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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on June 29th, 2008 Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times Just a few months ago, the consensus view was that Barack Obama would need to choose a hard-core national-security type as his vice presidential running mate to compensate for his lack of foreign policy experience and that John McCain would need a running mate who was young and sprightly to compensate for his age. Come August, though, I predict both men will be looking for a financial wizard as their running mates to help them steer America out of what could become a serious economic tailspin. I do not believe nation-building in Iraq is going to be the issue come November — whether things get better there or worse. If they get better, we’ll ignore Iraq more; if they get worse, the next president will be under pressure to get out quicker.
Up to now, the economic crisis we’ve been in has been largely a credit crisis in the capital markets, while consumer spending has kept reasonably steady, as have manufacturing and exports. But with banks still reluctant to lend even to healthy businesses, fuel and food prices soaring and home prices declining, this is starting to affect consumers, shrinking their wallets and crimping spending. Unemployment is already creeping up and manufacturing creeping down. The straws in the wind are hard to ignore: If you visit any car dealership in America today you will see row after row of unsold S.U.V.’s. And if you own a gas guzzler already, good luck. On Thursday, The Palm Beach Post ran an article on your S.U.V. options: “Continue to spend upward of $100 for a fill-up. Sell or trade in the vehicle for a fraction of the original cost. Or hold out and park the truck in the driveway for occasional use in hopes the market will turn around.” Just be glad you don’t own a bus. Montgomery County, Md., where I live, just announced that more children were going to have to walk to school next year to save money on bus fuel.
I continue to be appalled at the gap between what is clearly going to be the next great global industry — renewable energy and clean power — and the inability of Congress and the administration to put in place the bold policies we need to ensure that America leads that industry. “America and its political leaders, after two decades of failing to come together to solve big problems, seem to have lost faith in their ability to do so,” Wall Street Journal columnist Gerald Seib noted last week. “A political system that expects failure doesn’t try very hard to produce anything else.” We used to try harder and do better. After Sputnik, we came together as a nation and responded with a technology, infrastructure and education surge, notes Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International. After the 1973 oil crisis, we came together and made dramatic improvements in energy efficiency. After Social Security became imperiled in the early 1980s, we came together and fixed it for that moment. “But today,” added Hormats, “the political system seems incapable of producing a critical mass to support any kind of serious long-term reform.” If the old saying — that “as General Motors goes, so goes America” — is true, then folks, we’re in a lot of trouble. General Motors’s stock-market value now stands at just $6.47 billion, compared with Toyota’s $162.6 billion. On top of it, G.M. shares sank to a 34-year low last week.
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on June 18th, 2008 From: mweldon at civic-exchange.org Hong Kong-based public policy think tank Civic Exchange has released a new report - A full copy of the report can be downloaded from the Civic Exchange website: A copy of the presentation can also be found on the website at : Related reports Marine Emission Reduction Options for Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta Region A Price too High: Health Impacts of Air Pollution in South China Lessons for Hong Kong: Air Quality Management in London and Los Angeles Apologies for cross posting Civic Exchange is a non-profit public policy think tank based in Hong Kong that helps to improve policy and decision-making through research and analysis. If you would like or further information on Civic Exchange’s ongoing and planned research programmes, please do not hesitate to contact our new Environmental Programme Manger Mike Kilburn ( mkilburn at civic-exchange.org) or visit our website at www.civic-exchange.org. Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on May 20th, 2008
Threat Laid Bear Polar bears are a threatened species, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne announced last week — but that doesn’t mean we can’t drill in their habitat! The “threatened” designation means the bear could become endangered if adequate conservation steps aren’t taken; it puts polar bears on the endangered-species list but in effect allows the Interior Department to pick and choose which protections to impose. Interior made clear that those protections will “allow continuation of vital energy production in Alaska.” While the polar bear is being listed specifically because climate change is melting its habitat, the department also took pains to point out that the listing “should not open the door to use of the [Endangered Species Act] to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions from automobiles, power plants, and other sources.” In fact, the department plans to propose modifying the regulatory language of the ESA to “prevent abuse of this listing to erect a back-door climate policy.” Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on May 18th, 2008 REMEMBER! Peak Oil and Politicians. In 1956, M. King Hubbert, a petroleum geologist with Shell Oil, presented a paper to the American Petroleum Institute that predicted US oil production would peak in the early 1970s and then follow a declining curve, now known as Hubbert’s curve. But Hubbert almost didn’t get to give his paper. He got a call from his bosses at Shell, who asked him to “tone it down.” His reply was that there was nothing to tone down. It was just straightforward analysis. He presented the paper, unedited. You can read the whole story at http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index…. There have been a few hitches in that strategy. In 1972, just as oil production in the United States reached its all-time peak, a group of computer modelers from MIT released a study called “The Limits to Growth.” They predicted a steep decline in natural resources of all kinds. Because reserve numbers for many minerals, including oil, were not accurately known back then, they looked at different scenarios. Some showed us running out of oil before 2000 and some showed the peak occurring toward the middle of the 21st century.
