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Green is Possible:

 

Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 31st, 2010
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)

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

Brazil: Midyear Economic and Political Outlook.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010

8:00 – 8:30 AM    Registration, Breakfast and Networking
8:30 – 10:00 AM    Panel Discussion, Question & Answer

Hosted By:

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

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

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Also an Afternoon Presentation the following day

by Eduardo Giannetti da Fonseca, Ph.D.,

Economic Advisor to Ms. Marina da Silva’s (Green Party) Presidential Campaign.


Special Events at the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce.


Event Time: 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM
Event Date: Thursday, July 22, 2010
Location: Crowell & Moring LLP    (map)
590 Madison Avenue, 22nd Floor
New York City
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================================================

So what did we learn from the presentations?

We will not regard the presentations as separate – but rather as a pair of partially opposites – but not really. Nevertheless, we endeavor to say that we learned a lot about what might trip Brazil, if though nobody was brave enough to present it this way.

In fact, the best update to THE NEW BRAZIL we found in a special insert to The Financial Times of June 29, 2010 – something that also normal people can understand – not just Wall Street undertakers.   FT special report at http://www.ft.com/newbrazil is also a mixed bag with various interests pushing forward from their own angles but we will pick as starter for our report the one by Martin Wolf who says that Brazil may have achieved stability, but its economy lacks the dynamism of the other BRICS and then says that it is indeed an IC world – this for India and China not the BRICS.

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The New Brazil

Why Brazil must try harder.

By Martin Wolf

Published: June 28 2010.

Brazil is the country of the future – and always will be. So goes an old joke. But is it a joke on the world at last? Has Brazil – anointed by Goldman Sachs as the B in Brics – at last become a country of the present?

The answer is yes, but only up to a point. Brazil is still a long way from matching the performance of India and China. It can, and should, do far better.

From the among the other 11 articles of The Special Report, the FT EDITOR’S CHOICE are:

Brazil’s great achievements of the past decade and a half are those of stability – political and economic. Under the presidencies of Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995-2003) and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-), it has achieved stable democratic rule. The era of military rule, which ended in 1985, seems distant; so, too, do the days of inflation, which peaked at an annual rate of 2,950 per cent in 1990.

Under the “real plan” launched by Cardoso in 1994, inflation was at last tamed. After lowering inflation via a quasi-fixed exchange rate, a currency crisis in 1999 drove Brazil to adopt a floating exchange rate. Since then, the central bank has reduced the interest rate from 45 per cent to a low of 8.75 per cent in 2009. Buttressing this stability has been the accumulation of foreign currency reserves, which reached $235bn by February 2010, up from $33bn in January 1999.

Yet stability is not dynamism. Growth averaged only 2.9 per cent a year between 1995 and 2009. While the contraction in 2009 was modest, at a mere 0.2 per cent of GDP, the International Monetary Fund forecasts growth from 2010-13 at an average of 4.5 per cent, far below rates in China and India.

At least as important a failing is Brazil’s inequality of income. According to the World Bank, its distribution of income is among the most unequal in the world. Even if growth were to accelerate, most of the benefits are likely to go to the richest part of the population.

In 1980, China’s GDP per head (at purchasing power parity) was just 7 per cent of Brazil’s, while India’s was 11 per cent. By 1995, these ratios had reached 23 per cent and 17 per cent, respectively. By 2009, they had reached 63 per cent and 28 per cent. Between 1995 and 2009, the increase in Brazilian GDP per head was only 22 per cent, against 100 per cent for India and 226 per cent for China.

As a result, Brazil’s share of world output, at purchasing power parity, declined from 3.1 per cent in 1995 to 2.9 per cent in 2009. Over the same period, China’s jumped from 5.7 per cent to 12.5 per cent and India’s from 3.2 per cent to 5.1 per cent. This, then, is the rise of the “ICs”, not the Brics.

{But} Brazil is a paradigmatic example of countries that have fallen into what economists call the “middle-income trap”. Can it do better in future?

If the answer is to be yes, Brazil must overcome huge structural disadvantages. Most important is its extremely low level of savings. In 2008, according to the World Bank, its gross savings were a mere 17 per cent of GDP, against India’s 38 per cent and China’s incredible 54 per cent. Unless this is raised to at least 30 per cent of GDP, the chances of sustained and fast growth in living standards are low.

Moreover, only 45 per cent of Brazil’s merchandise exports were manufactured goods in 2008, against 63 per cent for India and 93 per cent for China: industrialisation through trade will be hard to achieve. Brazil has also suffered a massive appreciation of the real exchange rate, estimated by JP Morgan at 156 per cent between October 2002 and April 2010. In addition, the ratio of trade to GDP was 28 per cent in 2008, against India’s 51 per cent and China’s 65 per cent. The appreciation of the real exchange rate makes a rise in the economy’s openness to trade unlikely.

The challenge then is clear and daunting: to move from today’s stability to tomorrow’s growth. With a population of 192m in 2008, Brazil cannot become as big a player in the world as the two Asian giants, but it could still achieve something far more important than power and influence in the world – a prosperous society at home. Much still has to change if that dream is to become reality.

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As it is obvious that our website is very much in Brazil’s corner, as I had personal many past involvement in Brazil since the 70s,  and I saw that Brazil is capable of innovation and progress, it hurt me that in the two New York events it seemed that much more attention was paid to what is good for Wall Street then on what is actually better for the Brazilians.

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The above was about the economy – and how is it with the politics going into the October 3, 2010, Presidential elections?

Who will lead Brazil?

By Jonathan Wheatley

Published: June 28 2010.

Charismatic leader: Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, president of Brazil, visits a building project of the government’s accelerated growth programme in Rio de Janeiro

If any one figure personifies the New Brazil, it is surely Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, President since January 1 2003 – and whose Presidency will end December 31, 2010.

His childhood journey from rural poverty in Brazil’s hard-scrabble north-east to the industrial rust belt around São Paulo is one that millions of his compatriots have made themselves. His ascendancy from shoeshine boy to lathe operator, from union leader to founder of one of Brazil’s biggest political parties and thence to the presidency, mirrors Brazil’s own extraordinary progress over the past decade and a half.

His charisma and popularity – his support in opinion polls has hardly dipped below 70 per cent during two four-year terms – are the perfect symbol for the exuberance and confidence of Brazil’s rising consumer classes.

But Lula da Silva’s time is almost up. Four months from now, in October, Brazilians must choose a new president.

The FT EDITOR’S CHOICE extends now to four additional articles from that report:

To some, the election makes little difference.

“Sincerely, I really don’t think markets are worried,” says Rogério Schmidt of CLP, a São Paulo political think-tank. “There is a sense that whoever wins, there will be a mix of orthodox and heterodox policies.”

That view is supported by the fact Brazil has enjoyed broad continuity in macroeconomic policies for the past 16 years. The inflation-busting reforms that laid the basis of today’s prosperity were introduced in 1994 by Fernando Henrique Cardoso, then finance minister and subsequently president from 1995 to 2002.

When Lula da Silva was elected to succeed him, Brazil’s borrowing costs soared as investors worried that the former firebrand leftwinger would lose control of public finances and lead Brazil into default.

But Lula da Silva moved quickly to calm such fears, by promising no rupture with the past and by installing trusted pro-market figures at the finance ministry and central bank (the former lost to a corruption scandal in 2006; the latter still in office today). Many observers expect similar or greater continuity when the president hands over to his successor in January.

Others are less sanguine. They worry that investors take too much comfort from the ease of transition last time around and risk becoming complacent about Brazil’s future prospects.

“It worries me that people think this election doesn’t matter,” says Jim O’Neill, chief economist at Goldman Sachs and one of Brazil’s most vocal champions over the past decade. “People are getting carried away.”

He says he has no view on who would make the best presidential successor, as long as that person ensures current macro policies stay in place.

Contender for the presidency: José Serra

The frontrunners in opinion polls are José Serra and Dilma Rousseff. He was governor of São Paulo state (Brazil’s biggest) and she was Lula da Silva’s chief minister until both stood down in April to qualify as candidates.It is often supposed that Serra is the more market-friendly candidate while Rousseff is more inclined to enlarge the role of the public sector in the economy to the detriment of the private sector. Serra was a highly successful health minister under Cardoso who has earned a reputation for managerial efficiency and fiscal austerity, not least as governor of São Paulo. If, as his centrist opposition party, the PSDB, has argued, what Brazil needs most is a dose of good management, he could be the man for the job.

But Rousseff is also billed as a master of management, although with the emphasis on central planning rather than a minimal state.

Lula da Silva calls her “the mother of the PAC [the government’s flagship growth acceleration programme]” and she is closely associated with what Brazilians call “developmentalism” – a drive for growth and income distribution above all else that pays less attention to the need for fiscal reform and an overhaul of Brazil’s tax system and labour laws.

This suggests a broad distinction: Serra more orthodox, Rousseff more populist. Yet this classification does not hold up to much scrutiny. The bastion of orthodoxy in the Lula government has been the central bank, led by Henrique Meirelles, a former head of Bank Boston and a former member of Serra’s PSDB.

Although the bank is not independent by law, it has been given operational independence, adjusting interest rates in pursuit of the government’s annual inflation targets, often in the face of fierce criticism from all sides, both inside and outside government.

Serra – who was moved to health from the planning ministry under Cardoso after disagreements with the finance ministry and central bank – is among the most vocal critics of Brazil’s high interest rates.

It could be argued that he would tackle the fiscal problems that have kept them high for so long. But he has a reputation as an interventionist and in recent interviews has done little to dispel a concern among many economists that he would attempt to reduce interest rates at the stroke of a pen. This, many observers fear, would not only undermine the credibility of monetary policy but also cause a mass walk-out of the central bank’s most competent directors. The impact on investor confidence could be disastrous.

Candidate: Dilma Rousseff

Rousseff has gone out of her way to emphasise that if she wins, the three pillars of stability – inflation targeting, a floating exchange rate and gradual reductions in public debt – will be untouched. She is also close to Meirelles and to Antonio Palocci, the Lula government’s first finance minister who, in terms of economic policy, is probably to the right of Serra.Does this mean that Rousseff is the investor’s choice after all? Perhaps, but perhaps not, for a number of reasons. One is that she is not Lula da Silva, and may lack the political clout to defend the central bank or to hold in check the statist instincts of other leaders of their leftwing party, the PT (and which some commentators say she also shares).

Another is that Serra, while erratic on monetary policy, shows every sign of being far more hawkish on fiscal issues – and a dose of fiscal hawkishness would be to Brazil’s benefit as evidence mounts that the economy is overheating, partly due to the exaggerated presence of the public sector.

Perhaps doubts such as these will be clarified as campaigning starts after the World Cup. But, again, perhaps not. Orthodox economic policies have been good for the Brazilian people but they have rarely gained much popularity, perhaps because of an enduring belief in the beneficial influence of the state.

If the opening salvos in the pre-campaign period have been any guide, the election will come down to a dispute over who is best suited to continue the work of Lula da Silva.

With the most popular president in Brazilian history making it the declared priority of his final year to get her elected as his successor, Rousseff has got to be the one to beat.

———————————-

What above article is missing is the candidacy of Marina da Silva, the Candidate of the Green Party and also a friend of President Lula. The issue is that though she does not have the votes it takes to win, she does have enough votes to influence who of the two above does win. It seems safe to accept that she will b part of a government established by whoever among the two front runners does win.

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Our last article on deepwater drilling for oil – http://www.sustainabilitank.info/category/latin-america/brazil/#17264 has obviously as well interest to our readers about Brazil.

Oil groups view the reality of upcoming tougher US rules on drilling. How will Canada, Brazil, the UK, Norway and Australia react? What will ExxonMobil, Chevron, Total, ConocoPhillips and Shell do?

Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 22nd, 2010
by Pincas Jawetz ( PJ at SustainabiliTank.com)

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From the two days at the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce Inc. I will start with the second say – this was the presentation by Dr. Eduardo Giannetti da Fonseca, a San Paulo based economist of high standing who is also an Economic Advisor to Ms. da Silva’s Presidential Campaign – on a Green Party line.

Mr. da Fonseca is important and, we will not be surprised if Ms da Silva ends up in next government and so Mr. Gianetti da Fonseca.

Marina da Silva’s childhood spent in the rain forest taught her the most valuable lesson anyone can learn: the love for the environment. She says she gets lost in any city in the world, but never in the forest. Already, when she was very young she knew she wanted to save her home, the rainforest, from the destruction by illegal loggers .

2003-08 Minister of Environment Maria Osmarina Marina da Silva Vaz de Lima.
Normally known as Marina Silva, she was elected Senator in 1994. Presidential Candidate for the Green Party in 2010. (b. 1958-).

She has had to fight hard to reduce deforestation in the Amazon by 75 % and because of her, today, Brazil has the strictest environmental laws in the world. She resigned her position as Minister on May 14, 2008 after losing several key battles in her fight to rein in destruction of the Amazon rainforest. Her resignation was a blow to the Lula Government. If the government had any global credibility in environmental issues, it was because of Minister Marina,” Jose Maria Cardoso da Silva, vice president of Conservation International-South America, told Reuters.

She only learned how to read and write when she was 16 years old and moved to the closest town, 70 km away – to Rio Branco. In the forest she was part of rubber trees tappers and worked as a child as there was no school nearby. When she came to Rio Branco she worked all day as a maid, and studied hard at night. She graduated in history in 1985 and soon became involved as a leader in a syndicate, defending workers. She became in 1994 the youngest female senator ever to be elected.

When she resigned from her position of Minister of the Environment it was said that “Brazil is losing the only voice in the government that spoke out for the environment,” Sergio Leitao, director of public policy for Greenpeace in Brazil, was quoted as saying by the Associated Press. “The minister is leaving because the pressure on her for taking the measures she took against deforestation has become unbearable.”

