This is about GOP gubernatorial candidate Charles Baker has a reputation as a smart guy, but he said last week he wasn’t smart enough to form an opinion on the hottest environmental topic of the day – Climate change.

Baker’s bio says he graduated Harvard College, later “served as Corporate Communications Director for the Massachusetts High Technology Council,” and then “decided to return to school in 1984 and earned an MBA from Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University in 1986.

Blue Mass Group (“Mass” in the name of this website  stands for Massachusetts) has more detail on the Suffolk incident:

Speaking at the Rappaport Center for Law and Public Service at Suffolk University Law School on Thursday February 5th, Charlie was snowing the crowd under with his intellectual firepower.

An admiring Globe scribe remarked on Baker’s “somewhat apologetic tutorial on energy pricing” and told how he “talked at length about regulatory overhaul, duplicative bureaucracy, and the esprit de corps he experienced at a once-foundering health plan.”  He practically sounded professorial!  But then Charlie faced a question about global warming: “I don’t think whether I believe that or not matters in this conversation,” Baker said.  He added, “I can get eight professors from MIT on both sides of this issue and no one in this room will walk away understanding what they said about climate change.”

That global warming stuff is way too complicated for anyone to understand, especially Charlie Baker. It’s a good thing he’s willing to settle for something easy like being Governor of Massachusetts.

Actually, there is precisely one MIT professor trying to obfuscate the issue and he has been utterly debunked again and again (see Lindzen debunked again: New scientific study finds his paper downplaying dangers of human-caused warming is “seriously in error”).

The other seven MIT professors would share with you their analysis — and it ain’t pretty:

M.I.T. doubles its 2095 warming projection to 10°F — with 866 ppm and Arctic warming of 20°F

Has Baker simply decided that it’s good politics to pretend to be stupid?  (If Baker took truth serum before he answered the Globe does anyone honestly believe that he would maintain this pretense that he does not believe in global warming?  Yes-it’s sad but true that some, though not all Republicans (witness the exceptions like Lindsay Graham) have decided it’s good fun to reject science, but Baker headed an organization vitally dependent on the scientific progress.

————

For the full posting please go to:

GOP candidate response when asked about climate change “wail shucks, ah jus aint’ smart nuff!”: http://bit.ly/cZHQQM via @addthis
12:18 PM Feb 10th from web

Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on January 26th, 2010
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)

Opinion: Lead Health Care Reform With Conviction.

Howard Dean
Special to Sphere, aol, January 25, 2010.
The conventional wisdom inside the beltway is that the election of Scott Brown to the Senate signals that the electorate at large in the U.S. has taken a sharp turn to the right as a reaction to over-reaching by the majority. This, of course, is total nonsense, as is much of what passes for spin, political calculation and punditry in Washington.

A poll of Obama voters conducted by Research 2000 on election night in Massachusetts paints a very different picture. The poll found that 18 percent of people who voted for Brown also voted for Obama in the 2008 general election. Of these voters, 82 percent said they wanted a public option, and 57 percent said they thought the health care reform bill in Congress did not go far enough. The poll also found that among the Obama voters who stayed home, 86 percent said they wanted a public option, and by 6-to1 they said the bill in Congress did not go far enough.

The Massachusetts vote was a populist rebellion by voters on the left, in the middle and on the right, mobilizing against a Washington that they see as both unresponsive to and ignoring their needs.

The American electorate was promised change. So far they have not seen it. The Republicans have skillfully opposed everything, and then blamed the Democrats and the president for failing to deliver. The Republicans can’t govern, but they sure are good at opposition. And we play the role of collaborative punching bags all too well. George W. Bush, with an assist from the Supreme Court, gained power because we simply weren’t tough enough, and we are seeing it happen again.

Our country cannot afford another Republican government. The last one brought us to near economic collapse.

Rules for winning

1) Lead with conviction. Prescribe a course for the country and then do it. The American people respect strength and decisiveness in leadership. They desperately want change in the way business is done in Washington, where they see everyone except themselves represented at the table. Remember that there’s a difference between making a compromise and compromising principles.

2) In the long run, how you get there matters less than how good the results are. A majority of Americans care less about using reconciliation than they do about stopping insurance company abuses. Allowing health care companies to charge two or three times as much to older people or women (as is in the current House and Senate bills) is not insurance reform and shouldn’t be sold that way. Ultimately you can’t fool the voters.

3) Timing matters. What political adviser would suggest to a client that they pass a bill that the client would have to defend for two election cycles with only modest changes seen by the vast majority of voters? Yet that is what both the current House and Senate bills do.

4) Use what people know and like. Expanding Medicare and Medicaid works, and people like these programs. Remember last August. People really did say, “Keep the government’s hands off my Medicare.” I asked 2,700 people at a town hall meeting in Virginia how many of them would give up their Medicare. Only five raised their hands.

5) Explain what we are doing often. Health care reform is complex, but it can be distilled to a few simple principles based on our values. One example is, “If you like what you have, you can keep it.” We needed to stay with that. Another, “Put an end to insurance company rip-offs.” Everyone gets that. Or, “You can choose between private insurance and a public insurance like Medicare.” Americans like choices, and they hate to be told what to do, especially by the government.

We need to refocus our agenda, but we can’t forget our promises on health care.

It may be too late for a public option or an individual mandate. If there is still the stomach for using reconciliation, use it to: 1) Expand Medicare to help those over 55 who are unable to get insurance because of disability or unemployment, or because it is a barrier to being employed. 2) Do the expansions to Medicaid, which were in both the House and Senate bills, and which would insure countless working people, especially young people just graduated into lower-wage jobs. 3) Pass a separate bill and dare the Republicans to filibuster insurance reforms such as extension of parental insurance policies to children under 28, eliminating pre-existing conditions as a barrier to insurance, and clamping down on insurance company abuse of claims denials.

The populist winds are strong, but they can shift direction quickly. The Republicans have that wind temporarily because Democrats have demoralized our own base, which gave President Barack Obama and our Congress their seats. But the Republicans cannot lead. So far they have only been able to say no, and to obstruct. That cannot make them winners, but it can make us losers. Unfortunately their pathetic strategy works when we fail to stand up to it and stand firmly on our values.

Be bold. That is what we promised. Bold leadership with less attention to politics in Washington and more attention to the desperation of ordinary Americans for real change is what will put Democrats back in the driver’s seat where we belong, and which we earned in 2008.
______________________
Howard Dean, MD, is former governor of Vermont and former Democratic Party chairman.

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– http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424…

The Great Recession Continues: Americans haven’t been fooled by the Dow’s rise. What they see ahead are more taxes.

By MORTIMER ZUCKERMAN, an Opinion piece, Wall Street Journal, January 22, 2010

The December jobs report has doused the hope that we were at the beginning of a sustained economic recovery.

The unemployment rate managed to hold at 10% in December only because of an extraordinary shrinkage in the labor force: Some 661,000 gave up looking for a job.

Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) nonfarm payroll data indicate that December job losses totaled 85,000. But the bureau’s household survey, a better and more comprehensive measure of both the unemployed and underemployed, indicated a loss of 589,000 jobs. Since the Great Recession began in 2007, some 8.6 million jobs have been lost, according to the bureau; and small businesses, the normal source for new jobs, are still shedding workers. Fewer than 10% added employees, while more than 20% cut back—and the cuts averaged nearly twice as many per firm as the hires at the expanding companies.