To be clear, peak oil is often misunderstood. The date that the world reaches peak oil is not the date we actually run out, but the date that we stop increasing production. This is followed by a “plateau” where oil production is flat. Eventually, oil production will decline. These facts are simple. As Hubbert said back in 1956: “Nothing sensational about it, just straightforward analysis.” And yet the most powerful institutions in our society continue to do everything they can to avoid confronting the truth.
Michigan Republican Congressman Vernon Ehler will launch the conference. Ehler is a member of the House Peak Oil Caucus, which was founded by another Republican, Roscoe Bartlett of Maryland. The Peak Oil Caucus is co-chaired by Democrat Tom Udall, but it has only 15 members in all. There is no similar group in the Senate and very few other politicians will use the term peak oil. None of the current presidential candidates have made peak oil an issue. Bartlett’s press secretary, Lisa Wright, said that Bartlett has talked about peak oil with John McCain but not with Obama or Clinton. When I asked if McCain would take on the peak oil issue, Wright said, “I would not describe Senator McCain as being nearly as knowledgeable or committed as Representative Bartlett on the issue.” Both Democrats and Republicans buy into this view. In this election season, some Democrats seem even more willing than Republicans to play the oil fear card and promote quick-fix measures that are ineffectual or downright ridiculous. Senator Reid plans to bring an expedited resolution to the Senate floor that would block $1.37 billion in arms sales to the Saudis unless they increase oil production by one million barrels a day. Peak oil educator Richard Heinberg warns where all this confrontation might lead: “[S]uppose we get tough with the Saudis and end up destabilizing the kingdom so that forces unfriendly to us take over. Then we will feel more or less forced to invade in order to maintain access to our national drug of choice. Where would it end? Does any of this help?”
Bartlett takes this position because he is operating with the knowledge that oil is finite and that the world is nearing or has surpassed peak production. If all members of Congress were operating within this framework, then we would see some very different policy proposals. I asked Lisa Wright why Bartlett’s office thinks the peak oil issue has gotten so little traction in the media and with politicians. Wright blamed a human psychological condition known as cognitive dissonance, “the phenomenon that you only hear what you’re interested in hearing.” “Hard truths are hard to talk about as well as hard to absorb,” she said. “It’s much easier to believe people who say that if we just have more American production then we wouldn’t have to worry about foreign imports, without explaining that we’re already pumping our minute portion of world reserves three or four times faster than the rest of the world. But we can’t drill our way to self-sufficiency because you can’t pump what’s not there.” When asked if she saw peak oil becoming an issue in the presidential campaign, Wright said, “It will become a campaign issue if candidates make it an issue and candidates will choose to make it an issue if it shows up as being a motivating issue for voters.” But, she said, “It’s a chicken and egg conundrum. To the extent that voters become informed and aware through media, you’ll find that candidates will follow. That’s generally the way American politics works.”