In Brazil, and  internationally, she is a  recognized hero – small in stature but long in spirit. She has no chance to win in the elections, but is considered a potential coalition member by either of the two front runners. As we understood from Mr. Giannetti, she might be favored more by Mr. Serra for balancing purpose.

Mr. Giannetti himself is not a Paul Krugman, not even a Jeffrey Sachs or Joe Stiglitz. Nevertheless, in the Brazilian context he is is advanced, and we dare to say of exactly the mind-set that put together the Financial Times insert we mentioned above.

Mr. Eduardo Giannetti da Fonseca born in Belo Horizonte, in 1957, studied in Sao Paulo, received his doctorate in economics from the University of Cambridge, where he was also a professor from 1984 to 1987. From 1988 to 2001 he taught at the FEA/USP (School of Economics, Business and Accounting of the University of São Paulo). He is currently a full-time professor at IBMEC (Instituto Brasileiro de Mercado de Capitais) São Paulo. He came through as a basically enlightened conventional economist who has serious criticism of the Brazilian government.

He said that huge part of the private sector relies on protection, subsidies etc. This helps the government to neutralize opposition. Business leaders will thus not speak up against the government in order not to be excluded from the ongoing system. In this respect it is clearly worse then the US State Socialism as here the lobbies fight for the share of public funding but never stop criticizing the government that feds them.

Giannetti has helped shape the intellectual debate in Brazil by pointing at things as I just noted and this is what makes him important in the public discourse. His target is the Brazilian Complacency – and the effects of Growth with Imbalances.

In the 90s Brazil used to be hypersensitive to global shocks – now it absorbed the shock without any major effects. Much of this is credited to the fact that it has $250 billion in foreign reserves insurance – this up from $39 billion in 2003. In 1970 it was about zero.

How did it happen? This was thanks to a very dynamic export sector that led to the big turn around in current accounts. There is a positive balance also for the Public Sector – no debt. There was an increase in minimum vages and improvement of credit to the lower income masses.

The continuity of government public policy and monetary stability – this for 12 years – since the second Cardozo government – created the confidence that things are under control. For Brazil, during the recent crisis – it was a clear first. While the world was in crisis – Brazil reduced interest rates whereas in the past it would have acted the other way around and devalued the currency on top. Now, Brazil has a strong currency – maybe too strong.

Even though the public was buying less, there was an increase in expenditures by the public sector and an aggressive program to keep credit flowing – Brazil had a “good” crisis compared to others. Ergo – his optimism for the future of Brazil.

But not so fast – he wants us to remember that it was the same during the second half of the 50′s under the Juscelino Kubitschek government’s growth of 10% consistently – but that was not sustained! They tripled the monetary base in 5 years to build Brasilia – this could not be sustained.

Similarly – in the mid 70′s, when there was the oil crisis, Brazil was an island of prosperity in a sea of turbulence, but it also turned around This because the external debt that was fueled by OPEC money surplus and it ended in a 80′s-90′s collapse.

He is warning of this series of failed stabilization cycles and we must learn from the errors and he proceeded to talk of the threats and the problems.

He says we (Brazil) must learn from errors.  With 7.5% growth per year expectation of inflation is growing. We face now for the first time since 2007 a current account deficit. It can be managed if it is done correctly. The danger is Overheating the economy. The way the government makes money available as implicit subsidy to the public enterprise. The government does not provide consistent figures but the treasury charges a fraction on this debt. This support for business amounts to $8 billion – more then the expenditures on social problems. His criticism of the government is that the expenditures are obscure and he feels not answering democracy and transparency. That is serious criticism and any next government will have to take a long look at it.

On the other hand, the true driving force of growth was consumption. It is by families – this added to private investment and government investment – but we know you cannot do it all at the same time – that causes Overheating and Increased Imports. He went so far as to say that the Brazilian Government is like a brain with two hemispheres not connected – a Fiscal Side part and a Monetary Side part.

Then he moved to education. His complaint that there is no number for measuring human capital build up. His estimate is 1.8% in this area and says 5-6% of GDP are needed for the long run. This creates a distortion in ways of long term business in Brazil.

39% of GDP is mediated by the State and the investment capacity of the private sector is extremely low – there is only 2.1% that comes out of this as capital formation.

OECD countries statistics covering 57 countries, puts Brazil as 54th – and this is because of the human capital deficit.

From her he moved to the Business Environment and pointed out that the Underground Economy in Brazil is 1/3 of the total economy.

This is another big problem. In the World Bank estimates of 1`83 countries Brazil is 129th in the complexity of its tax system causing an absurd situation of the labor market. The government rellies on PAY-ROLL TAXES and 9% of GDP comes from this. The result is that hiring in the labor open market is dangerous to businesses in litigation terms. it takes 2600 hours/year to calculate and collect taxes while similarly outside Brazil it takes 138 hours. These labor and taxation laws become prohibitive and push businesses into the underground economy.

CONCLUSION – In the Short Term Prospects in Brazil are Good – In the Long Term More Difficult.

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The elections:

Marina da Silva, his candidate, only dreams.

Serra – has monetaristic views of the policy. Here, if it gets difficult – interest rates are risen. He thinks the currency is already absurdly overvalued – so you really cannot increase interest rates.

Dilma – here he sees as problem that she will just continue the policy as she gets at the end of the Lula Administration.

Giannetti thinks the State has infrastructure problems and is afraid that Dilma will start from the belief that the State can provide the way to attract private enterprise.

——-

The chair remarked that there is agreement that the tax system must be overhauled but there is no agreement on how to do it. He also mentioned that labor is ready to go along with elimination of the labor courts – how can these things be helped by change of Presidency?

A. The political consensus can help in the change. All see that there is a clear need to reduce payroll taxes in order to increase hiring – but then he said education and other things are paid for from these taxes. This is thus counterproductive!

You can improve things when you incorporate the informal economy. To achieve this you must mobilize support. The underground economy has no access to credit, to technology – there is need for leadership to reel this all in!

——

Question on the structural problems – lack of adequate infrastructure that was answered that the Central Bank has to do changes. The sad thing is that in Brazil – Words replace Acts, and we may have reached a state that a World double-dip helps Brazil. If that is salvation – what is damnation?

Question on the potential growth rate based on May data.

A. We again rely on external savings and to some extent they are welcome – but this must be done carefully.

——

NOW WE HAVE REACHED THE POINT WHERE I WAS ABLE TO PLACE MY OWN QUESTION, AND THIS WILL ALSO EXPLAIN WHY I STARTED MY REPORTING WITH MR. GIANNETTI FIRST:

Based on the presentations of the previous day, where to a question of mine I was told that Brazil need the income from Petroleum in order to pursue things like education, it is that the public in Brazil will not be ready to address the possibility of a blowout like it happened in the Gulf of Mexico. I was left feeling like I was the outside kid who simply said the King is naked.

Clearly, we will get back to the above, but let me say that here I started my question from the idea we heard that EDUCATION IS PAID FOR FROM LABOR TAX-ROLLS and mentioned that though Mr. Giannetti also did not touch even in passing the money-making of PETROBRAS, or the Environment, nevertheless, if the money is not really used for the causes he was talking about, then could we take an honest look at the potential damages from deepwater drilling for petroleum?

A. The idea is for using the oil money in a fund established outside Brazil to fund the development of Brazil.  What he is most afraid of for Brazil is that this money falls into the hands of a populist government that gets hold of Brazil – like it happened in other countries of Latin America. It could even turn Brazil to OPEC. In short – he described the well known “curse of oil.”

Giannetti agred with me that the production of oil will become much more expensive in the wake f the Gulf Coast blow-out.

——

To another question he answered that there is no clear analysis of the Brazilian economy by private enterprise because of the fact that most are being subsidized by government and they would not want to fall out of line because that would translate in their losing the subsidies – We have a very diligent bureaucracy that enforces its own codes of unanimous opinion-making.

There are 40 million pay checks that go to 120 million people dependent on them – and that is the real governing power in Brazil he implied.

To the idea of increasing savings in order to create funds for investment – he said it must be all voluntary – he dreads compulsory credit and wants voluntary credit.

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

June 10, 2008, Mr. Jose Sergio Gabrielli, President and cEO pf Petroleo Brasiliero S.A. – Petrobras -  was the speaker at a BACC breakfast at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in New York City.

His line was then: “While some of the world’s largest oil producers, including Mexico and Iran, are struggling to remain exporters, Brazil is moving in the opposite direction. (?? – he said that.)

A huge underwater oil field discovered late last year has the potential to transform South America’s largest country into a sizable exporter and win it a seat at the table of the world’s oil cartel …” He was optimistic that the company could develop the oil — “We think we can develop the oil faster than we thought at the beginning,” Mr. Gabrielli said then. “We don’t think we have any insurmountable challenge on the technology side.”

At the time it was an oil company CEO making his presentation before a room-full of potential Wall Street investors.

We neither heard there the government of Brazil making a political case, nor any other case of national economic significance.
I remembered this episode when I heard from Professor Giannetti that some in Brazil might contemplate joining OPEC. So, here I found the right reference to Petrobras – a mainly government owned company that is supported fully by the government, though it was known in the past of going against Brazil government policy. On this I make reference to the Petrobras resistance to the original Proalcol – or National fuel-ethanol program.

Above, the Brazilian ethanol issue, has been swallowed up now by Petrobras which sees in it another good avenue for profits, and is in the process of turning ethanol into feed for large tanker-ships to be moved overseas.

Whatever, Petrobras rules by now over Brazilian energy and by its mere size, over the Brazilian economy as well. We are sure that they do not need anymore to come to Wall Street in order to advertise their potential – it is now Wall Street that chases after Petrobras. Nevertheless, it is a bit surprising that speakers on Brazil’s economic and political future manage somehow not to mention Petrobras in their presentations.

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Brazil Update: Tight Race for the Presidency

Mateo Samper and Valeria Cruz
July 29, 2010, http://www.as-coa.org/articles/2566/Brazil_Update:_Tight_Race_for_the_Presidency/

Brazilians head to the polls on Sunday, October 3, to choose a new president who will lead the country for the next four years. The top contenders are Dilma Rousseff of the Worker’s Party (PT) and José Serra of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB). A third candidate, Marina Silva of the Green Party (PV), trails third in the polls but could be a key player in the likely scenario that neither of the frontrunners wins the requisite 50 percent of ballots in the first round. If necessary, the runoff would be scheduled for October 31.

Rousseff began closing a 20 percent gap with Serra starting in December.

However, for the past three months, the two have been technically tied in the polls. One recent survey shows Rousseff ahead by eight points, but another places Serra on top by just one percentage point. Marina Silva, who has been gaining ground, polls at 10 percent.
The Candidates in Brief

President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva handpicked Rousseff as his successor. She worked as a member of his cabinet since the beginning of his presidency in 2002, first as minister of Energy and Mines and then as chief of staff starting in 2005. If elected, she will be Brazil’s first female president. Prior to serving in the president’s cabinet, Rousseff worked for the city of Porto Alegre’s Treasury Department and for the state of Rio Grande do Sul as state secretary of Energy. She was also active in the restructuring of the center-left Brazilian Labor Party after the end of the military dictatorship in the 1980s.

Rousseff has never been elected to public office, but she now rides high on Lula’s popularity and promises to continue his policies. As she said: “President Lula left me a legacy—to take care of the Brazilian people. I am going to be a mother for all the Brazilian people.” Observers expect her to maintain market friendly economic policies paired with continued federal intervention in the economy.


Internationally, she’s expected to pursue a left-leaning agenda, keeping close ties with Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and the Castro government in Cuba, as well as to work closely with emerging markets.

Until March 2010, Serra was the governor of the state of São Paulo, the most industrialized state in the country, accounting for over 31 percent of the Brazilian GDP. A U.S.-trained economist with a doctorate, he has been a congressman and a senator, as well as the mayor of São Paulo (2004-2007). He also served as planning minister (1995-1996) and health minister (1998-2002) under President Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

Serra disputed and lost the presidency to Lula in 2002. Considered a center-right pragmatic administrator with pro-market views, the PSDB candidate would continue Lula’s subsidy programs targeting the poor but favors less economic intervention.
Serra has
Regionally, Serra is stronger in the south and southeast, while Dilma is favored in the northeast, north, and midwest of the country—where Lula is also more popular.
been stepping up his criticisms against the Lula administration, questioning Brazil’s alignment with countries such as Venezuela and Iran.

Given the state of the economy and the popularity of the current president, Serra could have a difficult time trying to convince voters   that he represents a better alternative to Rousseff’s continuity.

Green Party candidate Marina Silva is a former senator and world-renowned environmentalist. Silva, who stepped down as Lula’s environment minister in May 2008, proposes to cut taxes and social security benefits, urging a reform of the country’s costly pension system. The PV candidate also indicated that she would continue many of Lula’s policies, such as poverty reduction programs. Rather than promoting handouts, she has pledged to encourage mobility through better education and more job opportunities.

Lula’s Campaign?

In little over six months, Rousseff has surged in the polls, increasing the chances that the PT will remain in power. There are two explanations behind Rousseff’s rising support: the economy and Lula’s huge popularity, which is now close to 78 percent. Brazil has been steadily growing in recent years while keeping inflation low, allowing 13 million people to rise out of poverty from 1995 to 2008. In the midst of the global economic crisis, the country recorded only a mild slowdown. Its economy is expected to grow at around 7 percent this year, which could lead to the creation of thousands of new jobs. Moreover, expanded subsidy programs for low-income families, particularly in the north of the country, has made President Lula hugely popular and helped Rousseff boost her numbers as she promises to continue Lula’s policies and efforts.

