|  Author | Topic: The Propaganda Continues VI (Read 6,651 times) |
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|  | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #285 on Sept 1, 2011, 12:52am » | |
Keystone XL: a line in the sand for Obama
As protest intensifies to stop a major tar sands oil pipeline, the president must choose: a green energy future or Big Oil profit
o Amy Goodman
o guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 24 August 2011 13.30 BST
![[image]](http://img43.imageshack.us/img43/3566/blogcarbonemissionta001.jpg "[image]")
Tar sands oil extraction in Alberta, Canada; the new Keystone XL pipeline would pump Canada's heavy crude with the US Gulf Coast. Photograph: Orjan F Ellingvag/Dagens Naringsliv/Corbis
The White House was rocked Tuesday, not only by the 5.9 Richter-scale earthquake, but by the protests mounting outside its gates. More than 2,100 people say they'll risk arrest there during the next two weeks. They oppose the Keystone XL pipeline project, designed to carry heavy crude oil from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, to refineries on the US Gulf Coast.
A "keystone" in architecture is the stone at the top of an arch that holds the arch together; without it, the structure collapses. By putting their bodies on the line – as more than 200 have already at the time of this writing – these practitioners of the proud tradition of civil disobedience hope to collapse not only the pipeline, but the fossil-fuel dependence that is accelerating disruptive global climate change.
Bill McKibben was among those already arrested. He is an environmentalist and author who founded the group 350.org, named after the estimated safe upper limit of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of 350ppm (parts per million; the planet is currently at 390ppm). In a call to action to join the protest, McKibben, along with others, including journalist Naomi Klein, actor Danny Glover and Nasa scientist James Hansen, wrote the Keystone pipeline is "a fifteen hundred mile fuse to the biggest carbon bomb on the continent, a way to make it easier and faster to trigger the final overheating of our planet".
The movement to oppose Keystone XL ranges from activists and scientists to indigenous peoples of the threatened Canadian plains and boreal forests, where the tar sands are located, to rural farmers and ranchers in the ecologically fragile Sand Hills region of Nebraska, to students and physicians. Asked why the White House protests are taking place while President Barack Obama is away on a family vacation on Martha's Vineyard, McKibben replied:
"We'll be here when he gets back, too. We're staying for two weeks, every day. This is the first real civil disobedience of this scale in the environmental movement in ages."
Just miles to the east of Martha's Vineyard, and almost exactly 170 years earlier, on Nantucket, Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave, abolitionist, journalist and publisher, gave one of his first major addresses, before the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. Douglass is famous for stating one of grassroots organising's central truths:
"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."
Demanding change is one thing, while getting change in Washington, DC is another, especially with the Republican-controlled House of Representatives' hostility to any climate-change legislation. That is why the protests against Keystone XL are happening in front of the White House. President Obama has the power to stop the pipeline. The Canadian corporation behind the project, TransCanada, has applied for a permit from the US state department to build the pipeline. If the state department denies the permit, Keystone XL would be dead. The enormous environmental devastation caused by extracting petroleum from the tar sands might still move forward, but without easy access to the refineries and the US market, it would certainly be slowed.
TransCanada executives are confident that the US will grant the permit by the end of the year. Republican politicians and the petroleum industry tout the creation of well-paying construction jobs that would come from the project, and even enjoy some union support. In response, two major unions, the Amalgamated Transit Union and the Transport Workers Union, representing more than 300,000 workers, called on the state department to deny the permit. In a joint press release, they said:
"We need jobs, but not ones based on increasing our reliance on Tar Sands oil … Many jobs could also be created in energy conservation, upgrading the grid, maintaining and expanding public transportation – jobs that can help us reduce air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and improve energy efficiency."
Two Canadian women, indigenous actor Tantoo Cardinal, who starred in "Dances With Wolves", and Margot Kidder, who played Lois Lane in "Superman", were arrested with about 50 others just before the earthquake hit Tuesday. Bill McKibben summed up:
"It takes more than earthquakes and hurricanes to worry us – we'll be out here through 3 September. Our hope is to send a Richter 8 tremor through the political system on the day Barack Obama says no to Big Oil and reminds us all why we were so happy when he got elected. The tar sands pipeline is his test."
• Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/....obama-oil-sands
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #286 on Sept 2, 2011, 11:44am » | |
Climate change: an eye on the storms
We all know particular events can't be attributed to long-term warming of the atmosphere. Actually, it's no longer that simple
o Andrew Simms
o guardian.co.uk, Thursday 1 September 2011 09.30 BST
When Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD79 the residents of Pompeii were taken entirely by surprise. Inactive for more than 1,000 years, the local people living in its shadow didn't even realise Vesuvius was a volcano. But when it blew they had a choice: chance it and stay, or run. The eruption lasted two days, and from a town of 20,000 inhabitants, evidence of around 5,000 buried in the ash and pumice remains. It doesn't mean all the others got away, but some did, and it shows people were divided about what to do.
Many Americans must have felt similarly torn when President Obama took the unusual step of warning about the "historic" threat from Hurricane Irene, and the residents of New York City were reminded of their vulnerability and immense natural forces as a state of emergency was declared.
Some might see irony in the president's warning, as his administration was simultaneously committing itself to develop some of the world's dirtiest fossil fuels, such as backing a pipeline to carry oil from Canadian tar sands to Texas.
Protests against Obama's decisions saw a wave of arrests, ranging from Nasa climate scientist James Hansen to author and activist Bill McKibben. To be ironic, however, there would have to be a link between extreme events like Irene, and the global warming that results from burning fossil fuels. And we all know that direct attribution between particular events and the long-term warming of the atmosphere is not possible, don't we? In fact, it's no longer that simple.
While both scientific and more ideological debates rage, a relationship between warming and extreme events has been quietly working its way into economic risk assessment. The insurance industry hasn't waited for definitive proof of attribution, or been distracted by the bluster of debate, because it works on the basis of probabilities, and it's been clear for some time that these are changing.
In 2003, the climate scientist Myles Allen explained in the science journal Nature how they do it. Insurers, for example, will raise the cost of premiums to householders where warming creates an increased risk of flooding. All you have to do, wrote Allen, is work out a "mean likelihood-weighted liability by averaging over all possibilities consistent with currently available information". So, if past greenhouse gas emissions have increased flood risk (or storm damage, or crop loss due to drought) tenfold, 90% of the damage caused by a flood might be attributed to past emissions. Insurance costs get incurred in advance due to changing risks. But similar calculations could possibly be used in "tort" style claims after extreme events to seek compensation for actual damages.
In this way attribution becomes an economic reality owing to observed changes before more narrow cause-and-effect relationships to particular events are established. But, here too, the science is getting more confident.
Two pieces of research published in Nature earlier this year made the case that the fingerprint of human-driven global warming could be seen in a number of recent extreme events. In a warmer world, the atmosphere holds more water, creating bigger events. As the paper by lead author Seung-Ki Min points out, "atmospheric water content is increasing in accord with this theoretical expectation". That research found that "human-induced increases in greenhouse gases have contributed to the observed intensification of heavy precipitation events found over approximately two-thirds of … Northern Hemisphere land areas", for which data was available. It also concluded that current models were underestimating actual extreme events.
Another paper looking at flooding in the UK in October and November 2000, the wettest autumn since records began in 1766, found that warming had increased flood risk by over 20% in nine out of 10 cases, and up to 90% in two thirds of cases.
Separately, warming was found to have doubled the likelihood of the extreme European heatwave of 2003.
All this leaves us with a rather simple conundrum. How bad do things have to get, how loud does the mountain have to rumble and the ground shake before, in policy terms, we decide to leave the old town and build our livelihoods on more secure ground?
In giving his warnings about the storm hitting the eastern seaboard, Obama was driven to distinguish himself from George Bush's incompetent handling of Hurricane Katrina and the wrecking of New Orleans. But if he can't distinguish himself from Bush's other defining association, with the oil industry, ultimately he'll be the man that history remembers for telling people to shelter in their homes beneath the active volcano.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/....-extreme-events
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #287 on Sept 8, 2011, 9:25pm » | |
Ban Ki-moon challenges climate sceptics
September 8, 2011 - 5:17PM
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said he hopes Australia will "lead the way" globally in combating climate change.
