of his childhood. Indeed, when O’Neill coined the term Bric in 2001, he had never properly visited three of the four countries (the exception was China), and spoke none of their languages. Yet, notwithstanding those unlikely beginnings, in the past decade, Bric has become a near ubiquitous financial term, shaping how a generation of investors, financiers and policymakers view the emerging markets: companies ranging from Nissan to media group WPP have developed Brics business strategies; several dozen financial institutions now run Brics funds; business schools have launched Brics courses; and this April Phillips de Pury will be holding a Brics-themed auction. “The Brics concept … that O’Neill created … has become such a strong brand,” says Felipe Góes, adviser to the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, who is organising the first Brics think-tank.

O’Neill speaks in smaller spheres for a moment: “It has transformed my life,” he says.

To some critics, the fuss about Brics is overblown. The term is hype, spin, from a bank and banking industry accustomed to disguising such guff as genuinely new ideas and concepts – the better to profit from them. “Brics is really just marketing – it’s nonsense!” says Charles Dumas, a London-based economist who disputes many elements of the Brics concept, such as the idea that these countries will keep growing inexorably into the future. Others are more cynical still, arguing that Goldmans Sachs has used the concept to extend its global power, and thus turbo-charge its formidable profit-making machine. O’Neill denies this latter accusation. “I really believe in this idea of Brics, that this idea can make the world a better place – it’s what drives me,” he says.

But even if Brics is self-interested spin, such spin – an idea in itself, really – can sometimes take on a life of its own, beyond what its creators expect or even hope for. By creating the word Brics, O’Neill has redrawn powerbrokers’ cognitive map, helping them to articulate a fundamental shift of influence away from the western world. And if you believe that the way humans think and speak not only reflects reality, but can shape its future path too, then this Brics tag has itself come both to reflect and drive the change – albeit from some unlikely beginnings.

……………………..

The rise of the non-western world

The way O’Neill, 52, tells the tale of how he developed the Brics – and he is a born raconteur – starts, a touch melodramatically, on the day terrorists flew aircraft into the World Trade Centre and Pentagon, killing thousands of people.

The son of a postman, O’Neill grew up in south Manchester, where he studied at the local comprehensive (Oasis’s Noel and Liam Gallagher were pupils there too, albeit later) and spent much of his time playing football. After school, he decided to study at Sheffield University, partly because it offered easy access to watch Manchester United. (Today, he has a season tickets at Old Trafford, and leaves spare tickets behind the bar at a local pub, for childhood friends to use.) During his time there, between “getting drunk and playing football”, O’Neill discovered a passion for economics. And after completing a doctorate in the subject, he worked as a foreign exchange analyst at a series of City banks, eventually joining Goldman in 1995 as co-head of economics. In the summer of 2001, Gavyn Davies, O’Neill’s highly respected co-chief, announced his departure – leaving O’Neill the sole leader, and under huge pressure to perform. “I thought: “Oh my god, I have got to put my imprint on this department,” he recalls. “I was searching for a theme and a new idea.”

“What 9/11 told me was that there was no way that globalisation was going to be Americanisation in the future – nor should it be. In order for globalisation to advance, it had to be accepted by more people … but not by imposing the dominant American social and philosophical beliefs and structures”
Inspiration came – a bittersweet gift. On September 11, as the first aircraft approached the Twin Towers, where he had delivered a lecture a few days earlier, O’Neill was hosting a global video conference call. Halfway through, the New York faces vanished from the screen. O’Neill later learnt the staff had been safely evacuated from their offices, but he still reeled in shock at the events. In the days that followed, his mind began to whir. As a foreign exchange analyst, O’Neill had always been a passionate advocate of globalisation, and was fascinated by the rising power of Asia. And to him, the horror in Manhattan was a powerful demonstration of exactly why the non-western world was starting to matter more and more – albeit in a negative way. However, O’Neill also believed – or hoped – that this shift in power could be seen in a more positive sense, too. “What 9/11 told me was that there was no way that globalisation was going to be Americanisation in the future – nor should it be,” he says. “In order for globalisation to advance, it had to be accepted by more people … but not by imposing the dominant American social and philosophical beliefs and structures.”
In practical terms, O’Neill decided, that meant economists had to look more closely at how non-western economies could wield more power in the future. As he scoured the globe, he became increasingly fascinated by four countries: Brazil, India, Russia and China. In one sense, the four seemed disparate, separated geographically and culturally; they had never acted as a bloc in any way, never conceived of themselves as a unit. Yet what they all shared in 2001 were large populations, underdeveloped economies and governments that appeared willing to embrace global markets and some elements of globalisation. To O’Neill, these characteristics made them natural sisters: they all had the potential for rapid future growth.

Excited, he tried to work out how to label this bunch. Since China was easily the largest, it made sense to put its name first. “Lloyd Blankfein [Goldman Sachs’s chief executive] always teases me about it – he says I should have called the group the Cribs,” O’Neill recalls. But O’Neill thought that a word linked to babies would seem patronising. So on November 30 2001, he launched his Big Idea: Goldman Sachs’s Global Economic Paper #66, “Building Better Global Economic Brics”. He predicted, soberly, that “over the next 10 years, the weight of the Brics and especially China in world GDP will grow” – and warned, perhaps a little less soberly, that “in line with these prospects, world policymaking forums should be reorganised” to give more power to the group he had now dubbed Brics.

……………………..

Welcome to Briclife

The paper immediately sparked interest among Goldman Sachs’s corporate clients, particularly those already selling – or trying to sell – consumer products to the emerging markets. “I found the Bric thing fascinating right from the start,” says Martin Sorrell, chief executive of WPP. “It tapped into what we had been already discussing.” But to many investors and bankers – including some inside Goldman Sachs – it all seemed rather fanciful, particularly given that countries such as Brazil had recently experienced hyperinflation. “When I first spoke at a big group in Rio [after the paper was published], it was to around 1,000 investors from all of Latin America,” recalls O’Neill. “The guy who was introducing me whispered in my ear as he went to the podium, ‘we all know that the only reason the B is there is because without it there is no acronym.’”

But O’Neill kept discussing the concept with colleagues and in 2003 his team produced the next offering: a paper called “Dreaming with Brics: The Path to 2050”. It boldly declared that by 2039 the Brics group could overtake the largest western economies in scale. “The list of the world’s 10 largest economies may look quite different in 2050,” it said. That prediction launched O’Neill’s team into what he calls Briclife. Within days, Goldman economists were flooded with e-mails from executives at companies ranging from mobile telecoms group Vodafone to miner BHP Billiton to Ikea and Nissan. By luck – or insight – O’Neill had produced this tag just as many western businesses were trying to hone their strategies to sell products to the non-western world, or to use regions such as China as a manufacturing base. And in a world where corporate boards face information overload, Brics suddenly provided executives with a snappy way of discussing strategy. Better still, unlike phrases such as “emerging markets” or “developing world”, Brics did not sound patronising, or unpromising; it was neutral, strong, politically correct.

Soon rivals, such as HSBC and Deutsche Bank fund unit DWS, were launching dedicated investment funds marketed under the label of Brics. “We asked our lawyers if we could trademark the word Brics, but they said not – apparently it’s not a product,” O’Neill recalls. Steadily, the brand spread, taking on a life beyond Goldman. Initially, most hedge funds ignored the concept as marketing hype. But as investors began to purchase assets specifically linked to the rise of Brics, the hedge-funders recognised that the way that China, say, was making cars could affect demand for Brazilian copper. New correlations were developing in asset prices, amid strong investment flows (since 2003, the Brics stock markets have risen from 2 to 9 per cent of global market capitalisation, and O’Neill forecasts they will represent almost 50 per cent of global market capitalisation in 2050).

……………………..

Who’s in, who’s out?

Unsurprisingly, O’Neill’s rivals started to snipe. Some economists said it was ridiculous to make forecasts as far out as 2050, particularly since many of O’Neill’s projections seemed to involve extrapolating current growth on a straight line. Others took issue with the idea that the four Bric countries could – or should – be described as a group. “Economically, financially and politically, China overshadows and will continue to overshadow the other Brics,” analysts at Deutsche Bank argued. Some banks tried to ban their employees from using the B word. “Why the hell should we do Goldman’s marketing for it?” says the chief executive of one of the world’s biggest investment banks. Meanwhile, out in the market, some investors suggested it would be better to talk about Bricks (with Korea included), or Brimck (with Mexico as well) or even Abrimcks (chucking in the Arab region and South Africa). One market wag joked that somebody should start trading the Cement bloc (Countries Excluded from the Emerging New Terminology).

O’Neill fought back. The Goldman team started to crank out Bric research, looking at everything from the future size of the Indian middle class to car use in Brazil. In an effort to soothe some ruffled feathers, in 2005 O’Neill tried to explain why Korea and Mexico had not been included in his big idea (the rather arbitrary-sounding reason was that they were members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). He also tried to placate some of the non-Brics by offering a new term: the “N-11”, or Next Eleven nations on the list to emerge as powers. This was a confusingly broad club, encompassing Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Korea, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines, Turkey and Vietnam, but within months companies such as Nissan and WPP were bandying “N-11” around their boardrooms. Another marketing tag – or boundary on a cognitive map – had been born.

Nor was it just the corporate world getting excited. O’Neill heard that politicians in Nigeria were slapping the term on their internal propaganda campaigns, redefining some of the slogans for their own ends; it was uncannily reminiscent of how 19th-century Nigerians once transposed the language of the Anglican Church to their own cultural traditions.

……………………..

The Teflon term

Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of O’Neill’s golden child is what it didn’t do: collapse under scrutiny as the credit crisis hit. Over the past two years, many of Wall Street’s big ideas have been exposed as woefully ill-conceived at best, utterly fallacious at worst. However, during the great re-reckoning, the Brics concept has flourished. Most of the Brics and N-11 emerged from the crisis well, relative to the economies of the western world. Their banking systems are intact, and their economies are growing at breakneck speed. “As a result,” wrote O’Neill in a recent paper, “we think our long-term 2050 Bric ‘dream’ projections are more, rather than less, likely to materialise.” More specifically, Goldman now predicts that China’s economy will become as big as the US’s by 2027, while the total Brics group will eclipse the big western economies by 2032 – almost a decade sooner than first thought.

That, O’Neill argues, will overturn many western assumptions about how the world works. These days, Goldman aggressively recommends that investors decide which western companies to invest in based on whether they are selling to the Brics and N-11, rather than just western consumers. (In another piece of neat cultural transposition, Goldman recently dubbed this strategy “investment in the Brics Nifty 50” [companies which sell to the Brics region] – a reference to the “nifty 50” of big western companies that were beloved by investors back in the 1970s, when it was presumed that the US and Europe would provide the engines of growth.) “We estimate that two billion people could join the global middle-class by 2030, mainly from Brics,” Goldman’s latest research note trills.

The argument is beloved by some investors. “Had you heeded O’Neill’s work and gotten invested in the stock markets of those four nations [back in 2001], you’d have made more money this past decade than by doing virtually anything else conceivable,” declared Joshua Brown, an influential investment commentator, on his Wall Street blog last month. (O’Neill brushes off the praise as “somewhat embarrassing”.) Others fear it is the next big bubble. To some, the exclusion of countries such as South Africa – or even Indonesia – looks increasingly odd. And the inclusion of Russia is presenting an ever-greater headache, given that the Russian economy was the one Bric to take a real fall in the credit crisis – so severe, in fact, that some investors (and even a few bankers inside Goldman) suspect it is now time to kick Russia out of the group.

Unsurprisingly, O’Neill is reluctant to undermine Goldman’s relations with Moscow by doing that. Although he admits that Russia has “disappointed”, he also insists that if the country “recovers strongly and quickly in 2010 and 2011, as we expect, we believe it will deserve its Bric status”.

……………………..

Back to reality

In the early years of Bric-dom, the four countries chosen by O’Neill had reactions ranging from bafflement to indifference. But soon the countries began to embrace the designation, and use it to get their voices heard on the world stage
But now another Brics-related phenomenon is emerging. In the early years of Bric-dom, the four countries chosen by O’Neill had different reactions to the designation. There was delight in Russia, bafflement in China, cynicism in Brazil and indifference in India. Now, the countries are using the idea to forge tentative links in reality – not just the world of investment ideas. In May 2008, Russia hosted the first formal Bric summit, a meeting of Bric foreign ministers in Yekaterinburg. In July 2009, it followed this with a formal gathering of all four Bric heads of state.
As meetings go, these were symbolic, not substantive. Although the four countries discussed how they could better co-ordinate their affairs to gain greater influence – and seek alternatives to the dollar – they did not agree any tangible steps. But this year in the early summer, the four countries will meet again, this time in Brazil. In anticipation, the Brazilian authorities are establishing a group of academics and a formal think-tank to brainstorm how to develop the Brics agenda. As part of that, they plan to host a conference next month in Rio – with the participation of O’Neill himself. McKinsey, which has used a version of the Brics concept in its consulting strategy, will also be involved.

It might seem ironic that the four countries would choose a term created by an American bank to define themselves but it is not unprecedented. When countries such as India first developed their sense of national identity and rebelled against the British – or when Soviet republics such as Uzbekistan developed a similar nationalism – they did so using the borders that had also been imposed, artificially and arbitrarily, by an outside power. When the cognitive map is redrawn by a dominant power – even in the world of marketing and investment bank “spin” – it tends not to be erased so much as appropriated.

“Is there much evidence that the Brics countries are collaborating today in practical terms?” O’Neill asks. “Not really, no. But that could change in the future – you look at how Brazil supplies commodities which China needs … or the fact that they all have quite similar ideas about how to manage their economies.”

Or as Felipe Góes, the Brazilian official in Rio charged with setting up the world’s first Brics think-tank, says: “It is somewhat ironic [that we use the word Brics] … but that reflects the fact that in the modern world it is people like Goldman Sachs and McKinsey who have the resources and minds to develop ideas.” Indeed, what makes a large institution such as Goldman so influential these days is not simply its trading acumen and political connections, but also its ability to invest heavily in what bankers sometimes call “thought-leadership”, by funding analysis and ensuring it is read around the world.

……………………..

At home abroad

Back in New York, some of Goldman’s older managers are aware of the cultural ironies of the Brics boom. During the first 120 years of its history, Goldman made most of its profits from American markets, and today the firm is often viewed as the most politically well-connected of the US banks. If you step into the office of its headquarters at 85 Broad Street, in downtown Manhattan, the first thing that you see is a vast American flag, looming over the dull brown marble lobby. Yet appearances can deceive. While O’Neill has spent the past decade trying to carve out his own intellectual niche by promoting the Brics, so too – far more discreetly – Goldman has been remaking itself, building activities outside the American heartland to capture the growth that O’Neill forecasts. In the past decade, the bank has opened more offices across the world than in the whole of its previous history, and while revenues from the Americas accounted for 60 per cent of its earnings 10 years ago, they now represent about half (and far less if Latin America is excluded). Indeed, senior Goldman executives expect that within a few years, profits that are “made in America” will be a minority of total earnings.