An Ibope poll shows that, due to Lula’s strong social policies to fight poverty with programs such as Bolsa de familia, Rousseff has an 11 percent advantage over Serra among minimum-wage earners.
But Lula’s involvement in the presidential race has raised eyebrows. He has used his political influence to promote and openly campaign in favor of his chosen candidate, earning him several fines from the electoral authority. He is now under the investigation of the deputy electoral attorney general, Sandra Cureau, who is studying the possibility of an action before the Brazilian Federal Election Commission against Lula for abuse of political and economic power. In that case, President Lula would garner additional fines and face sanctions, such as the inability to pursue public posts for as many as eight years.

In Brazil, presidents can endorse candidates, but what seems less clear is to what extent. PT lawyer Márcio Luiz Silva argued that the president can campaign when the event is not financed or organized by the federal government. He has also said that, as an affiliated member of the PT, Lula has the right to participate in campaign events in support of his candidate.

What’s Next?

Although television debates and radio commercials do not start until August 17, many of the candidates have begun debating online, as well as hosting campaign rallies. However, Rousseff said she would only participate in four of several planned presidential debates on television, prompting opponents and other analysts to posit that she is ill prepared for debates with Serra and Silva. Rousseff countered that her tight agenda limited her availability for debates and she would be open to interviews in Brasilia.

In spite of the debate dispute, many analysts forecast that, barring a very poor performance in the debates or a major gaffe in what’s left of the campaign, Rousseff will emerge the victor in October.

See more in: Brazil, Democracy & Elections

————————————————————-==================================———————————————

Backing now into the July 21, 2010 Seminar on Brazil’s Economic and Political Outlook presented Midyear 2010, but in clear view of the October 3, 2010 Presidential elections, we listened to the following two panels:

A, The Post-Crisis Election Macro Economy: Policy Challenges and Investment Opportunities.

With Marcelo Salomon, Director and Chief Brazil Economist at Barclays Capital
and Marcel Kasumovich, Founding Partner at Woodbine Capital Advisors.

B. The Electoral Landscape, Platforms, Likely Outcomes: Lula’s Legacy and Shadow 2012-2016.

With Christopher Garman, Director and Head of the Latin America Practice Eurasia Group,
and Paulo Sotero Marques, Director Brazil Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center.

The welcome remarks were by host Michael J. Gilespi, Partner of Debevoise & Plimpton, LLP our hosts.
and the Introductory Remarks by Paulo Vieira da Cunha, Chairman of the Banking and Capital Markets Committee of the
BACC Inc. and Partner & Head of Research – Emerging Markets Tandem Global Partners.

——-

From the above, we see that all except Paulo Sotero Marques are economists and as this was going on with a Wall Street audience in New York, it became quite clear from the start that this was more about what Wall Street would like to see happen in Brazil, then what is best for Brazil. The point was that if post crisis – The US, China and the EU all grow, Brazil will have to compete in this capital market. Then, if Brazil continues as now, it will have a two tier money lending market and the formal banking system will be more aggressive in order to be able to accommodate growth.


Kasumovich looked at the young population with good potential for new household formation that will lead to growth. He sees the continuation of Microbased policies to facilitate this. He evaluates the situation as being helped by the crisis in the developed world that helped Brazil to avoid superheating. It regulated the normal cyclic expansion mechanism. POORER COUNTRIES RAISE THEIR STANDARDS AND HELP FINANCE THE US – THAT IS THE TRANSITION IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY.

THE CURRENCY CRISES OF THE PAST WERE I THE FINANCING OF THE US DEBT.  This does not impact the foreign investment in Brazil. The likelihood for a vicious cycle in Brazil is low. The above may change if US troubles go away.

He further said that Petrobras has growth potential and is hampered by management. I cringed thinking what if Petrobras might not want to grow fast? Actually thet are Brazil Government owned and what does the government think? I promis to get back to this point.

Salomon said the missing link is the challenge of growing with savings. He wants sustainable growth. He finds an excellent monetary policy in Brazil, that eliminated inflation, but does not see the effort to answer: “Where do we get the money for investment.” Will it come from foreign savings only? Internal savings is now 14% but 10% more are needed. He asked: “Where the Wild Things Are? – Who will finance the infrastructure investments for the 2014 World Cup, The 2016 Olympics, the Pre-Salt oil extractive business?      —-   IS KEYNES REALLY DEAD – OR HE JUST MOVED TO BRAZIL, he asked.”

Fiscal spending is increased by BNDES and he does not see things discussed during the present crisis as part of the election process.

Garman said there is more at stake: He sees no macroeconomic policy split between Serra and Dilma, but sector specific industrial policy differences. He specifically noted very different views on how to develop Brazil’s oil sector – with repercussion to growth he said. This will influence utilities, telecom, mining as well. He finds that the main difference between Serra and Dilma is in the industrial area. This gave me the clear feeling why the room was rather in Serra’s corner.

Sotero, as I said earlier, was different. He is a Journalist and had the longest resume of the four speakers.

Paulo Sotero was the Washington correspondent for Estado de S.Paulo, the Gazeta Mercantil, for the last seventeen years. He has been also a regular commentator and analyst for the BBC radio’s Portuguese language service, Radio France Internationale, and the Brazilian Rádio Eldorado.He started He is a native of Sao Paulo, stated his career at the Veja weekly in 1968, held positions in Recife, Paris, Lisbon, Sao Paulo, and Brasilia. He is a frequent lecturer on Brazilian affairs at US universities, and think tanks.

Since 2003 he has been an adjunct lecturer at Georgetown University, both in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and at the Center for Latin American Studies of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service.

Sotero has a BA in history from the Catholic University of Pernambuco, Brazil, and an MA in Journalism and Public Affairs from The American University in Washington, D.C. In 1987, he received the prestigious Maria Moors Cabot Award Special Citation from the Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University. He is also the recipient of the 1993 Distinguished Visiting Lecturer award from the Foreign Service Institute of the U.S. Department of State. In Brazil, he was awarded the 1978 “Prêmio Abril de Reportagem” for Veja magazine’s cover story on Paraguay and for an investigative report on the assassination of Chilean General Carlos Prats in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC and at Princeton University, September 2006, appointed Sotero , as the director its Brazil Institute.

He is clearly the kind of person that could evaluate not just the US interest in Brazil, but also what the people of Brazil would want to see happen to them.

Dilma is clearly more ideological, and she has Lula’s backing in a country that loves Lula because he leaves the State in much better shape then he found it.

Under her, there will be a clear supervision of exchange rates as her advisors will not want to see the currency appreciate – so the make-up of the Central Bank will be at play. Serra on the other hand will rather watch expenditures.

2010 is a dream year to run on a platform of continuity and Lula’s legacy and shadow will extend to the 2012-2016 years.

It is clear – there is an enormously popular president, a satisfied population, an impressive economic achievements’ record and a prommissing economic outlook.

———–

At Q&A time, and having heard about the reliance on income from oil as a way to fund development projects, while the oil is indeed of deepwater drilling source, and these being the days of the US BP Gulf disaster I decided to ask if in Brazil people read the papers about what can happen with this sort of oil production?

From Mr. Garman I got a clear answer that it is of no concern to the Brazilians – specially as the economy is based on this income and people want education and education needs money … In this respect please see why I started the review from the following day’s presentation by Mr. Giannetti who said that education is paid from the taxes taken from labor. So – here goes out the argument that Brazil economy is based on that oil.

Further o – Mr. Sotero picked up my question also and said that 25% of all investments in Brazil will go to oil & gas – this is the BNDES (the National Bank) forecast. That would tie down Brazil in many respects.

In effect, the choice is to do it slower in order to develop other sectors of the economy – that will bring gains slower. But I clearly felt that this is more sustainable.

Further, in private, one of the participants told me that the water currents are such that if there is an accident – the oil will go south to Argentina and will not hurt the Brazilian beaches – Well that is nice to know. We hope the Argentinians read this also.

———–

The bottom line perspective of this end of July report of Brazil going to the October 3, 2010 elections, It seems the future may hold a presidency that will try to continue the achievements of the Lula eight years and it will be led by Ms. Dilma Rousseff with the support of Ms. Marina da Silva.

We hope that this Brazilian Administration will clamp down on Petrobras and hold back somewhat from the development of oil beyond what is best for the Brazilian economy. The best one can hope for is that they continue to do it by themselves, at low speed, and do not look for outside companies that might be more inclined to lead them to disaster. The government will have to supervise the Petrobras accounting and indeed get the income from this that the government needs in order to build up the consumer society to help in Brazil growth as justified by its effort to grow along China and India.

The official campaigning starts August 17th and provided there is no “September surprise” above is our estimate as of today.



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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 30th, 2010
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)

An Entire Generation of India’s Brightest Students is Galvanized into Tackling Sustainability, Climate Change, Energy Security and the Environment.

IIT Madras to Host The 2010 Al Gore Sustainable Technology Venture Competition™, India, in Chennai, September 30 ? October 3, 2010.

——————

The The Al Gore Sustainable Technology Venture CompetitionTM 2010 to be held at IIT Madras
September 30 – October 3, 2010.

Founded in early 2007, The Al Gore Sustainable Technology Venture Competition™, Asia’s first and most prestigious sustainable/clean technology business plan competition, brings green and sustainable technologies to market through entrepreneurship, to fortify energy security, enhance sustainability on the planet, and tackle climate change.

Now in its third year, the competition is the brainchild of Prof. Oopali Operajita, CEO, Cicero, A Trans National Advisory, a Senior Strategic and International Affairs Adviser to several of India’s prominent political leaders in India’s Parliament, and a former Distinguished Faculty Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University,USA.

The Al Gore Sustainable Technology Venture CompetitionTM is a student-led business plan competition, which provides mentoring for, and exposure to, the development of sustainable technology ventures from around the world, to combat climate change and fortify energy security.  The competition supports the creation of real businesses that bring about positive change through new technologies in a sustainable manner.

The Al Gore Sustainable Technology Venture CompetitionTM consists of two rounds: a preliminary round of online submissions (the deadline is August 10, 2010), followed by a presentation round to venture capitalists, angel investors, industrialists and distinguished faculty at IIT Madras. The best entries from the preliminary round will be selected to participate in the finals at IIT Madras, September 30 – October 3, 2010. During the final round of the competition, students will present the environmental, financial and social values of their businesses, gaining valuable feedback from some of the best minds in the field.

Cash Prizes of Rs. 1,00,000 and Rs. 70,000 will be awarded to the winners and runners up.

The IIT Madras Finalist Team (Greenext Technology Solutions) from the 2009 Al Gore Sustainable Technology Venture Competition™ won the First Coveted ‘NYC Next Idea’ Prize from Mayor Bloomberg in New York City. Here’s a link to the story. Here‘s the coverage on the leading Indian television channel NDTV 24×7.

For further details, please visit  website:

http://www.cicerotransnational.com/agstvc.html

or send us email mail at: agstvc (at) shaastra (dot) org        or agstvc (at) gmail (dot) com

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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 29th, 2010
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)

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

Climate report shows Earth has heated up over 50 years.

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

By GAUTAM NAIK

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—————————–

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

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

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

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

NOAA finds “human fingerprints” on climate

July 28th, 2010  by Fiona Harvey

A report from the NOAA in the US has found that data from ten key climate indicators all point to the same finding: the scientific evidence that our world is warming is unmistakable.

It is the first major piece of new research since the “Climategate” scandals.

It found that, relying on data from multiple sources, each indicator proved consistent with a warming world. Seven indicators are rising: air temperature over land, sea-surface temperature, marine air temperature, sea level, ocean heat, humidity, and tropospheric temperature in the “active-weather” layer of the atmosphere closest to the earth’s surface. Three indicators are declining: Arctic sea ice, glaciers and spring snow cover in the northern hemisphere.

Read the full report here:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/bams-state-of-the-climate.

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

Research says climate change undeniable

By Fiona Harvey, Environment Correspondent

Published: July 28 2010 – print and on-line.

International scientists have injected fresh evidence into the debate over global warming, saying that climate change is “undeniable” and shows clear signs of “human fingerprints” in the first major piece of research since the “Climategate” controversy.

The research, headed by the US National Oceans and Atmospheric Administration, is based on new data not available for the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report of 2007, the target of attacks by sceptics in recent years.

The NOAA study drew on up to 11 different indicators of climate, and found that each one pointed to a world that was warming owing to the influence of greenhouse gases, said Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring at the UK’s Met Office, one of the agencies participating.

Seven indicators were rising, he said. These were: air temperature over land, sea-surface temperature, marine air temperature, sea level, ocean heat, humidity, and tropospheric temperature in the “active-weather” layer of the atmosphere closest to the earth’s surface. Four indicators were declining: Arctic sea ice, glaciers, spring snow cover in the northern hemisphere, and stratospheric temperatures.

Mr Stott said: “The whole of the climate system is acting in a way consistent with the effects of greenhouse gases.” “The fingerprints are clear,” he said. “The glaringly obvious explanation for this is warming from greenhouse gases.”

Environment ThumbnailSome scientists hailed the study as a refutation of the claims made by climate sceptics during the “Climategate” saga. Those scandals involved accusations – some since proven correct – of flaws in the IPCC’s landmark 2007 report, and the release of hundreds of emails from climate scientists that appeared to show them distorting certain data.

“This confirms that while all of this [Climategate] was going on, the earth was continuing to warm. It shows that Climategate was a distraction, because it took the focus off what the science actually says,” said Bob Ward, policy director of the Grantham Institute at the London School of Economics.

But the report nonetheless remained the target of scorn for sceptics.

Myron Ebell, of the Competitive Enterprise Institute in the US, said the new report would not change people’s minds. “It’s clear that the scientific case for global warming alarmism is weak. The scientific case for [many of the claims] is unsound and we are finding out all the time how unsound it is.”