Kelpie Wilson is Truthout’s environment editor. Trained as a mechanical engineer, she embarked on a career as a forest protection activist, then returned to engineering as a technical writer for the solar power industry. She is the author of “Primal Tears,” an eco-thriller about a hybrid human-bonobo girl. Greg Bear, author of “Darwin’s Radio,” says: “‘Primal Tears’ is primal storytelling, thoughtful and passionate. Kelpie Wilson wonderfully expands our definitions of human and family. Read Leslie Thatcher’s review of Kelpie Wilson’s novel “Primal Tears.” Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on April 25th, 2008 Today, Americans around the country are planting trees in celebration of Arbor Day. For those of us working to protect Alaska wilderness, this day holds special significance. As our nation’s oldest environmental holiday and a day to care for trees, Arbor Day reminds us of the Tongass National Forest, whose ancient trees rank among the oldest in the country. The Tongass is the largest intact temperate rainforest in the world. Its giant Sitka Spruce and other old growth trees, which pre-date Columbus’ trip to America by hundreds of years, are home to wolves, bears, salmon and Bald Eagles that have disappeared from many other parts of the country. Planting saplings is a great way to work towards a greener future. Let’s honor Arbor Day by also protecting the trees that we already have. Please take a minute to contact your representative and urge him or her to help protect the Tongass, the biggest, wettest, and wildest forest in the country. Thanks for keeping Alaska wild, Cindy Shogan Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on April 15th, 2008 nbsp;http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con… Economists Debate Link Between War, Credit Crisis
For House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the connection between the Iraq conflict and the U.S. economic downturn is simple: “The president has taken us into a failed war,” the California Democrat said recently. “He’s taken us deeply into debt, and that debt is taking us into recession.” This assessment was put to powerful political effect in the latest congressional hearings on the war, when Democrats and Republicans alike told Army Gen. David H. Petraeus that the oil-rich Iraqi government should relieve the United States of the conflict’s financial burdens. And Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) echoed the theme yesterday at a manufacturing forum in Pittsburgh. “If we can spend $10 billion a month rebuilding Iraq,” the Democratic presidential contender declared, “we can spend $15 billion a year in our own country to put Americans back to work and strengthen the long-term competitiveness of our economy.” But this logic may have more political salience than economic validity, according to many economists, who say that the assertions linking the five-year-old conflict in Iraq to the domestic economic slide have been oversimplified. “You should support the war or oppose the war, which I do and have done from the start, on the merits of the war itself,” said Martin N. Baily, a former chairman of President Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers. But, he added, “the current problems the United States is facing have very little to do with the war in Iraq.” Even so, the theme resonated in Congress last week. “We’re kind of bankrupting this country,” Sen. George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio) told Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker. “We’re eating our seed corn. We’re in a recession, and God only knows how long we’re going to be in it.” The link between Iraq and the downturn reflects a growing public perception that individual economic anxieties must stem somehow from the unpopular war — a unified theory of political misery, said Peter D. Hart, a Democratic pollster. “It’s a sour economy, it’s a sour mood and it’s a sour situation in Iraq,” he said. “The public has for the last two years been told about the cost of Iraq in terms of human life. But then there was a direct and important switch, when we went into what I call the surge period, where the budget costs became front and center. While the administration was touting military successes, what the American public saw directly were the costs.” Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist who wrote the new book “The Three Trillion Dollar War,” contends that the connection is real. Even with a growing energy demand from China, the United States and elsewhere, oil traders anticipated before the war that the price of oil would remain about $25 a barrel. Instead, it has soared to more than $100 a barrel. Iraqi oil production has not risen with demand, in part because investment in the Middle East has been stunted by war-related unrest. Those price increases are self-perpetuating, Stiglitz argues. Oil-rich Persian Gulf states are so awash in money that they are not sure what to do with it all. By holding back oil production, they make more off what they do produce and keep their greatest asset — oil — in the ground as they search for ways to spend their cash. That cash, through state-owned sovereign wealth funds, has flowed into stocks, bonds and other investments, creating incentives for lenders to offer low-interest loans, many of which have now gone sour. But that is only one factor, by Stiglitz’s accounting. The federal government has sunk deeply into debt, first with tax cuts, then with accelerating war expenditures that have easily topped half a trillion dollars. That limited the government’s ability to keep the economy on track through tax cuts or domestic investments, so the Federal Reserve Board used low interest rates and the free flow of money to keep the economy growing. Cheap credit sparked rash loans, a housing bubble and the current crisis. “The war played a very important role,” Stiglitz said. To economists on the left and the right, his analysis strains credulity. Traditional economics hold that large budget deficits “crowd