Unemployment, in short, has graduated from being a difficulty, a worry. It is now a catastrophe, with some 15.3 million Americans out of work, according to the BLS.

What about the future? The problem in the job market going forward is not so much layoffs in the private sector, which are abating, but a lack of hiring. The federal stimulus program is offset by a 2010 budget shortfall for state, city, county and school districts, which the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities recently estimated will be in the range of an astonishing $200 billion nationally. Since virtually all states and cities have to run balanced budgets, the result will be reduced services, layoffs and tax hikes.

The consequence is that the U.S. economy—for decades the greatest job creation machine in the world—is taking longer and longer to replace the jobs already lost. In the 1970s and 1980s, Jane Sasseen noted in a recent report in BusinessWeek, it took as little as one year from the end of a recession to add back the lost jobs. After the eight-month downturn ending in March of 1991, for example, jobs came back in 23 months. After the downturn from the dot-com bust in 2001, it took 31 months. This time it could take as many as five years or even more to recover all of the eight-plus million jobs lost since March 2007. That’s because we would have to create an additional 1.7 million jobs annually beyond those for the 1.3 million new people who enter the work force every year.

Economists may see the recession as being over, but the man on the street does not. Roughly 60% of the public believes the recession still has a way to go, a NBC/Wall Street Journal poll reported last October. Even those who have not suffered know someone—a friend, a neighbor, a family member—who is being hurt. Two in three say the rally in the stock market has not changed their views.

There are sound reasons for this gloom. Consumers have learned a bitter lesson. They understand that increased consumption—private and public—will have to come from income and not borrowing, and income will have to come from employment.

Today, mainstream Americans are going on a financial diet amid deteriorating family finances. They know now that they cannot spend what they don’t have, as the painful consequences of spending levels that were artificially pumped up by too much debt have hit home. The top 20% of the nation’s households account for 40% of all spending, according to government data reported by Ylan Q. Mui in the Washington Post last September. But these households no longer trust their home equity or rising stock portfolios (up by almost $5 trillion this past year) as a basis for spending in lieu of saving. All they see ahead are taxes, taxes, taxes. So the dollars have not yet started to flow. This is the new normal.

What this means is that larger-than-typical head winds face two of the three normal engines of recovery: consumption and residential investment. Rather than pumping more cash into a fragile economy to make up this difference, the government will have to focus on its next big task: drawing up credible plans for bringing bloated budget deficits under control without triggering another downturn.

The prospect, therefore, is sluggish GDP growth; employment gains that are too slow to prevent further increases in the unemployment rate; and firms still very reluctant to hire vigorously.

How can we accelerate a substantial recovery in job growth that will generate additional labor income? There is no snap answer. But this is no argument for inertia.

We must have programs that create some degree of confidence that America can be rebuilt, and jobs can be created, especially since consumer spending will likely decline as a part of GDP for many years. The unemployed have to be supported. But it would be better if the financial support employed labor in rational, long-term, major infrastructure projects, processed by a newly created National Infrastructure Bank.

These wouldn’t be entitlement programs, but regeneration programs. Government spending on infrastructure projects—broadband Internet access across the nation, restoring decaying bridges and canals, building high-speed railways, modern airports, sewage plants, ports—has a high multiplier effect for adding jobs to the economy. And we will be fulfilling a desperate national need.

A second avenue for increasing employment would be to enhance technology, the area of our greatest strength. We are depriving ourselves of productive talent by a fearful attitude toward immigration. We make it hard for bright people to come and we make it hard for them to stay, so once they have graduated from our universities they go home to work for our competitors. This is not the way to run a railroad.

Foreign students are a significant proportion of those with graduate degrees in the hard sciences in American universities. We should restore the quotas for H-1B visas to 195,000 annually (where it was in the early 2000s) from 65,000, where it is now.

This increase has been blocked by shortsighted special-interest groups that fear jobs will be taken from Americans. On the contrary. The kind of people we should be striving to keep are those whose work in technology and engineering provides more than their share of new jobs.

Technology and innovation have long given us our greatest job growth. Just think: In 1800, about three-quarters of the U.S. labor force was devoted to agriculture. Today, it is less than 3%. Manufacturing employed one-third of the work force at the end of World War II. Today, it is down to about one-tenth. Americans are accustomed to economic transformation.

We must follow rational economic policies in the interest of the nation and not in the interest of narrow parochial groups who lobby legislators. Otherwise, as illustrated by the sorry journey of health-care legislation, we will see more of the politics of corruption.

Mr. Zuckerman is chairman and editor in chief of U.S. News & World Report.

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In the news oday, Russia is buying Canadian Dollars and financial papers, in order to diversify its foreign currency holdings away from the US Dollar.

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Obama v. Wall Street: The President gets serious about moral hazard.

A Wall Street Editorial, January 22, 2010
 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424…

President Obama and Democrats have settled on demonizing Wall Street as a campaign theme for November’s elections. If history is any guide, Mr. Obama and New York Senator Chuck Schumer will now persuade Wall Street to underwrite this campaign. Ah, the politics of hope and change. How refreshing.

Phony populism aside, yesterday Mr. Obama introduced his first serious idea into the debate on reforming the financial system. In calling for an end to proprietary trading at firms with a federal safety net, the President showed that he now understands an important principle: Risk-taking in the capital markets is incompatible with a taxpayer guarantee.

Under the President’s still-sketchy plan, firms that hold government-insured deposits or are eligible to receive cheap loans in an emergency from the Federal Reserve would not be able to trade for their own accounts. The firms could facilitate customer orders as brokers have always done and continue to underwrite new issues of stocks and bonds, but they could not make bets with their own capital or own or invest in hedge funds.

Yesterday’s announcement is a critical departure from the reform plan Mr. Obama introduced last year—largely incorporated in the House and Senate bills written by Barney Frank and Chris Dodd. Those plans all sought to expand the universe of too-big-to-fail companies eligible for taxpayer rescue. Mr. Obama has at last joined the most important policy discussion: How to eliminate the moral hazard now embedded in the U.S. financial system. Political assaults on banker compensation have done nothing to address this core problem that enables gargantuan bonuses.

The days ahead will demonstrate whether Mr. Obama is serious, or if this is merely a political tactic to encourage Republicans to defend big banks. If he’s serious, he will add to his plan a taxpayer exit strategy from the most expensive bailouts—at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

He’ll also soon realize that while his plan raises the right questions, its details will be crucial. Since there’s a counterparty on the other end of every trade made by Goldman Sachs, it won’t always be easy to discern trades made for customers versus those made for Goldman.

More fundamentally, even if the logistics can be mastered, the President’s plan would not have prevented the credit chaos of 2008. Bear Stearns was not a bank, could not borrow from the Fed’s discount window and wasn’t even all that big, yet the government still wouldn’t let it fail. Under Mr. Obama’s new rules, Goldman might simply decide to sell its bank—yet investors and its own traders would still assume it is too big to fail. That problem still needs to be addressed.

Mr. Obama also keeps peddling the illusion that the entire crisis was caused by the bankers. But the root cause was a credit mania, courtesy of the Federal Reserve. The mania was concentrated in the housing market, courtesy of Congress and several Presidential Administrations.