Pat Michaels, a prominent climate sceptic, ex-professor of environmental sciences and fellow of the Cato Institute in the US, said the NOAA study and other evidence suggested that the computerised climate models had overestimated the sensitivity of the earth’s temperature to carbon dioxide. This would mean that the earth could warm a little under the influence of greenhouse gases, but not by as much as the IPCC and others have predicted.

“I think it is the lack of frankness about this that emerged with Climategate, and that seems to continue [that make people doubt the findings],” he said.

Steve Goddard, a blogger, said the conclusion that the first half of 2010 showed a record high temperature was “based on incorrect, fabricated data” because the researchers involved did not have access to much information on Arctic temperatures.

David Herro, the financier, who follows climate science as a hobby, said NOAA also “lacks credibility”.

But Jane Lubchenco, the administrator of NOAA, said the study found that the average temperature in the world had increased by 0.56° C (1° F) over the past 50 years. The rise “may seem small, but it has already altered our planet … Glaciers and sea ice are melting, heavy rainfall is intensifying, and heat waves are more common.”

——————————————————-
 http://planetark.org/wen/58965

Developing Nations See Cancun Climate Deal Tough.

Date: 29-Jul-10
Country: MEXICO
Author: Brian Ellsworth

Reaching a binding climate deal at the upcoming U.N. conference in Mexico will likely be difficult, delegates from a group of developing nations said on Monday, spurring further doubts about a global climate accord this year.

Environment ministers from Brazil, South Africa, India and China — known as the BASIC group — meeting in Rio de Janeiro said developed nations have not done enough to cut their own emissions or help poor countries reduce theirs.

Delays by the United States and Australia in implementing schemes to cut carbon emissions has added to gloomy sentiment about possible results from the Cancun meeting.

“If by the time we get to Cancun (U.S. senators) still have not completed the legislation then clearly we will get less than a legally binding outcome,” said Buyelwa Sonjica, South Africa’s Water and Environment Affairs minister.

“For us that is a concern, and we’re very realistic about the fact that we may not” complete a legally binding accord, she said.

BASIC nations held deliberations on Sunday and Monday about upcoming climate talks, but the representatives said those talks did not yield a specific proposal on emissions reductions to be presented at the Cancun meeting.

“I think we’re all a bit wiser after Copenhagen, our expectations for Cancun are realistic — we cannot expect any miracles,” said Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh.

He added that countries have failed to make good on promises for $30 billion in “fast track” financing for emissions reduction programs in poor countries.

“The single most important reason why it is going to be difficult is the inability of the developed countries to bring clarity on the financial commitments which they have undertaken in the Copenhagen Accord,” he said.

Hopes for a global treaty on cutting carbon emissions to slow global warming were dealt a heavy blow last year when rich and poor nations were unable to agree on a legally binding mechanism to reduce global carbon emissions.

More than 100 countries backed a nonbinding accord agreed in Copenhagen last year to limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times, but it did not spell out how this should be achieved.

The U.S. Senate on Thursday postponed an effort to pass broad legislation to combat climate change until September at the earliest, vastly reducing the possibility of such legislation being ready before the Cancun conference begins in December.

Australia has delayed a carbon emissions trading scheme until 2012 under heavy political pressure on from industries that rely heavily on coal for their energy.

The U.N.’s climate agency has detailed contingency options if the world cannot agree a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, whose present round expires in 2012 with no new deal in sight. {But the article does not spell them out and we wonder if they are any different from what we suggested – moving the deliberations away from the UNFCCC – to a much smaller group of Nations modeled along the lines on the evolving G20 with a united EU and a representation of AOSIS/SIDS and Highest suffering countries like Bangladesh on-board,}

Kyoto placed carbon emissions caps on nearly 40 developed countries from 2008-2012. {But Left out any responsibilities for the remaining countries including the above BRICS. Copenhagen was a success in the sense that it made it clear that the BRICS must be part of any agreement if it is going to happen – so, in this trspect, at Copenhagen there was progress – the first time since the beginning of the negotiations within UNFCCC.}

———————

The comments in green are those made by us – the editor of www.SustainabiliTank.info
WE ARE OPTIMISTS NEVERTHELESS AND WE HOPE THAT WITH THE UN-BASED SMILES FROM THE UN HEADQUARTERS IN NEW YORK, OUT OF THE WAY, A MORE ATUNNED  CHRISTIANA FIGUERES WILL INDEED COME UP WITH A MORE MANAGEABLE DEBATE.

From the Wikipedia: Karen Christiana Figueres Olsen (born August 7, 1956) was appointed Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) on 17 May 2010, succeeding Yvo de Boer[1] [2]. She had been a member of the Costa Rican negotiating team since 1995, involved in both UNFCCC[3] and Kyoto Protocol[4] negotiations. She has contributed to the design of key climate change instruments.[5] She is a prime promoter of Latin America’s active participation in the Convention,[6] a frequent public speaker,[7] and a widely published author.[8] She won the Hero for the Planet award in 2001.[9]

For Latin America, in the BASIC group, speaks Brazil which has created for itself the image of an oil-rich country. This might create further difficulties for Ms. Figueres and we do not yet say that Brazil steaked out a final position for Cancun. In effect, the October 3, 2010 elections will have brought to the fore-front a new President for Brazil and we are yet to see his or her position.


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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 20th, 2010
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)

Culture Change

19 July 2010

How We Will Turn the Gulf Catastrophe into Positive Change.
by Jan Lundberg
19 July 2010

Our Posting is in effect an amalgam of Jan Lundberg’s article at Culture Change http://www.culturechange.org/cms/content/view/666/68/
and an older version that reached us earlier.

We all want to really make it right in the Gulf. Will BP and the government handle it well enough? That’s in doubt. It’s actually up to us all. We need urgent environmental action especially involving energy consumption: let us cut oil use.

The grassroots coalition World Oil Reduction for the Gulf (WORG) has as its initial objective the promulgation and propagation of a powerful Resolution for immediate global remediation of the gusher in the Gulf of Mexico.


ImageWe all want to really make it right in the Gulf. Will BP and the government handle it well enough? That’s in doubt. It’s actually up to us all. We need urgent environmental action especially involving energy consumption: let us cut oil use.The grassroots coalition World Oil Reduction for the Gulf (WORG) has as its initial objective the promulgation and propagation of a powerful Resolution for immediate global remediation of the gusher in the Gulf of Mexico.

A sensible approach is to go after the low-hanging fruit, which WORG and many other advocates have identified.

World Oil Reduction for the Gulf’s first purpose is to ecologically and numerically counteract the unprcedented millions of barrels of toxic oil and methane spewing into the Gulf waters and the atmosphere.

The crisis may seem to abate, but it may not be possible to fully describe the long-term ecological and economic consequences with words, numbers and images.

To act you need not go further than to read and distribute the WORG Resolution. See the document on our new webpage at www.WorldOilReduction.org. As specified, relatively simple measures can begin to bring U.S. oil consumption under control, if we move toward achieving a reduction commensurate with the near hundreds of millions of gallons of oil and unknown number of cubic feet of methane released by the Deepwater Horizon (Macondo) gusher.

Image

We cannot stop there. The Gulf disaster has opened the eyes of millions of people to the threat that oil poses to all aspects of life on our small planet. The crisis in the Gulf cannot “go away” any time soon, but some citizens may want to believe it — will they miss the opportunity to do something about the overall problem? Will ecological degradation reach the killing point world-wide, to finally wake people up when it is too late?

If enough people begin to push their city councils to act — ordinances to follow the Resolution — we can achieve action also on the State level, finally causing the federal government to act in confirmation of a national movement. It seems obvious that for first states, Louisiana and Florida should be logical candidates, despite any anti-oil green tinge from cutting oil consumption: the “pain” of reducing oil use across the board would be distributed mainly beyond the Gulf. For a progressive proposal such as WORG to fly, it may have to be that a state like Vermont takes the plunge first.

We invite you to join us in our attempt to have the U.S. finally address its oil and energy gluttony. This can affect positively other nations and the global economy. The standing of the U.S. today as most wasteful consumer can improve by offsetting the Gulf disaster on a barrel-to-barrel basis, by cutting petroleum use. The U.S. uses twice the energy of affluent West European countries per capita, largely due to massive pro-oil subsidies in the U.S. It is high time that the profligate U.S. cuts back now, when the planet is taking a big hit from greedy BP and from those tied to its fortunes (you and me?).

Image

WORG offers a choice of various kinds of cutbacks in oil use for communities to undertake. These cutbacks, requiring “sacrifice,” would in the aggregate potentially make up for the entire Gulf oil gusher — past, present and future — in a short time if they were even modestly implemented. They will be clearly set out: a Washington, D.C. think tank is preparing for WORG a special graph of U.S. oil consumption that shows some of the many ways to reduce oil consumption. They won’t all be on the pie chart, but these ways include: lessening car dependence through enhancing mass transit, bicycling, and car-pooling; purchasing less food shipped from thousands of miles away; banning some disposable plastics; adjusting thermostats; banning leaf blowers and discouraging power mowers; shutting BP’s unsafe refineries, and — last but not least — ending the wars for oil.

Plugging the damaged well and cleanup are only the first step.

President Obama has offered no leadership towards slashing oil use – except for calling for a clean energy future.

We need action now, rather than waiting for results from long-term investment and faith in the free market and government.

As an independent oil industry analyst I have been trying to do everything possible to bring culture change to the forefront. We stand a good chance now to do that through WORG. I hope you share our goals and will get involved.

We have the WORG coalition counts as its members:

Center for Biological Diversity
RealitySandwich.com
Population Press
Hope Dance
Culture Change
and
Dr. Brent Blackwelder, president emeritus of Friends of the Earth – U.S.

——————————————–

To join WORG (no membership fee), consider the Resolution that we hope your city council and state will adopt. It is at www.WorldOilReduction.org. Let us know if you and your organization can be listed as a member or endorser of WORG. Your involvement in this cause as a WORG coalition member is most welcome. Very soon the website will be further developed for maximum participation and speedy actions for WORG participants.

Besides signing up more groups and individuals, the task at hand requires networking, research, travel, and publicity. The present WORG coalition members will do their part. Meanwhile, prior to rapid deployment for our first city-council Resolution for world oil reduction for the Gulf, Culture Change is now the organization making the big initial push. So your generous donation to Culture Change today will support the early, rapid development of WORG. Please go to our donation page at culturechange.org/donate.html

Thank you,

Jan Lundberg

independent oil industry analyst
Publisher, Editor and Founder, Culture Change
P.O. Box 4347, Arcata, CA 95518
 http://www.culturechange.org

Committee Against Oil Exploration (CAOE, pronounced K-O).
www.WorldOilReduction.org
jan “at” culturechange.org

Further reading:

On oil subsidies and more: “New thinking on BP spill: Declare a holiday!” by Brent Blackwelder,The Daly News: Energy Bulletin

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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 19th, 2010
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)

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

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

  • The UN Secretary-General and his climate finance advisers are exploring private financing options to deliver resources to combat climate change. Developing countries pledged “fast-start” financing — $10 billion per year for the next three years, growing to $100 billion annually by 2020 — for those nations least responsible for, and most affected by, climate changes. Should private donors contribute to aid to mitigate the effects of climate change in developing countries?
Yes — it is everyone’s responsibility
No — governments should find their own financing

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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 16th, 2010
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)

Pop goes the green myth On World Population Day, take note: population isn’t the problem.

People on planetIs population growth the cause of our troubles?A green myth is on the march. It wants to blame the world’s overbreeding poor people for the planet’s peril. It stinks. And on World Population Day, I encourage fellow environmentalists not to be seduced.

Some greens think all efforts to save the world are doomed unless we “do something” about continuing population growth. But this is nonsense. Worse, it is dangerous nonsense.

For a start, the population bomb that I remember being scared by 40 years ago as a schoolkid is being defused fast. Back then, most women round the world had five or six children. Today’s women have just half as many as their mothers — an average of 2.6. Not just in the rich world, but almost everywhere.

This is getting close to the long-term replacement level, which, allowing for girls who don’t make it to adulthood, is around 2.3. Women are cutting their family sizes not because governments tell them to, but for their own good and the good of their families — and if it helps the planet too, then so much the better.

This is a stunning change in just one generation. Why don’t we hear more about it? Because it doesn’t fit the doomsday agenda.

Half the world now has fewer than the “replacement level” of children. That includes Europe, North America, and the Caribbean, most of the Far East from Japan to Thailand, and much of the Middle East from Algeria to Iran.

Yes, Iran. Women in Tehran today have fewer children than their sisters in New York — and a quarter as many as their mothers had. The mullahs may not like it, but those guys don’t count for much in the bedroom.

And China. There, the communist government decides how many children couples can have. The one-child policy is brutal and repulsive. But the odd thing is that it may not make much difference any more. Chinese women round the world have gone the same way without compulsion. When Britain finally handed Hong Kong back to China in 1997, it had the lowest fertility in the world — below one child per woman. Britain wasn’t running a covert one-child policy. That was as many children as the women in Hong Kong wanted.

What is going on? Family-planning experts used to say that women only started having fewer children when they got educated or escaped poverty — like us. But tell that to the women of Bangladesh.

Recently I met Aisha, Miriam, and Akhi — three women from three families working in a backstreet sweatshop in the capital Dhaka. Together, they had 22 brothers and sisters. But they told me they planned to have only six children between them. That was the global reproductive revolution summed up in one shack. Bangladesh is one of the world’s poorest nations. Its girls are among the least educated in the world, and mostly marry in their mid-teens. Yet they have on average just three children now.

India is even lower at 2.8. In Brazil, hotbed of Catholicism, most women have two children. And nothing the priests say can stop millions of them getting sterilized. The local joke is that they prefer being sterilized to other methods of contraception because you only have to confess once. It may not be a joke.

