Foreign Policy: The Top 10 Stories You Missed in 2008

This is a MUST READ. Be sure to check out #6: "Greenhouse Gas Comes from Solar Panels."

What you don't know can hurt you.

Technorati tags: Foreign Policy, top ten, stories, missed, solar panels, solar energy

Obama Positioned to Quickly Reverse Bush Actions

Stem Cell, Climate Rules Among Targets of President-Elect's Team

Washington Post:

"Transition advisers to President-elect Barack Obama have compiled a list of about 200 Bush administration actions and executive orders that could be swiftly undone to reverse White House policies on climate change, stem cell research, reproductive rights and other issues, according to congressional Democrats, campaign aides and experts working with the transition team...."

Who is the More Green Candidate? Compare.

Know the facts before you vote. Compare the Candidates Policy Proposals:

Click on the Chart for Larger View.

For more information see: See at a glance where the presidential candidates stand on climate and energy issues | Grist

Technorati tags: Energy, Climate, Climate Change, Green, Energy Policy, Global Warming, Environment, Energy Policy, Barack Obama, John McCain, 2008, Election, Presidential

Obama McCain and the "Worst Case Scenario"

The Real News Network interviews Cass Sunnstein:

Sunnstein: The climate change crisis, not terrorism, is the real "worst case scenario"

Bio

Cass R. Sunstein (born 1954) is an American preeminent legal scholar, particularly in the fields of constitutional law, administrative law, environmental law, and law and behavioral economics. Sunstein taught at the University of Chicago Law School for 27 years, where he continues to teach as the Harry Kalven Visiting Professor. Sunstein is currently the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.

And Then There Was One

Thomas L. Friedman, NY Times, writes:

"As we emerge from Labor Day, college students are gathering back on campuses not only to start the fall semester, but also, in some cases, to vote for the first time in a presidential election. There is no bigger issue on campuses these days than environment/energy. Going into this election, I thought that — for the first time — we would have a choice between two “green” candidates. That view is no longer operative — and college students (and everyone else) need to understand that...."

Photo Credit: Thomas Friedman. (Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times)

Also See:

• Friedman: A Vote for Obama

Technorati tags: Thomas Friedman, New York Times, Energy, Environment, 2008 Election, Barack Obama, John McCain, Green, op ed

The Five Facts You Should Know About Sarah Palin's Record

Send to a friend: Five Facts You Should Know About Sarah Palin's Record

Make sure your friends know Sarah Palin's right-wing stances on the issues that are top priorities to women voters -- from education to the environment. Her name on the ticket only confirms that John McCain will not offer the progressive change this country needs.

Click Here to send a meesage to your friends encouraging them to get the facts.

Thanks to Emily's List.

Republicans Have Handed Democrats a Winning Election Issue

AlterNet:

But so far, Democrats have been refusing to accept the gift....

Technorati tags: Alternet, David Morris, Environment, Energy, Politics, Republicans, Democrats, 2008 Election, Barack Obama, John McCain

A different kind of hybrid or flex-fuel

Left I on the News reports:

In the U.S., "hybrid" car is pretty much synonymous with the Toyota Prius and similar cars which can run on electricity or gasoline; "flex-fuel" is synonymous with cars that can run on either gasoline or what used to be called (I haven't seen the term in quite a while) "gasohol." But there's a different kind of hybrid car I'd never heard of, and one of the world leaders in its production is...Iran:

Iranian companies have increased production of dual-fuel vehicles as part of the general plan to manufacture less gasoline-powered cars.

“Iranian automakers have produced more than 120,000 vehicles that use natural gas and regular gasoline in the first quarter of the current (Iranian calendar) year (March 20-July 21),” Iranian Minister of Industries and Mines Ali-Akbar Mehrabian said on Sunday in Tehran.

“Hybrid car production rose to 429,000 last year from 20,000 two years ago,” Mehrabian said at Iran's first national conference on CNG, which was held in the capital from August 2 to 3.

For comparison, there are only 150,000 natural gas vehicles in the entire U.S., a country with more than four times the population of Iran.

Hopefully the Administration and corporate media won't learn about this; I'm sure they'll figure out the nefarious motive behind it and call for additional sanctions.

Update: By the way, ever the stickler for the precise use of language, I note that the first sentence in the quoted article should read "fewer gasoline-powered cars," not "less."

Technorati tags: Energy Policy, Environment, Iran, Hybrid, Flex-fuel, Automobiles

Al Gore: A Generational Challenge to Repower America

Courtesy of "We Can Solve It"



For complete transcript, click here.