If we are going to have a Fed and a political class as reckless as we have, then we need a more comprehensive answer to financial risk. Bankruptcy for risk-takers who bet wrong is the best option. Barring that, strict limits on margin and leverage, especially for holders of insured deposits, can be helpful. Mr. Obama’s suggestion yesterday of limits on the size of financial firms—with the limits still to be determined—deserves a hearing but would seem more problematic.

Still, we’re encouraged by yesterday’s announcement. The Democrats appear to finally realize that too-big-to-fail is a problem to be solved, not the foundation of a modern banking system.

The Lost Senate Seat Of Senator Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts on Barack Obama’s First Anniversary as President of the United States. Why? Is this some sort of a 21st Century Tea Party?

Having listened to the many lamentations, we decided to suggest our own way of looking at the events.

We start by saying that although for decades that seat belonged to the Democrats, it is nevertheless true that the State of Massachusetts, in its totality, is rather an Independent State, not a State in perpetuity belonging to the Democrats. What I learned was that today the strongest registration by affiliation figures in Massachusetts is “INDEPENDENT” – it is a little over 50%, more then Democrat and much more then Republican. So, lets start with the assumption that the folks in Massachusetts are in no-body’s pocket and then let’s remember that this is actually the State of the First “Tea  Rebellion” in 1773 – the so called “Boston Tea Party” that started rolling the American Revolution against the British.

“The Boston Tea Party was a direct action by colonists in Boston, a town in the British colony of Massachusetts, against the British government. On December 16, 1773, after officials in Boston refused to return three shiploads of taxed tea to Britain, a group of colonists boarded the ships and destroyed the tea by throwing it into Boston Harbor. The incident remains an iconic event of American history, and reference is often made to it in other political protests.
The Tea Party was the culmination of a resistance movement throughout British America against the Tea Act, which had been passed by the British Parliament in 1773. Colonists objected to the Tea Act for a variety of reasons, especially because they believed that it violated their right to be taxed only by their own elected representatives. Protesters had successfully prevented the unloading of taxed tea in three other colonies, but in Boston, embattled Royal Governor Thomas Hutchinson refused to allow the tea to be returned to Britain. He apparently did not expect that the protesters would choose to destroy the tea rather than concede the authority of a legislature in which they were not directly represented.
The Boston Tea Party was a key event in the growth of the American Revolution. Parliament responded in 1774 with the Coercive Acts, which, among other provisions, closed Boston’s commerce until the British East India Company had been repaid for the destroyed tea. Colonists in turn responded to the Coercive Acts with additional acts of protest, and by convening the First Continental Congress, which petitioned the British monarch for repeal of the acts and coordinated colonial resistance to them. The crisis escalated, and the American Revolutionary War began near Boston in 1775.”

OK – so the folks here were for “No taxation without representation” – this was back in 1773, and just the same in 2008 – the year Barack Obama was elected President of the USA. The taxation this time was the sum-total of the transfer of the US treasury from the US Government to the Dick Cheney loyalists – those folks that built for years the bubbles of the economy and saw them burst, while we saw the funds under the Bush Administration continue to flow to their pockets that remained wide open because their institutions were “too big to fail.”

The Massachusetts Independents loved Ted Kennedy and listened to him, they voted for Barack Obama because they really had enough of the Republican shenanigans in Washington. They hoped for change and did not see it coming during this first Obama year. With Ted Kennedy gone they said – let’s tell Washington that we did not like it because we saw no change and we watch all that bickering of the Democrats that does not promise us a way out of stagnation. Let us send them this new unknown boy who happens to run under the Republican flag – this simply to wake them up and tell the Democrats – we want to see action and we want our wish to be noted.

So, let us repeat – this was a victory for the Independents who want to feel change in areas of the economy when measured directly with figures they relate to themselves – employment, value of their houses, earning by the lower middle class, their own health care bills, their children’s school, safe airports without the need to have your underwear checked, etc. Obama’s Washington claimed change and claimed they avoided much greater runs on the economy that they avoided by stabilizing the institutions that were handed down to them – but all of this meant nothing to the Independent person who looks at his own position in the world.

Let us call this vote – the 21st Century Tea Party and let us immediately say that this is not the church going women’s tea-drinking party to host Sarah Palin. This was the real thing – the dump into the sea of one tea-bale for the folks to notice what YES WE CAN means.

Very fast forward with our eyes looking backwards!

Barack Obama is a very intelligent man and we are completely in his corner. We also like the Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern team that works in his White House. They understand that the Democrats in Congress – the House and Senate – look at reelection rather then at reformation. To our great shame – reelection means money, and money comes from greasy hands – right – most of these hands one should be able to chop off but how do you do this when they are your source of political life? Does that mean that America is doomed and that we get the best Congress this money can buy, while we get the best President the people think might be ready to bring about change?

Now the greatness of the Massachusetts Independents’ affair. They told Congress – not really that they are ready to switch from Democrat to Republican – rather what they said was that they are ready to throw out all incumbents – AND THEIR STAND-INS TOO. That will create panic on both sides of the ail, but it will not create a more harmonious environment.

So what shall Obama do?

We think he knows and he showed that when the White House explained that they will have the EPA REGULATE on environmental needs.

The answer is thus RULE – BY REGULATION – that is government by a YES WE CAN man.

It is clear, this does not work if you need international agreements that have to be ratified by the Senate – but it is good for everything that is of real importance to the Tea Party Rebels of Massachusetts. You could even put up wind-mills where Senator Ted Kennedy did not want them.

The situation is simple – Congress will go with the winner so they can win also. The winner is the leader and in his results is his compensation.

So, starting immediately, the White House can pick items they can get going via regulation and expect his own party to back what he is doing in order to survive November 2010 – specially if he dos not ask for their vote. If they do not back him they will go down themselves. Those that do not run for reelection have it even easier. There is nothing to keep them from doing the right thing – that is their hand does not have to hold onto the greasy hand. Yes, we have noted that the US Supreme Court just voted to enlarge the greasy hand – and we hope this was noted also by the Independent voters that will realize that one more Republican appointment on that court – and the whole democracy fiction will be gone. (In his scathing dissent, 89 year young Justice Stevens said the ruling “threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions around the nation” and is “a rejection of the common sense of the American people.”) But, to get there – show you can – regulate the banks, bring in Paul Volker to your kitchen, so Joe Stiglitz, find someone like them for every topic you want to tackle in the next 6 months, release some from the teams you inherited – and go for it.

KEEP THANKING MASSACHUSETTS FOR HAVING SOUNDED THE ALARM BELL – JUST IN TIME.

If you do not believe me – read The Washington Post of today - “Breaking News: Frustration drove Brown’s Mass. victory, poll finds.” Whatever – the specifics vary but the Independence is rock solid.

Former President Bill Clinton is still the UN Special Envoy to help Haiti recovery from the Hurricane disasters. So he is no newcomer to Haiti.

Now -

Bush, Clinton Say No Politics in Haiti Response.
AP, WASHINGTON (Jan. 17) – Former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill
Clinton say the earthquake in Haiti offers a chance to put aside
politics and help people in despair. Bush and Clinton appeared on five
Sunday talk shows as part of their effort to lead private fundraising
efforts for Haitian relief, including immediate needs and the
long-term rebuilding effort. President Barack Obama asked them to lead
the bipartisan effort.