Women are having smaller families because, for the first time in history, they can. Because we have largely eradicated the diseases that used to mean most children died before growing up. Mothers no longer need to have five or six children to ensure the next generation, so they don’t.

There are holdouts, of course. In parts of rural Africa, women still have five or more children. But even here they are being rational — they need the kids to mind the animals and work in the fields.

But most of the world now lives in cities. And in cities, children are an economic burden. You have to get them educated before they can get a job. And by then they are ready to leave home.

The big story is that rich or poor, socialist or capitalist, Muslim or Catholic, secular or devout, with tough government birth-control policies or none, most countries tell the same story: Small families are the new norm.

That doesn’t mean women don’t still need help to achieve their ambitions of small families. They need governments or charities to distribute modern contraception. But this is now about rights for women, not “population control.”

It is also true that population growth has not ceased yet. We have 6.8 billion people today, and may end up with another 2 billion before the population bomb is finally defused. But this is mainly because of a time lag while the huge numbers of young women born during the baby boom years of the 20th century remain fertile.

With half the world already at below-replacement birthrates, and with those rates still falling fast, the world’s population will probably be shrinking within a generation.

This is good news for the environment, for sure. But don’t put out the flags. Another myth put out by the population doom-mongers is that it’s all those extra people that are wrecking the planet. But that’s no longer the case.

Rising consumption today is a far bigger threat to the environment than a rising head count. And most of that extra consumption is still happening in rich countries that have long since given up growing their populations.

Virtually all of the remaining population growth is in the poor world, and the poor half of the planet is only responsible for 7 percent of carbon emissions.

The carbon emissions of one American today are equivalent to those of around four Chinese, 20 Indians, 40 Nigerians, or 250 Ethiopians. How dare rich-world greens blame the poor world for the planet’s perils?

Some greens need to take a long, hard look at themselves. They should remember where some of their ideas came from.

The granddaddy of demographic doomsters was Bob Malthus, an English clergyman who got famous by warning 200 years ago about population growth. He believed that the world’s population would keep increasing till it was cut down by disease or famine. Back in the ferment of the Industrial Revolution, he was a favorite of the evil mill owners and a scourge on anyone with a social conscience.

Malthus hated Victorian charities because he said they were keeping poor people alive to breed. Better that they die, he said. He believed the workhouses, where the destitute ended up, were too lenient, and he successfully campaigned for a get-tough law known at the time as Malthus’s Law.

The novelist Charles Dickens, a social reformer, attacked Malthus in several of his books. When Oliver Twist asked for more gruel in the workhouse, that was a satire on Malthus’s Law. In A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge was a caricature of Malthus. In Hard Times, Thomas Gradgrind, the unfeeling headmaster of Coketown, had a son called Malthus.

I think Karl Marx, another contemporary, was spot on when he called Malthusian ideas “a libel on the human race.” And we are seeing the truth of that today as, round the world, women are voluntarily cutting their family sizes. No compulsion needed.

The population bomb is being defused right now — by the world’s poor women. Sadly, the consumption bomb is still primed and ever more dangerous. Now that would be a proper target for environmentalists.

Editor’s note: Read a rebuttal to Pearce’s post by Robert Walker of the Population Institute.

———————————-

Earth to Fred

Of course population is still a problem

Fred Pearce’s recent post on population generated lots of impassioned discussion. In a rebuttal post, Robert Walker of the Population Institute takes Pearce to task and says he got the story all wrong. Meanwhile, Jason D. Scorse asks: What is the “optimum” population of planet Earth?

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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 16th, 2010
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)

New Power Capacity from Renewables Tops Fossil Fuels.

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

In 2009, for the second year in a row, both the U.S. and Europe added more power capacity from renewable sources such as wind and solar than from conventional sources like coal, gas and nuclear, according to twin reports launched today by the United Nations Environment Programme and the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century (REN21).

Renewables accounted for 60% of newly installed capacity in Europe and more than 50% in the USA in 2009. This year or next, experts predict, the world as a whole will add more capacity to the electricity supply from renewable than non-renewable sources.

The reports detail trends in the global green energy sector, including which sources attracted the greatest attention from investors and governments in different world regions.

Investment in core clean energy (new renewables, biofuels and energy efficiency) decreased by 7% in 2009 to the value of $162 billion. Many sub-sectors declined significantly in money invested, including large (utility) scale solar power and biofuels.

However, there was record investment in wind power. If spending on solar water heaters, as well as total installation costs for rooftop solar PV, were included, total investment in 2009 actually increased in 2009, bucking the economic trend.

New private and public sector investments in core clean energy leapt 53% in China in 2009. China added 37 gigawatts (GW) of renewable power capacity, more than any other country.

Globally, nearly 80 GW of renewable power capacity was added, including 31 GW of hydro and 48 GW of non-hydro capacity.

China surpassed the U.S. in 2009 as the country with the greatest investment in clean energy.

China’s wind farm development was the strongest investment feature of the year by far, although there were other areas of strength worldwide in 2009, notably North Sea offshore wind investment and the financing of power storage and electric vehicle technology companies.

Wind power and solar PV additions reached a record high of 38 GW and 7 GW, respectively. Investment totals in utility-scale solar PV declined relative to 2008, partly a result of large drops in the costs of solar PV. However, this decline was offset by record investment in small-scale (rooftop) solar PV projects.

The reports also show that countries with policies encouraging renewable energy have roughly doubled from 55 in 2005 to more than 100 today–half of them in the developing world–and have played a critically important role in the sector’s rapid growth.

The sister reports, UNEP’s Global Trends in Sustainable Energy Investment 2010 and the REN21′s Renewables 2010 Global Status Report, were released by UN Under-Secretary-General Achim Steiner, UNEP’s Executive Director, and Mohamed El-Ashry, Chair of REN21.

The UNEP report was prepared by London-based Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

The REN21 report was produced by a team of authors in collaboration with a global network of research partners.

The UNEP report focuses on the global trends in sustainable energy investment, covering both the renewable energy and energy efficiency sectors.

The REN21 report offers a broad look at the status of renewable energy worldwide today, covering power regeneration, heating and cooling and transport fuels, and paints the landscape of policies and targets introduced around the world to promote renewable energy.

Achim Steiner said: “The sustainable energy investment story of 2009 was one of resilience, frustration and determination.

Resilience to the financial downturn that was hitting all sectors of the global economy and frustration that, while the UN climate convention meeting in Copenhagen was not the big breakdown that might have occurred, neither was it the big breakthrough so many had hoped for. Yet there was determination on the part of many industry actors and governments, especially in rapidly developing economies, to transform the financial and economic crisis into an opportunity for greener growth.”

“There remains, however, a serious gap between the ambition and the science in terms of where the world needs to be in 2020 to avoid dangerous climate change. But what this five years of research underlines is that this gap is not unbridgeable. Indeed, renewable energy is consistently and persistently bucking the trends and can play its part in realizing a low carbon, resource efficient Green Economy if government policy sends ever harder market signals to investors,” he added.

Mohamed El-Ashry said, “Favorable policies now in place in more than 100 countries have played a critical role in the strength of global renewable energy investments recently. For the upward trend of renewable energy growth to continue, policy efforts now need to be taken to the next level and encourage a massive scale up of renewable technologies.”

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RELATED TOPICS
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London, England (CNN) — The creation of new power capacity from renewable energy has exceeded new fossil fuel power generation in the United States and Europe for the second year running, according to two United Nations reports published Thursday.
Renewables accounted for over 50 percent of new capacity in the U.S. in 2009 while in Europe the figure was 60 percent, leading the U.N. to predict that the world as a whole will add more capacity to the electricity supply from renewables than non-renewables this year or by 2011.
Globally, nearly 80 giga-watts (GW) of new renewable power capacity was added in 2009, the U.N. reported.
U.N. Environmental Program (UNEP) executive director, Achim Steiner said in a statement that the story of renewable energy investment in 2009 was one of “resilience to the financial downturn,” with many businesses and governments determined to “transform the financial and economic crisis into an opportunity for greener growth.”
The two reports — “Global Trends in Sustainable Energy Investment 2010″ and “Renewables, 2010 Global Status” — reveal that investment fell seven percent, from $173 billion in 2008 to $162 billion in 2009, largely due to declines in large-scale solar power and biofuels investment, which dropped 27 percent and 62 percent respectively.
But other green energy sub-sectors bucked the downward global investment trend.
Wind and biomass sectors both saw investment rise 14 percent, while energy smart technologies — which include power storage and energy efficiency devices — rose 34 percent to $4 billion.
“One of the upsides of the downturn of last year was that it did lead to a significant decease in the cost of some these [renewable] technologies, particularly in solar,” Eric Usher, manager the UN’s Sustainable Energy Finance Initiative, told CNN.
“So while investment numbers are flat or a little bit decreasing the actual scale of installation has been continuingly increasing.”
According to the U.N., wind power received record investment in 2009 — $67 billion in 2009 compared with $59 billion in 2008 — with a total of 38 GW of new energy installed worldwide.
Over a third of this capacity was due to Chinese growth where 13.8 GW of wind power were added in 2009.
Julian Wong, a Chinese energy policy expert at the Washington-based think tank, the Center for American Progress, told CNN: “China is doing what no other country in the world is doing. China is an example of what can be done, with good, strong policy to develop a vibrant sector.”
Wong says the Chinese domestic market is growing very quickly, with the government now targeting seven sites across the country which will be wind “megabases” generating 10-20 GW of power.
“I expect sometime this year, or early next, China will revise its targets on renewable energy upwards. This will provide a very strong signal to investors and provincial government that it is a priority for the country,” Wong said.
China’s renewable energy expansion is a “positive message globally,” Eric Usher believes.
“But it’s also a warning signal for western industries that they’re very serious about this sector and the competition will be strong in the future,” Usher said.
It’s not just China where wind power is really taking off. The U.N. highlighted the growth of wind power in the North Sea off the UK.
“Things are shaping up extremely well for the UK wind energy sector,” Nick Medic, head of communications at RenewableUK, the trade body for country’s renewable wind and marine industries.
“We have a colossal 49 GW offshore at various stages of development which could supply around 40 percent of the UK’s total electricity,” Medic said.
Unlike its large-scale cousin, smaller solar photovoltaics (PV) panels received record investment in 2009 passing the $40 billion mark.
The U.N. says that grid-connected solar power had grown from 0.2 GW in 2000 to 21 GW by the end of 2009.
Europe and Asia/Oceania are the two powerhouses of investment according to the U.N., contributing nearly $85 billion (Europe $43.7 billion, Asia/Oceania $41 billion) of total green energy investments in 2009.
Asia/Oceania was the only region to see a significant increase in investment — up nearly $10 billion from 2008. The Middle East and Africa saw a modest increase from $2.1 billion in 2008 to £2.5 billion in 2009.
“The fundamentals of the sector continue to be quite strong. The fact that you’ve seen a plateauing in investment rather than a large drop off in the last two years has signaled that the markets are in the longer term still poised for growth,” Usher said.
More than 100 countries now have renewable energy policies or promotions in place — nearly double the figure five years ago, according to the U.N.
Renewable energy now contributes a quarter of the world’s electricity capacity and is responsible for 18 percent of global power production.
Michael Liebreich, chief executive of Bloomberg New Energy Finance said in a statement: “The relatively resilient performance of the sector during the current economic downturn shows that clean energy was not a bubble created by the late stages of the credit boom, but is instead an investment theme that will remain important for the years ahead.”

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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 16th, 2010
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)

UN DAILY NEWS from the
UNITED NATIONS NEWS SERVICE

15 July, 2010 =========================================================================

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 15th, 2010
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)


THE GOLD STANDARD  PREMIUM QUALITY CARBON CREDITS.

GOLDEN PAGES IN PRINT – CARBON CHATTER:

Swedavia Swedish Airports Chooses Tricorona as Supplier of Gold Standard CDM Carbon Offsets.

Recently, Swedavia Swedish Airports, which runs
Sweden’s state-owned airports, announced that it

has chosen Tricorona as supplier of Gold Standard
CDM carbon offsetts for the next three years.

The initiative is part of Swedavia’s comprehensive climate
strategy, which includes reducing and offsetting
climate impact of the organization’s operations.

“Gold Standard CDM” represents the highest quality
level available for offset projects,” said Lena Wennberg,
environmental manager at Swedavia, “and Tricorona is
one of the few companies worldwide whose projects
meet its strict criteria for genuine carbon reductions
and contribution to sustainable development.”

The offset projects chosen are Sri Balaji, a biomass power
plant in India, and Yinyi and Yangjiayao, two wind
farms in China.

These projects save carbon emissions
by displacing coal power, and have a wide range of
benefits, such as reduced local air pollution and greater
security of energy supply for rural communities.

The emissions to be offset arise from Swedavia’s energy
use in buildings and fuel use in vehicles at all 14 of its
airports, as well as the organization’s business travel.
Information excerpted from Tricorona press release
dated May 25, 2010, see www.tricorona.se.

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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 15th, 2010
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)

ROTOR ELEKTRIK URETIM OSMANIYE WIND FARM IN TURKEY (GS474)

The projects consists of 54 wind turbines providing a total installed capacity 135 MW and reducing Turkey’s greenhouse gas emissions by over 300,000 tonnes a year.

Located in the Gokcedag Mountain in the Osmaniye Province of Turkey, this project was fully constructed in 2009 and registered with the Gold Standard in May 2009.

In addition to providing emission reductions, this project also provides the local communities with a number of sustainable benefits including local employment opportunities, knowledge transfer, contribution to thelocal economy with much of the construction equipment being sourced locally, and helping Turkey meet its growing energy demands through renewable energy sources.

For more information about the impact of this project and to purchase Gold Standard VERs visit www.ecosecurities.com.