Mr Ban was in Sydney today to give his only Australian public lecture.
Speaking at the University of Sydney, he talked of the need for world leaders to address global challenges including climate change, pandemics, and issues involving food, energy and waste.
Regarding climate change, he urged sceptics to visit the Pacific island nation of Kiribati, where rising sea levels are a very real threat.
The impoverished nation was facing a bill of $947 million just to protect infrastructure from the effects of climate change, and had yet to come up with viable ways to relocate some of the population.
Mr Ban added the country was running out of time and hoped Australia would lead the way "for your own good as well as well as that of the planet".
"By 2050, the [world] population will reach 9 billion. That is a 50 per cent increase compared with 2000.
"By that time we will have to reduce greenhouse emissions by 50 per cent."
To those who said there was no point in taking action, because other nations were not, Mr Ban pointed to big polluters including China and India.
China had pledged to reduce its carbon pollution by up to 45 per cent in the next decade, he said.
"It now produces half of the world's wind and solar power."
He added there were plans to increase investment in India in the clean energy sector by more than 300 per cent this decade.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climat....#ixzz1XPz FguaW
|
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
|
Big Bunny
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| | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #288 on Sept 12, 2011, 7:03pm » | |
Hurricanes, floods and wildfires – but Washington won't talk global warming
America is seeing record-breaking extreme weather, yet the US political class is paralysed in climate change negligence
o Jules Boykoff
o guardian.co.uk, Friday 9 September 2011 15.34 BST
![[image]](http://img683.imageshack.us/img683/1766/firefightersinsmithvill.jpg "[image]")
Firefighters in Smithville, Texas: Governor Rick Perry, has called climate change an 'unproven theory' while wildfires ravage his drought-scorched state. Photograph: Erich Schlegel/AP
In 2007, then New York Times environmental reporter Andrew Revkin pondered the possibility that thanks to the vast geographical expanse of the United States, "there is almost never a shared sense of meteorological misery." This, he noted cautiously, might help explain why global warming had not become a front-burner political issue, unlike geographically tighter places like Europe where elected leaders were tackling the problem with more vim.
But recent record-breaking "meteorological misery" from coast to coast is making it clear that severe weather may well be the new normal. Weather is getting more extreme and this, scientists tell us, has a lot to do with climate change. Meanwhile, inside the Beltway and among mainstream media, there's virtually no public debate about the likelihood we're already paying the high price of climate change.
To be sure, we can't definitively pin any single weather event to climate change. Weather is about near-term changes in the atmosphere; climate is about long-term changes to the atmosphere over time and the larger interrelations of ocean, ice and land. As Nasa puts it, "When we talk about climate change, we talk about changes in long-term averages of daily weather." As such, weather is like climate's rambunctious little brother who's always in your face.
For decades, climate scientists have been writing an increasingly precise script for climate change and now nature has snatched the lead role with abandon. One recent report from the US Climate Change Science Programme, "Weather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate" (pdf), summarised weather extremes this way:
"With continued global warming, heat waves and heavy downpours are very likely to further increase in frequency and intensity. Substantial areas of North America are likely to have more frequent droughts of greater severity. Hurricane wind speeds, rainfall intensity, and storm surge levels are likely to increase. The strongest cold season storms are likely to become more frequent, with stronger winds and more extreme wave heights."
Sound familiar? It does for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa). Last month, Noaa noted the US had already endured nine distinct disasters, each totalling $1bn or more in economic losses, tying the wretched record from 2008. They calculated losses for 2011 at more than $35bn – and this was before Hurricane Irene. Jane Lubchenco, the head of Noaa, connected the dots during a speech in Denver: "With climate change, we are loading the dice in favor of these more severe weather events." Others from the scientific community have highlighted the relationship between weather and climate. Climatologist Heidi Cullen argues in her book The Weather of the Future: Heat Waves, Extreme Storms, and Other Scenes from a Climate-Changed Planet:
"Climate and global warming need to be built into our daily weather forecasts because by connecting climate and weather we can begin to work on our long-term memory and relate it to what's outside our window today. If climate is impersonal statistics, weather is personal experience. We need to reconnect them."
The news media carry much of the burden to make this reconnection. Yet, after the Copenhagen climate change conference in 2009, the amount of US media coverage of climate change has plunged to pre-Inconvenient Truth levels, consistently hovering below levels of coverage from other parts of the world. At the same time, Nielsen's recent Global Online Environment and Sustainability Survey found that concern in the US over climate change has dwindled considerably since 2007, dropping 14 percentage points. Less than half of those surveyed in the US (48%) consider climate change a source of concern. Anxiety over extreme weather patterns – and those patterns' ties to climate change – led to significantly higher concern about climate change in other places like Latin America (90%), the Middle East/Africa (80%) and Asia Pacific (72%).
Many mainstream US journalists are working hard to make sure climate change is reported with the urgency it deserves (Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post comes to mind). This is a challenge when politicians in DC – Barack Obama included – are pegging it low on their priority boards. But by accepting the over-hyped dichotomy between jobs and the environment, journalists too often portray a willingness to take meaningful action on climate change as political suicide.
Elected officials have a built-in political incentive to ignore climate disruption. Viewing climate change as an issue facing future generations, if that – rather than already with us – allows politicians to do what they do best: focus on their short-term political interests while hemming and hawing over long-term, seemingly intractable problems. When you add election-year Republican dynamics and stir, you have yourself a full-throttle political thicket where frontrunner presidential candidate Governor Rick Perry of Texas can wave off global warming as an "unproven" theory even as extreme weather ravages his home state.
Journalists have too easily slid into the well-worn ruts of culture-war coverage. As if on wedge-issue cue, Perry recently ploughed through a panoply of denialist verbiage:
"I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling into their projects. And I think we are seeing almost weekly, or even daily, scientists are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing the climate to change."
It's easy for journalists to cover the chaotic claims of prominent politicians. A challenge more befitting of the profession is to demonstrate how climate change connects to extreme weather, national security and the economy. More reporters covering those consequential issues need to place climate change into their journalistic quivers, so they can bring climate into conversation with the other vital issues of our time, rather than relegating it to the climate change ghetto in the media's culture war zone.
As Republican candidates rehearse Exxon-esque talking points, journalists need to ask them where their weather and climate change thresholds lie. Someone should ask Perry, "At what specific threshold would you begin to 'believe' in global warming?" Would he reconsider his position if Texas were thrashed by an Old Testament-style concoction of droughts and tornadoes on an even more regular basis? How regular would this thrashing have to be? More than 97% of active climate scientists are in consensus that humans are contributing significantly to climate change. What percentage does he require to eliminate doubt? 99%? 109%?
Same goes for Obama. How many deaths and billions in economic damage from extreme weather would it take for him to take action to mitigate climate change and, for example, put the kibosh on the Keystone XL pipeline? If New York were transmogrified into the Okefenokee swamp, would that be enough? How about if southern California were turned into a desertified deadzone?
We're living in unconventional political times in the United States, so it's time to dispense with conventional political thinking. Climate scientists are telling us with increasing confidence that the impacts of climate change are already playing out, and not just in the Antarctic where photogenic ice shelves are clattering into the sea. Climate change is already expressing itself as wild weather. It's blowing in the wind.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/....-climate-change
AND:
Why the GOP is going after the EPA
Republican lawmakers aim to cut back or even abolish the Environmental Protection Agency, even though it pays for itself
o Beth Wellington
o guardian.co.uk, Monday 12 September 2011 18.52 BST
![[image]](http://img846.imageshack.us/img846/9660/airpollutioninhouston00.jpg "[image]")
Forty years after the EPA was created to enforce clean air regulations, heatwave-hit Houston, Texas suffers from some of the highest air pollution in the US. Photograph: Michael Ainsworth/AP Photo
When Richard Nixon founded the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by executive order, politicians of all stripes agreed the US needed reforms, even if it cost a small amount of economic growth. Yet, after four decades of the EPA's helping to improve our land, air and water quality, ask whether we need federal regulation and the answer depends on whom you question.
