For those of you who may not know, I’m currently off on vacation. The picture above is the view from my window in the evening, just as the moon was coming up. It is only through the miracle of modern satellite technology that I’m able to check in with you, as the word “remote” only begins to describe my current location. It’s on the rocky edge of a mountain lake at the northern reaches of the Adirondack Range, not far from the Canadian border. Just getting here involves an extensive trip which includes phrases such as, “after the paved roads end” and a significant journey by boat after vehicles can go no further.
The place is hauntingly beautiful in a savage, untamed way, and very special to our family. All around the lakes, the land - such as it is - is characterized by massive expanses of stone where trees find only tenuous purchase in thin amounts of soil. This is a lake that was carved out by glaciers some ten thousand years ago, and the massive granite foundation is pure bedrock. It’s like standing on the very Bones of the Earth which, incidentally, is a loose translation of the name given to this area by the indiginous Native American tribes.
It’s a place which can push a person - even a cynical old, obsessive political hack like yours truly - towards dangerous levels of introspection. Last night, after most of the family had retired for the evening, I went out onto the rocky point the camp sits on, lay down upon the stone and just stared up into the night sky. If you live anywhere near a populated area of the lowlands, you tend to forget what the night really looks like. The haze in the atmosphere and the ambient light of civilization blurs and dims the view. Up here in the mountains, far from the nearest collection of buildings which could only charitably be called a “town” with a population breaking three digits, the view changes. To call it breathtaking doesn’t really do it justice. The number of stars that are visible boggles the mind, and the belt of the milky way is clearly in view. The absolute silence, broken only softly and occasionally by the lapping of water on rock or the nocturnal scurrying of unseen wildlife, quickly drags my mind off on seldom travelled paths. Read the rest of this entry »
For the past couple of weeks I have been spending more and more time inside as the air outside has gotten worse and worse. Looking into gray skies caused by literally hundreds of fires all over Northern California caused me to take a look at the causes of these fires.
Of course the primary cause of the fires was a freak thunderstorm that produced hundreds of lightning strikes. Also at fault was an unusually dry spring (one of the driest on record). But there is a deeper cause which allowed for the buildup of tons of fuel for this fire to grab hold of.
“Will the one who wants to be the bringer of ‘change we can believe in’ keep his promise if elected on November 4? To win this election, Mr. Obama is ready to abandon or modify some of his strongest commitments. So he decided to refuse public financing for his campaign and the spending limits attached thereto. Thus he is prepared to vote yes in the Senate for a bill that would justify the wire tapping authorized by Mr. Bush. He has also revised his position on the presence of troops in Iraq and has given assurances to pro-Israeli organizations. … These are the rules of the game and we shouldn’t exaggerate the importance of such tactical gestures. And neither should anyone imagine that politics has ceased to be politics, nor that it’s possible to win an election in the United States or elsewhere without being a realistic politician.”
Entire forests have been pulped to provide the paper for all of the commentaries in the day and a half since the Supreme Court overturned the District of Columbia’s handgun ban, but when all is said and done this is what it comes down to:
Justice Antonin Scalia, who in vociferously opposing the majority in the Gitmo detainee decision two weeks ago wrote that it “will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed,” has no such concern when it comes ignoring the literal meaning of the Constitution, let alone the well being of residents of violent inner city neighborhoods.
* * * * *
A few blocks from the Supreme Court, David Addington and John Yoo, the two key players in justifying the use of torture on those detainees and other guests in the Rumsfeld Gulag, cozied up to microphones and did a bad cop-good cop routine that would make Heinrich Himmler blush.
The graceless Yoo showed none of the fire he exhibited in a recent Wall Street Journalop-ed piece justifying his infamous torture memos and copped a poor-pitiful-me attitude in trying to blow smoke up the asses of his questioners by asserting that he was merely a bit player — and a misunderstood one at that. Nobody, of course, believed him.