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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 13th, 2010
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)

UNEP NEWS RELEASE: Green Goes Mainstream: Biodiversity Is Climbing the Corporate Agenda.
July 13, 2010

from James Sniffen :

The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) for Business Report.

Green Goes Mainstream: Biodiversity Is Climbing the Corporate Agenda.
Companies with ‘Net Positive Impact’ on Biological Diversity are Winners in
Resource-Constrained World.

One in four global CEOs sees biodiversity loss as a strategic issue for
business growth: Latin American and African CEOs are most concerned about
impacts of biodiversity loss on business growth prospects—European CEOs are
least concerned.

————

13 July, 2010 – Business leaders in biodiversity-rich developing economies
are concerned about losses of “natural capital”, a new report launched
today highlights.

Over 50 per cent of Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) surveyed in Latin
America and 45 per cent in Africa see declines in biodiversity as a
challenge to business growth. In contrast, less than 20 per cent of their
counterparts in Western Europe share such concerns.

The findings, compiled by a study of “The Economics of Ecosystems and
Biodiversity” (TEEB), indicate that those corporate chiefs who fail to make
sustainable management of biodiversity part of their business plans may
find themselves increasingly out of step with the market place.

Another recent survey, also spotlighted in the TEEB report for business,
shows rising interest among consumers with 60 per cent of those surveyed in
America and Europe and over 90 per cent in Brazil aware of biodiversity
loss.

Over 80 per cent of those consumers surveyed said they would stop buying
products from companies that disregard ethical considerations in their
sourcing practices.

The “TEEB for Business” report indicates that scrutiny of big business and
its impacts on the world’s natural capital is likely to intensify as better
evaluations and assessments come to the fore.

The UK-based consultancy TruCost, on behalf of the UN’s Principles for
Responsible Investment, is set to publish a study on the activities of the
world’s top 3,000 listed companies, estimating that their negative impacts
or “environmental externalities” total around $2.2 trillion annually.

Pavan Sukhdev, the TEEB Study Leader and also head of UNEP’s Green Economy
Initiative, said: “Through the work of TEEB and others, the economic
importance of biodiversity and ecosystems is emerging from the invisible
into the visible spectrum. It is clear that some companies in some sectors
and on some continents are hearing and acting on that message in order to
build more sustainable, 21st century businesses.”

Today’s report, entitled “TEEB for Business” and part of a suite of reports
being launched in the UN’s International Year of Biodiversity, calls for
companies to embrace concepts such as “No Net Loss”; “Ecological
Neutrality” and ultimately “Net Positive Impact” on the environment.

Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UNEP
which hosts TEEB, said: “We are entering an era where the multi-trillion
dollar losses of natural and nature-based resources are starting to shape
markets and consumer concerns. How companies respond to these risks,
realities and opportunities will increasingly define their profitability;
corporate profile in the market-place and the overall development paradigm
of the coming decades on a planet of six billion, going to over nine
billion people by 2050.”

Julia Marton-Lefevre, TEEB advisory board member and Director-General of
the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which
coordinated the “TEEB for Business” report, urged companies attending the
1st Global Business for Biodiversity Symposium at the Excel Centre in
London on 13 July to back new and transformational policies such as those
outlined in the report.

“Together Governments and business, in both developed and developing
economies, can show leadership by establishing networks of committed
corporations across all sectors dedicated to achieving a ‘Net Positive
Impact’ on biodiversity and ecosystem services.”

The TEEB report cites the case of the multinational mining giant Rio Tinto
as one company that has committed itself to achieving “Net Positive Impact”
on biodiversity. In association with leading conservation experts the
company has developed new ways of assessing the biodiversity values of its
land holdings, and has begun to apply biodiversity compensation or “offset”
methodologies in Madagascar, Australia and North America.

Other companies with similar commitments on biodiversity include Wal-Mart
(Acres for America initiative), Coca Cola (water neutral by 2020) and BC
Hydro (no net incremental ecological impact).

In addition to minimizing and mitigating adverse impacts, business can also
generate revenue from conserving biodiversity and delivering ecosystem
services. Agriculture, forestry and fisheries all depend on healthy
ecosystems to ensure healthy profits.

The tourism sector has a major stake and role to play in conserving
biodiversity. Realizing its reliance on the biodiversity rich but fragile
coral reefs, Chumbe Island Coral Park Ltd in Tanzania has invested over
$1.2million to establish a marine park to protect the corals surrounding
Chumbe Island. The company actively supports park management as well as its
own resort facilities.

The “TEEB for Business” report, which will form part of a final TEEB
synthesis report to be launched at a meeting of the Convention on
Biological Diversity in Nagoya, Japan in October 2010, calls on
professional associations to develop new accounting and reporting tools for
business.

The measurement and valuation of biodiversity and ecosystem services in
business is improving. The report recommends that accounting professions,
financial reporting bodies and others should accelerate efforts to develop
common standards and metrics to enable business to assess and disclose
their biodiversity impacts and responses in annual reports.

Joshua Bishop, the “TEEB for Business” report coordinator and Chief
Economist of IUCN, said: “Better accounting of business impacts on
biodiversity – both positive and negative – is essential to spur change in
business investment and operations. Smart business leaders realise that
integrating biodiversity and ecosystem services in their value chains can
generate substantial cost savings and new revenues, as well as improved
business reputation and license to operate.”

In another recent report by the World Business Council for Sustainable
Development, business leaders expressed their vision of a sustainable
future, which include “prices that reflect all externalities: costs and
benefits” (WBCSD Vision 2050).

Steps in this direction are already being taken, as evidenced by the growth
of markets for biodiversity and ecosystem services.  Market data compiled
by Forest Trends and the Ecosystem Marketplace showed:

* The certified agricultural products market was valued at over $40bn in
2008 and may reach up to $210bn by 2020.

* Biodiversity offsets, such as wetland mitigation banking in the United
States or “bio-banking” in Australia, are predicted to rise from $3 billion
in 2008 to $10 billion in 2020.

* Bio carbon/forest offsets including REDD are expected to rise from just
$21m in 2006 to over $10bn in 2020.

Starting today, businesses can show leadership on biodiversity and
ecosystem services (BES) by:

1. Identifying their impacts and dependencies on biodiversity and ecosystem
services
2. Assessing the business risks and opportunities associated with these
impacts and dependencies
3. Developing BES information systems, set targets and report results
4. Taking action to avoid, minimize and mitigate BES risks
5. Integrating BES actions with wider Corporate Social Responsibility
initiatives
6. Engaging with business peers and stakeholders to improve guidance and
policy
7. Grasping emerging BES business opportunities

The “TEEB for Business” report will be launched at the first Global
Business of Biodiversity Symposium on 13 July at the Excel Centre, London.
 http://www.businessofbiodiversity.co.uk/

———-

The “TEEB for Business” report is available at www.teebweb.org

The lead authors and editors of the “TEEB for Business” report include
staff from Business for Social Responsibility (BSR), Earthmind, the Global
Reporting Initiative (GRI), PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), IUCN, UNEP and
WBCSD.

The survey of CEOs and their attitudes to biodiversity loss was carried out
by Price WaterhouseCoopers.

The survey of consumer attitudes to biodiversity and business was carried
out by global market survey company IPSOS.

The TEEB project is hosted by UNEP and supported by the European
Commission; the German Federal Environment Ministry; the UK Government’s
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; the UK Department for
International Development; Norway’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs; The
Netherlands’ Interministerial Program Biodiversity; and the Swedish
International Development Cooperation Agency.

For more information, please contact:

Georgina Langdale, Communications, TEEB, Tel: +49-1707-617-138, Email
Georgina.langdale@unep-teeb.org

Brian Thomson, Media Relations and Campaigns, IUCN, Tel: + 41-22-999-0251,
Email Brian.Thomson@iucn.org

Or Nick Nuttall, UNEP Spokesperson/Head of Media, Tel: +254-733-632755
Email nick.nuttall@unep.org

***********************************
Jim Sniffen
Programme Officer
UN Environment Programme
New York
tel: +1-212-963-8094/8210
sniffenj@un.org
www.unep.org
*********************************

###

Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 11th, 2010
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)

The Return of the Bicycle.
Analysis by Lester R. Brown*
 http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=52066

WASHINGTON, Jul 6, 2010 (IPS) – The bicycle has many attractions as a form of personal transportation. It alleviates congestion, lowers air pollution, reduces obesity, increases physical fitness, does not emit climate-disrupting carbon dioxide, and is priced within the reach of the billions of people who cannot afford a car.

Bicycles increase mobility while reducing congestion and the area of land paved over. Six bicycles can typically fit into the road space used by one car. For parking, the advantage is even greater, with 20 bicycles occupying the space required to park a car.

Few methods of reducing carbon emissions are as effective as substituting a bicycle for a car on short trips. A bicycle is a marvel of engineering efficiency, one where an investment in 22 pounds of metal and rubber boosts the efficiency of individual mobility by a factor of three.

The bicycle is not only a flexible means of transportation; it is ideal in restoring a balance between caloric intake and expenditure. Regular exercise of the sort provided by cycling to work reduces cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, and arthritis, and it strengthens the immune system.

World bicycle production, averaging 94 million per year from 1990 to 2002, climbed to 130 million in 2007, far outstripping automobile production of 70 million. Bicycle sales in some markets are surging as governments devise a myriad of incentives to encourage bicycle use. For example, in 2009 the Italian government began a hefty incentive programme to encourage the purchase of bicycles or electric bikes in order to improve urban air quality and reduce the number of cars on the road. The direct payments will cover up to 30 percent of the cost of the bicycle.

China, with 430 million bikes, has the world’s largest fleet, but ownership rates are higher in Europe. The Netherlands has more than one bike per person, while Denmark and Germany have just under one bike per person.

China dramatically demonstrated the capacity of the bicycle to provide mobility for low-income populations. In 1976, this country produced six million bicycles. After the reforms in 1978 that led to an open market economy and rapidly rising incomes, bicycle production started climbing, reaching nearly 90 million in 2007.

The surge to 430 million bicycle owners in China has provided the greatest increase in mobility in history. Bicycles took over rural roads and city streets. Although China’s rapidly multiplying passenger cars and the urban congestion they cause get a lot of attention, it is bicycles that provide personal mobility for hundreds of millions of Chinese.

Among the industrial-country leaders in designing bicycle-friendly transport systems are the Netherlands, where 27 percent of all trips are by bike, Denmark with 18 percent, and Germany, 10 percent. By contrast, the United States and Britain are each at 1 percent.

An excellent study by John Pucher and Ralph Buehler at Rutgers University analyzed the reasons for these wide disparities among countries. They note that “extensive cycling rights-of-way in the Netherlands, Denmark, and Germany are complemented by ample bike parking, full integration with public transport, comprehensive traffic education and training of both cyclists and motorists.”

These countries, they point out, “make driving expensive as well as inconvenient in central cities through a host of taxes and restrictions on car ownership, use and parking.… It is the coordinated implementation of this multi-faceted, mutually reinforcing set of policies that best explains the success of these three countries in promoting cycling.” And it is the lack of these policies, they note, that explains “the marginal status of cycling in the UK and USA”.

The Netherlands, the unquestioned leader among industrial countries in encouraging bicycle use, has incorporated a vision of the role of bicycles into a Bicycle Master Plan. In addition to creating bike lanes and trails in all its cities, the system also often gives cyclists the advantage over motorists in right-of-way and at traffic lights. Some traffic signals permit cyclists to move out before cars. By 2007, Amsterdam had become the first western industrial city where the number of trips taken by bicycle exceeded those taken by car.

Within the Netherlands, a nongovernmental group called Interface for Cycling Expertise (I-ce) has been formed to share the Dutch experience in designing a modern transport system that prominently features bicycles. It is working with groups in Botswana, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Ghana, India, Kenya, Peru, South Africa, and Uganda to facilitate bicycle use.

Sales of electric bicycles, a relatively new genre of transport vehicles, also have taken off. E-bikes are similar to plug-in hybrid cars in that they are powered by two sources – in this case muscle and battery power – and can be plugged into the grid for recharging as needed.

In China, where this technology came into its own, sales climbed from 40,000 e-bikes in 1998 to 21 million in 2008. China had close to 100 million electric bicycles on the road that year, compared with 18 million cars. These e-bikes are now attracting attention in other Asian countries similarly plagued with air pollution and in the United States and Europe, where combined sales now exceed 300,000 per year.

In contrast to plug-in hybrid cars, electric bikes do not directly use any fossil fuel. If we can make the transition from coal-fired power plants to wind, solar, and geothermal power, then electrically powered bicycles can also operate fossil-fuel-free.

Above all, the key to realising the potential of the bicycle is to create bicycle-friendly transport systems. This means providing bicycle trails and designated street lanes for bicycles, designed to serve both commuters and people biking for recreation, and making bike parking facilities and showers available at workplaces. This simple bicycle is a winner in the Plan B economy.

—————

*Lester R. Brown is founder and president of the Earth Policy Institute. This article is excerpted from Chapter 6, “Designing Cities for People” in Brown’s ‘Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilisation’ (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2009), available on-line at  www.earthpolicy.org

###

Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 9th, 2010
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)

from raffaella@ecoharmony.com
to Energy-l <energy-l@lists.iisd.ca>
date Fri, Jul 9, 2010
subject [LondonRIG] Event 29 July 2010: Christian Aid’s Climate Change & Adaptation Work.
)

Dear all,

For those of you in London or passing by, LondonRIG will be having another informal presentation and discussion on:

“Christian Aid’s Climate Change & Adaptation Work with Links to Emerging Renewable Energy Issues” by Richard Ewbank, Climate Change Programme Coordinator at Christian Aid.