out” private lending, raising interest rates and making lending scarce, not profligate. “The credit crisis we got into is because of the housing boom, the relaxation of lending standards and certainly a lack of adequate supervision,” Baily said. “I don’t see a connection with government borrowing.” And most economists still think that oil prices are soaring because of rising demand, not constrained supply. “I guess you can argue there’s been a contagion of foolishness” sparked by a spendthrift federal government, “but that seems like a stretch,” said Kevin A. Hassett, an American Enterprise Institute economist and an adviser to Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Republicans have tried their best to beat back the argument before it takes hold, even citing one of their ideological nemeses, Princeton University economist and liberal New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who has raised doubts about any link between the war and the credit crunch. “While both parties agree that middle-class families and small businesses are struggling with skyrocketing costs of living, this latest argument from Democratic leaders smacks of political opportunism at its very worst,” House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said last week. The analysis is politically powerful because people believe it. A CNN poll last month found that 71 percent of Americans say government spending in Iraq is a factor in the economic downturn. “When you’re spending over $50 to fill up your car because the price of oil is four times what it was before Iraq, you’re paying a price for this war,” Obama told an audience last month at the University of Charleston in West Virginia. “When Iraq is costing each household about $100 a month, you’re paying a price for this war.” The analysis will drive the debate on the $108 billion in additional war spending that President Bush is now requesting. Congress is set to begin debate on war funding before the end of the month. “I think there is a connection between the state of our economy and Iraq, and what we’re spending over there,” said Rep. Baron P. Hill (Ind.), a leading Democratic budget hawk. “We’re limited as to what we can do to stimulate the economy. We’re limited as to what we can do on health care or any other program. We need to spend more money on infrastructure, on roads and bridges that would have a stimulative effect on the economy, and we’re not doing those things because of all the money we’re spending in Iraq.” Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on March 30th, 2008 The Session was Chaired by Geofrey Carr, the Science Editor for The Economist. He specializes since 1995 in topics covering disease, climate science, evolution, genetics, neuroeconomics, neuroscience, and synthetic biology. The panel included: Ken Drinkwater of the University of Bergen, Senior Scientist at the Centre for Climate Research. He worked on marine-ecosystems for over 35 years. His recent research has focused on the Barents and Norwegian Seas as part of the ongoing 2007-2008 International Polar Year (IPY); Grete K. Hovelsrud, Senior Research Fellow, Center for International Climate and Environmental Research, Oslo. She works now on impact, adaptation and vulnerability to climate change developing theoretical and methodological frameworks for multi-factor interdisciplinary studies; Eystein Jansen, Professor, Dept. of Geology and Director, Bjerkness Centre for Climate Research, University of Bergen works now on defining water mass structures, rates of change, and variability of the climate system with different natural forcings; Peter Schlosser, Professor, Columbia University, with Earth and Environmental Engineering, Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science , Associate Director and Director of Research, The Earth Institute. His interests are in aqueous geochemistry, physical oceanography, climate and contaminant transport. Daniel M. White, Director, Institute of Northern Engineering (INE), Civil and Environmental Engineering, U of Alaska at Fairbanks. He works on Climate Change impacts in the Arctic on Drinking Water and Water Resources. We are posting the above as we were intrigued by the heavy Norwegian involvement which makes sense in the light of Norway’s direct interest in the changes of the Arctic geography, but as we did not get to listen to the discussions we will have to come back after we obtain transcripts. Further, the first “after lunch” speaker was Mr. Jonas Gahr Store, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Norway. The Keynote Speaker of Session 2 was Mr Jan Egeland of Norway, now Director of te Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, and Special Assistant to the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, former USG under the Previous UNSG Kofi Annan. —————– State of the Planet is a bi-annual event - so next one will be in 2010. By definition these meetings are intended as multi-disciplinary bringing in thinkers to assess the state of natural and human systems with the goal being SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT. The other three Sessions at this two-day Conference, March 27 and 28, 2008, were: Session 1: Eradicating Poverty As The poor population Expands; Session 2: Addressing Areas of Conflict in our Changing World; Session 3: identifying Energy Solutions for Sustainable Development. —————- The Keynote Speaker, after the opening remarks, March 27, 2008, was Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Mr. Kofi Annan serves now as President of the Geneva based, UK backed, Global Humanitarian Forum launched on June 30, 2007, and chairs - The Africa Progress Panel (APP) launched in Berlin on April 24, 2007 including Peter Eigen of Transparency International, Bob Geldorf, Graca Machel, Michel Camdessus, Robert Rubin, and Muhammad Yunus, funded by Bill Gates it will demand accountability on promises made on supporting development and fight poverty in Africa; also The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), established by The