“I’d say now is not the time to focus on politics,” Bush said in an
interview taped Saturday after the ex-presidents’ visit to the White
House. “You’ve got people who are … children who’ve lost parents.
People wondering where they’re going to be able to drink water,” Bush
said. “There’s a great sense of desperation. And so my attention is on
trying to help people deal with the desperation.”

Bush said that he doesn’t know what critics are talking about when
they claim Obama is trying to score political points with a broad
response to Haiti’s woes. The most vocal critic has been radio talk
show host Rush Limbaugh who urged people not to donate and said he
wouldn’t trust that money donated to Haiti through the White House Web
site would go to the relief efforts. He said people contribute enough
by paying income taxes.

“I just think it doesn’t do us any good to waste any time in what is
in my opinion a fruitless and pointless conversation,” Clinton said.
He added: “In a disaster of this magnitude there’s no way that the
government, which has other responsibilities as well, national
security and other responsibilities – you just can’t deal with this
just with government money.”

Clinton said a disaster like the earthquake in Haiti “reminds us of
our common humanity. It reminds us of needs that go beyond fleeting
disagreements.” He said political debate is healthy in normal times,
but it would be perverse in a time of disaster to let politics get in
the way of helping.

He said the timing is important to fundraising efforts and long-term
goals for Haiti.

“Everybody who’s seriously followed Haiti over a long period of time
believed that Haiti was handed the best chance it has had in our
lifetimes to break the chains of its past,” he said, “to build a truly
modern state, to have a more thriving economy, an honest and competent
government, better health care, better education, more self-generated
clean energy – the whole nine yards.”

The former presidents appeared on ABC’s “This Week,” NBC’s “Meet the
Press,” CBS’ “Face the Nation,” CNN’s “State of the Union” and “Fox
News Sunday.”

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Floating Hospital Awaits Patients to Fill Empty Beds.

by Emily Schmall, Sphere, aol, ABOARD THE USS CARL VINSON (Jan. 16)

Seven earthquake victims, including a newborn, were helicoptered to
this aircraft carrier Saturday, testing the flexibility of the ship’s
52-person medical staff.

The operating room is prepped with oxygen tanks, ventilators and a
roster of blood donors. But while the USS Carl Vinson’s medical
facilities perhaps exceed those of any other triage center nearby, it
had remained essentially unused since it arrived off the coast of
Port-au-Prince early Friday.

“At this point, I have no criteria for anything. I don’t care who it
is or what it is, we’ll take it,” said Commander Alfred Shwayhat, the
ship’s senior medical officer, earlier Saturday. Shwayhat, an
endocrinologist, internist and aerospace anesthesiologist, said he is
equipped to handle virtually any malady.

Sailors deliver an injured American citizen to the USS Carl Vinson for
medical attention Friday. The patient was one of two treated on the
air vessel in Haiti that day.

He has a plan for filling the ship’s enormous hanger bay with as many
as 1,000 Haitians. But his mission, as part of the recently dubbed
Operation Unified Response, is to treat anyone sent to him by military
commanders in Port-au-Prince, and so far that hasn’t amounted to many
people.

One reason beds are empty is that the ship doesn’t have the authority
to pick up victims; it has to wait for the Air Force to call and
request a medevac.

“Our policy is to treat first, ask questions later, but it’s up to
those on the ground,” said the ship’s public affairs officer,
Commander James Krohne. The U.S. 4th Fleet, which is responsible for
ground operations in Port-au-Prince, could not be reached for comment.

“Treatment of patients with basic injuries is best done on shore,”
Krohne added. “If we didn’t have (the space) available, those seven
patients would be who knows where.”

The vessel boasts 52 doctors, nurses, technicians and staff. In
addition to Shwayhat, there is a critical care nurse; a general
surgeon; a family practitioner; a radiologist; lab technicians; a
pharmacy stocked with anti-malaria medication; and an independent
corpsman deployed with the fleet marine force to diagnose injuries on
the ground.

The hospital’s present mission, as Shwayhat understands it, is limited
to treating the approximately 3,500 military personnel on board and
any American civilian injured in Tuesday’s 7.0-magnitude earthquake.

The clinic stabilized two patients Friday before sending them on a
flight to the naval hospital at Guantanamo Bay. The first patient, a
presumed American citizen in his fifties, arrived to the Vinson’s
hospital around noon after both of his legs were amputated to free him
from the rubble of the Hotel Montana, where he was trapped for 70
hours without food or water.

“To this day, I do not know his name,” Shwayhat said.
Earthquake in Haiti

The other victim, a Christian missionary from Iowa, was flown in from
the airport in Port-au-Prince after a brick wall crumbled down on her.
On Saturday afternoon, at least four medical personnel from the Vinson
were sent to treat injured people on shore.

Two U.S. vessels expected to reach Haiti next week will be equipped to
receive injured Haitians.

The USNS Comfort, a hospital ship with the capacity for 1,000 patients
and one of the largest trauma facilities in the U.S., was deployed
Saturday and expected to arrive into Haiti by Jan. 21.

The Comfort, which responded to Hurricane Katrina and performs
humanitarian missions around the world, has 19 operation rooms and a
medical team of 550 Navy doctors, nurses, technicians and support
staff, comprised of Navy medical personnel stationed at National Navy
Medical Center Bethesda and Haval Hospital Portsmouth.

The USS Bataan, an amphibious assault ship en route from Baltimore,
will offer three additional operating rooms.

There is currently no facility with surgical capabilities on the
ground, Jennifer Furin, a doctor with Harvard Medical School, told CNN
Saturday.

While the Vinson has been able to launch sorties to deliver medical
supplies, it has nothing on board and has to trek to Guantanamo to
reload.

The Haitian government today ceded control of the Port-au-Prince
airport to the U.S. military, a step that will allow the Vinson’s
helicopters to pick up and deliver the thousands of tons of supplies
that have arrived there.

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

Latest News from the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Harvard Kennedy School
December 7, 2009

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BREAKING THE CLIMATE IMPASSE WITH CHINA: A GLOBAL SOLUTION

By Kelly Sims Gallagher

The paper is aimed at finding a partial solution that would be likely to bring both the United States and China into an international climate change mitigation regime. It proposes a “deal,” whereby all major-emitting countries, including the United States and China, agree to reduce emissions through implementation of significant, mutually agreeable, domestic emission-reduction policies. To resolve competitiveness and equity concerns, a proposed Carbon Mitigation Fund would be created.

More: http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/19698

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CREATING A CLIMATE POLICY REVIEW MECHANISM

By Michael A. Levi

International climate negotiations are becoming increasingly focused on suites of emissions-cutting policies and measures, rather than solely on traditional targets and timetables, particularly for developing countries. This approach raises at least two important challenges. First, how can negotiators judge whether states’ proposed policies and measures are commensurate with ambitious global goals for controlling emissions? Second, how can policymakers evaluate whether climate policies and measures (in both developed and developing countries) are succeeding?