* * * * *
There is an emerging consensus in the wake of that Supreme Court ruling that Gitmo has to go, but where? John McCain proposes the Army prison at Ft. Leavenworth, but the base commander and Kansas’ two Republican U.S. senators are crying NIMBY.
Lieutenant General William Caldwell IV says the Disciplinary Barracks, as the prison is formally known, would require a major revamping if foreign prisoners were to be brought in. This presumably would not mean having to add running water, a requisite for waterboarding.
* * * * *
The Fourth Branch of the U.S. government is unhappy about President Bush’s conciliatory gestures toward North Korea.
Mr. Fourth Branch answered question after question during an off-the-record sit-down with foreign reporters, but when the subject of the newly de-listed member of the Axis of Evil came up, participants say he froze and stared unsmilingly at his questioner for several long seconds, harrumphed that he was not the one to announce the decision, declared he was done taking questions and left.
* * * * *
Who are those people?
With 75 percent of Americans blaming George Bush for a hydra-headed economic meltdown, including the worst June on Wall Street since the Great Depression, and nearly that many people disapproving of the president’s overall job performance, you have to wonder who the holdouts are.
Why affluent John McCain supporters, of course, while Barack Obama is making substantial inroads among Americans who are struggling to make ends meet.
* * * * *
In a grown-up but no less immature version of a brat sticking his fingers in his ears and humming loudly so he can’t hear bad news, the White House told the Environmental Protection Agency that it would not open an email containing a document concluding that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled. The EPA found that there would be $500 billion to $2 trillion in economic benefits over the next 30-plus years if auto emissions were curtailed.
The email remains in cyber-limbo, but the EPA was back this week with a sufficiently watered-down version that offers no conclusion.
* * * * *
Washington is full of boobs, but we’re not talking about politicians here. It’s exposed women’s breasts and even men’s willies, and Robert Hunt is very unhappy over this rampant immodesty.
The Texas rancher was appalled to find so many statues and art work of naked women and men when he visited the nation’s capital and recently proposed that the Texas Republican Party adopt a resolution calling for this filth to be removed from what he termed “our sacred cities.”
Photograph by Jim McMillan/Philadelphia Daily News
One of the least reported stories recently is that of Virginia Congressman Randy Forbes. So far it has gotten coverage from just the Wall Street Journal and Tom Sullivan Show, plus a few other people.
Forbes has been in the House since 2001 and has recently made a very interesting proposal which is being ignored by both his fellow legislators and the media in general. Forbes has looked to history and seen something he thinks we need to bring back.
During World War 2 the nation was faced with the prospect of defeat by foreign enemies and the threat of a terrible new weapon. Recognizing that something had to be done our government began a crash program and in less than a decade went from theory to practice in the development of the Atomic Bomb.
Nearly two decades later we faced a war of a different sense, a cold war with the Soviet Union. President Kennedy saw the need to fight them on every possible front. Once again we rose to the challenge and in less than a decade went from our first space launches to landing a man on the Moon.
Today Congressman Forbes sees the need to fight a third battle, this one for energy independence. Right now we are forced to either fight wars we don’t want to or to bow down to dictators around the world.
He thinks we need to move beyond this with a crash program to reduce our reliance on foreign oil by 50% in the next 10 years and another 50% in the following 10. Total energy independence by the year 2028.
His plan is to establish a commission that will consist of experts who will report to Congress what needs to be done. The goals include higher fuel efficiency in cars, more solar and biofuel energy as well as reduction in energy consumption.
Not only has this story been ignored by the media but also by his fellow legislators. They have fallen into the traditional partisan roles of either pushing for radical enviromental rules or simply ignoring the problem.
You would think that with $ 4-5 gas, rising energy prices across the board and the burden of our troops overseas that people would want to change, but that is not the case.
His proposal is well covered in the WSJ article and deserves to be heard. If you are a reader of this blog, please contact your members of the House and Senate and urge them to support this proposal.
It is far from perfect and certainly will require a lot of adjustment to work out, but it is at least something less than the partisan gruel being put forth by everyone else.