Technorati tags: Environment, Global Warming, Energy Policy, Al Gore, Speech

How Green is Your Candidate?

Grist has done the research and provided valuable information about where the presidential candidates fall on the Green scale.

Interviews and information on the presidential candidates' energy plans and environmental positions are provided. You can also compare the candidate's green positions in this chart allowing you to quickly contrast where the presidential contenders stand on climate and energy issues.

Finally, you can watch video of "some of the candidates speaking at the first-ever presidential candidate forum focused on climate change and energy policy, cosponsored by Grist."

"Grist also teamed up with Outside to interview presidential contenders about green issues. [They've] published Q&As with all of the Democrats and a number of the Republicans. [They've] also compiled fact sheets on the candidates, with their current platforms, voting records, video, audio, and more" to be updated "as the campaigns unfold."

Illustration: Grist.org

Technorati tags: 2008 Presidential Election, Presidential Candidates, Green, Global Warming, Energy Policies, Environment

Be A Part of 'The Shift'

With all the destruction and negativity and pessimism in the world today, here is something positive you can be a part of:

The Shift

A massive worldwide phenomenon is in progress, offering seeds of great hope for the future.

Millions of individuals, organizations and corporations around the world are waking up and embracing a new outlook with an emphasis on their responsibility to contribute positively to our collective future.

We are in the middle of the biggest social transformation in human history, The SHIFT.



At this critical point, it is imperative we make the masses aware of this global movement quickly. This evolutionary phenomenon is broader and deeper than the most visible SHIFT, the environmental movement. It involves our very understanding of who we are as human beings, and our responsibility to the world and to life itself.

THE SHIFT movie raises awareness to the story of our roles in an evolutionary shift in our collective consciousness.

As it chronicles the faces, the stories and leaders assisting in this social transformation, the film reveals its emergence & meaning.

Be a part of The Shift: Visit http://theshiftmovie.com

Hat tip to Al Buono.

Technorati tags: film, movies, The Shift, Global Warming, Environment, news, activism, video

Green Jobs

The Green Road Less Traveled
By Thomas L. Friedman
The New York Times

Whoever knew — I.B.M. is managing traffic congestion in Stockholm. Well it is, and therein lies a story.

Probably the biggest green initiative coming down the road these days, literally, is congestion pricing — charging people for the right to drive into a downtown area. It is already proving to be the most effective short-term way to clean up polluted city air, promote energy efficiency and create more livable urban centers, while also providing mayors with unexpected new revenue.

Imagine a day when you will go online and buy a pass to drive into any major urban area and the price of your pass will be set by whether you are driving a hybrid or a Hummer, the time of day you want to drive, the road you want to use and how much carbon your car trip will emit. And if there is an accident on the route you normally take, an alert will be sent to a device in your car warning you to go a different way.

Well, that day is pretty much here for London, Stockholm and Singapore — and New York City could be next. In a few years, the notion that you will be able to get into your car in the suburbs and drive downtown for free will be as old-fashioned as horses and buggies.

But what does this have to do with I.B.M.? To make congestion pricing work, you need technology — cameras, software and algorithms that can read auto license plates as they flash by and automatically charge the driver or check whether he or she has paid the fee to enter the city center. (The data is regularly destroyed to protect privacy.) That is what I.B.M. is providing for the city of Stockholm, which, after a successful seven-month trial in which traffic dropped more than 20 percent, will move to full congestion pricing in August.

“In Stockholm, we built a system where we have a ring of cameras around the city — 18 entry points with multiple lanes,” explained Jamie Houghton, I.B.M.’s global leader for road charging, based in London. “I.B.M. Stockholm runs the whole system.”

O.K., Friedman, so I.B.M. is now in the traffic biz. Who cares?

I care, because it underscores a fundamental truth about green technology: you can’t make a product greener, whether it’s a car, a refrigerator or a traffic system, without making it smarter — smarter materials, smarter software or smarter design.

What can many U.S. companies still manufacture? They can manufacture things that are smart — that have a lot of knowledge content in them, like a congestion pricing network for a whole city. What do many Chinese companies manufacturer? They manufacture things that can be made with a lot of cheap labor, like the rubber tires on your car. Which jobs are most easily outsourced? The ones vulnerable to cheap labor. Which jobs are hardest to outsource? Those that require a lot of knowledge.