More: http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/19738
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CLIMATE FINANCE: KEY CONCEPTS AND WAYS FORWARD

By Richard B. Stewart, Benedict Kingsbury, Bryce Rudyk

The Copenhagen process must, at a minimum, reach agreement on a comprehensive framework and set of principles for both public and private climate finance, as well as an agenda for future elaboration and implementation. Such agreement (which should include credible arrangements for significant adaptation as well as mitigation funding) is essential to winning developing country trust and engagement and providing resources sufficient to curb, and adapt to, anthropogenic climate change. This Viewpoint examines some of the key issues facing negotiators.

More: http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/19772

——————————–
ROBERT STAVINS TO BLOG FOR THE FINANCIAL TIMES FROM COPENHAGEN

Professor Robert Stavins, director of the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements, will be blogging periodically from Copenhagen for the Financial Times. Prof. Stavins will offer his analysis of the key issues before the climate negotiators in response to questions from the Financial Times’ editors and reporters. Prof. Stavins’ posts can be viewed at the Financial Times – http://blogs.ft.com/energysource –
or at his own blog, An Economic View of the Environment – http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/analysis/stavins/

Stockholm Environment Institute’s 20th anniversary seminar: 8 October 2009, Stockholm

From

Jane Webb

Dear colleagues,

SEI 20th anniversary seminar & reception: The day after Copenhagen
8 October 1400 – 1600 Aula Magna, Stockholm University

To celebrate SEI’s twenty years of bridging science and policy since 1989, we’re having an event and panel debate on 8 October that will look ahead to the challenges we should address in the next twenty years.

SEI invites you to look beyond the UN climate negotiations in Copenhagen, beyond climate change, to consider the future challenges in the fields of environment and development.

Our invited speakers will outline what analysis policymakers and scientists require to bring about sustainable development, within the areas of

•                     managing natural resources,

•                     reducing climate risks,

•                     transforming vulnerable communities, and

•                     rethinking development.

The event features input from:

Andreas Carlgren, Minister for the Environment, Sweden

Angela Cropper, Co-founder & director of the Cropper Foundation and Deputy Executive Director, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)

Julia Marton-Lefèvre, Director General of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN)

John Schellnhuber, Director of Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK)

Maurice Strong, first Executive Director of UNEP and Secretary General for both the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm and the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro

Camilla Toulmin, Director of International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED)

Judi Wakhungu, Executive Director of African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS)

Reception and exhibition 1600 – 1800 Aula Magna gallery, Stockholm University

A reception follows the seminar and includes an exhibition of past and present SEI projects, tools and publications.

Joining us in Stockholm

For those of you able to join us at Stockholm University’s Aula Magna on 8 October 2009 at 1400, please register online. www.sei.se/news-a-events/seievents/sei-anniversary.html?eventId=1&task=event_register&type=reg_individual

Joining us virtually

We will webcast the event live on the 8 October 2009 from 1400 CET. Details for the webcast will be on our website in early October 2009. www.sei.se

For more information about the event please view http://www.sei.se/news-a-events/news-arc… or email  jane.webb at sei.se

Jane

Communications assistant,

Stockholm Environment Institute

Kräftriket 2B

SE-106 91 Stockholm

Sweden

The UNFCCC meetings are like the UN General Assembly – you get a few UN functionaries to raise an important issue and then you leave it floating in the air unless just one handful takes the topic up at the UN Security Council after having ironed out the issue first among themselves.

You guessed it – by now we think that only a start from the G2, then enlarged to a G11-13 could provide the way for an eventual global effort on anything – specialy when the subject is as wide as the impact of climate change.

 
CLIMATE CHANGE: ‘15 Days to Copenhagen’
Analysis by Julio Godoy

BERLIN, Aug 17 (IPS) – The disappointing results of negotiations in Bonn last week are indication that industrialised countries are unwilling to make substantial contributions to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions.

They failed once again to meet the expectations formulated in 2007 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In a report in February 2007, the IPCC called for reductions of up to 40 percent up to 2020. Without substantial reductions, it warned, the average earth temperature would rise by more than two degrees Celsius by 2050.
Two degrees is considered the most that earth can tolerate if it is to maintain its ecological equilibrium. A temperature rise beyond this point, the IPCC said, would lead to environmental catastrophes from severe droughts to further melting of glaciers and rise in sea level, and stronger and more frequent cyclones and hurricanes. 

The industrialised nations – other than the U.S. – responsible for most greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change, proposed reduction by 16 to 24 percent by 2020 relative to 1990 levels. 

The U.S., the largest polluting country per capita by far, did not commit itself even to this. The total reductions offered by industrialised nations add up to far less if U.S. emissions are taken into account. 

“If we count the U.S. emissions, then the reductions proposed in Bonn by industrialised nations fall to 10 to 15 percent,” Martin Kaiser, climate change expert with the environmental organisation Greenpeace told IPS. 

“If we continue at this rate we’re not going to make it,” Yvo de Boer, head of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which hosted the meeting in Bonn, told a news conference after the closing of the negotiations. Some 2,000 delegates from 192 nations took part in the Bonn talks. 

The conference in Copenhagen is expected to produce a binding global agreement on reducing emissions, to take over from the Kyoto protocol on climate change which expires in 2012. 

De Boer said there are now only 15 days of negotiations left until the Copenhagen meeting. “A climate deal in Copenhagen this year is an unequivocal requirement to stop climate change from slipping out of control,” he said. 

The talks are scheduled to continue in Bangkok in late September and in Barcelona in November. 

Eighty least developed countries, including several small island states, collectively called for reductions of at least 45 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, in order to keep the global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees. 

There is little sign of any such pledge. “Industrialised countries are playing poker with climate change,” Stephen Byers, chair of the Global Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment (GLOBE), told IPS. 

Byers said industrialised countries are waiting until the very end of the negotiations for reduction commitments by emerging economies, and only then reveal their hand. “This is a gambler’s behaviour, and it’s as wrong.” 

Byers urged the industrialised countries to “take a strategic approach to the climate change negotiations and commit to medium-term emissions reductions in line with the IPCC’s analysis and an overall goal of limiting global temperature rise to two degrees Celsius.” 

Byers also demanded that the industrialised countries “recognise the scale of the required financial support from developed to developing economies to ensure effective implementation of the diverse outcomes of the Copenhagen conference.” 

GLOBE estimates that some 90 to 140 billion dollars a year might be needed to pay for climate change mitigation technologies and adaptation. GLOBE says predictable and sustained finance must be raised “according to the principle of common but differentiated responsibility, for example a levy on bunker fuels or aviation.” 

Delegates from the emerging new economies such as India and China accused industrialised countries of trying to shift the burden of reductions on to poorer countries. 

“We still have the same problems that have been holding back an agreement,” China’s climate ambassador Yu Qingtai said at a press conference in Bonn. 

Yvo de Boer had said at the last round of talks in June in Bonn that there remained “tough nuts to crack.” Those nuts still remain, and remain just as hard.

Switching super-computers on to green power.
By Karin Kloosterman

August 12, 2009
You don’t have to junk old equipment just because you need a bigger and better server, says Israeli company Voltaire.
 http://www.israel21c.org/index.php?optio…

Israeli company Voltaire builds super-computer servers that deliver high performance at low power consumption – helping to green our computers.

Computers need resources. Whether it’s logging on at work, sending Tweets from the train station or powering big laboratory ideas, firing up all those communications devices requires juice. In the language of “green,” energy savings equal increased efficiency, and efficiency means less carbon-based pollution.