Republican presumptive Presidential nominee Sen. John McCain has made it clear: although he has called for renewed offshore drilling as a way to help get America out of the energy crunch and has shifted his position on that — he is not dropping his opposition to drilling in ANWR:
Senator John McCain reiterated his opposition to drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge on Thursday, a day after his statement that he would be willing to “go back and look at it again” sparked speculation among both opponents and proponents of drilling that he might change his mind.
“My position has not changed,’’ Mr. McCain said here on his campaign bus.
“People have said to me, ‘I’m going to bring you new information about ANWR, how environmentally we can make it safe,’” he said. “I’ll be glad to accept new information but my position has not changed.’’
Mr. McCain did change his position this week by proposing lifting the moratorium on off-shore drilling – in which he was quickly seconded by President Bush – but he said his position on drilling the the wildlife refuge was unchanged.
It’s actually a very smart position for McCain, going into the general election. It means he is not appearing to be Bush Lite on the drilling — taking a middle-stance between those who want unfettered drilling and always mention ANWR in the same breath and those such as Democratic presumptive Presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama who oppose drilling.
The issue is more complex than it may appear at first glance: despite a widespread perception that most Americans remain opposed to drilling in once-taboo areas, a recent Gallup poll found “57 percent of Americans would support drilling in the nation’s coastal and wilderness areas that are currently closed to exploration if it helped reduce gasoline prices and if the drilling was conducted under strict environmental controls,” US News reports.
But the wildlife refuge?
Those who oppose it have pointed to experts who say it would do little for a short or even long term fix, and mostly be a big, fat ladle of gravy handed over to the oil companies. Here’s one of the websites arguing against it. Some mainstream news media also reached the same conclusion — as you can see here and here.
“One reason why I’m now far more in favor of off shore drilling is the price of oil,’’ he said. But he said that he did not believe that the price was so high that he would reconsider his position on drilling in the wildlife refuge.
Bush and his talk show and web supporters have made ANWR a kind of rallying cry, but have been thwarted repeatedly. And to environmentalists, perhaps more than the thorny issue of offshore drilling, it has become a kind of line in the ice.
Add to that a slew of images of the preserve that are online — images showing pristine scenery and endangered Polar Bears — and it’s hard to believe any Republican who claims to be a descendant of conservationist President TR Roosevelt could ever advocate drilling there.
McCain often likes to paint himself as a modern day Teddy Roosevelt. And while he’ll take lots of heat for changing his position on offshore drilling, and will have environmental groups working against him, sticking with his position on ANWR will set him apart from both packs — and maintain some of the independent image he had that eroded as he has tried to please the GOP’s conservative base and show loyalty to George Bush.
McCain again when asked about changing his position:
“No, but again, if somebody says, ‘will you look at this information,’ that the guy stood up at the town hall meeting, `I know how you can make it environmentally and totally safe,’ I’ll be glad to look at that information,’’ he said. “I think it’s incumbent on me to review it. But I certainly haven’t changed my position.”
And unless he changes his position, his current position now puts him between the viewpoints of establishment Republicans (yes on offshore drilling and drill in ANWR) and most Democrats (no on offshore drilling and don’t drill in ANWR).
So McCain’s precarious political tightrope walk continues — shaky, but it continues..
June 18th, 2008 by DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, TMV Columnist
The Soul is a River, The River Has a Soul
As a child, I was taken to Hoover dam,
one of the wonders of the world, they said,
and in a way it was, a testament to the workers
who risked their lives to build a concrete moat
complete with castlettes
to hold the Mother water back,
and all the life she once nourished,
and all that once laid increase into her womb.
I stood on the hydroelectric dam,
atop the concrete spillway.