That pattern is certainly not unique to Goldman Sachs: most other western banks have also been expanding across the globe in the past few years. Deutsche Bank, for example, has been deftly building an emerging markets derivatives franchise, while HSBC is now so convinced that its future lies in Asia that Michael Geoghegan, chief executive, recently relocated to Hong Kong from London.

Still, the swing is particularly striking at Goldman, given its all-American past. These days, one of the buzzwords at 85 Broad Street is “domestification”, or the idea that the bank must build businesses around the world that provide local clients not simply with international services, but also with services in their local markets. Rather than treating non-western countries as far-flung frontiers or pawns in a trading game, the new corporate rhetoric insists that the Brics (and other non-western countries) are markets in their own rights. Thus in Brazil, Goldman recently started selling Brazilian investment funds to Brazilians. In Japan, there are staff who speak barely speak a word of English. And in China – where Goldman Sachs most certainly does not fly a big US flag – the bank is sponsoring a Chinese business school, to ensure access to a stream of authentically local Chinese students.

This drive is going hand in hand with a complex process of cultural engineering. As the bank acquires more non-western staff, it is devising programmes to rotate its locally hired employees through headquarters, to ensure that they learn “Goldman values”. It also takes care to send staff from New York and London out to the regions, and to shuffle different ethnic groups between different regions.

As its sponsorship of Chinese business schools shows, Goldman is trying to raise a new generation of local leaders. “If you look at the history of the London office of Goldman, you can see how over a decade or two, you can have locals rise to the top,” says one top executive. “That is our goal across the world. The idea is to get embedded, to show that we are there for the long term … but also to ensure that our Goldman values are everywhere in the world.”

It all might sound reminiscent of the way the British empire operated in the 19th century – or the way the Russian Communist party once tried to knit the diverse peoples of the Soviet Union into a single ideologically based nation. Only this time, it is MBA programmes and Goldman training courses, rather than British public schools or communist training camps, that provide the cultural glue. And – perhaps most important of all – Goldman Sachs (unlike earlier empires) is not overtly acting with a nationalist or political agenda; insofar as it has a real loyalty, it is to its own bottom line and its ability to make profits.

Put it another way: Goldman will keep flying Old Glory only as long as it believes that there is profit to be made under that banner. No wonder a senior member of the US government remarked a couple of years ago, partly in jest, that sooner or later, Goldman “is going to have to choose whether it wants to really be American or not”. If O’Neill is even half-right in his predictions, it may not be a straightforward choice.

——————-

Gillian Tett is the FT’s capital markets editor.

Her last piece for the magazine was about the JP Morgan bankers who invented the credit derivative’ – and their reactions to the derivatives-induced financial crisis. Read it at www.ft.com

On Monday, the FT begins a five-part series on Bric consumers – who they are, what they buy, who is selling to them and what their rise means for the global economy

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 http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/628a8500-ff1c-…

Moscow’s stray dogs
By Susanne Sternthal
Published in the Financial Times -  January 16 2010.

Russians can go nutty when it comes to dogs. Consider the incident a few years ago that involved Yulia Romanova, a 22-year-old model. On a winter evening, Romanova was returning with her beloved Staffordshire terrier from a visit to a designer who specialises in kitting out canine Muscovites in the latest fashions. The terrier was sporting a new green camouflage jacket as he walked with his owner through the crowded Mendeleyevskaya metro station. There they encountered Malchik, a black stray who had made the station his home, guarding it against drunks and other dogs. Malchik barked at the pair, defending his territory. But instead of walking away, Romanova reached into her pink rucksack, pulled out a kitchen knife and, in front of rush-hour commuters, stabbed Malchik to death.

{Photo – The statue of Malchik erected by well-wishers after his death.}
Romanova was arrested, tried and underwent a year of psychiatric treatment. Typically for Russia, this horror story was countered by a wellspring of sympathy for Moscow’s strays. A bronze statue of Malchik, paid for by donations, now stands at the entrance of Mendeleyevskaya station. It has become a symbol for the 35,000 stray dogs that roam Russia’s capital – about 84 dogs per square mile. You see them everywhere. They lie around in the courtyards of apartment complexes, wander near markets and kiosks, and sleep inside metro stations and pedestrian passageways. You can hear them barking and howling at night. And the strays on Moscow’s streets do not look anything like the purebreds preferred by status-conscious Muscovites. They look like a breed apart.
I moved to Moscow with my family last year and was startled to see so many stray dogs. Watching them over time, I realised that, despite some variation in colour – some were black, others yellowish white or russet – they all shared a certain look. They were medium-sized with thick fur, wedge-shaped heads and almond eyes. Their tails were long and their ears erect.

They also acted differently. Every so often, you would see one waiting on a metro platform. When the train pulled up, the dog would step in, scramble up to lie on a seat or sit on the floor if the carriage was crowded, and then exit a few stops later. There is even a website dedicated to the metro stray (www.metrodog.ru) on which passengers post photos and video clips taken with their mobile phones, documenting the savviest of the pack using the public transport system like any other Muscovite.

Where did these animals come from? It’s a question Andrei Poyarkov, 56, a biologist specialising in wolves, has dedicated himself to answering. His research focuses on how different environments affect dogs’ behaviour and social organisation. About 30 years ago, he began studying Moscow’s stray dogs. Poyarkov contends that their appearance and behaviour have changed over the decades as they have continuously adapted to the changing face of Russia’s capital. Virtually all the city’s strays were born that way: dumping a pet dog on the streets of Moscow amounts to a near-certain death sentence. Poyarkov reckons fewer than 3 per cent survive.

. . .

Poyarkov works at the A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution in south-west Moscow. His office is small, but boasts high ceilings and tall windows. Several wire cages sit on a table in the centre of the room. Inside them, four weasels scurry through tunnels and run on a wheel. Poyarkov and I sit near the weasels and sip green tea.

Biologist Andrei Poyarkov – He first thought of observing the behaviour of stray dogs in 1979, and began with the ones that lived near his apartment and those he encountered on his way to work. The area he studied came to comprise some 10 sq km, home to about 100 dogs. Poyarkov started making recordings of the sounds that the strays made, and began to study their social organisation. He photographed and catalogued them, mapping where each dog lived.
He quickly found that the strays were much easier to study than wolves. “To see a wild wolf is a real event,” he says. “You can see them, but not for very long and not at close range. But with stray dogs you can watch them for as long as you want and, for the most part, be quite near them.” According to Poyarkov, there are 30,000 to 35,000 stray dogs in Moscow, while the wolf population for the whole of Russia is about 50,000 to 60,000. Population density, he says, determines how frequently the animals come into contact with each other, which in turn affects their behaviour, psychology, stress levels, physiology and relationship to their environment.

“The second difference between stray dogs and wolves is that the dogs, on average, are much less aggressive and a good deal more tolerant of one another,” says Poyarkov. Wolves stay strictly within their own pack, even if they share a territory with another. A pack of dogs, however, can hold a dominant position over other packs and their leader will often “patrol” the other packs by moving in and out of them. His observations have led Poyarkov to conclude that this leader is not necessarily the strongest or most dominant dog, but the most intelligent – and is acknowledged as such. The pack depends on him for its survival.

Moscow’s strays sit somewhere between house pets and wolves, says Poyarkov, but are in the early stages of the shift from the domesticated back towards the wild. That said, there seems little chance of reversing this process. It is virtually impossible to domesticate a stray: many cannot stand being confined indoors.

“Genetically, wolves and dogs are almost identical,” says Poyarkov. “What has changed significantly [with domestication] is a range of hormonal and behavioural parameters, because of the brutal natural selection that eliminated many aggressive animals.” He recounts the work of Soviet biologist Dmitri Belyaev, exiled from Moscow in 1948 during the Stalin years for a commitment to classical genetics that ran counter to state scientific doctrine of the time.

Under the guise of studying animal physiology, Belyaev set up a Russian silver fox research centre in Novosibirsk, setting out to test his theory that the most important selected characteristic for the domestication of dogs was a lack of aggression. He began to select foxes that showed the least fear of humans and bred them. After 10-15 years, the foxes he bred showed affection to their keepers, even licking them. They barked, had floppy ears and wagged their tails. They also developed spotted coats – a surprising development that was connected with a decrease in their levels of adrenaline, which shares a biochemical pathway with melanin and controls pigment production.

“With stray dogs, we’re witnessing a move backwards,” explains Poyarkov. “That is, to a wilder and less domesticated state, to a more ‘natural’ state.” As if to prove his point, strays do not have spotted coats, they rarely wag their tails and are wary of humans, showing no signs of affection towards them.

. . .

The stray dogs of Moscow are mentioned for the first time in the reports of the journalist and writer Vladimir Gilyarovsky in the latter half of the 19th century. But Poyarkov says they have been there as long as the city itself. They remain different from wolves, in particular because they exhibit pronounced “polymorphism” – a range of behavioural traits shaped in part by the “ecological niche” they occupy. And it is this ability to adapt that explains why the population density of strays is so much greater than that of wolves. “With several niches there are more resources and more opportunities.”

The dogs divide into four types, he says, which are determined by their character, how they forage for food, their level of socialisation to people and the ecological niche they inhabit.

{Photo: A dog seeking warmth near Moscow’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.}
Those that remain most comfortable with people Poyarkov calls “guard dogs”. Their territories tend to be garages, warehouses, hospitals and other fenced-in institutions, and they develop ties to the security guards from whom they receive food and whom they regard as masters. I’ve seen them in my neighbourhood near the front gate to the Central Clinical Hospital for Civil Aviation. When I pass on the other side with my dog they cross the street towards us, barking loudly.
“The second stage of becoming wild is where the dog is socialised to people in general, but not personally,” says Poyarkov. “These are the beggars and they are excellent psychologists.” He gives as an example a dog that appears to be dozing as throngs of people walk past, but who rears his head when an easy target comes into view: “The dog will come to a little old lady, start smiling and wagging his tail, and sure enough, he’ll get food.” These dogs not only smell who is carrying something tasty, but sense who will stop and feed them.

The beggars live in relatively small packs and are subordinate to leaders. If a dog is intelligent but occupies a low rank and does not get enough to eat, he will separate from the pack frequently to look for food. If he sees other dogs begging, he will watch and learn.

The third group comprises dogs that are somewhat socialised to people, but whose social interaction is directed almost exclusively towards other strays. Their main strategy for acquiring food is gathering scraps from the streets and the many open rubbish bins. During the Soviet period, the pickings were slim, which limited their population (as did a government policy of catching and killing them). But as Russia began to prosper in the post-Soviet years, official efforts to cull them fell away and, at the same time, many more choice offerings appeared in the bins. The strays flourished.

The last of Poyarkov’s groups are the wild dogs. “There are dogs living in the city that are not socialised to people. They know people, but view them as dangerous. Their range is extremely broad, and they are predators. They catch mice, rats and the occasional cat. They live in the city, but as a rule near industrial complexes, or in wooded parks. They are nocturnal and walk about when there are fewer people on the streets.”

My neighbourhood is in the north-west of Moscow and lies between a large wooded park and one of the canals of the Moscow river. Leaving the windows open once the thaw of spring finally took hold, I found myself pulled out of a deep slumber by a cacophony that sounded as if packs of dogs were tearing each other apart in the grounds of our apartment complex. This went on for weeks. I later learned that spring is when many strays mate – “the dog marriage season”, as Russians poetically call it.

. . .

There is one special sub-group of strays that stands apart from the rest: Moscow’s metro dogs. “The metro dog appeared for the simple reason that it was permitted to enter,” says Andrei Neuronov, an author and specialist in animal behaviour and psychology, who has worked with Vladimir Putin’s black female Labrador retriever, Connie (“a very nice pup”). “This began in the late 1980s during perestroika,” he says. “When more food appeared, people began to live better and feed strays.” The dogs started by riding on overground trams and buses, where supervisors were becoming increasingly thin on the ground.

Neuronov says there are some 500 strays that live in the metro stations, especially during the colder months, but only about 20 have learned how to ride the trains. This happened gradually, first as a way to broaden their territory. Later, it became a way of life. “Why should they go by foot if they can move around by public transport?” he asks.

“They orient themselves in a number of ways,” Neuronov adds. “They figure out where they are by smell, by recognising the name of the station from the recorded announcer’s voice and by time intervals. If, for example, you come every Monday and feed a dog, that dog will know when it’s Monday and the hour to expect you, based on their sense of time intervals from their biological clocks.”

The metro dog also has uncannily good instincts about people, happily greeting kindly passers by, but slinking down the furthest escalator to avoid the intolerant older women who oversee the metro’s electronic turnstiles. “Right outside this metro,” says Neuronov, gesturing toward Frunzenskaya station, a short distance from the park where we were speaking, “a black dog sleeps on a mat. He’s called Malish. And this is what I saw one day: a bowl of freshly ground beef set before him, and slowly, and ever so lazily, he scooped it up with his tongue while lying down.”

. . .

Stray dogs evoke a strong reaction from Muscovites. While the model Romanova’s stabbing of a stray demonstrated an example of one extreme, the statue erected in his memory depicts the other. The city government has been forced to take action to protect the strays, but with mixed results. In 2002, mayor Yuri Luzhkov enacted legislation forbidding the killing of stray animals and adopted a new strategy of sterilising them and building shelters.

But until Russians themselves adopt the practice of sterilising their pets, this will remain only a half-measure. One Russian, noting that my male Ridgeback is neutered, exclaimed: “Now, why would you want to cripple a dog in that way?” Even though the city budget allocated more than $30m to build 15 animal shelters last year, that is not nearly enough to accommodate the strays. Still, there is pressure from some quarters to return to the practice of catching and culling them. Poyarkov believes this would be dangerous. While the goal, he acknowledges, “is to do away with dogs who carry rabies, tapeworms, toxoplasmosis and other infections, what actually happens is that infected dogs and other animals outside Moscow will come into the city because the biological barrier maintained by the population of strays in Moscow is turned upside down. The environment becomes chaotic and unpredictable and the epidemiological situation worsens.”
Alexey Vereshchagin, 33, a graduate student who works with Poyarkov, says that Moscow probably could find a way of controlling the feared influx. But that doesn’t mean he thinks strays should be removed from the capital. “I grew up with them,” he says. “Personally, I think they make life in the city more interesting.” Like other experts, Vereshchagin questions whether strays could ever be eliminated completely, particularly given the city’s generally chaotic approach to administration.

Poyarkov concedes that sterilisation might control the number of strays, if methodically conducted. But his work suggests that the population is self-regulating anyway. The quantity of food available keeps the total steady at about 35,000 – Moscow strays are at the limit and, as a result, most pups born to strays don’t reach adulthood. “If they do survive, it is only to replace an adult dog that died,” Poyarkov says. Even then, their life expectancy seldom exceeds 10 years. Having spent a career studying the stray dogs of Moscow and tracing their path back towards a wilder state, he is in no hurry to see them swept from the streets.