When: Thursday 29th of July 2010 at 18:30

Where: The Carpenters Arms, 12 Seymour Place, Marylebone, London

Note: The event is open to all! However due to the informal nature and short duration of the meet-up, we do not encourage or support attendance from overseas – unless you are passing by London for other reasons.

RSVP: thalia@ecoharmony.com (please respond with a YES or MAYBE if planning to come)

Topic:
‘Christian Aid has gained a high profile as a campaigning agency working on climate change but Richard will explain how their main programme work involves the rather more practical side of supporting poor communities to cope with the increasing levels of climate change that they are experiencing. This means increasing the resilience of their livelihoods, enhancing the ability of their communities to identify and plan for the likely future climate threats they may face and diversifying their sources of income.

He will describe how an important part of this process is to detect the level of climate change that has occurred and is likely in the future and to attribute livelihood risks correctly to climate or other risk factors.

With 44% of people in India and over 70% in Africa not connected to grid sources of electricity, renewable energy is a key resource in this adaptation process. ’

Please find flyer attached. Feel free to post this on your own newsletters or websites and to forward this to others who may be interested to attend.

Directions and other information about the event and the London Regional Interest Group, are available on the HEDON website:

http://www.hedon.info/LondonRIG:29Jul2010

We look forward to seeing you there.
Best regards,
Thalia & Raffaella

Thalia KONARIS
Eco Ltd: www.ecoharmony.com
PO Box 900, London, Bromley, BR1 9FF, UK
Tel +44-20 30 120 130
Fax  +44-20 30 120 140
email thalia@ecoharmony.com

###

Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 9th, 2010
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)

It happened last night, June 29, 2010, and the venue was the delightful Museum of American Finance – right there at 48 Wall Street, and our host was the delightful 1988 Founder, and Chairman Emeritus, John E. Herzog.

The Spring Issue of Financial History, the Museum’s Magazine is very up-to-date. It has on the cover Charles Ponzi and articles like “why We Love Scandals,” “Robbing Peter to Pay Paul,” “James Bowie’s Louisiana Purchase Fraud,” and Monclova Speculations,” “How to Make a Dead Ma” on the life insurance business.

The first thing I learned at the Museum was that Warren Buffet, now billionaire investor of the  was the only student at the Columbia University School of Business, who ever got an A+ from his Professor Benjamin Graham who in the early 1930s, taught his students Value Investing. Today’s Ben Graham Center for Value Investment at the Richard Ivey School of Business, in London, Western Ontario, Canada,  teaches: “First, we think of stocks in the same way that a business person would think of a business. Second, we do not follow but instead try to take advantage of the manic depressive Mr. Market. Third, we always look for a margin of safety.” Did you note – A MARGIN OF SAFETY!” Do you need to study the Manic Depressive side of Washington?

Anyway, Warren Buffet went on to sell pinball machines in bars, and with his first $1,000 he earned he bought land which he rented to farmers. The rest is history, and ask Berkshire Hathaway investors about safe investing.

I learned much more in this excellent museum and recommend it to our readers. I even learned that in the Napoleon – Thomas Jefferson Louisiana deal – the Louisiana purchase that doubled the size of the US for $15 million in US Treasuries subscribed by two European banks, the US acquired the land at 3 cents/acre.

But, it was not the museum and the catered treats we got at the end that brought me there: it was a Sierra Club e-mail about a panel: “EVERYBODY WINS: INVESTING IN ENERGY EFFICIENCY.”

The  moderator was Michael Richter – partner with Environmental Capital Partners (ECP), a private equity firm affiliated with New York Private Bank & Trust that provides long-term capital and management support to leading middle-market companies in the environmental industry. (Before doing that, and before business school,  he was three time National Hockey League All-Star.)

His panel included:

Rebecca Craft, Director of Energy Efficiency Programs at Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc. A regulated utility that whatever happens – must make a profit.

Christopher J. Lord, Senior Vice President of Business Development at Hannon Armstrong Capital. They specialized in the last 30 years in investment in new technologies.

Carl Pope, Chairman of the Sierra Club, America’s largest grassroots environmental organization and as the paper proudly states - “The Aspen Institute, after surveying every member of Congress and key federal officials, named the Sierra Club as the most influential organization in Washington DC.” I was appalled reading this self description which in my eyes looked rather like the reason of disqualification from claiming representation on environmentalism’s board.

————–

After the statements by the panelists, with major participation of Con Edison that turned it all into a rather energy for the home sort of an event, there were many intelligent questions from the audience, and I am sorry to say that again I found it quite disquieting as I realized that with this sort of discussion we will really not get out of the hole we find that we dug ourselves with the  help of exactly this sort of thinking – how to make a buck by skirting the real issues and trying somehow to improve at the margin.

I did not raise any question – rather slumbered through it all – then went over to a chat with Carl Pope.


Now this is a work in progress and I will get back to it – but want to post mow because of another event I picked up and want our readers that can make it – go over if they can.

Today, Wednesday, June 30, 2010,  12:30 – 01:30, at the Museum – 48 Wall Street, New York NY, 10005
tel: 1-212-908-4110

There will be a  discussion on past, present, and future of energy trading.

Participants are: Howard Hopkins, Director Energy Products CME Group.

and Paul Huges. Senior Analyst within Business Development for CME Group.

They will provide an overview of pre-electronic energy trading, speak about the current status of the markets, and discuss the globalization of futures markets and CME Group.

—————

We just received our electricity bill and it had an attachment for the sake of “ENVIRONMENTAL DISCLOSURE FOR CON ED”
It gave “The Fuel Souces and Air Emissions to Generate Your Electricity for the year 2006.” Is it not amazing? July 2010 we get information for 2006 – and they are partners of a panel with Sierra Club Chief?

So how did they produce our electricity in 2006?

Gas          – 50%

Nuclear   – 35%

Coal         -    8%

Hydro     -     3%

Oil           -     2%

Biomass, Solar, Solid Waste, Wind – each one of them says Less then 1% – and if we total them all up – we find that their total is 2% at best.

Now, do not think that the Con Edison list was according to resources used as I did it. It was rather by alphabet – so it is less obvious to the eye.

###

Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 8th, 2010
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)

A SWISS-led Project. They also came up with the Swatchmobil that turned into best-selling SMART car.

Why does the US not do this sort of work. Think about the availability of the Huntsville, Alabama facilities, could they figure out work on Solar Flight projects?

————————-

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20…

Solar Impulse completes 24-hour flight.

AP – guardian.co.uk, – Thursday 8 July 2010.

Plane powered by the sun lands safely in Switzerland after completing its first 24-hour test flight

Watch footage of the flight Link to this video

An experimental solar-powered plane landed safely today after completing its first 24-hour test flight, proving that the aircraft can collect enough energy from the sun during the day to stay aloft all night.

Pilot André Borschberg eased the Solar Impulse aircraft on to the runway at Payerne airfield, about 31 miles south-west of the Swiss capital, Berne, at 9am local time today.

Helpers rushed to stabilise the pioneering plane as it touched down, ensuring that its massive 63-metre wingspan didn’t touch the ground and topple the craft.

The record feat completes seven years of planning and brings the Swiss-led project one step closer to its ultimate aim of circling the globe using only energy from the sun.

The team says it has now shown the single-seat plane can theoretically stay in the air indefinitely, recharging its depleted batteries using 12,000 solar cells and nothing but the rays of the sun during the day.

Borschberg took off from Payerne airfield into the clear blue sky shortly before 7am yesterday, allowing the plane to soak up plenty of sunshine and fly in gentle loops over the Jura mountains, west of the Swiss Alps.

The 57-year-old former Swiss fighter pilot dodged low-level turbulence and thermal winds, endured freezing conditions during the night and ended the test flight with a picture-perfect landing to cheers and whoops from hundreds of supporters on the ground.

After completing final tests on the plane he embraced project co-founder Bertrand Piccard before gingerly unstrapping himself from the bathtub size cockpit where he had spent more than 26 hours sitting.

“When you took off it was another era,” said Piccard, himself a record-breaking balloonist. “You land in a new era where people understand that with renewable energy you can do impossible things.”

Although the goal is to show that emissions-free air travel is possible, the team has said it doesn’t see solar technology replacing conventional jet propulsion any time soon. Instead, the project is designed to test and promote new energy-efficient technologies.

————————-

Solar-Powered Plane Flies for 26 Hours.


Solar Impulse, piloted by André Borschberg, flew for 26 hours and reached a height of 28,543 feet, setting a record for the longest and highest flight ever made by a solar plane.
By ALAN COWELL, the New York Times
Published: July 8, 2010


But the paper edition printed in New York on July 9, 2010 demeaned the article by giving it the title:

THE POWER OF THE SUN MADE ICARUS CRASH, BUT IT KEEPS A PLANE ALOFT FOR 26 HOURS. We think Alan Cowell should complain to NYT headquarters.

NYT Editor – The sensationalism is in the achievement and the potential, not in the wise cracks – please.


PARIS — Slender as a stick insect, a solar-powered experimental airplane with a huge wingspan completed its first test flight of more than 24 hours on Thursday, powered overnight by energy collected from the sun during a day aloft over Switzerland.
The organizers said the flight was the longest and highest by a piloted solar-powered craft, reaching an altitude of just over 28,000 feet above sea level at an average speed of 23 knots, or about 26 miles per hour.
The plane, Solar Impulse, landed where it had taken off 26 hours and 9 minutes earlier, at Payerne, 30 miles southwest of the capital, Bern, after gliding and looping over the Jura Mountains, its 12,000 solar panels absorbing energy to keep its batteries charged when the sun went down.
The pilot, André Borschberg, 57, a former Swiss Air Force fighter pilot, flew the plane from a cramped, single-seat cockpit, buffeted by low-level turbulence after takeoff and chilled by low temperatures overnight.
“I’ve been a pilot for 40 years now, but this flight has been the most incredible one of my flying career,” Mr. Borschberg said as he landed, according to a statement from the organizers of the project. “Just sitting there and watching the battery charge level rise and rise, thanks to the sun.” He added that he had flown the entire trip without using any fuel or causing pollution. The project’s co-founder, Dr. Bertrand Piccard, who achieved fame by completing the first nonstop, round-the-world flight by hot air balloon in 1999, embraced the pilot after he landed the plane to the cheers of hundreds of supporters.
“When you took off, it was another era,” The Associated Press quoted Dr. Piccard as saying. “You land in a new era where people understand that with renewable energy you can do impossible things.”
The project’s designers had set out to prove that — theoretically at least — the plane, with its airliner-size, 208-foot wingspan, could stay aloft indefinitely, recharging batteries during the day and using the stored power overnight. “We are on the verge of the perpetual flight,” Dr. Piccard said.
The project’s founders say their ambition is for one of their craft to fly around the world using solar power. The propeller-driven Solar Impulse, made of carbon fiber, is powered by four small electric motors and weighs around 3,500 pounds. During its 26-hour flight, the plane reached a maximum speed of 68 knots, or 78 miles per hour, the organizers said.
The seven-year-old project is not intended to replace jet transportation — or its comforts.
Just 17 hours after takeoff, a blog on the project’s Web site reported, “André says he’s feeling great up there.”
It continued: “His only complaints involve little things like a slightly sore back as well as a 10-hour period during which it was minus 20 degrees Celsius in the cockpit.”
That made his drinking water system freeze, the post said and, worst of all, caused his iPod batteries to die.
—————————–
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/37ebb444-8abe-11df-8e17-00144feab49a.html

Solar-powered flight boosted by trip at night.

By Pilita Clark and Fiona Harvey in London

Published: July 8 2010 20:04, The Financial Times – front page.

The race to make aircraft environmentally sustainable received a boost on Thursday after a Swiss group said it had flown a solar-powered aircraft through the night.

The Solar Impulse aircraft, with the wingspan of a large passenger jet but the weight of a family car, flew for more than 26 hours using solar power stored during the day, in what organisers said was the longest and highest flight in the short history of solar aviation.

A solar-powered aircraft

A glider-like aircraft with solar cells in its wings has completed its first night flight.

“I have just flown more than 26 hours without using a drop of fuel and without causing any pollution,” said André Borschberg, the fighter pilot and engineer who made the flight over the Alps, landing at dawn at Payerne airbase in the north-western canton of Vaud.

Mr Borschberg is a co-founder of the Solar Impulse venture, along with Bertrand Piccard, a Swiss explorer who made the first non-stop round-the-world balloon flight in 1999.

The aircraft has 12,000 solar cells built into its wings that power four electric motors and batteries. Mr Piccard said the flight was a big step towards “perpetual flight without using a drop of fuel”.

The organisers are planning a 36-hour flight next, and in two years will attempt to fly around the world. Iata, the airline industry’s main trade body, will support that flight by obtaining air traffic control clearance.

The association said: “Solar power is unlikely to be the solution for commercial aviation. But after today’s flight, nobody, ever again, can say that carbon-free flight is impossible. The industry’s job is to achieve the same for a plane carrying 400 people.”

However, the craft is still viewed by the aviation industry as a fascinating experiment rather than a model of what aircraft can become. The Solar Impulse has been engineered to be as light as possible and is capable of carrying only the pilot. Many engineers are sceptical that solar panels alone could ever provide enough power for a standard-sized passenger aircraft.

But the €70m ($88m, £58m) Solar Impulse project has attracted interest and support from some European blue-chip companies. These include Deutsche Bank, France’s Dassault Aviation and the Altran high-tech consultancy.

Using renewable energy to power transport is a long-held dream of environmental engineers. Electricity and heating can easily be generated from renewable sources but transport fuels that could replace oil are much more of a challenge. Electric cars use proven technology, but the batteries that would enable them to travel long distances are still not fully developed.