So what does all this mean? It means that to the extent that we make “green” standards part of everything we design and manufacture, we create “green collar” jobs that are much more difficult to outsource. I.B.M. and other tech companies are discovering a mother lode of potential new business for their high-wage engineers and programmers thanks to the fact that mayors all over the world are thinking about going green through congestion pricing systems.

“Congestion pricing of traffic is emerging as a completely new services market for I.B.M.,” said Mr. Houghton. “I.B.M. is in discussion with major cities worldwide, including some in China.”

Hopefully, if the New York State Legislature acts, New York City will get access to a $500 million Department of Transportation grant for a pilot congestion pricing system. The more U.S. cities adopt congestion pricing, the more U.S. companies will quickly develop the expertise in this field, which is going to be a huge growth industry on a planet where more and more people will be living in cities. Congestion pricing is the only way to make them livable without trillions of dollars of new infrastructure.

As New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who’s trying to bring this system to his city, put it to me: “The percentage of your working day spent in a commute will go down and the time you spend being productive and being paid, or simply relaxing, will go up. Also, more people will do business in the city, because they can get to stores, offices or the theater more easily.”

So if you hear a politician say that we can’t afford to impose green standards because it will cost us jobs, tell them: “Hogwash.” The more we elevate, expand and globalize green, clean-power standards the more we play to the strengths of the American economy, American jobs and American-based companies.

Photo Credit: Thomas Friedman. (Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times)

Technorati tags: Thomas Friedman, New York Times, Sweden, Urban Planning, Pollution, Environment, Tolls, news, commentary, op ed

Live Bad, Go Green

By Thomas L. Friedman
The New York Times

Over dinner with friends in London the other night, the conversation drifted to global warming and whether anything was really being done to reverse it. One guest, Sameh El-Shahat, a furniture designer, heaped particular scorn on programs that enable people to offset their excessive carbon emissions by funding green projects elsewhere. “Who really checks that it’s being done?” he asked. And how much difference does it really make?

But then he hit on an ingenious idea: If people really want to generate money to plant trees or finance green power, why not have them offset their real sins, not just their carbon excesses? We started to play with his idea: Imagine if you could offset the whole Ten Commandments.

No, really, think about it. Imagine if there were a Web site — I’d call it GreenSinai.com — where every time you thought you had violated one of the Ten Commandments, or you wanted to violate one of them but did not want to feel guilty about it, you could buy carbon credits to offset your sins.

The motto of Britain’s Conservative Party today is “Vote Blue, Go Green.” GreenSinai’s motto could be: “Live Bad, Go Green.” That would generate some income.

Here’s how it would work: One day, you’re out in the backyard mowing the lawn and suddenly you covet your neighbor’s wife. Hey, it happens — that’s why “thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife” is one of the Ten Commandments. No problem. You just go to GreenSinai.com and buy 100 trees in the Amazon or fund a project to capture methane from cow dung in India — and, presto, you’re free and clear.

Obviously there would be a sliding scale. Taking God’s name in vain or erecting an idol might cost you only a few solar water heaters for a Chinese village, whereas bearing false witness or stealing would set you back a pilot sugar ethanol plant in Louisiana.

As for adultery, well, I think that’s where the big money could be made. My guess is that we could achieve a carbon-neutral world by 2020 if we just set up a system for people to offset their adultery by reversing deforestation of tropical rain forests or funding mega wind and solar power systems in China and India.

O.K., O.K., more seriously, I raise this issue of carbon offsets because they’re symptomatic of the larger problem we face in confronting climate change: everyone wants it to happen, but without pain or sacrifice. On balance, I think carbon-offsetting is a good thing — my family has purchased offsets — if for no other reason than it directs resources toward clean technologies that might not have been funded and, therefore, moves us down the innovation curve faster.

But the danger, argues Michael Sandel, Harvard’s noted political philosopher, “is that carbon offsets will become, at least for some, a painless mechanism to buy our way out of the more fundamental changes in habits, attitudes and way of life that are actually required to address the climate problem.”

“If someone drives a Hummer and buys carbon offsets to salve his conscience, that is better than driving the Hummer and doing nothing,” added Mr. Sandel, author of “The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering.” “But it would be even better to trade in the Hummer for a hybrid. The risk is that carbon offsets will make Hummers seem respectable rather than irresponsible, and distract us, as a nation, from harder, bigger changes in our energy policy.”