I felt the machine-drone
of the deep turbines underneath
trying to say something to my foot bones
through my shoes,
something like, ‘I am mighty,
look to me. ‘
But I had already been naked in rivers
and crossed land over ice lakes in winter,
and been baptized in creeks,
and the dam could not say enough
to convince me,
for I knew the mightiness
belonged to open water…
Suggesting that tough times call for tough measures, presumptive GOP Presidential nominee John McCain is calling for ending the federal offshore drilling ban — putting him at odds with environmentalist groups he was wooing and his own 2000 presidential campaign position on the issue.
The call is likely to mean environmentalists who have been counting the days since the Bush administration — considered by many environmental groups to be the worst administrations in American history on environmental matters — could work against him. And it also will likely be added to the list of issues on which Democrats say McCain has changed his positions. The Washington Post reports:
The move is aimed at easing voter anger over rising energy prices by freeing states to open vast stretches of the country’s coastline to oil exploration. In a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, nearly 80 percent said soaring prices at the pump are causing them financial hardship, the highest in surveys this decade.
“We must embark on a national mission to eliminate our dependence on foreign oil,” McCain told reporters yesterday. In a speech today, he plans to add that “we have untapped oil reserves of at least 21 billion barrels in the United States. But a broad federal moratorium stands in the way of energy exploration and production. . . . It is time for the federal government to lift these restrictions.”
McCain’s announcement is a reversal of the position he took in his 2000 presidential campaign and a break with environmental activists, even as he attempts to win the support of independents and moderate Democrats. Since becoming the presumptive GOP nominee in March, McCain has presented himself as a friend of the environment by touting his plans to combat global warming and his opposition to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and in the Everglades.
Representatives of several environmental groups criticized him for backing an idea they said would endanger the nation’s most environmentally sensitive waters.
This is the quote that could be a harbinger of what McCain can expect in campaign 2008:
Sierra Club political director Cathy Duvall said McCain “is using the environment as a way to portray himself as being different from George Bush. But the reality is that he isn’t.” The group began running radio commercials yesterday that criticize McCain’s environmental record in the battleground state of Ohio.
Democratic presumptive nominee Sen. Barack Obama responded as you would expect with a comment linking McCain’s call to Bush administration policies.
Nobody is yet calling John McCain a “flip-flopper”. But the Republican nominee’s increasingly finely balanced efforts to shore up his support among the shrinking Republican base while reaching out to independents is starting to fire up the critics.
On Tuesday morning, he launched an advertisement reminding voters of his repeated clashes with President George W. Bush over climate change, which Mr McCain believes is real and requires urgent action.
In the afternoon, he delivered a speech to the oil industry in Houston, calling for a lifting of the moratorium on offshore drilling in order to reduce petrol prices.
Mr McCain’s shift on offshore drilling – which contrasts with his strong support for upholding the moratorium in his 2000 bid for the Republican nomination – could further chip away at his reputation for being a “straight talker”.
Europe this week bade President Bush farewell - and if it was a fond farewell, it is because they know he’s leaving not only Europe, but the corridors of American power.
Yesterday I quoted Stephen J. Dubner’s criticism of Michael Pollan and the local food movement and concluded, generously, that “Dubner’s contribution to the [food] debate is to keep it real.”
Then I listened to his appearance (mp3) on The Takeaway. Dubner apparently hardly even bothered to prepare for the show. Said he, straight off, when the interviewer assumed he had “actually been investigating the impulse…to grow it yourself and you’ve come up with some hard cold reality-based conclusions:”
Well, investigating is a generous word for what I’ve been doing but I’ve poked around a little bit, right, so it’s a complex problem which is part of the issue here. The minute we talk about food miles… the math gets pretty complicated.
Yes, it does, Stephen. That’s what we need you for!
Dubner goes on to tell us that “the grocery store is the end product of a couple centuries of food production research.” Ipso factso the food coming from it “ends up having probably a smaller footprint than a hundred people growing locally.” In case you missed it, the emphasis on that probably is mine! It would have been helpful had Stephen done some research prior to coming on the show, and maybe cited some of it!