“I am not at all convinced that Moscow should be left without dogs. Given a correct relationship to dogs, they definitely do clean the city. They keep the population of rats down. Why should the city be a concrete desert? Why should we do away with strays who have always lived next to us?”

————–
Susanne Sternthal is a writer living in Moscow

Inuit sue EU over seal ban.
LEIGH PHILLIP, January 15, 2010.

Today @ 07:53 CET
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – Canadian and Greenlandic Inuit groups are suing the European Union over its ban on seal products, and are very confident they will win.

Canada’s Tapiriit Kanatami, the country’s national Inuit organisation, the Inuit Circumpolar council and a number of Inuit individuals filed the lawsuit with the European General Court, until this year known as the Court of First Instance, on Wednesday.

In 2009, the EU banned the import of seal products. The legislation was one of the most non-partisan bills to pass through the European Parliament. Believing the issue to be massively popular amongst EU citizens ahead of elections to the chamber in June, some 550 deputies voted in favour of the ban, with just 49 opposed.

The groups will aim to prove that the seal hunt is, contrary to the European legislation’s justification, humane. The suit will also maintain that the hunt is environmentally sustainable and that seals are not endangered.

Calling the EU ban the product of a “shrill campaign” by animal rights “extremists”, Mary Simon, president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, said: “Inuit have been hunting seals and sustaining themselves for food, clothing, and trade for many generations.”

“No objective and fair minded person can conclude that seals are under genuine conservation threat or that Inuit hunting activities are less humane than those practiced by hunting communities all over the world, including hunters in Europe.”

The EU ban includes an exemption for aboriginal hunts, but the Inuit argue that this makes little difference as the ban results in a collapse of their biggest market. Canada currently is trying to develop a Chinese market for seal products in the wake of the ban.

Ms Simon said the ban was hypocritical, given the industrialisation of European farming in recent decades and the effect that has had on food animal living and slaughterhouse conditions.

“It is bitterly ironic that the EU, which seems entirely at home with promoting massive levels of agri-business and the raising and slaughtering of animals in highly industrialized conditions, seeks to preach some kind of selective elevated morality to Inuit.”

The groups are highly confident they will win the suit, suggesting that European legal experts warned against adopting the legislation.

“Despite advance warning by their own lawyers, its EU lawmakers registered no inhibitions about adopting laws that are legally defective,” said Ms Simon.

The Canadian government is also currently challenging the EU seal products trade ban at the World Trade Organisation.

Economics of Adaptation to Climate Change Study:
The Global Report
 hpage at worldbank.org by Friday January 8, 2010

“Full-body scanners on display at Reagan National Airport: Many experts say the full-body scanners would have detected the explosives carried aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day, but the
machines have also raised privacy concerns over the detailed body image that is displayed as part of the screening.”

TSA – Transportation and Security Administration – tries to assuage privacy concerns about full-body scans.

By Philip Rucker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 4, 2010
It has come to this.

Already shoeless, beltless and waterless, more beleaguered air passengers will be holding their legs apart, raising their arms and effectively baring it all as they pass through U.S. airport security
checkpoints.

Add the “full-body scan” to the list of indignities that some travelers are confronting in the post-Sept. 11, 2001, era of vigilance.

Federal authorities, working to close security gaps exposed by the thwarted Christmas Day terrorist attack on a Detroit-bound airliner, are multiplying the number of imaging machines at the nation’s biggest
airports. The devices scan passengers’ bodies and produce X-ray-like images that can reveal objects concealed beneath clothes…….

- – - – - -

now add the “me-au” from the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, ADC Legal Director   nshora at adc.org

Washington, D.C. | January 5, 2010 | www.adc.org |

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) is deeply concerned by the new Transportation and Security Administration (TSA) directives, which went into effect on January 4th at midnight.  According to news sources, these directives will require citizens from 14 countries, all Arab or Muslim countries, with the exception of Cuba, to go through enhanced security screening. Such screening can include full pat-downs, scans, delays, and anything associated with secondary screening – an extra search of the passenger’s carry-on luggage may also be required.  News sources also stated that the directives are applicable to any travelers, including US CITIZENS, who have passed through one of these 14 countries, or who have taken flights that have originated from these 14 countries.

ADC is very troubled as such directives will have negative ramifications on Arab-Americans, citizens of the 14 countries, and all Americans who visit these countries. A disparate segment of the Arab-American community will be scrutinized because of these new guidelines. The blanket labeling of hundreds of millions of civilians based solely on their country of citizenship or travel is not only unfairly discriminatory based on national origin, but also improperly labels millions of innocent people as somehow suspect or possible terrorists.

The new directives came following the Christmas Day attempted airline attack that threatened our national security, and which ADC has strongly condemned. Implementing an effective and productive counterterrorism tool is paramount. However, casting a wide net against individuals based on their country of origin, race or religion is not an effective counterterrorism tool. During the past decade, similar racial, ethnic and religious profiling tactics and practices have time and again misdirected precious counterterrorism resources, damaged foreign relations with key allies, fueled the fires of extremists by giving them an excuse, stigmatized communities, and most importantly did not have any discernible impact on security. Based on precedent, these new directives will be no different than these past practices and their adverse consequences; and while such directives may appear to make us feel safer, the reality is that they discriminate against innocent persons and divert attention from real threats.

Resources must instead be focused on high-risk individuals based on proper intelligence, better coordination and communication between different governmental agencies. In addition, continued engagement with the Arab, Muslim, Sikh, and South Asian community groups must be strengthened, and must not be discouraged by ethnic profiling tactics.

ADC has been in contact with TSA and the Department Homeland Security (DHS) and is planning to file a complaint and request for additional information with the Department.  ADC urges all travelers affected by these new guidelines to always comply with the Transportation Security Officer’s (TSO’s) request.  In the event of any abuse or misuse of authority, please request the TSO’s name and badge number, and file a complaint with ADC’s Legal Department at  legal at adc.org.

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

Honestly, I feel the pain of decent members of the ADC, but am appalled at the chutzpah to announce the complaints of that organization without a single word attached saying that as loyal citizens to this country they are ready to organize themselves in units of informers when it comes to transgressions by people from their country of birth, that are endangering the security of the country that gave to the ADC members the privilege of life under a secular democracy.

Yes, I know that the ADC has members that are Muslim, Christian or atheists. I know they have no Jews in ADC, but that is not the issue. The Arab countries, other Asian countries, and the African Arabized countries, on the list of 13, are all Islamic countries – in all of them Christians and Jews face very serious difficulties. Further, I know of good Muslims in the US and overseas, that participate with enlightened Jews in order to build bridges between communities. in Copenhagen I actually participated during the Climate conference at a pilgrimage that took us to places of worship that were Jewish, Buddhist, Christian, and Muslim (that last meeting was held in the rooms of a Danish humanist society) – in this time sequence. Yes – good relationships are possible, but that will happen only when, and if, there is a clear understanding, and voiced recognition, that Islamic terrorism originates with Muslim individuals, and that in order to safeguard ourselves, profiling in search of instruments of terror is not a dirty word, but a means of self defense.

Also, in order to avoid needless friction, I suggest that the ADC moves front and center in the global effort to disengage from the addiction to oil.

And one more item – this website does speak up for Cuba as they surely are not part of the group of countries responsible for Islamicists performing acts of terror. So, they do not belong on that list of 14.

GLOBAL WARMING IGNITES BORDERS AS WELL

By Manuel Manonelles, BARCELONA, (IPS) Posted by Other News January 3, 2009.

Little by little, it is being confirmed that the melting of the polar ice caps, whether in Antarctica or the Arctic, is happening significantly faster than initially predicted. The consequences of this for peace, one of the main victims of climate change, are enormous.

Glaciers and areas of high-altitude mountains that were previously considered zones of perpetual snow are now melting. A paradigmatic case is that of the alpine border between Switzerland and Italy where during a recent routine verification, certain sections of ice or perennial snow that had been on the map since 1861 were found to be missing. In this case, the two countries have enjoyed long periods of peaceful coexistence and are approaching the problem in a logical and cordial fashion, forming a commission to find a technical solution.

However, the possible implications of cases like this in other geographical areas are very worrisome. The destabilising potential of a similar development on the India-Pakistan border would be enormous, particularly in the zone of Kashmir or the Siachen glacier, where more than 3000 soldiers of both countries have died since 1984. The same is true of the tense China-India border, or the deeply problematic border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, which will grow increasingly porous with melting, contributing to a rise in destabilisation in what are already two of the most unstable countries on the earth.

Another major effect of global warming is the gradual opening of major global shipping lanes in areas that had previously been impassable because of ice. The Northeast Passage along the north of Russia, used recently for the first time in history, shortens travel between the ports of China, Japan, and Korea and Hamburg, Rotterdam, and South Hampton by 4,000 kilometres. With the Northwest Passage along northern Canada, travel between the China and the ports of the eastern United States is similarly shortened.

The opening of these new routes will completely change the dynamics of intercontinental trade and might render irrelevant places that until now were considered geostrategically essential, such as the Panama and the Suez Canal.

Add to this the draw of massive reserves of raw materials expected to be present in the Arctic, ever more accessible as the ice recedes, which is provoking a race for control of the area – including an arms race – and is stoking tensions particularly between Russia, Norway, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States. The Russian news agency TASS has calculated oil reserves in the area at over 10 billion tonnes. Last year Canada approved an extraordinary 6.9 billion dollar arms bill to strengthen its military presence in its arctic zone, while Russia has resumed tactical flights of nuclear bombers in its polar region, triggering the protests of numerous countries.

This also explains, in part, the speed with which the European Union is processing the application for EU membership of bankrupt Iceland, which would place the body in the best possible position for future negotiations and territorial claims in the area with regard to future access to the “Arctic banquet”.

The melting of the ice caps is also the major cause of rising sea levels, which have other irreversible territorial, social, and economic consequences, such as the physical disappearance -partial or total- of certain small island states of the Pacific likely to occur within a few years -the Maldives, Samoa, Kiribati, among others. Obviously the implications are vast, including – in addition to the personal, environmental, cultural, and national trauma – the political and legal status of future states that have no territory. The principal components of the global infrastructure, from ports and refineries to airports and nuclear plants, are also seriously at risk, and will find themselves near or at or even below sea level.

It is important to note in this context that the majority of the global population lives in areas close to the sea, starting with megacities like Mumbai, London, New York, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Buenos Aires, and densely-populated areas like the Ganges delta in Bangladesh, where rising sea levels are already wreaking havoc in the form of water pollution and related effects. Recent studies indicate the possibility of some 200 million new environmental refugees in coming years -refugees who would only increase the already considerable humanitarian pressures and tensions in these areas and exacerbate existing or latent conflict.

The Global Humanitarian Fund issued a report this year that shows unequivocally that climate change today is responsible for some 300,000 deaths per year. Numbers for the medium and long-term are even higher. In this context, the urgency of fighting climate is a pre-condition for a peaceful future. Therefore, the international community has no other option, specially after the fiasco in Copenhagen, to spring into action as soon as possible. It is about climate, but also about peace and human lives.

—————-

This and all “other news” issues edited by Roberto Savio can be found at http://www.other-net.info/index.php

From Monica Alessi ( Monica.Alessi at ext.ceps.eu) we learn that the Center for European Policy Studies – CEPS – a Brussels based Think Tank – is tackling now the issue that we wrote about a long time ago – at least a year ago.  The Copenhagen meeting was doomed by its organizers at the UN, and by the world’s reality. It can be only a G2 – US and China that has any chance at dealing realistically with Global Warming / climate change, and there will not be a G3 to include the EU – this because of the other reality – the fact that the 27 members of the EU do not want to create a strong union, and by their own choice have thus doomed themselves to irrelevance when it comes to global leadership. Japan is also left outside the new inner circle that is destined to become eventually a UN CLIMATE SECURITY COUNCIL that will include besides the US and China also the IBSA States – India, Brazil, and South Africa. The first two because of their strong development pace and the latter in order to have present also an African country – and the reasonable pick is thus South Africa that has indeed a high potential for development. Russia is not in this game either, and we believe that with time Russia itself will apply also for membership in the EU which will thus become its own mini-UN with its own high economic potential if they ever decide to create a stronger union led by an Administration that has power to govern large and mini-States – at least in a way how the US Federal Government manages its affairs. That is when the EU will indeed become a “G.”

The present UN Security Council has a P5 that leads it, and aspires to be considered the G5 that they believe they are because they are the 5 governments that command the officially acknowledged atomic weapons. But when it comes to Climate issues – the weapon that wields power is rather the combination of size of the economy, the population numbers, and the quantifiable amount of GHG emissions by the year 2050 that will determine supremacy! To understands that better we posted the Professor Schwartzenberg scheme that helps us rank the UN members according to their true values – which obviously counts size of the contribution to the UN as a measure of size of the economy. In the Climate arena, it can be contended that size of GHG emissions is also a measurement of the size of the economy if we do not want to say blatantly that the emissions measure the size of the destructive power of the states because of their impact on climate. If the EU stays un-united they are just not part of that leadership even today. Even without going into this sort of calculations, it is clear nevertheless, that the precious day President Obama spent in Copenhagen, was much better utilized in his meetings with the Chinese then it would have been in meetings with Europeans as after all – it is not for him to help Europe figure out what is best for themselves.

The Alessi e-mail tells us:

In a new CEPS Commentary (from 25 December) on the implications of the Copenhagen Accord on the EU, Christian Egenhofer and Anton Georgiev are wondering why the outcome is seen so differently in the EU and the US and find very different expectations and perspectives on both sides of the Atlantic.  The Commentary, which is attached but can also be downloaded at http://www.ceps.eu/book/copenhagen-accor… argues that the Copenhagen Accord can be an important first step towards an architecture, but i) shifts from a top-down target and timetables approach to voluntary pledges, ii) cements very inequitable table carbon budgets, iii) brings the world onto a pathways to 3.2° C at best while iv) raising major issues on the negotiation mode.

Yet, the Copenhagen negotiations may not be remembered for their impact on the future climate change architecture but in making visible a new world order, with the US under Obama working towards a network of partnerships with itself at the core to preserve its influence in the world.  In turn this raises a number of hard questions for the EU:

-          Should the EU declare – the US-made – Accord a success or acknowledge the absence of EU influence?
-          Does the new EU Lisbon Treaty – the ‘EU constitution’ – offer possibilities to increase the role of the EU on the world stage?
-          Is continuation of a close relationship with the US still an option to ensure EU influence on the new climate architecture?
-          What are other options to ‘impose’ global carbon pricing, the main plank of EU policy?

The Commentary gives first tentative answers to all these questions – signed Christian Egenhofer.