Israel’s Voltaire works with the top companies in the business, such as Oracle, Sun and IBM, to make servers and super-computers more energy efficient. Some 1,100 clients around the world use InfiniBand, Voltaire’s “switching” product that lets them connect together small servers so that they can scale up in accordance with their business and computing power needs.

Not long ago, as their needs increased, companies responded by buying bigger, faster and more expensive servers, often throwing out the old ones, or downgrading them to another unit. Another common solution was to connect smaller, cheaper servers together in parallel, adding more computers as a company grew.

The problem with the latter is that some 50 percent of the energy consumed goes to the computer servers as they communicate with each other in order to carry out their tasks.

As for the former solution: “In the last few years people have found that, on one side, they acquire new equipment but over the next two years will spend much more on operating it,” says Asaf Somekh, the VP of marketing for Voltaire.

Cooling is power, power is money

Using the Voltaire switch solution, companies may pay a little more in the beginning but the cost savings over time can be enormous. According to Somekh, his company’s product can increase the energy efficiency of a network from 50 to 80 percent.

“This is the key challenge today for our customers,” he tells ISRAEL21c. “It’s not about greening the planet but saving money on power, cooling and space. They want to know how they can use their space and budget and obviously when you say power, power and cooling go hand in hand.”

Featured in the Green500 report recently, Voltaire’s switching technology reduces energy consumption without compromising computing power.

The seven largest supercomputers in the world today use IBM’s BladeCenter servers which are connected with Voltaire’s Grid Director InfiniBand switches. These switches are built to deliver high performance along with low power consumption.

The company’s technology is at work with the largest petaflop supercomputer in the world at Las Alamos National Laboratory in the United States as well as with about 30% of the Fortune 100 companies, the most profitable companies in the world.

Moving up and scaling out

Voltaire is helping to green companies and projects involved in astrophysics, energy, pharmaceuticals and global-climate research. Using only five watts of power per port, the Voltaire switches are much more power-friendly than those of its major competitor, which consumes up to 100 watts of power per port, according to the company.

In Europe, for the past two years Voltaire has been considered one of the fastest growing tech companies. “All of this growth is fueled by the changing needs in data centers,” says Somekh. “People over the last 10 years have found out they can build much better and more efficient data centers – “scale out” technologies.”

Somekh compares this to the more costly and wasteful solution of “scaling up” when a company buys bigger and bigger servers: “People realized instead of bigger servers, they could buy data centers with small commodity servers and stack them together. So when they need more computers – they stack computers together. Voltaire is focused on this market,” he explains.

“At end of day, companies want to use their processors in the best possible way. . . we provide the network for scale out data centers and want to make sure that they are not losing CPU from the network itself,” he adds.

Traded on NASDAQ (VOLT), Voltaire was founded in 1997 by two Israeli engineers Amir Presher and Erez Diamond. Initially the company developed communications security products, but in 2000 it changed its business model.

Today the company is based in Ra’anana, Israel and has US headquarters in the Boston area. About 200 people, mostly in Israel, work for the company which made about $60 million in sales last year.

SIXTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON TECHNOLOGY, KNOWLEDGE AND SOCIETY
Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
15-17 January 2010
 http://www.Technology-Conference.com

Berlin, today, has great influence within the realms of science, technology, commerce, architecture and the arts. No other region in Europe has such a rich concentration of scientific, academic and research facilities, as does Berlin. Adlershof, a district of Berlin, has become one of the world’s 15 largest science and technology parks and is named the ‘City for Science, Technology and Media’. The focal points of Berlin’s research span the depths of medical technology, biotechnology, information and communications technology, optical technology, material sciences and transportation and environmental technologies. Showing testament to the quality of this very research, one of the products of  Berlin’s research, a digital film recorder, received an Oscar for technical  innovation at the 2002 Academy Awards in Hollywood. At the heart of the  recorder, a new frequency-stabilized laser diode, was the creation of the Ferdinand Braun Institute for Highest Frequency Technology. Of additional significance, the Max Born Institute for Nonlinear Optics and Short Pulse Spectroscopy generated the world’s shortest light pulse (used to examine ultra-fast chemical processes and primary biological procedures), with a  duration of only 3.8 femto seconds – another tribute to Berlin’s thriving  technological research.

This Conference will address a range of critically important themes in the
various fields that address the complex and subtle relationships between
technology, knowledge and society. The Conference is cross-disciplinary in
scope, meeting points for technologists with a concern for the social and social
scientists with a concern for the technological. The focus is primarily, but not
exclusively, on information and communications technologies.

The Conference includes plenary presentations by accomplished researchers,
scholars and practitioners, as well as numerous paper, workshop and colloquium
presentations. Presenters may choose to submit written papers for publication in
the fully refereed International Journal of Technology, Knowledge and Society.
If you are unable to attend the Conference in person, virtual registrations are
also available which allow you to submit a paper for refereeing and possible
publication in this fully refereed academic Journal.

Whether you are a virtual or in-person presenter at this Conference, we also
encourage you to present on the Conference YouTube Channel. Please select the
Online Sessions link on the Conference website for further details.

The deadline for the next round in the call for papers (a title and short abstract) is 13 August 2009.

Future deadlines will be announced on the Conference website after this date. Proposals are reviewed within two weeks of
submission. Full details of the Conference, including an online proposal submission form, are to be found at the Conference website -   http://www.Technology-Conference.com

Yours Sincerely,
Karim Gherab Martin
Visiting Research Scholar
Harvard University, Cambridge, USA
For the Advisory Board, International Conference on Technology, Knowledge and
Society and The International Journal of Technology, Knowledge and Society

From: Mieke van der Wansem, Associate Director, CIERP, The Fletcher School at Tufts University (Center for International Environment and Resource Policy).

2009-2010 Fletcher-Lauder Post–Doctoral Fellowship Announcement.

Carbon Biosequestration Strategies.

The Fletcher School at Tufts University (Center for International Environment and Resource Policy) and the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy at The Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya (IDC, Israel) are accepting applications for the Fletcher-Lauder Fellowship for 2009-2010 to support a post-doctoral fellow, to conduct independent research on Carbon Biosequestration Strategies.

The analysis of the Fletcher-Lauder Fellow will be based on data from a National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) and Arizona Public Service (APS) pilot project demonstrating bio-sequestration of carbon dioxide from carbon-rich sources, e.g., power plants, through algae production.  

Specifically, the Fellow will analyze the national and international potential of carbon bio-sequestration via algae, compare it with other alternatives for industrial and power plant CO2 mitigation, and explore costs and policy options to support the implementation of carbon biosequestration on a large scale.   Additional research will focus on the benefits of algae in other fields, including but not limited to biofuels and feed production.

The analysis may utilize systems dynamics modeling, econometric analysis and other methodologies that will improve understanding of the economic and policy implications scalability, and the rate at which capture systems may be introduced to prevent carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere from a variety of industrial and power sources.

Application process:   Students should submit, by e-mail, an application that contains:
1) A letter outlining their relevant research in the engineering, technical or biology fields.   The application should address the following:
a) Details of previous research
b) How this research is relevant to the NETL-APS project
c) Experience with national and international energy policy
2) A curriculum vita
3) Two letters of reference

Selection process: A committee of Fletcher School and Lauder School faculty will select the 2009-2010 Fellow. The faculty will assess the quality of the applicant’s previous research and the intellectual rigor and policy relevance of the student’s previous work.