Ask ordinary people in the US and, according to a 2011 Pew survey (pdf), 71% respond, across the political spectrum, that they agree with the statement,"This country should do whatever it takes to protect the environment."
Ask most Republican politicians, some Democrats and the polluting industries that provide them substantial funding, and you'll get a very different answer. And this divergence may be ramping up in the wake of the Citizens United supreme court decision, which equated free speech and political contributions.
Republicans returning to Congress after the Labor Day recess have a legislative shopping list running gamut from rolling back "job-killing" regulation to outright abolition of the agency. Republican presidential candidates would similarly strip the EPA of its authority or shut it down. As far as abolishing the EPA goes, Mark Schapiro, author of Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What's at Stake for American Power, tells me, "It's an economic catastrophe to remove incentives and oversight."
Jonathan H Adler, director of the centre for business law and regulation at Case Western Reserve University, has received an award from the conservative Federalist Society for Law and Policy Studies – and yet he writes of the GOP efforts, "opposing the Environmental Protection Agency, by itself, is not a serious environmental policy."
Meanwhile, Democrats co-sponsoring legislation to curtail the EPA include Senators Jay Rockerfeller (West Virginia), Joe Manchin (West Virginia), Claire McCaskill (Missouri) Kent Conrad (North Dakota), Tim Johnson (South Dakota), Ben Nelson (Nebraska) and Jim Webb (Virginia); as well as Congressmen Mark Critz (Pennsylvania), Gene Green (Texas) and Nick Rahall (West Virginia).
And, on 2 September, President Obama, as is his wont, sought to assure critics of his reasonableness by arguing that the EPA unnecessarily burdens US industry. The president said that, while his commitment to public health and the environment is "unwavering", he has ordered the EPA to withdraw its draft ozone national ambient air quality standards in order to "underscore the importance of reducing regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty, particularly as our economy continues to recover".
Ground-level ozone is the primary constituent of smog, which leads to lung and heart disease. In June, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson testified before a Senate environment and public works committee (EPW) hearing on the clean air act and public health. In July, she responded in a letter (pdf) to EPW member Tom Carper (Democrat, Delaware) that she had opted to review the 2008 ozone standards, rather than keep them in place until the next mandated review in 2013. The Bush administration standards, which the outgoing president had weakened at the last minute in 2008 and are under court challenge. In Jackson's estimation, those standards are "not legally defensible given the scientific evidence".
Juliet Eilperin, who reports on on science, policy and politics for the Washington Post, called Obama's statement a "win for business". And, according to Eilperin, the forestalled ozone regulation may be joined by delayed "limits on mercury and air toxins, greenhouse gases from power plants, and a range of emissions from industrial boilers, oil refineries, cement plants and other sources".
The annual budget request for the EPA for 2011 was $10.02bn (pdf). Compare this, to the $11.4bn requested by the department of defence for just one family of fighter planes, Lockheed Martin's F-35 (pdf). The paradox of curtailing the EPA is that the benefits of its regulations outweigh its costs (pdf) due to reductions in disease and premature death.
Of course, in the US, manufacturing firms do not have to pay the costs associated with the pollution. Schapiro, who is also senior correspondent at the Centre for Investigative Reporting, tells me that the fact that environmental regulation is stricter in the European Union than in the US may derive from the US's lack of universal healthcare: "The economic argument becomes more potent where government … will have to absorb healthcare costs." Another difference, according to Schapiro, is that the European system fosters prevention (risk avoidance), the US-system favours litigation to obtain compensatory damages.
I'd observe that companies are willing to gamble with our health and safety: tobacco, the Ford Pinto, Love Canal and the BP oil spill all come to mind. In the past, the EPA has countered critics of federal regulation, saying – in Jackson's words – that "[s]mart environmental protection can actually drive innovation." Schapiro agrees:
"The dialogue between 'jobs' and 'regulation' is endless and repetitive, and in almost every instance, the claims by industry that new, more protective regulations would result in job losses and harm competitiveness have turned out to be dramatically overstated."
Take, for instance, how the US is falling behind Europe in green technology – in the field of solar energy. As Paula Mints writes:
"The US was the leader in solar manufacturing until the mid 1990s when Japan took over, offering government support to its manufacturing and its market. Once the FiT incentive gathered steam in Europe, its manufacturers enjoyed one year as the number one manufacturing region. Meanwhile, China's government invested – and heavily – in its crystalline manufacturing sector and export market, and in 2009 Chinese manufacturers began aggressively pricing product for share (a common practice, by the way). And now China's manufacturers control the market."
Beyond the economic argument, do we really want to go back to the days before the EPA? Nixon's first EPA administrator, William Ruckelshaus, describes that time in the Wall Street Journal:
"We humans with our big cars and our big factories and our big cities were discharging terrible stuff into the air and water, and it had to be stopped or we would soon make our nest uninhabitable. The public was growing increasingly outraged. Every night on colour television, we saw yellow sludge flowing into blue rivers; every day, as we drove to work, we saw black smudges against the barely visible blue sky. We knew that our indiscriminate use of pesticides and toxic substances was threatening wildlife and public health.
"But we didn't do much about it. Until 1970, most regulation of industry was done by the states, which competed so strongly for plants and jobs that regulating companies to protect public health was beyond them.
"Environmentally, it was a race to the bottom."
Which is where our lawmakers will take us again, if we let them.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/....blicans-abolish
|
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #289 on Sept 12, 2011, 7:10pm » | |
Biomass schemes will boost destructive timber imports, claims wood industry
Wood companies and green campaigners say subsidies to power companies threaten both jobs and rainforests
* Terry Macalister
* guardian.co.uk, Sunday 11 September 2011 19.00 BST
Big wood companies are trying to halt Drax, RWE and others pressing ahead with a raft of lower-carbon energy schemes which would see large power stations switch from burning coal to timber.
The wood industry fears thousands of jobs in its factories will be threatened by the "green" power plans and wants government to remove the subsidies facilitating them.
Wildlife and environmental groups are also alarmed that the new biomass schemes could trigger a huge escalation in wood imports and threaten rainforests.
The Wood Panel Industries Association said: "We have already seen a 50% increase in wood prices over the last three years because of these kinds of energy developments and we do not think they should be receiving subsidies for schemes which we believe are not carbon-friendly and which will require a huge amount of imported wood to support a tenfold increase in planned capacity."
The lobbying has started ahead of a planned consultation by the Department of Energy and Climate Change into the future level of subsidy through the renewable obligation certificate (ROC) system.
The current subsidy regime for biomass and other clean technology such as wind power runs until 2013. New "banding" is being considered that will run until 2017.
A DECC spokesman said the department was aware of concerns from interest groups about a major escalation in biomass but said it had safeguards in place. "The very clear sustainability criteria we now have in place under the renewables obligation will mean we know where biomass has come from and how it has been grown.
"The UK criteria also include a minimum greenhouse gas emission saving of 60% compared with EU average fossil-fuel use, and restrictions to prevent use of land, such a primary forest and other land important on carbon or biodiversity grounds, from being converted to grow biomass. These criteria apply to both imported and UK biomass."
It is not just companies such as Canada's Norbord and Austria's Egger which are worried about the future of the British factories they run to supply the construction industry and others with wood.
The RSPB wildlife campaign group also says it is "by no means certain" biomass is a low-carbon energy source. Its new report , Bioenergy: a burning issue, says the power companies will move from a 74% dependency on British wood to an 80% dependency on imports where sustainability will be far harder to verify.
Friends of the Earth says it is also concerned about the large-scale imports of biomass wood from overseas which would be "impossible" to control and could create terrible damage through deforestation in the developing world.