Reference:
Christian Egenhofer & Anton Georgiev, The Copenhagen Accord: a fist stab at deciphering the implications for the EU.  CEPS Commentary, 25 December 2009: http://www.ceps.eu/book/copenhagen-accor… (or go to CEPS Shop, then to Commentaries)

The Copenhagen Accord

A first stab at deciphering the implications for the EU
Christian Egenhofer & Anton Georgiev
25 December 2009

The original purpose of the conference in Copenhagen (COP 15) had been to complete
negotiations on a new international agreement on climate change to come into force when the
Kyoto Protocol’s first commitment period came to an end in 2012.  In the last two years,
however, climate change has assumed such an important role in the global agenda that an
unprecedented number of heads of governments – almost 120 were present – decided to meet
in Copenhagen to provide political leadership and give the final push for a global climate
change agreement, hoping thereby to lay the foundations for the new ‘global climate change
order’.  Days after the meeting ended, people are still asking themselves whether the gamble
paid off.  Almost everyone agrees that the outcome was far less than most had hoped for.  On
the other hand, the final outcome is better than what even the most optimistic observer could
have wished for after the conference entered into deep negotiations in the second week,
where deadlock built up. It is still unclear whether the agreement is “a disaster” (Swedish EU
Presidency) or represents “an unprecedented breakthrough” (US President Obama). Even the
EU seems to be divided. German Chancellor Merkel hailed the outcome as a ‘step, albeit a
small one towards a global climate change architecture’. What is striking is that the outcome
is generally seen in a more favourable light in the US than in Europe. This difference,
however, can be explained by different expectations and perspectives.

Expectations
Let us first start with the expectations. First, there has always been a high degree of optimism
behind the assumption that heads of governments – even at an unprecedented number – could
break the deadlock that has developed over the last two years. It has been the very same
governments whose heads met in Copenhagen that have been instructing the negotiators to
stick to their positions and made them dig themselves ever deeper into their trenches. And
ever since the end of last summer, it had become clear to virtually all participants that a
legally binding agreement was not possible – the downgrading started at the latest in mid-
October and was rubberstamped by heads of state at a meeting in Singapore of the Asia-
Pacific Economic Conference.  Nevertheless, the EU continued to hope for a ‘comprehensive
and operational’ agreement, including especially commitments for GHG reductions and
finance in line with their ‘responsibilities and capabilities’.

Second, closely related to the first point, the negotiations have become too complex for the
heads of governments to conclude. As argued by Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff of the FT, who
characterised them as ‘systems overload’,1 in the end the negotiations included issues
involving macroeconomic transformation, trade, development, R&D and innovation,
technology transfer, intellectual property rights. To conclude each of these negotiations
separately is a tall order on its own. To move them to the global scale, in addition requires
that negotiations are concluded in parallel. The belief that this can be achieved requires an
immense dose of optimism.

Third, for the EU Copenhagen was originally about the final sharing-out of the remaining
carbon budget of cumulative GHG emissions of around 1,550 billion tonnes of CO2eq that
are left until 2050.  For many other, including industrialised, countries, COP 15 has been
more about architecture than about cuts in carbon emissions as such.

Perspectives
We can find similar differences when it comes to perspectives. First, many developing
countries see climate change mitigation – rightly – as a short-term ‘constraint on economic
growth’, mainly but not only because it puts a constraint on the use of coal.  Industrialised
countries regularly respond with the ‘benefits of a green growth model’. As a result, in the
EU and some other industrialised countries, climate change mitigation is framed in the
context of green growth and jobs and future competitiveness.

Second, while the UNFCCC has set out the principle of historical responsibility, some
developing countries prefer to frame the debate in terms of carbon debt, thereby suggesting
that developed countries first need to pay back these debts (in terms of reductions or finance)
before developing countries take action. The emissions figures however tell us differently.
Without reductions by emerging economies, global climate change targets of 50% reductions
by 2050 simply cannot be met.

Finally, for many developing countries and emerging economies, the climate change issue is
framed in the context of adaptation. Impacts are typically the highest in countries with more
extreme weather conditions. In many cases, these countries are developing countries or
emerging economies. The government of India typically claims to be spending around 2.5%
of GDP on climate change. Moreover, developing countries, especially least-developing
countries are more vulnerable as their adaptive capacity tends to be lower than that of ‘richer’
countries.

1.  Main results of the Copenhagen Accord
Judging from the high rhetoric heard before the Copenhagen meeting, urging parties to
complete negotiations on a new international agreement on climate change to follow the
Kyoto Protocol, the results must be seen as a failure. The Copenhagen Accord – the
substantial outcome of the negotiations – does not impose actual and verifiable obligations, or
binding emissions targets in particular or finance contributions.  This fact, however, should
not be allowed to belittle the significant progress has been made in at least three areas:
financing, deforestation and adaptation.

• Developed countries for the first time commit to a goal of jointly mobilising $100
billion annually by 2020 from both public and private sources. Not only could this
unlock the finance standoff, it also gives further impetus for the development of
carbon markets. In addition, there is a collective commitment to provide ‘new and
additional, predictable and adequate funding’ amounting to $30 billion for the period
2010-12, with ‘balanced allocation between adaptation and mitigation’ with
adaptation funding being prioritised for the most vulnerable developing countries. The
major question is whether this commitment will be honoured, given the past record of
governments in bringing up really additional finance.

• There is an explicit acknowledgement to act on deforestation and forest degradation
and the establishment of a mechanism, i.e. a body, to mobilise the required resources.

• Action and cooperation on adaptation particularly in the least developed countries,
small island developing states, and Africa have been given ‘urgent’ attention with
developed countries committing to provide financial resources.  This could open the
way to addressing a key concern of developing countries.

For the EU, item 7 on ‘opportunities to use markets’ is of particular importance as it
recognises the importance of carbon markets, a key plank of EU policy.

Progress is also represented by the recognition of the scientific case for keeping the rise in
global temperatures to 2°C, but this recognition falls short of providing a credible pathway
for reaching this objective. Instead, the Copenhagen Accord inserts ‘domestic pledges’ to be
submitted by the end of January 2010.  Emissions reductions for the Annex I parties will be
measured, reported and verified according to guidelines, yet to be established. Mitigation
actions taken by non-Annex I parties will be subject to domestic measurement, reporting and
verification (MRV) reported through national communications, with international
consultation and analysis. The latter has been a major point of contention between the US and
China. Beyond that, the Copenhagen Accord remains vague. It makes a reference to 50%
reductions by 2050 compared to 1990. There is also a reference to developed countries’
commitment to reducing their emissions by at least 80% by 2050 but without mentioning
1990 as the base year. It also repeats the ‘equitable right of access to the atmosphere’.
Conspicuously absent is the recognition of ‘historical’ responsibility, despite a reference to
the UNFCCC.

No meaningful progress has been made on international aviation and maritime transport.
Following 2015, the Accord foresees a review including the long-term target.
Finally, due to opposition from a small number of countries, the COP itself did not adopt the
Accord but merely took note of it. It is therefore still uncertain what role it will play in future
climate change negotiations.

2.  An important first step?
Despite the ‘legal limbo’ in which the Accord is currently suspended, if and once adopted, it
could have major implications. These implications are to a large extent linked to the absence
of legally binding ‘targets’ and commitments, an area that so far has been at the centre of
attention – even if one has faith in the national pledges countries are due to file by the end of
January 2010.  But the implications of the Copenhagen Accord go beyond this. The document
also introduces a number of ‘architectural changes’ with potentially major repercussions for
the future climate change agreement.

2.1. A new architecture: From targets and timetables to voluntary pledges?
At about the same time that it became clear that there would be no legally binding agreement
– around October 2009 – it gradually transpired that what now has become the Copenhagen
Accord would not follow a ‘top-down’ Kyoto-style ‘targets and timetable’ approach, but
rather would take the form of ‘unilateral pledges’ or what the Harvard Project calls the
‘portfolio approach’ with some – of a yet unknown nature – mixture of domestic and
international compliance.  This is not dissimilar to the ‘bottom-up pledge-and-review’ model
that the Japanese government proposed prior to the negotiations leading to the Kyoto
Protocol in 1996.  If this approach prevails, it means that the Kyoto Protocol’s top-down
targets-and-timetables approach has been buried in Copenhagen.

By extension, this means that the original objective of “vacating and redistributing the
remaining carbon space” has been postponed and may never materialise.  Those who have
been occupying this carbon space – such as the US, Europe or the countries of the former
Soviet Union, and to a lesser extent many of the emerging economies – will continue to
occupy it to the detriment of least developed countries or countries with low per capita
emissions such as India and Indonesia. This has major implications for financial transfers.
The failure to ‘vacate’ the occupied carbon space due e.g. to physical limitations can only be
compensated by financial transfers, which constitute a kind of ‘rent’.

2.2. Inequitable carbon budgets
The Copenhagen Accord has confirmed that the current ‘grandfathering’ practise, expressed
through percentage reductions in current actual emissions, favours those currently occupying
the carbon space. Some simple calculations make this clear. On the basis of preliminary
figures – derived from pledges (see also section 3) – in all likelihood this means that the
remaining carbon budget will largely be used up by those occupying it now. For example,
there is a 50% chance of limiting the warming to 2°C at a maximum budget of cumulative
GHG emissions of around 1,550 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (Gt CO2eq).
This chance could increase to 74% if the remaining cumulative carbon budget – left until
20502 since the end of 2008 – to be distributed among the world’s nations is reduced to
around 1,050 Gt CO2eq,. Some calculations show that developed (or Annex I) countries,
accounting for 20% of the world’s population in 2005, have already contributed around 75%
of the cumulative CO2 emissions (from energy) until 2000 and above 50% of the cumulative
CO2 emissions since then.3 Given the range of pledges listed at Copenhagen, these countries
will have used up at least4 25-30%, or 36-43% for the stringent but more realistic budget,5 of
the total remaining GHG budget stock.6 And, meanwhile, some of the emerging economies
such as China, Brazil, Mexico, Korea or South Africa are about to consume the remaining
part, potentially curbing the economic growth ambitions of the least-developed and other
low-income countries (including India and Indonesia).7 The latter group of countries
collectively might need as much carbon budget as the developed countries are about to take
up from now until 2050, if they were to merely reach per capita GHG emissions of 4 t CO2eq
by 20308 and maintain that level until 2050.9  Many would expect such per capita emissions
as reasonable in order to make possible the approximately 8% economic growth needed to lift
people out of poverty. In all likelihood, currently existing and affordable technologies will
not enable this kind of economic growth without a significant per capita carbon emissions
increase.  One could argue that during the review of the Copenhagen Accord starting in 2016,
the target might be strengthened, as incidentally the Accord suggests.  We leave the
judgement of the likelihood that this will actually happen to the reader.

2.3 An emissions pathway towards 3.2°C at best
The Copenhagen Accord asks Parties to formalise their pledges by the end of January 2010.
To date, the most ambitious upper limit of the pledges for 2020, combined with the
implementation of the national plans in China and India, would bring the globe towards a
3.2°C increase by 2100 at best, according to estimates by the Climate Action Tracker.10
These pledges are estimated to reduce the projected 57 GtCO2eq in 2020 to 48 GtCO2eq.
Such a level of emissions increases the likelihood of exceeding 2°C to roughly 70%,
according to Meinshausen et al. (2009). Impacts will be mainly felt in least-developed
countries and in other low-income countries – as they have least means to adapt – but also by
future generations in emerging economies and developed countries.

2.4 More questions on the negotiation mode
The events in Copenhagen have exposed institutional shortcomings. Copenhagen has raised
doubts on whether the ultimate resource, i.e. heads of government, was deployed in the most
efficient way.  Even high-level participation did not ensure that the deep divisions between
developed and developing countries would be overcome. At the same time, the negotiations
have called into the question the assumption that a deal can be more easily reached if the
number of countries involved is kept small. These two analyses, however, pull into different
directions and warrant closer examination.

while the higher estimate also includes an assumption of 80% below 1990 levels. The two cases resulted in
Annex I cumulative emissions of 377 Gt CO2eq in the best case scenario and 456 Gt CO2eq in the more realistic
case (2009-49).

3.  A new world order?
A major difference in the appraisal of the Copenhagen outcome on both sides of the Atlantic
may lie in the fact that the world has witnessed – possibly for the first time in history –
fundamental new realities of the ‘new world order’. As the Washington Post notes,
developing nations, though not always united, nonetheless exercise a commanding role in a
large majority in United Nations gatherings such as the Copenhagen conference. At some
point, these majorities prevail.  Copenhagen therefore may have been a glimpse into a new
world order in which international diplomacy will increasingly be shaped by cooperation
between the United States and emerging powers, most notably China. In fact, the
Copenhagen negotiations boiled down to President Obama and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao
personally hammering out a pact both could live with, even if many other leaders could not.
Jake Schmidt, international climate policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Fund,
an environmental NGO, cited in the Washington Post (20 December), remarked: “Coming
into this conference, it was about 193 countries, and coming out of it, it clearly came down to
a conversation between the leaders of those two superpowers.” The leaders of Europe, Japan
and other countries at the summit were largely left to rubber-stamp the deal.  This may have
been why the Swedish Prime Minister’s office let it know that the result was ‘a disaster’.”
Therefore, the Copenhagen Accord essentially reflects the domestic political realities not only
in Washington but also Beijing. Both remain more cautious than for example the EU about
establishing a strict set of international rules. The agreement, which allows nations to set their
own emissions reduction targets without a firm deadline for signing a binding international
accord, ensures full national sovereignty. This may have touched a raw nerve revealed by the
findings of a new report by the European Council on Foreign Relations (see Shapiro & Witney,
2009) that documents how the US under Obama works towards a network of partnerships
with itself at the core to preserve its influence in the world.

4.  What are the EU’s options?
As we have said before, the EU went into the negotiations shoulder to shoulder with the US
with the objective to achieve a ‘comprehensive and operational’ agreement, leading to a
roadmap towards legally binding commitments on GHG reduction targets and finance. It did
not get it. In the end, the fact is that Europe as well as Japan played a very limited role at the
centre of the negotiations. This state of affairs will surely provoke some internal reflections in
the EU on its future role in the international negotiations.

The EU faces several options:
1. The EU could attempt to declare Copenhagen a success. Chancellor Merkel made an
earnest effort at it, attempting to discredit stakeholders and climate activists by saying
they were overly pessimistic.11 French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime
Minister Gordon Brown spoke along similar lines.12 However, this would throw away
the opportunity for Europe to reflect on what ‘leadership’ or at least a considerable
role would mean. We would expect that the press coverage in Europe would not allow
this strategy to persist much longer.

2. The Lisbon Treaty, as the EU’s new ‘constitution’, offers an opportunity for the EU to
play a bigger role in the negotiations, if it so wishes.  Ironically, the bad press that all
EU leaders received, including the climate leaders, may trigger a rethink on their part
on the desirability of attempting to play a bigger role in the future. Now that Merkel,
Sarkozy and Brown realise that international climate change negotiations do not
automatically allow for a shining role, they may find it attractive to allow the
European Commission to do more work in the negotiation trenches.  The next months,
which will see the implementation of the Lisbon Treaty, will be a crucial window of
opportunity.