Rockefeller Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in September 2006 ; and The Prize Committee of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation - an African initiative that has been established to “Stimulate debate on good governance across sub-Saharan Africa and the world” - the first award was given to former President of Mozambique, Joaquim Chissano, on 22nd October 2007, he was awarded US$5 million over 10 years and US$200,000 annually for life thereafter, plus up to US$200,000 a year for 10 years towards the winner’s public interest activities and good causes, and this is the largest monetary award in existence. —————- Session 1 included Mr. Kemal Dervis, the Administrator of UNDP, as its Keynote Speaker. Session 2, besides Jan Egeland of Norway, who was under UNSG Kofi Annan the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, appointed in 2003 to succeed Kenzo Oshima of Japan, included from the UN also the USG for Peacekeeping Operations, Jean-Marie Guehenno, of France. Session 3 included as Keynote Speaker Paula Di Perna, Executive VP, Corporate recruitment and Public Policy, Chicago Climate Exchange. ————- After Session 4, we listened to Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs summarize the two days of the conference: “We saw that the challenges are now global and interconnected. With a world Economy growing at 5%/year - the World Production doubles in 40 years. The stress on the planet is unmanageable and growing. Without global action we will have very large problems” he said. The scientists are absolutely vital. The mechanisms of change require most ingenuous analysis. Sometimes we encounter problems that we do not understand to the last moment - this was the case of ozone layer depletion. We could not have imagine that the inert refrigerant could do it. Linking the science to what has to happen requires Government leadership and Civil Society involvement. Nobody is in charge because we do not have a global government. Property rights incentives and the markets. Much of what is discussed here does not lend itself to privatization. You cannot privatize water …. America is based on “You don’t have to like your neighbor,” but these problems involves us and the neighbor. The Earth Institute found that “we need to create a new Climate Center to include it all - water, Climate Change Science, Engineering, Food Production.” Minister Roberto Rodrigues (Former Brazilian Minister of Agriculture, now Coordinator of the Getulio Vargas Foundation Agrobusiness Center, President of the Superior Agriculture Council of Sao Paulo’s Federation of Industries and Co-Chairman, Interamerican Ethanol Commission) who spoke in Session 3 - spoke on biofuels - human land use - the changes will be highest in the global food production. Rodrigues saw an intensification of the agriculture. Professor Sachs told the audience that the Earth Institute has initiated a global classroom with 15 campuses simultaneously participating. He expects by 2010, next State of the Planet Conference, that the Conference could also become a global event with participants in many places in the world. —————— Also, on Thursday night, March 27, 2008, there was a special “Economist Debate.” Moderator was Vijay Vaitheeswarran, Global Correspondent of the Economist. The Topic was “The United States and Climate CHange.” The Proposition for the Debate was: “THE UNITED STATES WILL SOLVE THE CLIMATE CHANGE PROBLEM.” The United States is the world’s largest consumer of oil and largest producer of greenhouse gases. Its consumption of resources is unmatched, even in nations with quadruple the population. And despite a broad international consensus about climate change, the US has refused to adopt serious domestic emission’s-control measures or to support international efforts to curb climate change such as the Kyoto Protocol. Will this stance continue when President George Bush leaves office? Will the bipartisan addiction to oil in the Us prove impossible to cure? Will the US continue to be a bigger part of the problem than the solution? Or will technological innovation and entrepreneurship change the dynamics of this issue?
It was announced that Vijay Vaitheeswarran will monitor a debate about leadership on climate change, and will have two teams, of two experts each, that will participate in an Oxford-style debate on the proposition - “The United States Will Solve The Climate Change Problem.”
IN FAVOR of the Proposition: David Victor, Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and Director of the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). Vinod Khosla, formerly a General Partner at Kleiner Perkins and Founder of Sun Microsystems, founded the Khosla Ventures in 2004. AGAINST the Proposition: Daniel Esty, Hillhouse Professorof Environmental Law and Policy, Yale Law School and Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. He is also the Director of the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy. Michael Grubb, Chief Economist at UK Carbon Trust and Senior Research Associate in the Cambridge University Faculty of Economics. He is a leading international researcher on economic, technology and policy aspects of climate change and related energy issues. The Moderator - Vijay Vaitheeswarran is an MIT-trained engineer who spent ten years covering energy and environment issues for the Economist. he is the author of “Power to the People: How the Coming Energy Revolution Will Transform an Industry, Change our Lives and maybe Even Save the Planet” from Farrar, Straus & Giroux . Also, “Zoom: the Global Race to Fuel thye Car of the Future.” Again, we are sorry for only posting now the outline of an event. It sounded interesting and we will fill in when further information becomes available. —————- Also, for the sake of the interest in the arctic - something we just picked up from www.DotEarth.com - March 29, 2008, 10:27 pm The New York Times Blog on Climate Science Touched the Arctic from an original angle:
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