The RSPB claims there are 31 biomass plants in operation but 14 more have been approved, 16 are in the planning stage and a further nine have been proposed.
Drax has been co-firing its main 4,000-megawatt plant using coal and a small amount of biomass but has talked about introducing three standalone biomass plants on the same Yorkshire site if the right subsidy regime is in place.
RWE has plans to convert its 1,050-megawatt coal-fired power station at Tilbury in Essex to run entirely on wood pellets, which would make it the UK's largest biomass plant. The German company has made clear it will import most of the wood supplies from the US.
The Biomass Energy Centre, run by the UK Forestry Commission, argues that wood derived from sustainable forests, where new trees are planted when others are cut down, releases far less carbon than traditional fossil fuels.
"The critical difference between biomass fuels and fossil fuel is that of fossil and contemporary carbon," it says. "Burning fossil fuels results in converting stable carbon sequestered millions of years ago into atmospheric carbon dioxide when the global environment has adapted to current levels.
"Burning biomass fuels, however, returns to the atmosphere contemporary carbon recently taken up by the growing plant, and currently being taken up by replacement growth."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20....-timber-imports
|
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
|
Big Bunny
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| | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #290 on Sept 12, 2011, 7:12pm » | |
Rio+20 must 'unenvironmentalise' green issues, says G77 negotiator
Focus should shift to economics to make notion of sustainability more widely accepted, says senior organiser for Brazil
* Jonathan Watts, Asia environment correspondent
* guardian.co.uk, Monday 12 September 2011 11.36 BST
Next year's Rio+20 United Nations summit must "un-environmentalise" the world's approach to sustainability so that it can reach out beyond the converted, according to a senior organiser in the host nation.
André Corręa do Lago, the chief negotiator for Brazil, said the once-in-a-generation gathering should focus on economic opportunities so the principles of sustainability are accepted beyond the "usual suspects" of environment ministries and green NGOs.
The effort to broaden the principles of the original 1992 Rio Earth summit are likely to prove controversial. Supporters say the world needs a new, more inclusive approach to sustainability that emphasises the benefits to humanity because current efforts to protect nature are failing. Critics warn the increased emphasis on technology and markets will simply greenwash destructive levels of consumption and development.
The first Rio summit 20 years ago is seen as one of the most ambitious gatherings in the history of the United Nations. More than 100 heads of state signed up to a raft of actions, including efforts to halt the deterioration of the ozone layer, tackle climate change and reduce the loss of biodiversity. These issues have taken centre stage in international negotiations for the past two decades.
The follow-up in June 2012 will also try to set the global agenda for the next 20 years, predicted do Lago, but he said the outcome would take a different shape.
"There is fatigue of conventions. We have enough," he said. Instead, he anticipates measures on water, energy and sustainable cities, and more discussion on technology and work on how to develop a "green economy", while eradicating poverty.
The shift partly reflects a change in the global balance of power. Twenty years ago, the west – particularly the US – dominated the world economy and political agenda. Today, such older industrial powers are struggling to recover from the 2008 financial crisis while fast developing nations, like China, India and Brazil are in the ascendant.
But a gap has opened up as the former group lose influence, while the latter are reluctant to accept more responsibility.
"I think that this conference may symbolise a moment in which these large emerging economies have more clout. There is no doubt about that," said de Lago, who is also chief climate negotiator for the G77+China UN grouping of developing countries. "This is misinterpreted by some developed countiries as a moment when we must assume more obligations. China, India, South Africa and Brazil are fully conscious that we are developing countries. We are convinced that we cannot be compared to countries that have financial and technical circumstances that are more important than ours."
Disputes between developed and developing nations are partly to blame for the dire progress in UN climate negotiations, which were also started by the 1992 summit. After the acrimony of talks in Copenhagen in 2009 and the weak outcome of Cancún last year, there is a danger that another poor result in Durban this winter could undermine the entire UN negotiating process and turn the follow-up Rio summit into a crisis meeting to rebuild the multilateral framework.
The Brazilian diplomat said he remained hopeful of a climate deal this year – particularly if developing nations can find common ground with Europe – but admitted a bad outcome could contaminate next year's gathering.
"Durban will have an impact on Rio. If it goes well, people will arrive in Rio trusting the multilateral system. If it fails, people will arrive maybe with the necessity of regaining trust in the multilateral system."
Even if the hosts can stick to their desired agenda, the emphasis on technology and "ecological service payments" has already alarmed many environmental commentators, who feel core values are being diluted and losing out to pressure from big corporations.
The Brazilian said the change of focus was a sign of the times. In 1992, environmentalists, he said, were the outsiders who were very vocal because they had to make their voices heard. But now, their views were mainstream and the priority was to for them to become a majority.
"It is like an election strategy. There is now a core of 30% that is sure to vote for you. Now, we must go for the others to get over 50%," said do Lago. "We need to get the people who make the big decisions to take environmental factors into account."
A furious debate looks likely to ensue between those calling for traditional protection for nature and those looking to collaborate with companies, markets and accountants in the creation of a green economy.
One NGO that has shifted is the US group Conservation International.
"Anyone honest would have to say we are totally failing. We need to recallibrate the development model," said Peter Seligmann, the founder of Conservation International, during a visit to Beijing last week. "We had the wrong mission. We can't just protect biodiversity. We must show it is essential for humanity."
His organisation – which was always close to major institutions – is now devoting the bulk of its resources to developing a green economy.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20....l-climate-talks
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #291 on Sept 12, 2011, 7:31pm » | |
Our demand for metals could cost us the Earth
For too long mining companies have used the mantra of growth to excuse environmental destruction
o Melody Kemp
o guardian.co.uk, Thursday 1 September 2011 10.29 BST
![[image]](http://img37.imageshack.us/img37/6818/tinmininginindonesia007.jpg "[image]")
An aerial view of the environmental damage caused by tin mining in Indonesia's Bangka Belitung province. Photograph: Stringer/Indonesia/Reuters
Have you noticed that mining is increasingly getting up people's noses? Globally, more communities are fighting it. Gaggles of poor villagers are taking on well-connected, cashed-up companies representing the brutish but powerful foundation of the globalised free market system. You have to admire their style.
Take Sumba, eastern Indonesia, which is currently pocked with the telltale signs of gold exploration. Its seams, Australian Hillgrove Resources says, are rich and promising. The local people's response? Consistent riots and outrage. As they see it, gold mining threatens their land, water, culture – their very being. It usually takes about 691,000 litres (almost 700 cubic meters) of water to produce one kilo of glitter. In the necklace of dry eastern Indonesian islands that hang delicately above Australia, water is more precious than gold. Australian behemoth BHP, which recently posted a A$22.5bn (Ł15bn) profit, ceded the licence after local protests showed no sign of abating. Hillgrove cannot say it wasn't warned.
On Palawan, a glistening gem of an island in the Philippines, a story all too familiar in Asia is also unfolding. A rich and powerful Forbes-listed airline magnate, Lucio Tan, in partnership with a UK mining giant Toledo Nickel, wants to mine one of Asia's last significant old growth forests (thus reducing significant carbon sequestration potential) to take advantage of record prices for the nickel needed to run hybrid cars and satisfy our addiction to gadgets. But the tech-savvy indigenous people would rather have trees. On the Philippine island of Luzon, mining companies with names like health resorts, Oceana and Oxiana, are both facing opposition from the locals.
In Australia, things are no better. A random news sample indicates that farmers, not known for their radicalism, have lately been sitting resolutely on folding chairs bearing placards against coal seam mining. Western Australian farmers were told to remove signs opposing an iron mine threatening to sap water needed for crops and livestock.
As global financial institutions seismically heave, demand for metals – gold in particular – intensifies. Shareholders might nervously read reports of protests, but their loyalty is bought by increased dividends. How can the environment win against such kitchen bribery? The plodding Australian resources minister Martin Ferguson dismissed the opposition, asserting the people have no rights over what lies beneath, adding ominously that farmers and indigenous peoples cannot veto mining. We are told it is in the national interest, but increasingly that is code for elite interests. After all, the test of any participatory democracy is the power of its peoples to influence their destiny. Mining companies thus far have used the mantra of growth and profits to excuse their habitat destruction.