People often refer to the current climate buzz as “a green revolution,” but the very term revolution suggests a fundamental break with past habits, attitudes and public policies. Yet, when you suggest a carbon tax or a higher gasoline tax — initiatives that would redirect resources and change habits at the scale actually needed to impact global warming — what is the first thing you hear in Congress? “Impossible — you can’t use the T-word.”

A revolution without sacrifice where everyone is a winner? There’s no such thing.

Katherine Ellison wrote a wonderful piece on this topic for Salon.com in which she quoted Stephen Schneider, the Stanford University climatologist, as saying: “Volunteerism doesn’t work. It’s about as effective as voluntary speed limits. No cops, no judges: road carnage. No rules, no fines: greenhouse gases. We’re going to triple or quadruple the CO2 in the atmosphere with no policy. I don’t believe offsets are just a distraction. But we’ll have failed if that’s all we do.”

There’s a saying at the Pentagon that “a vision without resources is a hallucination.” For my money, the green revolution today is still a hallucination.

Photo Credit: Thomas Friedman. (Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times)

Technorati tags: Thomas Friedman, New York Times, Carbon Dioxide, Global Warming, Air Pollution, Environment, news, commentary, op ed

Al Gore Has Big Plans

By James Traub, The New York Times:

"... Six years after the Supreme Court declared him the loser of a presidential race that seemed his for the taking, Al Gore has attained what you can only call prophetic status; and he has done so by acting as he could not, or would not, as a candidate — saying precisely what he believes, and saying it with clarity, passion, intellectual mastery and even, sometimes, wit. Everywhere he goes, people urge him, almost beg him, to run for the presidency. He probably won’t — though he might. (“It’s complicated,” he told me, “but it’s not mysterious.”) He says he thinks he’d be better at it this time than he was last time. And he probably would be: Gore really does know how to hold 6,000 people in a room...."

Also See:

• Al Gore's New Book Examines 'The Assault on Reason:'

  "In his new book, Al Gore explores why reason, logic and truth seem to play a sharply diminished role in the way America now makes important decisions and what we can do to change that...."

Technorati tags: New York Times, Al Gore, Environment, Global Warming, Presidential Election, Politics, news

Minimum Security

By Stephanie McMillan

Technorati tags: Stephanie McMillan, Cartoons, Global Warming, Environment

The Terrorist Walks

By Fidel Castro
CounterPunch.org

George W. Bush is undoubtedly the most genuine representative of a system of terror forced on the world by the technological, economic and political superiority of the most powerful country known to this planet. For this reason, we share the tragedy of the American people and their ethical values. The instructions for the verdict issued by Judge Kathleen Cardone, of the El Paso Federal Court last Friday, granting Luis Posada Carriles freedom on bail, could only have come from the White House.

It was President Bush himself who ignored at all times the criminal and terrorist nature of the defendant who was protected with a simple accusation of immigration violation leveled at him. The reply is brutal. The government of the United States and its most representative institutions had already decided to release the monster.

The backgrounds are well-known and reach far back. The people who trained him and ordered him to destroy a Cuban passenger plane in midair, with 73 athletes, students and other Cuban and foreign travelers on board, together with its dedicated crew; those who bought his freedom while the terrorist was held in prison in Venezuela, so that he could supply and practically conduct a dirty war against the people of Nicaragua, resulting in the loss of thousands of lives and the devastation of a country for decades to come; those who empowered him to smuggle with drugs and weapons making a mockery of the laws of Congress; those who collaborated with him to create the terrible Operation Condor and to internationalize terror; the same who brought torture, death and often the physical disappearance of hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans, could not possibly act any different.

Even though Bush's decision was to be expected, it is certainly no less humiliating for our people. Thanks to the revelations of "Por Esto!" a Mexican publication from the state of Quintana Roo later complemented by our own sources, Cuba knew with absolute precision how Posada Carriles entered from Central America, via Cancun, to the Isla Mujeres departing from there on board the Santrina, after the ship was inspected by the Mexican federal authorities, heading with other terrorists straight to Miami.

Denounced and publicly challenged with exact information on the matter, since April 15, 2005, it took the government of that country more than a month to arrest the terrorist, and a year and two months to admit that Luis Posada Carriles had entered through the Florida coast illegally on board the Santrina, a presumed school-ship licensed in the United States.

Not a single word is said of his countless victims, of the bombs he set off in tourist facilities in recent years, of his dozens of plans financed by the government of the United States to physically eliminate me.