###

Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 8th, 2010
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)

From The Brazilian American Chamber of Commerce Inc.

www.BrazilCham.com

Eduardo Giannetti da Fonseca, Ph.D.
Economic Advisor to Ms. Marian Silva’s (Green Party. of Brazil) Presidential Campaign.

Thursday, July 22, 2010
4:00 – 4:30 PM    Registration and Networking
4:30 – 6:00 PM  Presentation and Question & Answer

Crowell & Moring LLP
590 Madison Avenue, 22nd Floor,  New York City

###

Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 8th, 2010
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)

from: Bel Camargo <belcamargo@gmail.com>
date: Thu, Jul 8, 2010
subject: New climate finance policy brief by ODI and the Heinrich Boell Foundation

New climate finance policy brief by ODI and the Heinrich Boell Foundation: Climate finance additionality: emerging definitions and their implications.

This is the second paper in a series of policy briefs which provides independent commentary on current themes associated with the international debate on climate finance. The papers are prepared by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and Heinrich Boell Foundation and posted on the climate funds update website (www.climatefundsupdate.org).

The website has just updated information on several of its funds and will conduct a systematic update of all funds by end of July. The website will also soon expand to include new searchable graphs and databases as well as new information on Fast Start Finance.

###

Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 8th, 2010
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)

Past US Independence Day, for Bastille Day – July 14, 2010 – we note the following US effort:

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE SELECTS ROCHESTER AS A SITE FOR A FORUM DISCUSSION ABOUT PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA’S NATIONAL EXPORT INITIATIVE

- NEI Aims to Double the Number of Exports by 2012 -

ROCHESTER, N.Y. – (July 2, 2010) — Rochester is the only Upstate New York City the U.S. Department of State has selected as the location for a forum discussion about President Barack Obama’s National Export Initiative (NEI). NEI aims to double the United States’ number of exports by 2012 and create 2 million jobs nationwide, approximately the same number of jobs lost by the manufacturing sector during the economic downturn.

“The Department of State chose Rochester because the Greater Rochester Region is the largest exporting metro region in Upstate New York, and it is one of the top 5 exporting regions per capita in the United States,” said International Business Council (IBC) of Greater Rochester, NY Executive Director Laurie DeRoller. “This town hall style meeting will provide local businesses with valuable information they need to grow and create jobs.”

Thomas Engle, director of the Office of Monetary Affairs Bureau of Economic, Energy, and Business Affairs for the U.S. Department of State, will speak at the event, which takes place Wednesday, July 14 from 11 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. at the Gleason Works Auditorium, located at 1000 University Avenue in Rochester.

The IBC is hosting the NEI Forum Discussion along with the United States Department of Commerce (USDOC) Export Assistant and the Upstate NY District Export Council (DEC). There is no cost for IBC and DEC members, and Greater Rochester Enterprise (GRE) board members and investors. There is a $20 cost for all other attendees. To register for the event, contact Heidi Schmitt at Heidi@Rochesterbiz.com or register at http://www.regonline.com/register/checkin.aspx?EventId=875859.

ABOUT IBC:

The International Business Council of Greater Rochester, NY (IBC) is a collaborative association established to promote and expand international opportunities by developing and
enhancing the expertise of its members. An affiliate of GRE, IBC is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to bringing the trade community programs, assistance, and opportunities to enhance international trade practices.

ABOUT GRE:

Located in the heart of New York’s technology corridor, Greater Rochester Enterprise (GRE) is a public-private partnership established to professionally market the Rochester metropolitan region as a competitive, high-profile place for business location and growth. Its efforts support business attraction and expansion, as well as entrepreneurship and innovation.  GRE collaborates with businesses, universities, not-for-profit organizations and government leaders to ensure a unified approach to regional economic development.  For more information, please go to www.RochesterBiz.com.
========================================

But not everything is smooth with the NEI – there is also criticism. We hope that the Rochester location will provide for a discussion of not only the job creation aspect of this initiative – but also of the quality of the jobs as sustainability can be achieved only if these are high quality new tech jobs – otherwise the effort will rather end up promoting jobs overseas at high subsidy expense. We expect a lively discussion in Rochester.

——————————————-

Obama Announces Export Council, Reports On Export Progress.

By Dave Johnson

July 7, 2010,

http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2010072707/obama-announces-export-council-reports-export-progress

In his State of the Union speech President Obama announced the National Export Initiative, a campaign to double US exports within 5 years. Today he gave a progress report and announced the members of his Export Council, with a number of CEOs (and one labor leader) including Alan Mulally of the Ford Motor Company, Scott Davis of U.P.S., Glenn Tilton, United Airlines Chairman and CEO and Robert A. Iger of the Walt Disney Company.

The White House says that with a 17% increase in exports in the first 4 months of the year we are on track to double exports within 5 years.

Announcing the Export Council, Obama said, “We’ve got to compete for those customers. We mean to compete for those jobs and compete to win.”

For example, they are setting up “business assistance centers” abroad to help American companies get business, and increasing credit through the Export/Import bank.. They are fighting barriers that other countries have set up to keep out American products, so far increasing our export of things like pork by $1 billion. “When we give other countries the privilege of free and fair access we expect it in return.”

—————–

Leo Hindery, Chairman of the US Economy/Smart Globalization Initiative at the New America Foundation, writes at Huffington Post,

There are three problems with this pledge.

First, doubling U.S. exports would create just 10 percent of the 22 million new jobs we need, and yet, combined with multiple new free trade agreements (FTAs), it seems to be the only specific jobs policy coming from the White House.

Second, this strategy wrongly overshadows the more critical imperative of ‘import substitution’.

Third, the first three FTAs being proposed — with South Korea, Panama and Colombia — are very poorly negotiated and will cause even more American jobs to be lost overseas.

. . . And as the economist Clyde Prestowitz has determined, with plenty of supporting evidence, “the more free trade agreements the U.S. has entered into, the bigger America’s trade imbalances have become and the less our allies have seemed to like or pay attention to us”.

Hindery explains how past “free trade” agreement have failed American workers,

When NAFTA was proposed in 1993, five promises were made about the positive effects that were certain to come to the U.S., not one of which has been kept. The two ‘biggies,’ of course, were that (1) “NAFTA will generate a U.S. trade surplus with Mexico of around $100 billion between the years 2000 and 2010″ — in fact, our trade deficit with Mexico for these ten years will be around $527 billion; and (2) “NAFTA will create many new high-wage jobs in the United States” — instead, at least two million American workers have already lost their jobs.

. . . But even more imbalanced has been China’s entry into the WTO, which occurred a decade ago. Back then, President Clinton promised that this would be “a hundred-to-nothing deal for America when it comes to the economic consequences” — instead, our overall trade deficit with China has increased 173 percent since 2000, China is now responsible for around 75 percent of our overall annual trade deficit in manufactured goods, and we’ve lost more than one-third of our manufacturing jobs, mostly to China (and Mexico).

But Hindery’s beef is not that Obama is pushing Bush-negotiated agreements with Korea, Columbia and Panama, it is that this appears to be the only job-creation plan that Obama is offering.

Hindery offers a number of steps to improve the situation, including scrapping Bush-negotiated trade agreements and negotiating fair and balanced agreements that lift us and our partners instead of giving big corporations a hammer to use to lower American wages and eliminate American jobs.

Increasing exports is important. Fighting trade barriers is important. This will help the economy recover. Bravo to the President for this.

Now, how about recognizing that there is a jobs emergency and pushing hard on the Congress to set up some direct government job-creation programs?

—–   —–    —–

We want to add here again – that job creation is important but one must remember to look under the rug and make sure that these are jobs in the technologies of the future. In the past the US exported wind mill technology under the otherwise corrupt ENRON Corporation – but with ENRON we also lost the wind – and that is something that needs correction – so our point is that the US needs exports that are for the long term – exports of technologies for the future.

###

Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 8th, 2010
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)

A blog about all things green, from conservation to Capitol Hill.

Report Card on Renewables: Europe’s Getting A’s.


Posted by Jeffrey KlugerTuesday, July 6, 2010 at 3:54 pm


There are some new numbers worth pondering as the east coast sizzles through day three of a heat wave and the Time offices operate at brown-out  levels so that the air conditioning doesn’t crash the building-wide power grid. Whether or not the current scorcher has anything to do with climate change, there’s no doubt that we’re in for a lot more such summers as atmospheric carbon levels rise and the planet steadily warms. And there’s no doubt that the best way out of that mess is to switch from an oil-based grid to a renewables-based one—and pronto. That’s why Europe—Olde Europe, fusty Europe, the continent that couldn’t shoot straight—has reason to be proud.

According to a new report from the European Commission’s Joint Research Center (JRC), fully 62% of new electrical capacity installed in the European Union in 2009 came from renewables—meaning that nearly 20% of all electricity consumed by the continent is now clean and green. Of the 62% that was newly installed, 37.1% was wind power, 21% was photovoltaics, 2.1% was biomass, 1.4% was hydropower, and .4% was concentrated solar power—solar electricity produced not from  panels, but from collected sunlight that boils a fluid which in turn drives a zero-emissions turbine.

Of the 38% of new power that was not renewable, most (24%) was natural gas, and 8.7% was familiar, dirty coal. Nuclear power, which has historically played such a big role in the continent’s power grid, was just 1.6%.

Europe’s success is no accident, but rather comes from long range planning. Policymakers had set themselves a goal of producing 40 gigawatts (GW) of wind power per year by 2010, for example, and with that serving as a goad, actually exceeded the target by nearly 100%, with a current output of 74 GW. The new goal is 230 GW (or 20% of the continent’s total energy needs) by 2020.


As for the U.S.?

Renewables currently provide just 10.1% of our total electricity generation, or about half of the level Europe has achieved. And with the climate and energy bill now languishing in the place all good ideas go to die—the U.S. Senate—the prospects for  improving  those numbers in the near future look dim. Meantime, the 4 PM temperature in New York City is 102 degrees and the lights are still on—for now.

Read more: http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2010/07/06/report-card-on-renewables-europes-getting-as/#ixzz0t4OJ8DiL

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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on July 7th, 2010
by Pincas Jawetz (PJ@SustainabiliTank.com)

from: Energy and Capital <eac-eletter@angelnexus.com>
subject: I Got the Asian Itch.

By Nick Hodge, Energy & Capital | Wednesday, July 7th, 2010

I’ve got the Asian itch, and it won’t be hard to see why…

I’ve got this itch because the region’s economies continue to grow while economic tremors continue to rock Europe and the United States.

I’ve got this itch because Asia’s investment in cleantech continues to grow while it shrinks in other areas:

New Financial Investment in  Clean Energy by Region.

I’ve got this itch because Asian governments turned to cleantech as the obvious choice for financial stimulus — with China, South Korea, and Japan allocating $20 billion more to the sector than the United States:

Annual Global Stimulus Spending  for Clean Energy.

I’ve got this itch because China out-invested us 2:1 last year in new energy technologies:

New Financial Investment in  Clean Energy - Top 15 Countries.

Which makes their long-term cleantech investment curve look like this:

New Clean  Energy Investment in  China.

While ours looks like this:

New Clean Energy  Investment  U.S.

Scratching the itch…

With a financial investment edge like that, you can bet Asia’s — particularly China’s — dedication is translating to wins in the public markets as well.

Five years ago, you’d be hard-pressed to find more than one or two Chinese companies on global top ten lists…

Now, they’ve taken three of the top 10 global wind spots and six in the solar race:

Top 10  Solar and Wind  Manufacturers

And not only are they whooping us in investment and production capacity; European and U.S. companies look silly next to Chinese stars:

Chinese Solar  vs. U.S. and  Europe 2

That’s why 19 of the last 60 or so winners I’ve closed in the Alternative Energy Speculator have been China-based.

But my itch isn’t satisfied yet…

You see, only Asia’s dominance of the solar market has been thoroughly established in U.S. markets, where Chinese ADRs are common.

And while their dominance of wind and smart grid industries is definitely being plotted and executed, there’s been no way to play it in domestic markets — until now.

Sinovel (the #3 company in the table above) has announced ambitions to be the world wind leader in the next five years. I’m guessing this company, along with a few other Chinese entrants, will go the initial public offering route.

And if you think there’s work to be done on our grid, you should have a look at Asia where, in some places, there is no grid at all.

In fact it’s being built from scratch.

Just last week, Bloomberg broke news that “smart grid technology will be one of the key industries for research and development support in China’s upcoming 12th Five Year development plan, due to be enacted at the beginning of 2011.”

China’s largest grid operator, the State Grid Corp., has already said it will invest $37 billion this year alone to build a nationwide smart grid network.

So to recap…

China has leveraged its massive economy to become world leaders in solar and wind technology, outinvesting other nations by far.

Now they’re turning to the smart grid, which we’ll be necessary if they’re ever to harness that solar and wind potential effectively.

And make no mistake — only the Chinese survive in China. They take care of and nurture their own.

Like the Chinese solar companies now sharply outperforming their foreign competitors, I’ve found the one company about to become a global smart grid and electric car juggernaut.

As you can tell from all the data above, China is betting on a clean energy future.

And it’s winning.

While the U.S. continues to lag behind, you can satisfy your Asian itch by following China’s lead.

Call it like you see it.
Nick

P.S. China’s thirst for energy is incomparable. And it’s not just clean energy they’re after… My friend Christian DeHaemer is fresh off a trip to Mongolia, where he cozied up with a tiny company sitting on $51 billion worth of crude. And China wants it — bad.

He’s going to release a full report on the company and its massive find tomorrow. But because you’re a loyal reader of Energy & Capital, I figured I’d give you early access to it today.

———————–

China’s Next Cleantech Takeover: World’s Largest Automaker!

It was just a tiny, $10 battery company…

But right now, as part of China’s rapid cleantech mission, this little gem is rapidly on the verge of becoming the world’s largest automaker!

Click here for your free report.

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