The environment is one of the last of the global commons, and the sociocultural consequences and environmental costs of mining are increasingly unacceptable. This is especially so on small islands where water and arable land are limited. Papua New Guinea's minister for mines Byron Chan recently announced that he was changing the law to "hand ownership from the government to land owners". Greg Anderson, of the Australian chamber of mines and petroleum, choked on his tie when asked to respond. Obstacles and community shareholders are clearly not his thing.
Sumba, where electricity is intermittent, cannot spare the 143 gigajoules of energy it takes to produce one kilo of gold – nor do they need the greenhouse emissions or toxic additives like cyanide. Merely opening the earth delivers methane and carbon emissions. More carbon is produced by processing, transport and manufacture. The price of gold cannot possibly make up for what the environment pays.
In a dazzling display of chutzpah, the Queensland environmental defenders' office, along with Friends of the Earth, launched a court case against Xstrata coal, opposing a 32,000 hectare claim in Western Queensland. The EDO's case cites the future climate consequences to the global environment of both the mine and the coal's future use. One is tempted to cheer.
Donald Brown's series on points of ethics might have inspired them. He posits that we have not confronted "governments or individuals who oppose national climate change policies on the grounds of national economic cost alone whether they deny that, in addition to national economic interest, nations must comply with their obligations, duties, and responsibilities to prevent harm to millions of poor, vulnerable people around the world". He could be talking about mining when he says "the potential harms are grave to some people or ecological systems, and… those being put at risk have not consented to be put at risk".
Until now, mining has been a favoured child, not overly fettered by ethics. It's time that people's rights took precedence. Ethics and morality, seemingly redundant in an instant gratification world, may soon re-enter the dance, nudging unbridled growth off the stage.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/01/environment-ethics-mining
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #292 on Sept 16, 2011, 12:13am » | |
US environment agency to delay greenhouse gas proposals
EPA administrator Lisa Jackson admits the agency will miss target to float new utility-focused proposals by end of September
* BusinessGreen, part of the Guardian Environment Network
* guardian.co.uk, Thursday 15 September 2011 14.50 BST
New greenhouse gas regulations for US power plants are unlikely to be proposed by the end of the month, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has admitted.
The agency originally aimed at producing initial proposals by 30 September, but EPA administrator Lisa Jackson told news agency Reuters yesterday that the target will not be met.
"Greenhouse gases for power plants is first on the docket," she said on the sidelines of an event in San Francisco. "Although we are not going to make the date at the end of the month, we are still working and will be shortly announcing a new schedule."
The delay comes after the Obama administration decided to block a tightening of national smog standards, much to the consternation of green groups.
The government has come under intense pressure to cut environmental regulations from businesses that fear an increasing legislative burden is damaging the economy.
Republican politicians have been actively trying to curtail the EPA's powers, by slashing funding and axing a raft of environmental regulations.
Nevertheless, the EPA is pushing ahead with the first national standards for mercury and acid gas emissions from power plants.
"We are still intending to finalise that ruling in November," Jackson told Reuters.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20....-greenhouse-gas
|
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #293 on Sept 16, 2011, 12:15am » | |
What is wrong with these people:
The most anti-environment Congress ever?
Analysis by Democrats shows the Republican-dominated Congress has voted 125 times on measures that undermine environmental laws and the powers of the EPA
* Kate Sheppard for Mother Jones, part of the Guardian Environment Network
* guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 13 September 2011 16.44 BST
![[image]](http://img507.imageshack.us/img507/4694/votesagainstenvironment.jpg "[image]")
Votes against environmental laws by the Republican-dominated Congress. Photograph: Committee on energy & commerce
House Republicans have undertaken a war on environmental regulations since assuming the majority earlier this year, taking a total of 125 votes on measures that would take undermine environmental laws or take away the government's authority to set regulations. Together, the measures make this "the most anti-environment Congress in history," says Rep. Henry Waxman, the ranking member on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Democratic staffers on the Energy and Commerce Committee compiled the list, which includes stand-alone bills and amendments filed to other pieces of legislation. Fifty of the measures have targeted the Environmental Protection Agency, though the departments of Interior (25 measures) and Energy (24) have also been in the crosshairs. Twenty-eight have sought to undermine elements of the Clean Air Act, blocking the agency from issuing rules on particulate matter, ozone pollution, or mercury, for example.
Twenty of the measures have specifically targeted rules or programs that deal with climate change—like blocking the US from contributing to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, defunding the EPA's program that tracks greenhouse gas emissions, and stopping the Department of Homeland Security from establishing a Climate Change Adaptation Task Force.
Of course, we've covered the House GOP's ambush on environmental rules here pretty extensively. But now those attacks have been compiled in a searchable format! And the full list is really something, considering Republicans have only held the House since January. Just think what they could do in the next 15 and a half months!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/sep/13/anti-environment-congress-ever
|
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #294 on Sept 16, 2011, 12:42am » | |
Greenpeace at 40: A global brand in good health or an out-of-touch bureaucracy?
Group receives both happy and unhappy wishes as it marks its 40th campaigning birthday
o John Vidal, environment editor
o guardian.co.uk, Thursday 15 September 2011 07.15 BST
![[image]](http://img441.imageshack.us/img441/6483/greenpeaceinternational.jpg "[image]")
Greenpeace International executive director, Kumi Naidoo, presents a petition containing 50,000 signatures demanding the public release of Cairn Energy's oil spill response plan on the Greenpeace ship Esperanza in the Davis Strait off the coast of Greenland. Photograph: Jiri Rezac/Greenpeace
It began with a counter-culture movement of young journalists and Canadian ecologists calling themselves the Don't Make a Wave Committee. In one of the last century's more romantic acts, they hired a fishing boat with the modest intention of stopping an atomic bomb test in the Pacific and redefining man's relationship with the Earth.
Forty tumultuous years later, including the sinking of its flagship and the murder of one of its activists by the French government, Greenpeace is a global brand with nearly 3 million members, turning over hundreds of millions of dollars a year and picking fights with almost everyone in power. On Thursday it announced it was planning to expand into developing countries but also warned that the battle against the "mindless exploitation" of Earth's resources was in danger of being lost.
But the group that won't accept donations from corporations and has always offended governments and its proxies is being wished both a happy and a very unhappy middle age. "It was very powerful. It had the passion. It was idealistic and courageous," says Paul Watson, membership no 007 and the youngest surviving co-founder who was expelled in 1977 for being too confrontational. Watson went on to found the rival Sea Shepherd organisation and famously call Greenpeace "the Avon ladies of the environment movement".
"Many of the first group were journalists. We called ourselves [Marshall] McLuhan's warriors. But it's become a big bureaucracy. It's not original any more. It should be concentrating on the issues it began with," said Watson this week.
Rex Weyler, an American-Canadian journalist who sailed on the first boat to the Aleutian Islands, said: "[Greenpeace] adopted a form of civil disobedience - it did for the environment what the civil rights movement did for the dispossessed. We wanted to launch an ecology movement. There were civil rights, women's and peace movements. What was lacking was a real sense of ecology. We set out not to create an international organisation and make Greenpeace famous. We were going to transform the world … it sort of worked, didn't it?".
Former Labour environment minister Michael Meacher said: "My officials were dismayed and business was alarmed, but Greenpeace absolutely captured my imagination by their daring and dangerous escapades. Taking on the big forces of the world in such a scary way struck me rigid. [They] truly brought home what was going on."
Former Conservative environment secretary John Gummer strongly supported the group today. "Every environment minister should thank God for Greenpeace. It has helped us to push the boundaries much further than ever otherwise would have been possible."
But Stewart Brand, author of the 1960s hippy bible the Whole Earth Catalog and now calling himself a "futurist", this week scorned the group he once admired. "They have gone horribly wrong in opposing GM crops and nuclear power. In doing so they are obstructing progress where it is most needed – in the developing world – and making the greenhouse gas situation worse instead of better. In these matters their anti-science stance makes the whole green movement look irrational," he says.