3. The EU will have to answer the question whether it wants to keep its close
relationship with the US in the negotiations – as we described in a recent CSIS/CEPS
publication (see Egenhofer et al., 2009) – or whether it wants to develop its own
distinct position. This would require the EU to continue to develop its own position as
well as to challenge the US, where required. Given the importance it attaches to
historical responsibility and finance, the EU could become a possible bridge between
developed and developing countries. Already in Copenhagen negotiators and
observers wondered whether a break between the EU and the US position would not
have made a difference with respect to the outcome. So far, the EU has preferred to
stick closely to the US, which may explain why the EU did not play a major role in
the negotiations.
4. The EU could exercise leadership in future climate talks by pursuing a global ‘level’
pricing of carbon. There are two ways of doing this. One route would be to pursue
scaled-up post-2012 mechanisms that allow the establishment of a global carbon
price, but this would require the cooperation of other countries, notably developing
countries. Another route would be for the EU to impose an import tax on the content
of CO2 of all goods imported into the EU from countries that do not have their own
cap-and-trade system or equivalent measures. From a purely economic perspective,
this would be a straightforward way to move towards a global ‘shadow’ carbon price
even in the rest of the world. Such an import tariff improves global welfare because it
transfers, at least partially, via trade flows, carbon pricing even to those parts of the
world where governments have so far refrained from imposing domestic measures of
any magnitude. In other words, it creates a mechanism that enforces the pass-through
of carbon costs across the globe, therefore making domestic consumers pay the full
cost of carbon. A key effect of such a tariff is that it would always lower global
emissions. A paper by Gros and Egenhofer (2009) shows that there are solutions to
issues such as WTO compatibility and equity, the latter for example through rebating.
The latter move would have potential implications for the world trade regime and
international relations. Nevertheless, it should not be dismissed out of hand. What is clear
from the result at Copenhagen is that EU must engage in some serious re-thinking of its
strategy.  We strongly believe that business-as-usual is no longer a viable option. If the EU
continues to believe that climate change policy is important, it may need to make radical
choices. Otherwise the recent period of EU leadership in this critical domain risks becoming
a mere footnote in history.

1
Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, “Copenhagen lessons”, Financial Times, 23 December 2009, p. 8.

2
We took the respective global carbon budget (2000-49) for the above-mentioned probabilities from
Meinshausen et al. (2009) and subtracted the cumulative 450 Gt CO2eq (assuming a constant two-thirds of GHG
emissions are CO2 emissions) emitted in the period 2000-08.

3
Climate Analysis Indicators Tool (CAIT), v 7.0., World Resources Institute, Washington, D.C., 2009.

4
Assuming a linear decrease between 2008 and 2020 and then between 2021 and 2049, which is an optimistic
scenario as emissions should already have peaked in that case.

5
We take the Climate Action Tracker analysis as in Höhne et al. (2009) giving a high pledge for developed
countries of 19% reduction of GHG emissions (excluding LULUCF) below 1990 levels by 2020 (see also den
Elzen et al., 2009) and a low pledge of 11% reduction. The lower figure of the range for Annex I cumulative
2009-49 emissions also includes an assumption of reaching annual emissions of 90% below 1990 levels in 2050,

6
Climate change is caused by GHG concentrations as emissions stay in the atmosphere for up to 100 years.
Hence, historical cumulative emissions, i.e. the stock, matter.

7
A typical low-income country in terms of GHG emissions per capita is India with an average around 1.7
tonnes of CO2 equivalent per person in 2005 (see the CAIT database). An average EU citizen emits more than 6
times as much with around 10.3 tonnes, while a US citizen uses about 14 times the Indian carbon space. Hence,
in effect, developed countries together with most of the emerging economies have been occupying the world’s
carbon space.

8
This could be compared to the world average in 2005 of 5.9 t CO2eq per capita (see CAIT database).

9
For illustrative purposes, we took the countries with the lowest per capita GHG emissions in 2005, which
combined account for a population of roughly 3 billion (including Indians and Indonesians), as given in the
CAIT database. Taking their combined total GHG emissions in 2005 as a starting point (corresponding to almost
2 tCO2eq per capita excluding LULUCF), we then assumed a linear increase to 4 tonnes per capita in 2030 that
remains constant until 2050 while keeping for the sake of simplicity the 3 billion population fixed over the
whole 2005-50 period. This results in a cumulative 425 Gt CO2eq (2009-49).

10
See Höhne et al. (2009).

11
See http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20… and
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20… .

References
den Elzen, M.G.J., M. Roelfsema, S. Slingerland (2009), Too hot to handle? The emission surplus in the
Copenhagen negotiations, Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL), Bilthoven, The
Netherlands, December.
Egenhofer, Christian, David Pumphries, Sarah Ladislaw, Anton Georgiev (2009), Next Steps for the
Transatlantic Climate Change Partnership, A Report of the Global Dialogue between the European
Union and the United States. CSIS, December.
Gros, Daniel and Christian Egenhofer (2010), Climate Change and Trade: Taxing carbon at the border?, Centre
for European Policy Studies, CEPS Paperback, CEPS, Brussels (download preliminary version at:
 http://www.ceps.eu/system/files/article/…).

Ho?hne, Niklas, Michiel Schaeffer, Claudine Chen, Bill Hare, Katja Eisbrenner, Markus Hagemann, Christian
Ellermann (2009), Copenhagen Climate Deal – How to Close the Gap, Briefing paper, Ecofys &
Climate Analytics, 15 December.
Meinshausen, Malte, Nicolai Meinshausen, William Hare, Sarah C.B. Raper, Katja Frieler, Reto Knutti, David
J. Frame and  Myles R. Allen (2009), “Greenhouse gas emissions targets for limiting global warming to
2°C”, Nature, Vol. 458, 30 April.

About five years ago I asked at a meeting organized in New York by The Century Foundation, the Iranian Ambassador to the UN – why in these days of awareness of the need for Sustainable Development and the impact of fossil carbon emissions, and with Iran having knowledge, and people with knowledge, in the areas of renewable energy as I could see at events held at the UN, they insist on developing nuclear power while they could effectively become leaders in renewable energy and sustainable development?

The Ambassador gave me a long answer built on enlarging what I just said about potential positive aspects of Iranian policy, but then went into saying that SOVEREIGNTY was what drives Iran on the nuclear issue – plain and simple – nobody from the outside can tell Iran what to do as a sovereign nation.

OK – now the Iranians themselves are trying to tell their government to go to hell. Mind you – the GREEN of the movement, on its face value,  is the green of the Islamic religion. It is the same green as we see on the Saudi flag – the green of the Prophet Muhammad – not of our forces of renewable energy; but then, is it possible that under the one layer of green there is also another layer of green that says – enough is enough – we can be a normal people – normal as we see on foreign TV – wear short dresses and speak freely our minds/ Normal like in a democracy led by young people who are technology wise – rather then being led by old bearded men that are 500 years old in their minds and behavior?

Yes, my question to the Ambassador was an honest question. Iran is not Saudi Arabia. Iran is a country based on old real culture. The fact that they became in the 21st century the miserable state they did, has more to do with what was imposed on them by the Yalta meeting of 1945 between Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin, then by their own doing. To top that meeting’s result that turned Iran from Nation into Oil-Source, later on, when the Iranians tried for democracy under President Mossadegh, the US CIA killed him and injured the soul of Iran driving the people to true insanity. Yes, Ahmedi-Nejad behaves like a madman, and his Ambassador hid behind that call of Sovereignty, but the young people want to change green for green and the one binding connection between the those two greens makes it clear that they also have no use for the American green dollar.

Will Washington understand that it is not the CIA that can help change in Iran – but it rather calls for massive involvement of friendly NGOs intent to help in the democratization of the Iranian people, while helping shove aside the religious top layer of the bearded green? Look at our articles by Trita Parsi and the other Iranians living in the US. The intellectuals are not followers of the Shah but of the Nobel Prize winner Shirin Ebadi.

—————

“Iran’s turning point.“ Tuesday, December 29, 2009, a Washington Post Editorial.
ONE WAY or another, Sunday’s Ashura holiday in Iran probably will be a turning point in the struggle between an extremist regime and an increasingly radical opposition. At least eight people were killed when hundreds of thousands of Iranians turned out in cities across the country to face police and militia forces, who fired into some crowds and in turn were attacked and in some cases overwhelmed by the protesters. These were the largest demonstrations in six months, and they provoked another escalation of repression: The nephew of one opposition leader, Mir Hossein Mousavi, was murdered Sunday, and 10 more senior opposition figures were arrested Monday.

Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei clearly is betting he can defeat the opposition Green Movement with brute force. In the past week, security forces have attacked peaceful mourners at the funeral of dissident Ayatollah Ali Montazeri and violated the tradition of restraint associated with the Ashura holiday. The predominant chant in the streets, meanwhile, has shifted to “death to Khamenei” or “death to the dictator.” More street protests can be expected when the movement’s new martyr, Ali HabibiMousavi Khamene, is commemorated.

In short, Iran’s political crisis now looks like a battle to the death between the regime and its opposition. No one on either side in Tehran is talking about compromise. Nor does it seem likely that there will be a sustained respite from domestic turmoil until one side triumphs. That in turn means that, more than ever, the Obama administration and other Western governments must tailor their policies toward Iran to reflect the centrality of the Green Movement’s fight for freedom. While diplomatic contact with the regime need not be broken off entirely, by now it should be obvious that it cannot produce significant results — and might serve to shore up a tottering dictatorship.

President Obama shifted U.S. policy partway in the right direction when, during his Nobel Prize speech this month, he departed from his prepared text to say that “it is the responsibility of all free people and free nations to make clear that” the Iranian protesters “have us on their side.” He went further Monday with an admirably strong statement that condemned “the violent and unjust suppression of innocent Iranian citizens” and called for “the immediate release of all who have been unjustly detained.”

There is, however, more that could be done to help the Green Movement. Russia and non-Western nations should be pressed to join in condemning the regime’s violence. Sanctions aimed at the Revolutionary Guard and its extensive business and financial network should be accelerated; action must not be delayed by months of haggling at the U.N. Security Council. More should be done, now, to facilitate Iranian use of the Internet for uncensored communication. The State Department continues to drag its feet on using money appropriated by Congress to fund firewall-busting operations and to deny support to groups with a proven record of success, like the Global Internet Freedom Consortium.

The administration has worried excessively that open U.S. support might damage the Green Movement. Now President Obama has publicly taken sides, and the battle inside Iran has reached a critical juncture. It’s time for the United States to do whatever it can, in public and covertly, to help those Iranians fighting for freedom.

From The San Francisco Sentinel - http://www.sanfranciscosentinel.com/?p=5…

AUSCHWITZ SIGN RECOVERED IN THREE PIECES – FIVE ARRESTED
20 December 2009

“Arbeit macht frei” – “Work makes you free.”

BY BEN QUINN
The London Guardian

Polish police said Sunday night that they had recovered the infamous bronze sign to the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz after it was stolen on Friday.

They said it had been cut into three pieces, each containing one of the words Arbeit Macht Frei (work sets you free).

Five men, aged between 25 and 39, were detained in northern Poland and taken yesterday for questioning to the southern city of Krakow, about 40 miles from Auschwitz.

A state of emergency involving tightened border controls and a nationwide search was declared in Poland last week after the theft of the sign, which was cast by camp prisoners and stands as a symbol of the suffering millions endured at the death camp.

The discovery on Friday morning that the sign had been wrenched from the top of the camp’s entrance gate sparked an international outcry.

Avner Shalev, president of the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, Israel, called the theft “an attack on the remembrance of the Holocaust,” while Jarek Mensfelt, from the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum, said it was a “desecration.”

Police suspected that a gang was responsible because the theft was carefully carried out, with the perpetrators avoiding attracting the attention of night watchmen or CCTV cameras. Sniffer dogs led police to believe that the sign was removed through a hole in the camp fence before being loaded into a van.

More than one million people, 90% Jews, died at Auschwitz, which was liberated by Soviet troops 65 years ago, on 27 January 1945.

About 500 acres of the former death camp was turned into a museum after the war’s end and tens of thousands of visitors from around the world now visit the site.

———————————-

The Auschwitz-Birkenau camps are to become an international memorial as per announcement made earlier this month – this rather then the present Polish State museum, so it seems that this act of vandalism may have been perpetrated because of plain anti-semitism.

The theft comes just days after the German government pledged 60m Euros ($86m) to an international endowment fund to help preserve the camp.
Auschwitz, which receives more than a million visitors a year, has been run as a state museum since 1947, in respect to the Polish National Sovereignty over this region that became universal symbol of humanity meltdown.
It is the first time the sign, made by Polish prisoners, has been stolen since it was erected in 1940.
The Letter ‘B’ in the reversed and upside-down form is thought to have been reversed as an act of defiance-symbol by those Poles – making it appear upside-down.
Locals say Red Army soldiers were bribed to leave it in Poland after the camp was liberated.
The wrought iron sign, whose words mean “Work Sets You Free”, was unscrewed and pulled down from its position above the gate in the early hours of Friday.
Polish authorities denounced the theft, while Israel’s Holocaust museum branded it an “act of war”.

Polish ex-President Lech Walesa described the theft as “unthinkable”, while Poland’s chief rabbi said he could not imagine who would do such a thing.
“If they are pranksters, they’d have to be sick,” said Michael Schudrich.
Polish President Lech Kaczynski called on the public to help recover the sign, which he described as a “worldwide symbol of the cynicism of Hitler’s executioners and the martyrdom of their victims”.
Israeli President Shimon Peres also condemned the theft during a special meeting with Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk – in Copenhagen – as this happened while both of them were in Copenhagen because of the Global meeting of Heads of State at the High Level part of COP 15.
The bizarre event just formed another link between Holocaust and future destruction because of Climate Change – what a strange world indeed when you start noticing sick elements of what we call humankind.
In a statement, his office said Mr Peres “expressed the deepest shock of Israel’s citizens and the Jewish community across the world”, and urged Poland to “make every effort” it could to find the criminals and return the sign.

Siemens study says Scandinavian cities are cleanest
December 8, 2009 from DPA

Northern cool meets northern clean: The Scandinavian capitals come out best in a survey by German electrotechnical giant Siemens on Europe’s greenest conurbations.

Top of the list is Copenhagen, where the biggest UN climate summit of all time is curently into its 2nd day, followed by squeaky-clean Stockholm and the Norwegian capital Oslo. Vienna and Amsterdam score high too.

The analysis is based on the efforts of 30 European cities with a total population of 75 million people towards sustainable living and economic development in line with the so-called Green City Index. The Ukrainian capital Kiev – not renowned for its ecological correctness – comes bottom of the list of clean cities.