Application deadline:   June 1, 2009
Award will be announced on June 15, 2009
Award date:   July 1, 2009 (exact start date can be negotiated)

Please address applications to: Mieke van der Wansem, Associate Director, CIERP
 mieke.wansem at tufts.eduPost–Doc… Fellowship Announcement.

From: Other News – Roberto Savio <soros@other-net.info>
Date: Tue, Apr 7, 2009

Democratising Finance

By Hazel Henderson (*)
ST.AUGUSTINE, Apr (IPS) The financial meltdown generated by Wall Street and the “too big to fail” culture of global money-centre banks and financiers is generating local initiatives and demands to decentralise and democratise finance.

While national safety-nets are unravelling because of budget cuts, local leadership is rising, offering many creative alternatives for communities to nurture healthier home-grown economies:

-Local barter-clubs, like Freecycle.com, Craigslist and LETS, and scrip currencies are proliferating, as they always do when central bankers and the International Monetary Fund fail or make matters worse. Some of the most successful complementary currencies are Switzerland’s WIR and in the US, Berkshares, with equivalent to USD 2 million in circulation and accepted by banks and businesses in Massachusetts. Similar complementary currencies are working well in Britain, Canada, Australia, Argentina, Brazil, and other countries.

-People-to-people lending and microfinance projects are booming in many countries: Women’s World Banking, Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, now emulated in many countries, FINCA and ACCION in Latin America, as well as the newer online versions. Credit unions, operated in Europe and North America for a century, are now filling new local needs, reaching out to poorer people and adding microfinance and lending to small businesses.

-Associations of small local banks and businesses are wielding more political clout, as are credit unions. In the US, they are demanding equal treatment in the government’s bailout funds currently showered on the big banks whose reckless lending triggered the financial   mess. Venture capital and venture philanthropy firms, including the Rudolf Steiner Foundation, Acumen, and the foundations of Ebay founders Pierre Omidyar and Jeffrey Skoll, are investing in social enterprises that meet social needs while making modest profits. Such social capital is now creating a new hybrid sector in many economies.

-Britain’s New Economics Foundation (NEF) has been generating both local initiatives, such as the Transition Towns movement, and its Green New Deal and alternative indicators to correct GDP, measuring well-being and ecological sustainability. NEF’s proposal to save Britain’s 11,500 postal offices by adding local banking functions is backed by trade unions, small businesses, public interest groups, and pensioners.

-Time banking, a brainchild of Edgar Cahn in the US, is now helping local people connect and share services in Japan, Europe, and other countries. Neighbours contact each other via a local “time banker” to provide meals and help for shut-ins, babysit each other’s children, watch over property, mow lawns, and share appliances. And car-sharing has now spawned many new companies.

-China is host to many such local initiatives, linking small businesses on networks, including Baidu.com, Alibaba.com, as well as Qifang.com which provides affordable loans to China’s 25 million students. Circle Pleasure, a private company selling prepaid consumer cards, has formed a joint venture with Qifang for people-to-people banking, the first private company to receive a banking license from China’s Central Bank. In many countries in Africa, cell phone banking has taken off. Cell phones are the basis
for the “phone ladies” in Indian and Bangladeshi villages, who rent their cell phones to other villages so rural farmers and fishermen can consult prices in nearby towns and markets to optimise sales.

How far can people-to-people finance go in bypassing big, greedy banks and ethically-challenged Wall Street financiers and their political allies? A long way, thanks to all the communications tools now widely available. Using these new information-sharing tools is helping people realise again what money is: just one form of information. Today it is possible to trade using pure information exchange. For example, in rural Florida, there are call-in radio programmes where, for example, a farmer may offer to trade tractor use for a quantity of seed. Similarly, the growth of farmers’ markets and contract-supported agriculture allows local consumers to buy fresh produce directly from nearby farms.

So how did we allow big banks and centralised finance to grow so large that they became predators on the real living economies which produce the world’s real wealth? Local people around the world are realising that they can simply bypass big banks and stock exchanges and create these services locally. The old, bloated financial sectors must downsize, cut their bonuses and take the losses from their reckless bets in their global casino. A truly efficient financial services sector should be less than 10 percent of a country’s GDP. Those in Britain and the US grew to 25 percent of GDP, metastasising with their “financial engineers” preying on the real economy. Now students are looking for jobs as real engineers, teachers, doctors, and entrepreneurs.

In a very real sense, we humans don’t have a financial crisis but a crisis of perception. We are beginning to see our world differently from the way the mainstream media portrays it. We see our choices with new eyes. As we watch central bankers printing money on TV, we learn that money is not real wealth. Real wealth is generated by productive people using the Earth’s resources wisely. Money is a useful medium of exchange when managed properly, locally, nationally, globally, or electronically. Hoarding money is no longer a reliable store of value. We are all rediscovering the many stores of value in our own communities. We find wealth beyond money. We can change our values for the new times we live in and restore the love economies to their central role in our lives. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

(*) Hazel Henderson, author of Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy (2006), is president of Ethical Markets Media ( www.ethicalmarkets.com). She co-created the Calvert-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators, updated regularly at www.calvert-henderson.com.

Othernews | Via Panisperna, 207 | Rome | Italy | 00184 | Italy

Mexico Launches Wind Farm, Projected to be Largest in Latin American. By Mark Stevenson, AP, January 22, 2009. “Mexico inaugurated one of the world’s largest wind farm projects Thursday as the nation looks for alternative energy, in part to compensate for falling oil production. Mexico is trying to exploit its rich wind and solar potential after relying almost exclusively on petroleum for decades. With oil production down by 9.2 percent in 2008, Mexico now is turning to foreign companies, mainly Spanish, to tap its renewable riches… The new, $550 million project is in a region so breezy that the main town is named La Ventosa, or ‘Windy.’ It’s on the narrow isthmus between the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific Ocean, where winds blow at 15 mph to 22 mph (25 to 36 kph), a near-ideal rate for turbines… Spanish energy company Acciona Energia says the 6,180-acre (2,500-hectare) farm should generate 250 megawatts of electricity with 167 turbines, 25 of which are already operating. The rest should be on line by the end of the year, making the project the largest of its kind in Latin America. It will produce enough energy to power a city of 500,000 people, while reducing carbon monoxide emissions by 600,000 metric tons each year, according to the company.”

Maine Launches New England’s Largest Wind Farm.By Nick Sambides Jr., Bangor Daily News, January 23, 2009. “New England’s largest wind farm went on line Thursday highlighting what Gov. John Baldacci said makes Maine the region’s leader in the creation of clean, oil-free wind power. First Wind officials expected to transmit the project’s capacity, 57 megawatts, to the New England grid by day’s end. Combined with the company’s 28-megawatt Mars Hill farm, the Stetson operation makes Maine New England’s leading wind farm state, said Baldacci. The state’s first two wind farms are the cornerstone of the administration’s aggressive 3 ½-year pursuit of alternative energy.”