The group has also been attacked by scientists. "Greenpeace is now a ratbag rabble of intellectual cowards intent on peddling an agenda, whatever the scientific evidence. Its former glory rested on the righteousness of its actions in support of real evidence of how humanity was failing to care for the environment. Now it is a sad, dogmatic, reactionary phalanx of anti-science zealots who care not for evidence, but for publicity," said Wilson da Silva, editor of Australian science magazine Cosmos.
But Kumi Naidoo, the South African executive director of Greenpeace International, dismissed the criticism. He said the organisation is in good health, with offices in 40 countries, 3 million members and a growing presence and influence in China, Africa and Latin America. It will shortly launch a new 60-metre flagship Rainbow Warrior, one of the most environmentally advanced ships afloat.
"We've won many historic victories, on nuclear testing, whaling, protecting the rainforests, the hole in the ozone layer, defending the Antarctic and many other issues, the fact remains that the great environmental battle of our age [climate change] is still to be won," he said a statement on Thursday.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/sep/15/greenpeace-40-year-anniversary
FURTHER:
Greenpeace's 40 years of activism prepare us for our greatest threat
We have a long way to go if we are to protect the planet from climate change, the great environmental battle of our age
* Kumi Naidoo
* guardian.co.uk, Thursday 15 September 2011 07.00 BST
![[image]](http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/4535/bloggreenpeacegreenpea0.jpg "[image]")
Activists scaling Mount Rushmore on 8 July 2009 and hanging a banner urging Barack Obama to get tough on climate change. Photograph: Kate Davison/Greenpeace/AFP/Getty Images
Forty years ago today a small band of activists who had hired a fishing boat in Vancouver set sail for a small island off the coast of Alaska. Their aim was to halt a planned underground nuclear test by the Nixon administration, and although the attempt to prevent the explosion was thwarted by the US coastguard, something else was detonated as the crew of pacifist ecologists captured the imagination of people across the world and Greenpeace was born.
Over four subsequent decades Greenpeace has deployed a mix of non-violent direct action, investigations and mobilisation to highlight environmental threats and offer imaginative and effective solutions to protect the planet. We've been on the oceans putting our bodies between harpoons and whales, our campaigns against the dumping of toxic waste at sea have seen the introduction of international laws that now prevent it, and our rainforest campaigns have slowed the mass commercial exploitation of forests across the globe. More recently we were central to the successful campaign to block a third runway at Heathrow. Our campaign against new coal-fired power stations saw six activists who climbed the smokestack at Kingsnorth in Kent acquitted in court after they convinced a jury that their attempt to block carbon emissions were justified. Soon afterwards the UK government announced an end to new unabated coal plants in Britain.
But while we're happy to mark our successes on today's anniversary, this is no time to celebrate. We've done much, but sometimes it feels like the past 40 years have been a preparation for the greatest environmental challenge we humans have yet faced, the one that will define success or failure for our movement: climate change.
This week scientists from several leading institutes are reporting on the state of the Arctic sea ice – that white cap at the top of the world that acts as a global air conditioner by reflecting most of the solar radiation that hits it, keeping the planet cooler than it otherwise would be. In the lifetime of Greenpeace the summer volume of that vital sheet of floating ice has fallen from around 17,000 cubic kilometres to just 4,000. If Greenpeace exists four decades from now it is likely we will be campaigning for a planet that looks radically different from space, one with open ocean surrounding the north pole in the summer months.
I was in the Arctic this year. I was jailed for climbing on to an oil rig off the coast of Greenland and demanding an end to the drilling of exploratory wells by UK-based Cairn Energy, which is hoping to hit some of the billions of barrels said to lay untapped under the Arctic. It is a sign of how far we environmentalists still have to go that governments and businesses see the disappearance of the sea ice not as a grave warning to humanity, but as an opportunity to extract more of the very fuels that got us into this mess in the first place. My climb on to that rig, with 20 other men and women from around the world, forced Cairn to publish its deeply flawed plan for cleaning up an Arctic oil spill, but with Shell preparing to send its rigs to the same region next year we have on our hands one of the great environmental battles of our age.
By scaling that Arctic rig I wanted to make an important point. I am an African, my hometown of Durban could not be much further from Greenland, but the warming at the top of the world is of as much relevance to the lives of my countrymen and women as it is to the people of Scandinavia. The same can be said of deforestation in the Amazon, coal-burning in India or industrial overfishing in Europe. The consequences of our exploitation of the Earth's limited resources do not respect borders. Our world is now interconnected, but our biosphere always has been. When it comes to protecting the global environment for the next generation we really are all in it together, so unless we act together in places where Greenpeace has not long existed, this battle will be lost.
That means changing the way we operate, it means shifting our resources southwards so we're no longer so heavily represented in North America, where we began, and in Europe where we came of age when the French government sunk our flagship Rainbow Warrior, when our colleague Fernando Pereira drowned. Today we have expanded our campaign teams to China, Senegal and South Africa which is helping us co-ordinate our work so we can pressure the same targets across several continents at the same time. The threats we face are global, our opponents are often global corporations, the media that carries our message is changing rapidly and no longer marries up to the lines on a map. So we too need to be truly global.
But ultimate success will be achieved when we are no longer necessary. I have no more idea of what we will look like in 40 years than did our founders in 1971. But I fear the fight to defend the Earth and its inhabitants against mindless exploitation will be as relevant and necessary as it is now.
• Kumi Naidoo is the executive director of Greenpeace International
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/sep/15/greenpeace-40-years-activism
AND:
Greenpeace and WWF anniversaries highlight wildly differing tactics
This week sees the 40th and 50th years of two global green groups with identical goals – but very different approaches
* Fiona Harvey, environment correspondent
* guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 14 September 2011 09.00 BST
This week marks two anniversaries of global green campaigning groups that could scarcely be more different, while holding almost identical aims.
On Thursday, Greenpeace turns 40 – an unlikely candidate for middle age, given its activists' reputation for eye-catching and sometimes dangerous stunts. Last Sunday, WWF celebrated 50 years since the opening of its first office in Switzerland – a much more staid affair, as befits an organisation that boasts the support of the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Edinburgh.
WWF – it stands both for the Worldwide Fund for Nature and the World Wildlife Fund, its original name, though these days the organisation prefers to be known only by its initials and its famous panda logo – was born out of a realisation that some of the wild places and wild species of the world were under serious threat.
The catalyst for its foundation was a series of articles in the Observer by Sir Julian Huxley – a biologist and grandson of Thomas Huxley, the Victorian champion of evolution nickhamed "Darwin's bulldog" – warning of the spoliation of wildlife habitats in Africa. He was joined by a small group of conservationists including Godfrey Rockefeller, of the US oil dynasty, and Peter Scott, son of Scott of the Antarctic, and the World Wildlife Fund quickly gathered an aristocratic backing. Its first president was the playboy Dutch prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld – said to be one of the models for James Bond – who also founded the secretive Bilderberg Group, and he was soon to be followed by Prince Philip. Ironically for a group focused on saving endangered species, several of its early high-profile backers were the same hunters who a few years earlier had enjoyed killing "big game".
As the fund grew – last year, WWF's global income was more than half a billion euros – the organisation gradually took a broader approach to conservation, with the concentration on "charismatic mega fauna" replaced by campaigns on climate change, pollution and public policy. WWF also started to work closely with big companies – some of them the same alleged polluters or high-emitting business that other NGOs were criticising, such as cement company Lafarge and The Coca-Cola Company, which has been accused of damaging water courses in some of its operations.
A colourful history and new direction have earned WWF its share of detractors. "Sell-out" and "too cosy with business" are common criticisms when activists from other green organisations are asked their views. "Some of the people who work for WWF are probably quite similar to those in other NGOs like Greenpeace, but the people who support them are very different," says one campaigner.