When it comes to yearly C02 output per citizen, the Norwegians are tops. They churn out just 2.2 tonnes of C02 per head each year compared to a EU-average of 8.5 tonnes annually. The survey said most cities has drawn up a climate strategy and all faced challenges ahead. For instance the proportion of renewable energy used by the power utiities averaged out at 7 per cent – well under the 20 per cent which the EU hoeps to achieve by 2020.

Martin Bensley, dpa

[Comment] EU-US energy council should act as model for others

by RICHARD MORNINGSTAR AND JULIA NESHEIWAT, the US’ Special Envoy for Eurasian Energy,  and the Senior Advisor on Policy at the US Department of State

posted on  EUObserver as a comment (opinion piece) on 07.12.2009

President Barack Obama will travel to Copenhagen on 9 December to support the United Nations climate change conference, where he is eager to work with the international community to lay the foundation for a new, sustainable and prosperous clean energy future.

{obviously, that date was changed now to December 18, 2009 and accordingly the presentation the US President will be making in Copenhagen will be very different from what he would have said on December 9th. As such, we wonder what the purpose of this posting was when intended to be viewed close to that date, and how things might change after the December 18th date in case Copenhagen will have laid out the foundation for a larger scope climate, and thus energy, global horizon. (the SustainabiliTank editor)}

Copenhagen presents a critical opportunity to take decisive and immediate global action, to build the institutions that we will need to combat climate change and to speed the transition to a low-carbon global economy. Agreement on – and implementation of – a climate deal at Copenhagen is critical, but will be weakened without effective corresponding energy policies.

The right kinds of energy and their distribution across the globe will determine whether the international economy can maintain production levels while meeting the climate change goals set out in Copenhagen.

Energy is the prime nutrient that powers the global economy. It is the common thread that connects many of today’s global challenges, from rebuilding the global economy and combating climate change to forging new partnerships around the world. To ultimately be successful in combating climate change, we need a plan for clean, secure, and abundant energy not only for us for but for our friends around the world.

For these reasons, last month, President Obama, Swedish Prime Minister Reinfeldt, and President Barroso of the European Commission announced a new partnership that will help the United States and the European Union work together to meet our energy-related challenges: the US-EU Energy Council.

The Council will help drive diversification of energy sources, such as increased use of liquefied natural gas, solar and wind power and biofuels. It will facilitate cooperation in technical areas, such as energy efficiency and clean energy technology. And it will help us coordinate our approaches with other energy producers and consumers to increase sources of supply, diversify routes, strengthen energy markets in today’s financial crisis and increase transparency.

The new Council will help us address four major trends that will likely shape energy policy in the coming years: rising energy demand, increasingly interdependent markets, a growing imperative for global co-operation to reorient away from fossil fuels, and a clearer understanding that energy and climate change policy are inseparable.

First, despite the current decrease in global energy demand, increased demand over the medium term will likely result in increased reliance on fossil energy resources, with its accompanying environmental challenges. Unless we act now with fortified partnerships, these challenges will move ahead with increased demand for fossil fuels.

Second, global energy markets are interdependent. Disruptions in one market can have adverse impacts in distant places. In this global economy, countries and companies must realize that we can no longer afford “zero-sum games.” Clean energy and environmentally sustainable production are critical – as is maintaining global supply. A disruption of gas to Europe – apart from potentially severe humanitarian consequences – will have a direct effect on the supply and price of liquefied natural gas on a global basis. Instability of countries affected by climate change or by political volatility can also have dramatic effects.

Third, to ultimately reduce dependence on fossil fuels countries must work together to promote the development and commercialisation of alternative technologies and renewable energy, as well as improve energy efficiency and conservation. The brightest and most creative thinkers should be directed at this vital challenge.

The time is now to work with the European Union and other global partners and take authentic, concrete and quantifiable actions to exchange commercial ideas and address energy security challenges. Our partnerships must be standard bearers bringing about global co-operation and ultimately reduce dependence on fossil fuels. We must be leaders in promoting efficiency and developing alternative energy technologies. Together, we must pursue hydrogen and solar, wind, biomass, and geothermal energy.

One of the principal sources of alternative energy is via improved energy efficiency. Given that the largest sources of C02 are in the exceedingly inefficient thermal electricity and transportation sectors, there is a great deal of room for joint, international victories with the EU and Asia.

We are already engaging with other major energy players, such as Russia through the US-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission Energy Working Group. We will work together in technical areas, such as energy efficiency and clean energy technology. And we will discuss new investment opportunities in both countries, while at the same time encouraging diversified supply routes. By deepening the US-Russia dialogue on energy, we will increase transparency and promote stability and predictability in our relationship. While we may not agree on every issue, we can work together to foster an open dialogue that builds trust.

Fourth, our understanding of energy challenges must include environmentally suitable sources of supply that are compatible with

climate change objectives that will be outlined in Copenhagen. Addressing energy security and meeting the climate change challenge are inextricably linked. Since President Obama took office, the United States has demonstrated its renewed commitment to combating climate change both by supporting domestic policies that advance clean energy, climate security, and economic recovery; and by vigorously re-engaging in international climate negotiations.

Domestically, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act included over $80 billion for clean energy investment. President Obama set a new policy to increase fuel economy and reduce greenhouse gas pollution for all new cars and trucks. And the administration supports mandatory emissions reduction targets. On the international front, the United States is working with its partners around the world to forge a strong international agreement through the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiating process.

Global issues need global solutions and we can not go at this alone. A secure energy future is fostered by building relations internationally through many cross-cutting issues that will determine peace, prosperity and quality of life, not only for Americans, but for the world.

Richard Morningstar is the US’ Special Envoy for Eurasian Energy. Julia Nesheiwat is a Senior Advisor at the US Department of State

www.SustainabiliTank,info suggests that the following is a great opportunity to tell President Obama that long-term jobs are created
by establishing new industries that take into account the need of a sustainable life style, based on sustainable production and consumption patterns.

Bailing out unsustainable industries does not create new jobs, nor keeps old job, but rather insures that there will be unemployment in the future.

We hope that after Copenhagen and Oslo, the President will be ripe for leading the attempt to make 21st Century sense with America.

————————-

From:
Valerie Jarrett, The White House
December 1, 2009

On Thursday, President Obama is hosting a discussion at the White House to explore every possible avenue for job creation. Small business owners, CEOs, economists, financial experts, and nonprofit groups, as well as Americans who have felt the impact of this economic crisis firsthand, will be there to share ideas.

But you don’t need to be here on Thursday to participate. You can join the discussion by organizing your own jobs forum with your family, friends, and co-workers — because these conversations can take place in living rooms and conference tables, not just arenas and convention centers.

We’re looking for community leaders like you from all across the country to host discussions from now until December 13th.  Your community jobs forum will be a source of insights and ideas that will inform the President’s approach to job creation.

To get started, let us know you’re interested, and we’ll send you information that may help you organize a successful jobs forum in your community:

In the coming days, we’ll follow up with discussion questions and other materials to help make your event as productive as possible. We’re not able to offer an events center where anyone can find events already happening, so if you haven’t heard of one in your area, start your own and reach out to your network for participants.

After the event, we’ll provide a simple online tool for you to submit job creation ideas and thoughts.  Back here at the White House, we’ll compile your feedback and send it to the Oval Office for review.

With all of us working together, we’ll get America working again. Get started organizing a jobs forum in your community today.

Look forward to hearing from you,

Valerie

Valerie Jarrett
Senior Advisor and Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Affairs and Public Engagement
The White House

World Trade & Investment Law for a Low-Carbon Economy: Development & Regional Implications of Environmental Pricing Reform
13hr – 15hr, Tues, Dec 01 / Room B, WTO Ministerial NGO Centre CCV, Geneva

Many countries are adopting market-based instruments to promote sustainable development of a low-carbon economy, and to reduce climate change emissions. What are the trade and investment law implications? How can WTO and regional trade rules better support the effective and appropriate use of these instruments? This experts panel and participatory dialogue briefs WTO Ministerial participants on recent legal research and practice in new carbon trading systems and domestic carbon pricing measures, and on how economic instruments could better promote the adoption and transfer of clean energy technology. Hosted by Centre for International Sustainable Development Law (CISDL), in partnership with the law faculties of several leading universities, with support from Sustainable Prosperity, the event provides an opportunity to help define the emerging trade and investment law research agenda for Copenhagen and beyond.

Chair: Marie-Claire Cordonier Segger, Senior Director, Sustainable Prosperity & Director, CISDL
Jodie Keane, Overseas Development Institute*
Prof. Markus W Gehring, Professeur agrégé, University of Ottawa & Lecturer, Cambridge University
Prof. Kate Miles, Professor, Sydney University Law Faculty & Legal Research Fellow, CISDL
Me. Verki M Tunteng, Legal Research Fellow, CISDL

Renewable Energy and Technology – Trade and Investment Law Implications
16.15hr – 18.15hr, Tues, Dec 01 / ICTSD Trade and Development Symposium 2009, Room A, WMO, Geneva

Renewable Energy and Technology to promote sustainable development, and to reduce climate change emissions are in an increasingly high demand. But how can trade and investment law foster rather than frustrate this technological shift? How can WTO and regional trade rules better support the effective and appropriate use of these energies and technologies? This experts panel and participatory dialogue briefs WTO Ministerial participants on recent legal research and practice in renewable energy systems and domestic energy reforms, and on how economic instruments could better promote the adoption and transfer of clean energy technology. Hosted by Centre for International Sustainable Development Law (CISDL), in partnership with the law faculties of several leading universities, with support from Sustainable Prosperity, the event provides an opportunity to help define the emerging trade and investment law research agenda for Copenhagen and beyond.

Chair & Keynote: Marie-Claire Cordonier Segger, Senior Director, Sustainable Prosperity & Director, CISDL
Prof. Markus W Gehring, Professeur agrégé, University of Ottawa & Lecturer, Cambridge University
Prof. Kate Miles, Professor, Sydney University Law Faculty & Legal Research Fellow, CISDL
Me. Verki M Tunteng, Legal Research Fellow, CISDL

 news at religionandecology.org

Forum on Religion and Ecology Newsletter
3.11 (November 2009)

Contents:

1. Editorial, by Elizabeth McAnally

2. Religion, Science, and the Environment Symposium on the Mississippi River

3. Events

4. New Books

5. Exhibit: “Climate Change in Our World”

6. New Blog: Congregational Resource Guide Green  http://green.congregationalresources.org)

7. Sewanee’s Center for Religion and Environment

8. Sustainability: The Journal of Record

9. Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology

1. Editorial, by Elizabeth McAnally

Greetings!

Welcome to the November issue of the Forum on Religion and Ecology newsletter. I have many exciting things to share with you this month, including information about new publications, recent and upcoming events, a photography exhibit, and much more. In particular, I would like to direct your attention to the recent Religion, Science, and the Environment symposium sponsored by the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew of the Greek Orthodox Church. See below for a short summary of the symposium and links to related news articles.

Also, I am happy to inform you about the religion and ecology events that took place at the annual conference of American Academy of Religion (AAR) in Montreal, Quebec on November 7-10, 2009. I had the pleasure of attending this year’s conference, and am delighted to report that the field of religion and ecology was well represented.  The Forum hosted its annual AAR lunch on Friday, November 6th, where participants shared their latest activities with regard to teaching and research.  This is an occasion for people to meet one another and share common interests in the broad field of religion and ecology.

Throughout the AAR, diverse presentations in panels and workshops related to religion and ecology were hosted by the Religion and Ecology Group, the Animals and Religion Consultation, and the Sustainability Task Force.  The presentations addressed a variety of topics, including animals, food, bioethics, justice, climate change, globalization, poetry, and the philosophical grounds of the emerging field of religion and ecology. The new Sustainability Task Force hosted two great events: one was a pre-conference workshop on how to teach about global warming in the context of religious studies, and the other was a panel on sustainability among Native American peoples. It was inspiring to hear so many thought-provoking presentations.

Amidst many handshakes, hugs, shared meals, and stimulating conversations, it was evident that religion and ecology is not simply a field of study, but is also a matter of personal connections and face to face relationships.  With an intimate lunch hosted by the Forum, along with many discussions during and between presentations, the AAR provided time for new introductions to be made and for longtime friendships to be rejuvenated.  Next year’s meeting of the AAR will be held in Atlanta, Georgia on October 30-November 1, 2010. It would be wonderful if you could come and join the Forum community as we explore together the field and the force of religion and ecology.

I am also pleased to let you know that last year the Parliament of the World’s Religions asked the Forum to assist in creating panels on world religions and ecology.  This has been done, and there will be a fresh new emphasis on the environment at the Parliament.  In addition, the Forum arranged for panels on the Earth Charter, Thomas Berry’s legacy, the Renewal film, the Journey of the Universe film, and a new film on plants called Numen.  The Parliament will take place in Melbourne from December 3-9, 2009.

Elizabeth McAnally
California Institute of Integral Studies
Forum on Religion and Ecology at Yale
Web Content Manager & Newsletter Editor
 http://www.yale.edu/religionandecology

 news at religionandecology.org

2. Religion, Science, and the Environment Symposium on the Mississippi River

The 8th Symposium of Religion, Science, and the Environment (RSE) organized by the Greek Orthodox Church under the auspices of His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew was held in New Orleans, Louisiana and Memphis, Tennessee on October 21-25, 2009. The Symposium was titled “Restoring Balance: The Great Mississippi River.” Drawing attention to the erosion, sea level rise, pollution, and storms of the Mississippi River, this Symposium reached out across different faiths and denominations, revealing the wisdom of diverse theological traditions, as well as a common imperative to protect the natural world.  One goal of this gathering was to push for a successful outcome of international climate talks this December in Copenhagen. Forum co-directors Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim participated in the symposium (their 5th) by chairing panels and by presenting the film Journey of the Universe that they are making with Brian Swimme.

Past RSE Symposia have drawn global attention to the degradation of the Aegean Sea, the Black Sea, the Danube River, the Adriatic Sea, the Baltic Sea, and the Amazon River. Travelling down rivers and around seas, sometimes literally following pollution from its source to its point of impact, these waterborne journeys have offered up a tangible sense of the interconnectedness of the world’s waters and all its ecosystems, demonstrating the destructive ripples human actions can send through space and time. By bringing participants to the places where environmental problems are most acute and focusing on practical remedies rather than theoretical discussions, RSE Symposia have inspired positive change through collective action.