He goes on to cite his personal farm experience, as if to suggest that childhood experience is evidence of anything other than the single instance it represents. (Like the ice cream anecdote I quoted yesterday that was so ably dismissed by my commenter, thank you GreenDreams!) Anecdotes without standards and testing do not add up to evidence, Stephen.
The last of the whoppers is his notion of “the average grocery store” providing variety and freedom of choice. He says, “If I don’t want to buy the agribusiness, I don’t have to.” In fact, it’s very important to understand that we can only choose from the choices presented. The entire discussion on that program was a missed opportunity for the worthwhile discussion this nation wants to have. We’re hungry for it, that’s why they booked you Stephen!
Many factors influence the carbon footprint of a product: water use, cultivation and harvesting methods, quantity and type of fertilizer, even the type of fuel used to make the package. Sea-freight emissions are less than a sixtieth of those associated with airplanes, and you don’t have to build highways to berth a ship. Last year, a study of the carbon cost of the global wine trade found that it is actually more “green” for New Yorkers to drink wine from Bordeaux, which is shipped by sea, than wine from California, sent by truck. That is largely because shipping wine is mostly shipping glass. The study found that “the efficiencies of shipping drive a ‘green line’ all the way to Columbus, Ohio, the point where a wine from Bordeaux and Napa has the same carbon intensity.”
The environmental burden imposed by importing apples from New Zealand to Northern Europe or New York can be lower than if the apples were raised fifty miles away. “In New Zealand, they have more sunshine than in the U.K., which helps productivity,” Williams explained. That means the yield of New Zealand apples far exceeds the yield of those grown in northern climates, so the energy required for farmers to grow the crop is correspondingly lower. It also helps that the electricity in New Zealand is mostly generated by renewable sources, none of which emit large amounts of CO2.
Researchers at Lincoln University, in Christchurch, found that lamb raised in New Zealand and shipped eleven thousand miles by boat to England produced six hundred and eighty-eight kilograms of carbon-dioxide emissions per ton, about a fourth the amount produced by British lamb. In part, that is because pastures in New Zealand need far less fertilizer than most grazing land in Britain (or in many parts of the United States). Similarly, importing beans from Uganda or Kenya—where the farms are small, tractor use is limited, and the fertilizer is almost always manure—tends to be more efficient than growing beans in Europe, with its reliance on energy-dependent irrigation systems.
I get that it’s tricky problem. But the answer’s not glib bromides about the history of supermarkets!
June 12th, 2008 by MICHAEL STICKINGS, Assistant Editor
Actually, I like golf. I used to play it from time to time and enjoyed it immensely. It’s just not as easy to do when you live in Toronto (as I do) and have other, more pressing priorities.
**********
Regardless, the truth is that a lot of golfers are really stupid, at least if global warming denial is any indication (and I think it is):
NPR commentator Frank Deford had a segment this morning about golf courses, in which he cited a Golf Digest poll showing that 41 percent of golfers believe global warming to be a myth.
This number struck me as surprisingly high. But then I did a little digging and discovered that, while an April Pew poll found that 71 percent of Americans say there is “solid evidence” the earth is getting warmer, only 49 percent of Republicans now believe that to be the case. More intriguing, Pew found the number of Republican skeptics to be on the rise–up 13 percentage points from a similar poll conducted in January 2007.
So if you assume that most golfers are Republicans, the stat makes perfect sense.
That’s from TNR’s Michelle Cottle. I suspect her assumption is a valid one, though I’d like to see some numbers before passing judgement.
And there are other factors at play here. I assume that golfers are, in general, wealthier than non-golfers. This may make them Republican, or more likely to be Republican (and it is troubling that so many Republicans are global-warming deniers), but, if they’ve made their money in the corporate sector, it may also make them more likely to deny the truth of global warming and more likely to accept, say, oil-industry propaganda.
I assume, too, that golfers are, in general, older than non-golfers. This may also make them more likely to deny the truth of global warming and, more broadly, to be less environmentalist. Read the rest of this entry »
June 12th, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
We often hear that the world is now a “global village” and “globalization” is inevitable. But there are warning signs we cannot overlook. Two experts point out that “for the first time in more than 200 years we are moving into a world not wholly dominated by the West.