Solitaire Townsend, an environmental consultant whose own company Futerra celebrates its 10th birthday this week, characterises the organisations as "an angry teenager and an elegant, silvery 50-year-old" and says they serve very different purposes. "The types of people who are attracted to them are totally different. If environmental problems make you really pissed off and you want to get out there and stick it to the man, you go to Greenpeace. If they make you sad, and you want to sit in your room with a cuddly toy and look at pictures of cute animals, you would go to WWF," she says. "There is room for both, of course, but I don't think there's a lot of overlap in the personality types."
David Nussbaum, chief executive of WWF-UK, does not quite see it that way, but he acknowledges the distinction between his organisation's approach and some of its noisier fellows. "That more combative, aggressive approach of Greenpeace can be effective," he says, "but we have a contrasting method. We see a need to engage constructively with the commercial world. We use our influence with businesses."
While Greenpeace is likely to be found outside a corporate headquarters protesting, its counterparts in WWF might be inside meeting the chief executive. To critics who say this could lead to companies using WWF to greenwash their message, Nussbaum is unapologetic. "If you take a company like Marks & Spencer, which we work with, they are very principled and ethical, but you can say there is room for improvement – having a target implies that you haven't got all the way yet to where you need to be."
The broadened focus of WWF has taken it from campaigns on tigers and whales in its early days to working on the minutiae of the UK's energy efficiency legislation – a stretch, perhaps, for some long term supporters? Nussbaum is eager to stress that the new political campaigns have their roots in the vision of WWF's founders – he quotes Max Nicholson, the ornithologist: "WWF is not just about saving whales and tigers and rainforests, and preventing pollution and waste, but is inescapably concerned with the future conduct, welfare and happiness and indeed survival of mankind on this planet."
Whether the nature of WWF's support has changed over 50 years is difficult to assess – the crowned heads are still there, among the 5 million less aristocratic supporters around the world. In the UK, about 40% of these are long-serving regular donors, typically retired couples. About a third have adopted a species for themselves, mostly well-educated young, single people but also include lower paid people with families. About 28% are people who have been bought a species adoption as a gift, and many are children. Comparisons cannot be made as no such data was collated in the first decades of the group's life, but the share of individual donors has changed – they still make up more than half of the group's income, but governments and other public bodies account for about 17% and business donations are more than 10% of income.
That both WWF and Greenpeace have become instantly recognisable global brands is a testament to their success in the last decades, and to the enduring importance of the issues on which they campaign, says Townsend. But, she argues, the real challenge for both in the next 50 years is not the differing approaches taken by the pair – it is the question of how to spread their support from their western bases to be equally effective in other parts of the world. "Can these sorts of NGO model work outside the west? That is not clear yet," she says. "Concern for the environmental and degradation are universal, but what works in Norway might not work at all in China."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/sep/14/greenpeace-wwf-anniversaries
|
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
|
Big Bunny
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| | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #295 on Sept 16, 2011, 1:13am » | |
Is Al Gore now a help or hindrance to the global warming cause?
Al Gore's Climate Reality Project is broadcasting its message to 24 time zones across 24 hours
![[image]](http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/7601/leoblogalgoreandthe0083.jpg "[image]")
Screen grab from the introduction of Al Gore's Climate Reality event. Photograph: climaterealityproject.org/NASA
Death by Powerpoint. I have suffered this torture too many times over the years. We all probably have.
So I was a little nervous this morning logging into Climate Reality – Al Gore's 24-hour global-warming warning – as to what I might discover. And, I have to say, my heart immediately sank.
A no-doubt sincere presenter from the Solomon Islands was showing slide after slide of extreme weather events around the world that have occurred over the past year and linking everyone, it seemed, to the rise in anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. As anyone who follows the climate debate closely knows, that is a very contentious peg on which to hang your hat. That kind of talk traditionally requires lots of caveats and careful explaining. Done with abandon and raw emotion – as this presenter seemed to be doing – and you are quickly labelled in some quarters as a climate "alarmist".
And, for me, this is one of the key challenges the Climate Reality project faces. Who exactly is it trying to convince with its urgent, sometimes breathless campaign? Is it preaching to the converted? If so, it is doing a good job.
Or is it trying to win over climate sceptics? I suspect not. I get the sense from Climate Reality's tone and focus that it believes sceptics are a lost cause who are beyond redemption or reason.
That leaves the middle ground – the unconverted. Al Gore did a tremendous job connecting with this constituency in his hugely successful, Oscar-winning An Inconvenient Truth in 2006. No single person has ever done as much as Gore to raise global comprehension of both the causes and dangers of climate change.
But that was a long time ago now. The politics of climate change is much more polarised and fraught now than back then – even if the science is, it would seem, hardening – and, for right or wrong, Al Gore is a hugely polarising figure, particularly in his homeland. Whatever he does or says in this arena – no matter how cogent or sensible - will attract scorn and derision from those that just can't see past the man. And that is a huge problem for those who still want to see the world urgently address, as Gore says, the reality of climate change.
I might have misjudged the potency and reach of Climate Reality – I didn't, for example, like its idea of asking people to donate their Facebook and Twitter accounts – so please do share your own thoughts about its strengths and/or weaknesses below. Has there been a segment of the Climate Reality broadcast that you thought worked really well and hit home the "reality"? And will you be tuning in for Gore's final-hour presentation?
However, I still think there is an important, if difficult, question to be asked: despite all his efforts over the past three decades to raise awareness on this issue, is Gore now a help or a hindrance to the cause he cares so passionately about?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/bl....-change-reality
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #296 on Sept 17, 2011, 7:54am » | |
16 September 2011 Last updated at 14:16 GMT
UK 'set to miss' climate targets
By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News
The UK is set to miss climate change targets it is legally bound to meet, according to an independent analysis.
Cambridge Econometrics says the UK will narrowly miss carbon budgets up to 2017, and by bigger margins after that.
The government is legally bound to keep emissions within its carbon budgets.
Separately, a report from a coalition of green groups says the government is not living up to its "greenest ever" pledge. The government says it is making progress on a number of fronts.
It points out that emissions from the government's own activities, in Westminster, Whitehall and around the country, have fallen by nearly 14% in a single year.
But emissions from the nation as a whole actually grew during 2010, as the economy began a modest recovery from the recession.
According to analysts Cambridge Econometrics, this has helped to put the UK off the trajectory required to stay within its carbon budgets.
"The unmistakable lesson from the effect of emissions reduction policies 1997-2010 is that policies tend to have a lower impact than forecast, and therefore their strength needs to be increased if targets are to be achieved," said Paul Ekins from the Energy Institute at University College London, senior consultant to Cambridge Econometrics.
The country has also missed the target of cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 20% from 1990 levels by 2010 that was set by Labour before coming to power in 1997.
It has been clear for many years that this ambition would not be met, although a recession-induced 10% cut in CO2 emissions during 2009 brought it much closer.
That the country fell short, despite the recession, "shows the policy challenge of carbon emission reduction," observed Prof Ekins.
The majority of greenhouse gas reductions in recent years have been secured in gases other than CO2, notably in curbing methane release from landfill sites.
Sectoral shifts
The government has agreed carbon budgets for four successive five-year periods, running collectively from 2008-2027, following recommendations from statutory advisors the Committee on Climate Change.
The committee has also warned on several occasions that existing government policies would not do enough to meet the budgets.
The 2027 target amounts to a halving of emissions from 1990, the internationally agreed baseline year.
Cambridge Econometrics forecasts that emissions from electricity generation and road transport will fall over the next few years, while a number of sectors - particularly aviation - will pump out increasing quantities of CO2.
However, the analysts acknowledge that a number of government policies such as the Renewable Heat Incentive were finalised so recently that it is not possible to model their impact.
"On the face of it, there is still a good prospect that, with these policies, the gap between these forecasts and the now legally binding targets will be closed," said Prof Ekins.
"But the time taken for new policies to be worked up, consulted on and implemented is long, and few new policies will be able to be put in place and be effective even for the third budget period (2018-22), if it becomes clear that emissions are not being reduced as hoped."