For More Information, see the news articles below:

“Religious leaders gather in Memphis and New Orleans as sea level rise threat grows”
October 19, 2009
Press Release
 http://www.rsesymposia.org/more.php?&amp…

“Orthodox leader calls for environmental action”
October 23, 2009
By The Associated Press
 http://www.dailyworld.com/article/200910…

“Our Indivisible Environment: If life is sacred, so is the entire web that sustains it”
October 25, 2009
By The Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew
The Wall Street Journal
 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424…

For Further Information, visit the website of Religion, Science, and the Environment:www.rsesymposia.org

3. Events

Parliament of the World’s Religions
Melbourne, Australia
December 3-9, 2009
For More Information, visit: www.parliamentofreligions.org

“Environment & Spirit”
Centre for Peace
Vancouver, B.C., Canada
November 20-21, 2009
For More Information, visit: http://www.canadianmemorial.org/environm…

“Sacred Water: Sustaining Life”
14th Annual Festival of Faiths
Center for Interfaith Relations
Louisville, KY, USA
November 4-13, 2009
For More Information, visit: www.interfaithrelations.org

“Many Heavens, One Earth: Faith Commitments for a Living Planet”
Sponsored by Alliance for Religion and Conservation and UN Development Programme
Hosted by Prince Philip (HRH the Duke of Edinburgh)
Mary Evelyn Tucker presented the work of the Forum.
Windsor Castle, United Kingdom
November 2-4, 2009
For More Information, visit: www.windsor2009.org

2009 Global Environmental Action (GEA) International Conference
Sponsored by UN University, UN Environment Programme, and the Japanese Government including Ministry of Environment, etc.
Promoting Technologies and Policies toward a Low Carbon Society
Keynote speeches were given by the Crown Prince and the Prime Minister.
Mary Evelyn Tucker gave a presentation on values for sustainability from the world’s religions and the Earth Charter.
Prince Hotel, Tokyo, Japan
October 16 – 17, 2009
For More Information, visit: http://www.gea.or.jp/top_en.html

4. New Books

The Tao of Liberation: Exploring the Ecology of Transformation
By Mark Hathaway and Leonardo Boff
Orbis Books, 2009
 http://www.taoofliberation.com

Today, humanity stands at an historic crossroads. Deepening poverty and accelerating ecological destruction challenge us to act with wisdom and maturity: How can we move toward a future where meaning, hope, and beauty can truly flourish?

Drawing on insights from economics, psychology, science, and spirituality, The Tao of Liberation seeks wisdom leading to authentic liberation a path toward ever-greater communion, diversity, and creativity for the Earth community. It describes this wisdom using the Chinese word Tao both a way leading to harmony and the unfolding process of the cosmos itself.

This book is part of the Ecology and Justice Series in which Thomas Berry’s latest book, The Christian Future and the Fate of Earth, was also published.

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Religion, Ecology & Gender: East-West Perspectives
Edited by Sigurd Bergmann and Yong-Bock Kim
Studies in Religion and the Environment/Studien zur Religion und Umwelt, Vol. 1, 2009
 http://www.lit-verlag.de/isbn/3-8258-190…

The understanding of nature is at the heart of European self – understanding, while in Asia the terms of life and energy play a similar central role. Globally, many institutions and movements have made the protection of the environment and climate a top policy priority. Given the urgency of environmental problems the lack of reflections about the human and especially the spiritual dimension of environmental problems is striking.

Environmental – and – climatic change transforms not only culture, politics, and economy, but also religion. Religious traditions have on the one hand always been dependent on human ecologies; on the other hand they vibrantly affect our perceptions of nature and sociocultural practices with(in) it.

If life and religion change dramatically at present, how could religion make a change? How are religious and ecologic processes gendered, and how can ecofeminism deepen our understanding of justice? What are the life – enhancing spiritual resources in the East and the West? How can Christian theology contribute to the necessary eco – cultural revolution ahead of us? And how can Buddhist, Taoist, Confucian and Christian spiritualities cooperate in a common space and future?

Questions like these are reflected upon by scholars of religion and theology from Korea, Canada and Scandinavia. Their chapters emerge from an international workshop, which was arranged and convened by the editors 2007 in Yecheon on the Korean countryside and in Seoul. The book offers the 1st volume in a new series established by the European Forum for the Study of Religion and the Environment.

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In the Beginning is the Icon: A Liberative Theology of Images, Visual Arts and Culture
By Sigurd Bergmann
Equinox Publishing, 2009
 http://www.equinoxpub.com/books/showbook…

In the Beginning is the Icon (translated from the Swedish edition, published by Proprius Förlag in 2003) aims to contribute to raising awareness about the intrinsic value of images and image perception among those who wish to reflect over God and over pictorial expressions of different experiences from encounters with divinity in earthly and historical situations. Reflections from iconology, art theory, philosophical aesthetics, art history, and the fairly recent field of anthropology of art intersect with reflections from Theology and Religious studies.

A central question is how God, through human creation and observation of pictures, can have a liberating function in images. Within the context of a liberation theological approach to the interpretation of God and an aesthetic that focuses on the love of the poor, the final chapter develops a constructive proposal for a contextual art theology. In the globalised mass production of pictures, the pedagogy of art and iconology has a special significance in contributing to humanisation and the liberation of man. The roles of the hand and the eye for learning make up central and crucial notions within liberation pedagogy. The extended time period that is needed to orientate in the visual sphere is in itself a political counterforce to the violation of natural space and a natural passing of time caused by the acceleration of technological developments.

In light of the impact of both art and religion within a world of geographical and historical relations, and with a critical edge toward Western art reflection and the egocentric, Euro-centric character of religious interpretation, the chapter about “world art” is an independent contribution in the book’s structure. Even though the research history of ethnography and anthropology also reflects this ethnocentricity shared by art and religious studies, the newly established anthropology of art offers important perspectives for a cross-cultural art theology.

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Coming Back to Earth: From gods to God to Gaia
By Lloyd Geering
Edited with an introduction by Tom Hall
Polebridge Press, 2009
 http://www.westarinstitute.org/Polebridg…

The mainline churches in the Western world are declining, concludes Lloyd Geering, because they are “all out of step” with the modern secular world. This is not so much a result of the supposed renegade behavior of the secular world as the failure of the church to take the next steps in its path of faith. Abraham left his idols behind to go out into the unknown. In contrast, the churches reveal a lack of faith by insisting on an infallible Bible and a set of unchangeable doctrines tailored to an obsolete worldview. In Coming Back to Earth, Geering calls upon us to complete the work of the Second Axial Age by bringing the sacred—banished to an imaginary heavenly realm in the wake of the First Axial Age—back to earth.

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The Gift of Creation: Images from Scripture and Earth
Edited by Norman Wirzba
Photography by Tom Barnes
Acclaim Press, 2009
 http://www.acclaimpress.com/product_info…

The Gift of Creation: Images from Scripture and Earth is a beautiful book featuring vivid images of the Earth and the varied forms of life that call it home. Coupled with the images are biblically-based essays, written by notable academics and scholars from around the globe, exploring what scripture really says about caring for God’s creation, as well as a scientific assessment of the state of the Earth. These essays give a current state of the environment and a poignant and much-needed treatise on humanity’s role in caring for God’s creation. Edited by Norman Wirzba with photographs by Tom Barnes, The Gift of Creation reveals the splendor of nature in its varied landscapes, flora and fauna. The text reminds us to cherish and care for God’s great gift.

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A Greener Faith: Religious Environmentalism and Our Planet’s Future
By Roger S. Gottlieb
Paperback version, Oxford University Press, 2009
 http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/su…

In a time of darkening environmental prospects, frightening religious fundamentalism, and moribund liberalism, the remarkable and historically unprecedented rise of religious environmentalism is a profound source of hope. In A Greener Faith, Roger S. Gottlieb chronicles the promises of this critically important movement, illuminating its principal ideas, leading personalities, and ways of connecting care for the earth with justice for human beings. He also shows how religious environmentalism breaks the customary boundaries of “religious issues” in political life. Asserting that environmental degradation is sacrilegious, sinful, and an offense against God catapults religions directly into questions of social policy, economic and moral priorities, and the overall direction of secular society. Gottlieb contends that a spiritual perspective applied to Earth provides the environmental movement with a uniquely appropriate way to voice its dream of a sustainable and just world. Equally important, it helps develop a world-making political agenda that far exceeds interest group politics applied to forests and toxic incinerators. Rather, religious environmentalism offers an all-inclusive vision of what human beings are and how we should treat each other and the rest of life.

Gottlieb deftly analyzes the growing synthesis of the movement’s religious, social, and political aspects, as well as the challenges it faces in consumerism, fundamentalism, and globalization. Highly engaging and passionately argued, this book is an indispensable resource for people of faith, environmentalists, scholars, and anyone who is concerned about our planet’s future.

5. Exhibit: “Climate Change in Our World”

“Climate Change in Our World,” an exhibit of large-scale color photographs from Gary Braasch’s bookEarth Under Fire: How Global Warming is Changing the World, is now showing at the American Association for the Advancement of Science Headquarters in Washington DC.  “How We Know About Our Changing Climate: Learning and Taking Action on Climate Change” is an educational exhibit and video installation which accompanies the show.  Images from the book How We Know What We Know About Our Changing Climate: Scientists and Kids Explore Global Warming and the film series Young Voices on Climate Change will teach and inspire school groups and families.  This exhibit is co-created by Lynne Cherry, co-author with Braasch of the book and producer of the films.

The show runs from November through mid-March, 2010. Exhibits are open weekdays from 8am-5pm at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1200 New York Avenue NW, Washington DC 20005).

For more information, visit: http://www.earthunderfire.com/pages/exhi…

6. New Blog: Congregational Resource Guide Green  http://green.congregationalresources.org)

The Congregational Resource Guide (CRE) has long been recognized as the leading portal for information of interest to clergy, lay leaders, and laity in a variety of congregations and faiths  www.congregationalresources.org).  CRE is pleased to announce the launch of CRG Green, a blog dedicated to discussing the best resources available on the web and in press related to green resources for congregational life. The blog can be found at:
 http://green.congregationalresources.org

You are invited to visit the site and offer suggestions for links or issues that should be highlighted. Signed blog entries are also welcomed. You may send these to Martin Davis, director of Congregational Resource Guide, at  mdavis at alban.org. Entries should not exceed 500 words and should focus on issues or new resources specifically dedicated to aiding clergy and congregations to develop their understanding of green issues and how they can advance this movement.

7. Sewanee’s Center for Religion and Environment

Sewanee: The University of the South created the Center for Religion and Environment in order to develop educational programs and public forums that unite environmental learning and action with faith practices. The Center connects the University’s College of Arts and Sciences, its School of Theology, and its All Saints’ Chapel. It is the latest manifestation of Sewanee’s long-time commitment to the environment.

The Center makes the most of Sewanee’s unique situation, which brings together a first-rateenvironmental studies program offering both scientific and humanities/social policy dimensions, the diverse resources of a theological seminary and a liberal arts college, the inter-faith engagements of All Saints’ Chapel, and the practical benefits of a 13,000-acre campus that serves as an enormous land laboratory.

The Center will develop programs for Sewanee undergraduate students and seminarians; church administrators and lay leaders; youth leaders; and business, environmental, and civic leaders who may or may not be members of faith communities. These programs will address environmentally-oriented spiritual growth and integrate theological environmental perspectives with the insights of natural and social sciences.

For More Information, visit: http://www.sewanee.edu/cre

8. Sustainability: The Journal of Record

Sustainability: The Journal of Record  http://www.liebertpub.com/products/produ…) meets the needs of the rapidly growing community of professionals in academia, industry, policy, and government who have the responsibility and commitment to advancing one of the major imperatives of this young century.

The Journal provides the information and resources to foster collaboration and move forward the imperatives of the preservation and sustainability of global resources.

Each issue contains news and commentary; innovators in sustainability; profiles of corporate sustainability programs; tools for implementing sustainability programs on campus; provocative roundtable discussion; peer reviewed articles; books, web, and other resources; new products; and meetings and conferences.

Members of the Forum on Religion and Ecology can purchase the Journal with a special $63 online subscription offer (a $79 value). Please go to www.liebertpub.com to automatically receive your discount.

9. Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology

Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology has as its focus the relationships between religion, culture and ecology world-wide. Articles discuss major world religious traditions, such as Islam, Buddhism or Christianity; the traditions of indigenous peoples; new religious movements; and philosophical belief systems, such as pantheism, nature spiritualities, and other religious and cultural worldviews in relation to the cultural and ecological systems. Focusing on a range of disciplinary areas including Anthropology, Environmental Studies, Geography, Philosophy, Religious Studies, Sociology and Theology, the journal also presents special issues that center around one theme. To receive a free sample copy of Worldviews, email  marketing at brill.nl. For more information, visit: http://www.brill.nl/wo

For more information on other journals related to religion and ecology and to environmental ethics/philosophy, visit: http://fore.research.yale.edu/publicatio…. If you know of a publication that needs to be added to this list, email  news at religionandecology.org.

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For the archive of previous Forum newsletters, visit: http://fore.research.yale.edu/publicatio…

Looking through clippings from 2009:

Can Condoms help fight climate change?  Yes, and they should, wrote an editorial  of  medical journal Lancet!

In addition to boosting the health, standard of living and human rights of women, encouraging the use of contraception also will help save the planet. The calculus is simple: preventing unwanted pregnancies — especially in the developing world — translates into reduced demand for increasingly scarce and energy-intensive resources like food, water and shelter.

More than 200 million women around the world would like access to modern contraception, and their lack of it leads to 76 million unintended pregnancies each year, according to Lancet.

Thomas Wire, a postgraduate student at the London School of Economics, came to essentially the same conclusion. In a report titled “Fewer Emitters, Lower Emissions, Less Cost,” Wire calculated that if present trends continue, the planet is on track to have 338 billion “people-years” lived between 2020 and 2050. But if contraception were available to every woman who wanted it, so many pregnancies would be averted that the number of people-years would fall to 326 billion.

That reduction of 12 billion people-years would save 34 gigatons of carbon dioxide that would otherwise cost at least $220 billion to produce. In other words, each $7 invested in contraception would buy more than 1 ton of carbon dioxide emissions.

Among the first 40 developing countries to submit global warming adaptation plans to the U.N.  Framework Convention on Climate Change, 37 linked population growth to global warming. But only six of those countries incorporated contraception into their plans, according to Lancet. That should change, the editorial says.

and from a second source: “The world’s population is expected to reach more than 9 billion people by 2050, with 95 percent of this growth in developing countries. Those in support of investing in reproductive health services and contraception to combat climate change argue that having fewer children means less carbon emissions and less strain on diminishing natural resources.

An editorial in the medical journal Lancet last month called attention to the links between rapid population growth and increased vulnerability to the consequences of climate change, such as food and water scarcity and environmental degradation. It suggested that by reducing unintended pregnancies, we could slow the high rates of population growth and possibly ease pressure on the environment. The Lancet says that over 200 million women want, but currently lack, access to modern contraceptives, resulting in 76 million unintended pregnancies every year.