“If we want to influence this environment rather than be held to ransom by it, and if we want to take hold of some of the worrying features of globalisation, then real, practical multilateralism is a strategic necessity, not a liberal nicety…
“Today’s security agenda is often presented as a long list of threats: international terrorism, transnational crime, the threat of a new pandemic, energy insecurity and the dangers of climate change. These are all pressing issues but it is too easy to present them as disparate and unconnected…”
The two experts are Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, a former General-Secretary of Nato, and Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon, formerly the High Representative of the International Community in Bosnia & Herzegovina. They are co-chairmen of the IPPR Commission on National Security in the 21st century.
Recently their have been a lot of calls from Republican politicians to open up ANWR for drilling in order to lower gas prices. Having done my homework on this issue I believe that those that are doing so are either ignorant of the facts or have an ulterior motive that has almost nothing to do with lowering gas prices.
Stephen J. Dubner wonders, do we really need a few billion locavores? And with that wonder he skewers the notion that the local food movement can really enhance the economic, environmental and social health of our planet as much as some Michael Pollan adherents might hope. His piece starts out with this anecdote:
We made some ice cream at home last weekend. Someone had given one of the kids an ice cream maker a while ago and we finally got around to using it. We decided to make orange sherbet. It took a pretty long time and it didn’t taste very good but the worst part was how expensive it was. We spent about $12 on heavy cream, half-and-half, orange juice, and food coloring — the only ingredient we already had was sugar — to make a quart of ice cream. For the same price, we could have bought at least a gallon (four times the amount) of much better orange sherbet. In the end, we wound up throwing away about three-quarters of what we made. Which means we spent $12, not counting labor or electricity or capital costs (somebody bought the machine, even if we didn’t) for roughly three scoops of lousy ice cream.
As we’ve written before, it is a curious fact of modern life that one person’s labor is another’s leisure. Every day there are millions of people who cook and sew and farm for a living — and there are millions more who cook (probably in nicer kitchens) and sew (or knit or crochet) and farm (or garden) because they love to do so. Is this sensible? If people are satisfying their preferences, who cares if it costs them $20 to produce a single cherry tomato (or $12 for a few scoops of ice cream)?
I am both a Pollan fan and a Freakonomics fan. We need both Pollan’s aspirational hope — as expressed most recently in his April 20 NYTimes Magazine, Why Bother?, which urged us all to start vegetable gardens in our backyards as a means to both battle climate change and combat consumerism — and the gritty statistical reality Dubner provides:
…specialization (which Michael Pollan mostly dislikes, and which has been around for a long, long time) is ruthlessly efficient. Which means less transportation, lower prices — and, in most cases, far more variety, which in my book means more deliciousness and more nutrition. The same store where I blew $12 on ice cream ingredients will happily sell me ice cream in many flavors, dietetic options, and price points.
Dubner spoke more on the topic yesterday on The Takeaway, available for download here. Having read both of Pollan’s mostrecent books, I agree completely with his critique of nutritionism — that reducing food to its component parts takes away some of its vital essence — and I have to think that even Dubner would believe there’s a middle ground between the locavores and an industrial food system that has produced the kind of horrific waste lagoons exposed in this December 2006 Rolling Stone story.
While industrialization of the food system has brought about the specialization Dubner praises, deadly tomatoes from Connecticut to California underscore that it’s long past time for food reform. There is clearly room for real and needed improvement. Michael Pollan has done a good job of making us more aware of the harmful commoditization of food. Dubner’s contribution to the debate is to keep it real.
High-resolution satellite images have revealed the “rapid deforestation” of Papua New Guinea’s biodiversity rich rainforests over the past 30 years.
An international team of researchers estimates that the current rate of loss could result in more than half of the nation’s tree cover being lost by 2021.
They added that the main threats came from commercial logging and burning.