It was not enough for Bush to offend the name of Cuba by installing a horrible torture center similar to Abu Ghraib on the territory illegally occupied in Guantánamo, horrifying the world with this procedure. The cruel actions of his predecessors seemed not enough for him. It was not enough to force a poor and underdeveloped country like Cuba to spend 100 billion dollars. To accuse Posada Carriles was tantamount to accusing himself.

Throughout almost half a century, everything was fair game against our small island lying 90 miles away from its coast, wanting to be independent. Florida saw the installation of the largest station for intelligence and subversion that ever existed on this planet.

It was not enough to send a mercenary invasion on the Bay of Pigs, costing us 176 dead and more than 300 wounded at a time when the few medical specialists they left us had no experience treating war wounds.

Earlier still, the French ship La Coubre carrying Belgian weapons and grenades for Cuba had exploded on the docks of Havana Harbor. The two well synchronized explosions caused the deaths of more than 100 workers and wounded others as many of them tool part in the rescue attempts.

It was not enough to have the Missile Crisis of 1962, which brought the world to the brink of an all-consuming thermonuclear war, at a time when there were bombs 50 times more powerful than the ones dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

It was not enough to introduce in our country viruses, bacteria and fungi to attack plantations and flocks; and incredible as it may seem, to attack human beings. Some of these pathogens came out of American laboratories and were brought to Cuba by well-known terrorists in the service of the United States government.

Add to all this the enormous injustice of keeping five heroic patriots imprisoned for supplying information about terrorist activities; they were condemned in a fraudulent manner to sentences that include two life sentences and they stoically withstand cruel mistreatment, each of them in a different prison.

Time and again the Cuban people have fearlessly faced the threat of death. They have demonstrated that with intelligence, using appropriate tactics and strategies, and especially preserving unity around their political and social vanguard, there can be no force on this earth capable of defeating them.

I think that the coming May Day celebration would be the ideal day for our people, --using the minimum of fuel and transportation-- to show their feelings to the workers and the poor of the world.

Havana, April 10, 2007.

Also See:

• Fidel Castro: Where Have All the Bees Gone?


• Mickey Z.: Some Context on Castro and Cuba


• Saul Landau: Castro at 80

Photo Credit: Fidel Castro. (Wikipedia)

Technorati tags: Fidel Castro, Cuba, Bush, Terrorism, news, Counterpunch

Least Responsible Pay The Most

Upsetting the Balance
Thomas L. Friedman
The New York Times

"...'We have a message here to tell these countries, that you are causing aggression to us by causing global warming,' President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda told an African Union summit in Ethiopia last February. 'Alaska will probably become good for agriculture, Siberia will probably become good for agriculture, but where does that leave Africa?'

A study by Oxfam, entitled 'Africa -- Up in Smoke,' noted that in line with climate models, droughts in northwest Kenya appear to becoming more frequent. It profiled the impact on the nomadic pastoralists of Kenya's northwest Turkana region, who graze cattle, camels and goats. They've always known droughts, but because they are now more frequent, families and animals have less chance to recover.

The Turkana people, said Oxfam, call this more persistent drought ' 'Atiaktiak ng'awiyei' or 'the one that divided homes' because so many families split up to survive, migrating in all directions.'

It really is wrong that those least responsible for climate change should pay the most. 'My recommendation is that the biggest polluter pays,' said Mr. Kipng'etich. 'We are one planet, one system.' He has a point. He deserves an answer."

Photo Credit: Thomas Friedman. (Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times)

Non-TimesSelect Subscribers can read Friedman's entire op ed HERE.

Technorati tags: Thomas Friedman, New York Times, Kenya, Global Warming, Environment, Drought, news, commentary, op ed

Climate Mash

Watch the video.

"The Climate Mash" is hilarious - but the effects of global warming aren't. Global warming puts our health, our economy and our environment at risk. It's time to demand that major polluters like ExxonMobil and others stop resisting solutions that could make a real difference.

This Halloween, you can help SaveOurEnvironment.org send a message to Congress that they'll never forget. Click on the link above to watch "The Climate Mash" and take action today!

Markets, Climate And Katrina

Joseph Stiglitz (TomPaine.com) reports:

"Last January, after the tsunami, in response to widespread calls for an early warning system, I observed that the world had been given an early warning on global warming. The rest of the world has begun to take heed, but Bush, having ignored warnings about Al Qaeda’s plans prior to 9/11, and having not only ignored the warnings about New Orleans levees, but actually gutted funding to shore them, has not led America to do likewise...."