An economic case was made for investing in reproductive health by a recent study from the London School of Economics (LSE) and commissioned by the UK-based Optimum Population Trust. It showed that contraception is almost five times cheaper than leading green technologies, such as wind and solar power and hybrid or electric cars, to combat climate change. Specifically, the study found that each $7 (£4) spent on basic family planning over the next four decades would reduce global carbon dioxide emissions by more than a ton, but it would cost a minimum of $32 (£19) to achieve the same result with low-carbon technologies.”

Associated Press, November 24, 3009 from Washington – this is still unofficial:

President Barack Obama will go to Copenhagen next month, a White House official said Wednesday, to participate in a long-anticipated, high-stakes global climate summit.

Mr. Obama will attend the summit on Dec. 9 before heading to Oslo to accept the Nobel Peace Prize, the official said. Mr. Obama’s attendance had been in question until now.

The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because the formal announcement hasn’t been made.

The conference had originally been intended to produce a new global climate-change treaty on limiting emissions of greenhouse gases that would replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. However, hopes for a legally binding agreement have dimmed lately, with leaders saying the summit is more likely to produce a template for future action to cut emissions blamed for global warming.

While Mr. Obama himself tried to tamp down expectations during his eight-day trip to Asia earlier this month, he also called on world leaders to come to an agreement that has “immediate operational effect” and is not just a political declaration.

Obama administration officials said earlier this week that the U.S. will present a target for reducing carbon dioxide emissions at the summit. The development came as the European Union urged the U.S. and China to deliver greenhouse-gas emissions targets at the summit, saying their delays were hindering global efforts to curb climate change.

The administration has indicated that it would eventually come up with specific targets for quick reductions in pollution that causes global warming, as part of international negotiations. Those targets will soon be made public, officials said.

———–

This will be Mr. Obama’s second trip to Denmark this year. He made short trip to Copenhagen on Oct. 2 to make a vain pitch for 2016 Summer Olympics in Chicago during a meeting of the International Olympic Committee. On our website we complained at that time why Mr. Obama did not use the occasion also to touch upon the Climate Change issue with the other heads of State that also came to Copenhagen to boost their countries chances for the Olympics – Brazil, Japan, and Spain, and the local Danish host.

Now, on the eve of his speech in Oslo, before the Nobel Committee and the World, we hope that the US President will brand his personal credentials with a specially open – personal declaration – in matters of our need to adapt to the idea that there must be found a less energy intensive way for life in developed countries because of global climate change and the needed push for climate change science, technology and economics.

Let us note that the meetings days with the Heads of State are usually at the end of the Conference – that is only December 16-17, 2009 – thus by coming to Copenhagen on the 9th, just before the Oslo speech on the 10th, we think can justify Mr. Obama not retuning for the days when the other Heads of State will be there in order to rearrange the shards left after the fact that no deal was sealed at the 2009 meeting.

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NOW IT IS OFFICIAL – PLEASE SEE THE WASHINGTON POST ALERT:
9:45 AM EST Wednesday, November 25, 2009

President Obama will travel to Copenhagen Dec. 9, a day before accepting the Nobel Peace Price in Oslo, to help launch a U.N.-sponsored global climate change summit, a White House official said. The president will meet with other world leaders gathered for the summit, which is scheduled for Dec. 7-18.

Obama to attend climate talks in Copenhagen write Michael D. Shear and Juliet Eilperin on that alert:
President help kick off the global climate talks despite the conference’s failure to secure a binding worldwide treaty to reduce emissions.

DOES THAT MEAN THAT OTHER HEADS OF STATE WILL CHANGE THEIR SCHEDULES ALSO – SO THEY WILL BE THERE AT THE START OF THE MEETINGS?

It sounds rather that he decided to come for the kick-start and does not mind indeed if they come later to rearrange the shards as we said above. Oh Well – President Obama might come back if it looks like that something can be achieved there.

Norway is a shipping world power – so -  despite all the positive elements in the country – the masters of shipping do not want to be told to improve their fleet. We know what we say because we were involved years ago in the effort to see the UN make some sort of recommendation to have oil tankers obligated to be built with double hulls and compartments, so that in the case of a spill, not all the oil from a mega-barrel size ocean going monster end up on the beaches, on the fish, and the birds.

Brazil suggested the double hulls and compartments, Benin seconded, the G77 did not object in the UN Second Committee, but when it came to be added to the text – it was Norway that said NO! – and that was the end of it.

Now we see the following analysis of a very similar situation – the cleaning up of health endangering emissions from the burning of bunker fuel by ships and emissions of sulfur compounds – and we see that some scientists will say that the goo spewed out from the chimney of the ships is good for us because it helped in rejecting some sun rays after creating clouds. Other scientists will even tell us that there is the possibility of geo-engineering rains – just ask the Chinese that a couple of weeks ago managed to see destruction from floods they produced in ways suggested by these folks.

We wrote before, we love Norway but watch out when you step on their oil interests – that is when you find that they can be an OPEC auxiliary.

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Curbs To Ship Pollution Would Stoke Global Warming, Study Says.

reported by Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent, Reuters

November 23, 2009
OSLO – Shipping is slowing climate change by spewing out sunlight-dimming pollution but a clean-up needed to safeguard human health will stoke global warming, experts said Friday.

“So far shipping has caused a cooling effect that has slowed down global warming,” Jan Fuglestvedt, of the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research Oslo (CICERO), told Reuters.

“After some decades the net climate effect of shipping will shift from cooling to warming” because of cleaner fuels, he and colleagues in Germany, Britain and Norway wrote in this week’s edition of the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

Toxic sulphur dioxide emitted by burning bunker fuel accounted for the deaths of an estimated 60,000 people worldwide in 2001 through cancer and heart and lung disease, according to a previous study. A clean-up would save thousands of lives.

But sulphur pollution from the fast-growing shipping industry also helps create clouds by providing tiny seeds around which droplets form. Clouds have a cooling effect since sunlight bounces off their white tops.

The scientists argued against deliberate use of pollution from ships as part of possible schemes to shield the planet from sunlight, saying it was too risky and outweighed by the impact on human health.

—————–

CLIMATE COOLING

“The available evidence suggests that ‘climate cooling’ by continued shipping emissions of sulphur dioxide would not be advisable,” they wrote.

A clean-up of sulphur from ships will have a “double warming” effect — there will be more sunlight with less pollution and there will be ever more carbon dioxide, the non-toxic greenhouse gas emitted by burning fuel.

Shipping accounts for about 3.3 percent of world carbon dioxide emissions from human sources, emissions the U.N. Climate Panel says will cause more droughts, floods, heatwaves, rising sea levels and disease.

Some scientists, such as Nobel Prize winner Paul Crutzen, have suggested dumping sulphur in the upper atmosphere to slow global warming, one of several proposals for deliberate “geoengineering” to alter the climate system.

A U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen next month will consider new measures to penalize carbon dioxide emissions by both international shipping and aviation — both are outside the existing Kyoto Protocol for slowing emissions until 2012.

Fuglestvedt’s study estimated that it would take roughly 70 years for shipping to become a net contributor to global warming if sulphur dioxide emissions were quickly cut by 90 percent and all other fuel-related emissions stayed at 2000 levels.

The International Maritime Organization is seeking cuts in the sulphur content of bunker fuel to a maximum of 3.5 percent by 2012 and then to 0.5 percent by 2020.

From the Energy & Capital website information of value:

On January 1, 2010, for the first time in history,
Greenland’s $273 billion Rare Earth resource will become private property.

And one company will control it all.

“Dear Reader” writes, Keith Kohl, the editor of that investment newsletter:

“On New Year’s Day, the Kingdom of Denmark will relinquish its sovereign hold over Greenland’s mineral rights.

At stake: a 500-square-mile hunk of Arctic bedrock…

To most, this ice-encrusted landscape is the definition of barren and uninviting.

The only vegetation is moss, and the nearest town is little more than a collection of tents, over 100 miles away.

But to the world’s biggest automakers, as well as to the global weapons industry, this uninhabitable hunk of rock is the most precious 500 square miles on the planet.

?You see, locked within this property is a unique group of minerals, concentrated unlike any other deposit on earth.

?They’re called Rare Earth Elements, or REEs for short. And this prized piece of land contains more than $273 billion worth.

Without them, some of our most important modern technologies could never exist.

In fact, they’re so crucial to modern circuitry that industry insiders came up with a nickname for REEs: ‘Technology metals.’

From hybrid car batteries… to wind turbine motors… to missile guidance systems…

Metals such as cerium, promethium, europium and many of the remaining 29 Rare Earth Elements are essential to all modern electronic devices that use:

• rechargeable batteries
• electric motors
• photo optics
• solar cells
• strong magnets

And as the Kingdom of Denmark signs away its rights to these riches, the world’s biggest concentration of REEs will fall into the hands of a single company.

“Literally overnight, this company – which is trading for just under 50 cents right now – will come to control 1/4 of the global supply… for the next half century.

Now before I tell you all about this company — and its imminent run-up — let me explain why these minerals are so critical for Big Auto and the defense industry…

… And why they’re the Western world’s last line of defense against a huge and determined rival.

You see, for the last 15 years, the world has gotten its REEs from one main source.”

And it hasn’t exactly been a friendly one.” is written in that newsletter – then elaborated:

China’s Mission:
A Rare Earth Element Monopoly
“The Mideast had oil, but China has Rare Earth Elements. As OPEC did with oil… China is about to tighten its hammerlock on the market for some of the world’s most valuable metals.” – NY Times

The Chinese knew how important Rare Earths would be years ago.

In fact, as far back as 1992, Communist Party Leader Deng Xiaoping said: “There is oil in the Middle East. There is rare earth in China.”

And since then, they have been doing everything in their power to realize this destiny…

On April 27th of this year, they penned a deal with a major foreign supplier to widen their control of this market to a historic level.

Today, thanks to that deal, Communist China produces 96.8% of the total global supply of these vital elements.

Obviously, the newsletter does not mention Bolivia, Mongolia, and not even further resources in the US – but nevertheless – the basic information is of great interest.

Here’s what I mean he continues:

Every Toyota Prius, every Honda Civic Hybrid, and just about every other battery-powered car on the market requires between 23 and 25 pounds of Rare Earths to run.

For Japan, this is a very dangerous scenario:

“Japan, which imports nearly 100% of its rare earths from China, sees the group of elements as a probable battleground” – Wall Street Journal.

And while cleantech is still new, it’s already changing the face of the REE market.

Because as vital as Rare Earth components are, they make up only a tiny fraction of the overall mass of any modern electronic device.

That is why up until 2008, the entire global market for REEs was just $2 billion.

But with the emergence of cleantech, this is all rapidly changing.

In fact, less than a year from now, growth in the battery-powered car industry will increase global REE consumption between 90% and 166% from 2008 levels.

Now here’s why there is no end in sight for this trend: In high-capacity batteries, Rare Earths represent a significant percentage of the weight.

And right now, these batteries are being produced at an unprecedented rate.

Just look at the forecast for hybrid/electric sales for the next six years:

I’m talking about over 10 million battery-powered cars globally by the year 2015. (That’s a 500% increase over what exists today.)

And remember, it’s not just hybrids.

It’s any technology in which electric motors, photovoltiac cells and portable rechargeable batteries are essential… which means that on top of using REEs in the solar panels and in the the wind turbines themselves, every cleantech power generator will also rely on REE-filled batteries to store the energy.

And because batteries are so much hungrier for REEs more than any other single product, the demand for REEs will outpace the growth of the consumer electronics market alone — by as much as four-fold.

MIKHAIL GORBACHEV: Climatic challenge demands fall of new walls.

MOSCOW,  Sunday, November 15, 2009, Printed by The Japan Times, the day after the Obama visit:

The German people, and the whole world alongside them, are celebrating a landmark date in history, the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Not many events remain in the collective memory as a watershed that divides two distinct periods. The dismantling of the Berlin Wall — that stark, concrete symbol of a world divided into hostile camps — is such a defining moment.

The fall of the Berlin Wall brought hope and opportunity to people everywhere, and provided the 1980s with a truly jubilant finale. That is something to think about as this decade draws to a close — and as the chance for humanity to take another momentous leap forward appears to be slipping away.

The road to the end of the Cold War was certainly not easy, or universally welcomed at the time, but it is for just this reason that its lessons remain relevant. In the 1980s, the world was at a historic crossroads. The East-West arms race had created an explosive situation. Nuclear deterrents could have failed at any moment. We were heading for disaster, while stifling creativity and development.

Today, another planetary threat has emerged.  – —— -

The climate crisis is the new wall that divides us from our future, and current leaders are underestimating the urgency, and potentially catastrophic scale, of the emergency.

People used to joke that we will struggle for peace until there is nothing left on the planet; the threat of climate change makes this prophecy more literal than ever. Comparisons with the period immediately before the Berlin Wall came down are striking.

Like 20 years ago, we face a threat to global security and our very existence that no one nation can deal with alone. Again, it is the people who are calling for change. Just as the German people declared their will for unity, the world’s citizens today are demanding that action be taken to tackle climate change and redress the deep injustices that surround it.

Twenty years ago, key world leaders demonstrated resolve, faced up to opposition and immense pressure, and the Wall came down. It remains to be seen whether today’s leaders will do the same.

Addressing climate change demands a paradigm shift on a scale akin to that required to end the Cold War. But we need a “circuit-breaker” to escape from the business-as-usual approach that currently dominates the political agenda.

It was the transformation brought about by perestroika and glasnost that set the stage for the quantum leap to freedom for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and opened the way for the democratic revolution that saved history. Climate change is complex and closely entwined with a host of other challenges, but a similar breakthrough in our values and priorities is needed.

There is not just one wall to topple, but many. There is the wall between those states that are already industrialized and those that do not want to be held back in their economic development. There is the wall between those who cause climate change and those who suffer the consequences. There is the wall between those who heed the scientific evidence and those who pander to vested interests. And there is the wall between the citizens who are changing their own behavior and want strong global action, and the leaders who are so far letting them down.

In 1989, incredible changes that were deemed impossible just a few years earlier were implemented. But this was no accident. The changes resonated with the hopes of the time, and leaders responded.

We brought down the Berlin Wall in the belief that future generations would be able to solve challenges together.

Today, looking at the cavernous gulf between rich and poor, the irresponsibility that caused the global financial crisis, and the weak and divided responses to climate change, I feel bitter.

The opportunity to build a safer, fairer, and more united world has been largely squandered.

To echo the demand made of me by my late friend and sparring partner U.S. President Ronald Reagan:

Mr. Obama, Mr. Hu, Mr. Singh, and, back in Berlin, Ms. Merkel and her European counterparts, “Tear down this wall!” For this is your wall, your defining moment. You cannot dodge the call of history.

I appeal to heads of state and government to come in person to the climate change conference in Copenhagen next month and dismantle the wall. The people of the world expect you to deliver. Do not fail them.

—————

Mikhail Gorbachev, former president of the Soviet Union, was awarded the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize for his leading role in the peaceful conclusion of the Cold War. Today, as the founding president of Green Cross International, he is heading an international climate change task force.