Existing conservation measures were failing to protect the world’s third largest rainforest, the team concluded.
Commercial logging and burning. In other words, human beings and their seemingly bottomless reservoir of greed.
As much as individual liberty, the conquest of nature — the effort to impose our will on it, not (as the ancients prescribed) to live harmoniously with it (and within its limits) — very much defines the modern project as set in motion by the likes of Machiavelli (see his famous discussion of fortune/nature, and how to oppose it, in Chap. 25 of The Prince), and, however postmodern we have become, we are still very much the heirs to that tradition.
But this conquest — so powerfully articulated by Locke in Chap. 5 of his Second Treatise, “Of Property” — was meant to serve the development of civilization, both individual and social progress, and, to that end, it has been enormously successful. (Who among us seriously wants to return to pre-modern “nature”?)
The conquest continues, and much of it is conducted more responsibly than ever before (consider the rise of “green” politics in recent years, as well as much greater environmental stewardship in the private sector), but, obviously, some of it continues to be both destructive (of the natural environment) and self-destructive (of our planet and ourselves). Read the rest of this entry »
June 5th, 2008 by SWARAAJ CHAUHAN, International Columnist
The blame game has already been going on, and is likely to become ugly and fierce as to who is causing maximum pollution and contributing towards visible changes in environment.
On the one side we have “developed” countries refusing to have a critical look at their reckless consumerism. While on the other are the “developing” countries wanting to mindlessly ape the Western lifestyle and thus putting an unbearable burden on the scarce resources on our planet earth.
All this has been been convincingly discussed in detail in the latest must-read article in The Economist. However, it does more finger-pointing towards China and India rather than suggesting ways how and what the “developed” nations should do towards sustainable living.
“Now that the American presidential race is down to two candidates who are both committed to cutting emissions, China and India, the world’s most populous nations, are seen by many as the world’s biggest climate-change problems. Russia’s economy is more profligate with energy, but China is widely believed to be the world’s biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, and India is rapidly moving up.
“Their exploding emissions are America’s main excuse for failing to take action itself; and their intransigence exasperates those trying to negotiate a global agreement on climate-change mitigation to replace the Kyoto protocol. Meanwhile, both countries are awakening to the problems that climate change will cause them.”
It goes without saying that without equitable distribution of resources the world would be witnessing increasing migrations, poverty and terrorism in the coming years. One option has been shown by the Bush administration — survival of the fittest. The other revolves round urgent evolving of a consensus on such critical issues through serious deliberations by world leaders. The latter option may provide effective long and short term strategy so essential for world peace and harmony.
Meanwhile a study centre, described as the world’s first legal research centre into climate change, will be opened in Canberra at the Australian National University today by environment minister Peter Garrett. The centre would focus on issues such as the international legal regime for tackling climate change, after the Kyoto agreement runs out, climate litigation, and issues involving renewable energy, transport and forestry. More here…
May 31st, 2008 by DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, TMV Columnist
The Brazilian government says this picture, taken from an airplane deep over the rain forest, is of a tribal group that has never had contact with the ‘outside world.”
Aside from most of us today who got whiplashed between trying to cover the left, right and middle Obama pundits and watching the Democratic delegates acting like they might be at a Condominium HomeOwners Board meeting what with all the face-making, voice raising, booing, cheering, having to be reminded to act like adult men and women… well
being surrounded by gigantic green things and having no contact with the ‘outside world’ is looking pretty good to me. No doubt some others too.
________
Coda
Just a note about the photo; maybe I am imagining it–it’s been a really long day and the pay is so high, as you know…lol– but when I put it up on my forensic program even tho its transmitted resolution is poor… isnt it kind of odd that most things in the picture appear to have no shadows? It is said the darker figure is a woman, and from the placement of her breasts on chest, she would be youngish. But, if the men have run for their bows, what is a woman doing just sort of standing there. It’s a mystery. Like most of today’s flash news was a bewilderment to a good many of us.