Cape Wind Project Gets a Green Light. By Mike Seccome, Martha’s Vineyard Gazette, January 23, 2009. “After more than seven years of investigation and controversy, Cape Wind’s proposal to build 130 massive turbines across 25 square miles of Horseshoe Shoal in Nantucket Sound now seems all but sure to go ahead, following a favorable environmental assessment. The final Environmental Impact Statement from the federal Minerals Management Service (MMS) found the project posed no serious environmental threat. The 2,800 page final report differed little from a draft report, released almost exactly a year ago, which identified no lasting major adverse impacts on wildlife, navigation, fishing, tourism or recreation. Some minor regulatory hurdles remain to be cleared, and the prospect remains of delaying legal action from the project’s opponents, but the MMS report was the most significant hurdle the project, which would be sited in federal waters, had to clear. Certainly the proponents believe the wind is now blowing strongly their way. In a press release issued after the MMS report was released Friday, Cape Wind Associates said it hoped all remaining necessary permits would be in place by March.”

From:      sam_milton at harvard.edu
Subject: Fellowships at Harvard: Vacancies in Energy-Technology Innovation and Transportation Policy
Date:       January 7, 2009

The Energy Technology Innovation Policy (ETIP) research group in the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School is placing a special emphasis on filling fellowship vacancies in the following areas:

1)             Energy-technology innovation policy; and
2)             U.S. transportation policy

Please circulate this announcement widely among your colleagues.

Fellowship 1: Energy-Technology Innovation Policy

ETIP is seeking fellows to work on energy-technology innovation (ETI) policy. The ETI fellows will be committed mainly to a three-year project with three related but distinct goals: 1) producing a comprehensive set of recommendations for the next U.S. administration for a greatly expanded federal energy innovation budget; 2) preparing annual budget commentaries and recommendations to policy makers on current ERD&D spending priorities ; 3) producing a report comparing energy-technology innovation activities in the public and private sectors in the United States and internationally. Fellows will work toward one or several of the above goals.

ETI fellows participate in Congressional briefings, meetings with relevant stakeholders in business, industry, academia, and elsewhere, and interviews with the media.

Required Education, Experience and Skills

Applications for ETI fellowships are welcome from recent recipients of the Ph.D. or equivalent degree. The ideal candidate will have professional experience analyzing policy for publicly-funded ERD&D; developing and analyzing federal budgets for ERD&D; or strategic planning for ETI. Candidates will also have excellent skills in presenting complex material to a wide range of audiences. Candidates will ideally hold a Ph.D. in public policy, economics, political science, or a related field. A clear focus on ETI will be a plus. Candidates who have focused on other aspects of energy policy in their doctoral work, or who hold a Master’s degree and have extensive experience, will be considered.

Fellowship 2: U.S. Transportation Policy

ETIP is seeking a Research Fellow to contribute to work related to assessing and promoting policy options for reducing oil consumption and greenhouse gas emissions associated with the U.S. transportation sector.   The Fellow will report directly to ETIP’s Director and may lead research efforts in one or more of the following subject areas: modeling economic, environmental and other impacts of policy options, examining regulatory scenarios related to various policy options, exploring the role of consumers in reducing the impact of transportation sector, and examining the role of biofuels.   The Research Fellow will be expected to produce at least one publishable article, present his findings before internal and external audiences, and play a substantive role in the dissemination process of any findings.

Required Education, Experience and Skills

Applications for the Research Fellowship on U.S. Transportation Policy are welcome from recent recipients of the Ph.D. or equivalent. The ideal candidate will have academic and/or professional experience analyzing policy for the U.S. transportation sector; investigating specific transportation-related challenges, and/or developing strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector. Candidates will also have excellent skills in presenting complex material to a wide range of audiences. Candidates will ideally hold a Ph.D. in public policy, economics, political science, or a related field. A clear focus on transportation will be a plus. Candidates who have focused on other aspects of energy policy in their doctoral work, or who hold a Master’s degree and have extensive experience, will be considered.

Application procedures

Applications are due no later than February 15, 2009.   ETIP fellowships are for a one-year period, though they may be renewed.   We encourage applications from women, minorities, and citizens of all countries.

Please visit http://belfercenter.org/fellowships/ for complete application information.

For more information about the Energy Technology Innovation Policy research group, please visit www.energytechnologypolicy.org.

If you have any questions, please feel free to send any inquires to  etip at ksg.harvard.edu.

Thanks to the people on my e-mail list for all of the suggestions (more than 100!) about my draft “Tell Barack Obama the Truth – the Whole Truth”. Most frequent criticism: the need for an executive summary. Two people suggested: put a summary in the form of a letter to Michelle and Barack Obama. I like that idea. They are equally smart lawyers, and if we can get either of them to really focus on the actions that are needed, the planet has a chance.

The letter turned out to be four pages. Sorry. But I wrote a note to John Holdren, which can serve as an executive summary. John has promised to deliver the letter, but cannot do so prior to the inauguration. That delay is a problem for one of the three recommendations: tax and dividend. Thus I am making the letter available at
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/20081229_DearMichelleAndBarack.pdf
and the revised “Tell Barack Obama the Truth” at http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/20081229_Obama_revised.pdf in hopes of getting the information to people who continue to push for “goals” and “caps”.

“Goals” for percentage CO₂ emission reductions and “cap & trade & dividend” are a threat to the planet, weak tea, not commensurate with the task of getting CO₂ back to 350 ppm and less. Note:

(1) There must be a tax at the mine or port of entry, the first sale of oil, gas and coal, so every direct and indirect use of the fuel is affected. Anything less means that the reduction of demand for the fuel will make it cheaper for some uses; e.g., people will start burning coal in their stoves. Peter Barnes’ idea to push the cap upstream to the extent possible is not adequate nor is a ‘gas tax’ suggested by NY Times and others. A comprehensive approach is needed.

(2) “Cap & trade & dividend” creates Wall Street millionaires and complex bureaucracy. The public is fed up with that – rightly so. A single carbon tax rate can be adjusted upward affecting all activities appropriately. With 100% dividend the public will allow a carbon price adequate to the job, i.e., helping us move to the post-fossil-fuel world.

(3) Supply ‘caps’ cannot yield a really big reduction because of the weapon: ‘shortages’. All a utility has to say is ‘blackout coming’ and politicians and public have to cave in – we are not going to have the lights turned out. Will the public allow a high enough tax rate? Yes, dividends will exceed tax for most people concerned about their bills.

(4) A tax is not sufficient. All other measures, such as building codes, are needed. But with millions of buildings, all construction codes and operations cannot be enforced. A rising carbon price provides effective enforcement.

(5) Wouldn’t it be cheaper to let people burn the dirtiest fuel? No. The clean future that we aim for, including more efficient energy use, is not more expensive. For example, you may have read about passively heated homes that require little energy and increase construction costs only several percent. Such possibilities remain the oddball (with high price tag), not the standard construction, unless the government adopts policies that make things happen.

Some of you suggested that I should only explain the urgency of the climate crisis, the need to get back to 350 ppm CO₂ and less. Politicians are happy if scientists provide information and then go away and shut up. But science and policy cannot be divorced. What I learned in the past few years is that politicians often adopt convenient policies that can be shown to be inconsistent with long-term success, given readily available scientific data and empirical information on policy impacts.

Jim Hansen

• Full Text of Designing the Post-Kyoto Climate Regime: Lessons from the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements (243K 2 AKIKO V5.PDF)

Natives Hope Obama Will Be Their President, Too.

By Haider Rizvi from IPS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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