The analysts also forecast that investment in renewable electricity generation will not be enough to meet the UK's target, under EU legislation, of producing 15% of its electricity by renewable technologies by 2020.
Tarnished green?
When the coalition government assumed power last year, its leaders pledged to be the "greenest ever" in UK history.
On the climate change front, a report out this week from organisations including the Green Alliance, Christian Aid and Greenpeace says the government is falling short.
They calculate that the coalition has made 29 low-carbon commitments, spanning the curbing of new airport runways, support for renewable heat and acceptance of the fourth carbon budget.
According to their analysis, the government is making good progress on seven, moderate progress on 16, and failing on the remaining six.
"The government has taken some good decisions in tough economic circumstances, but it is hobbled by a lack of cross-government support for the Coalition Programme," said Matthew Spencer, director of the Green Alliance.
"It will miss opportunities to get economic and political benefit from its policies without more public leadership from the prime minister and greater accountability across Whitehall."
Prominent among the "successes" noted by the report is the government's cancellation of Heathrow's third runway, while the chief "failures" include the absence of a major shift towards green taxes.
It also gains credit for trying to advance carbon cuts on the international front, through attempting to persuade the EU to move from its current target of a 20% cut from 1990 levels by 2020, to a 30% cut over the same period.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14949188
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #297 on Sept 17, 2011, 8:04am » | |
9 September 2011 Last updated at 00:41 GMT
A White House 'sceptic': Would it matter?
By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News
Leo Hickman, among other talents a realistic candidate for the title of "world's most prolific enviro-tweeter", posts an analysis of the US political scene in The Guardian this week.
His conclusion: "The world needs to prepare for a climate sceptic defeating Obama".
The analysis rests on the quantifiable. In the first place, virtually all declared Republican presidential candidates have man-made climate change down as a hoax, or at least as something where the jury is out.
In the second place, President Obama's approval numbers are the worst they've been since he took office - 43%, as opposed to 53% who disapprove.
To be sure, climate change isn't the issue that's put him there - it's the economy, stupid.
But that doesn't alter the conclusion that he is potentially beatable.
There are of course many months to run in this campaign, and the shape and persuasion of the eventual Republican candidate is far from certain.
It's also possible that the Republicans will end up in the situation that befell the UK Conservative Party just a few years ago, wherein hard-core party members chose leaders on the basis of ideological purity, and in doing so ended up with prime ministerial candidates who were so unpalatable to the wider and more moderate electorate as to be virtually unelectable.
In particular, the question arises of whether the public approves or disapproves of the shenanigans in Congress over the recent budget.
An analysis by retired Republican staffer Mike Lofgren raises the really profound question of whether the current crop of congressmen actually want to make the government work, or whether their anti-big-government credo now permeates their thinking and tactics to the extent that they actually work towards gridlock, stalemate, and general public dissatisfaction with the political process.
"Everyone knows that in a hostage situation, the reckless and amoral actor has the negotiating upper hand over the cautious and responsible actor because the latter is actually concerned about the life of the hostage, while the former does not care," he writes of the budget negotiations that threatened to put the US in default, and that did lead to a downgrading of the nation's credit rating.
"The attitude of many freshman Republicans to national default was 'bring it on!'"
If this brand of what my colleague Jonny Dymond referred to as "red-meat Republican politics" does appeal, then presumably one of the rawest of the candidates will win the race, and a climate sceptic (or denier, as you prefer) will indeed line up opposite Mr Obama.
If not, Jon Huntsman or Mitt Romney - according to a New York Times analysis, the one-and-a-half candidates who don't plug the hoax line and who are more moderate on most other issues too - may yet win the nomination.
Deja vu
Suppose one of the "red-meat" candidates does come out on top, and does defeat Mr Obama - how does that change the outlook for US climate and energy policies, and for international discussions such as those within the US system on climate change, or within the G20 on clean energy?
In one sense, it'll change little. The balance of power in Congress, even in the Democrat-controlled Senate, means that comprehensive legislation to restrict carbon emissions is already further away than it has been at any point since George W Bush handed over the keys to the Oval Office.
Legislation is definitely not going to happen if a climate sceptic takes over - but it isn't going to happen if Mr Obama wins either. Ditto a strong US commitment in international climate change talks.
On the energy front, the G20 and Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) forum pledged to phase out fossil fuel subsidies back in 2009.
One suspects a red-meat Republican would cast such a pledge from his or her plate. But whether it makes any practical difference is another matter, given that the pledge had no timescale, no financial levers and no legal form.
Domestically, it's tempting to ask how the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would fare if the stabbings it's currently receiving from the forks of right-wing Congressmen are complemented by slicings from the knife of a right-wing Republican president.
As former Friends of the Earth chief Tom Burke wrote in the ENDS report in July (paywalled, unfortunately), the vitriol levelled at the agency is particularly ironic given that it and the swathe of legislation it administers were largely created by a very Republican president, Richard Nixon.
But the impacts of an EPA neutering would be largely confined within US borders, and reversed relatively easily if voters came to mourn its absence.
Decisions will have to be taken fairly soon on oil drilling around US coasts, especially in the Arctic, and whether to pursue more exotic fossil fuels such as methane hydrates.
But these decisions are not for the federal government alone. States will have their say; and in the north, native American peoples and their concerns will also be factors.
Already, the green fervour engendered by Mr Obama's election has subsided to such an extent that the most dramatic programmes on topics such as renewable energy, carbon taxation and automobile fuel standards are coming from states, not Capitol Hill; and a national election won't necessarily negate those programmes.
Given the politics yet to unfold, it may be a bit premature to assume that a climate change sceptic or denier will be running the White House when the dust settles.
But the rest of the world has to recognise that whatever transpires, the US is unlikely to be pushing a radical green line any time soon.
Then again, it has been this way since the hanging chads of Florida carried Mr Bush to the White House in 2001.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14834772
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #298 on Sept 17, 2011, 11:07am » | |
More Americans believe world is warming: Reuters/Ipsos
By Timothy Gardner
Posted 2011/09/15 at 7:29 pm EDT
WASHINGTON, Sep. 15, 2011 (Reuters) — More Americans than last year believe the world is warming and the change is likely influenced by the Republican presidential debates, a Reuters/Ipsos poll said on Thursday.
![[image]](http://img593.imageshack.us/img593/7278/20110915t231104z01btre7.jpg "[image]")
Hikers walk on the Matanuska Glacier near Palmer, Alaska August, 10 2008. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson/Files
The percentage of Americans who believe the Earth has been warming rose to 83 percent from 75 percent last year in the poll conducted Sept 8-12.
Republican presidential candidates, aside from Jon Huntsman, have mostly blasted the idea that emissions from burning fossil fuels and other human actions are warming the planet.
The current front-runner, Texas Governor Rick Perry, has accused scientists of manipulating climate data while Michele Bachmann has said climate change is a hoax.
As Americans watch Republicans debate the issue, they are forced to mull over what they think about global warming, said Jon Krosnick, a political science professor at Stanford University.
And what they think is also influenced by reports this year that global temperatures in 2010 were tied with 2005 to be the warmest year since the 1880s.
"That is exactly the kind of situation that will provoke the public to think about the issue in a way that they haven't before," Krosnick said about news reports on the Republicans denying climate change science.
WEATHER DISASTERS
This year has been a record year for the kind of costly weather disasters -- including Hurricane Irene, which raked the East Coast -- that scientists have warned would be more frequent with climate change.
The United States suffered 10 natural disasters in 2011 with economic losses of $1 billion or more, according to the National Weather Service.
Unlike many other issues that divide Republicans and Democratic voters, such as healthcare or how to deal with the deficit and debt, a majority of Americans from both major parties agree on global warming, the poll found. Some 72 percent of Republicans believe global warming is happening and 92 percent of Democrats do, it found.
Global warming could be an important issue in next year's election, because some 15 percent of voters see it as their primary concern, said Krosnick, who is also a university fellow at the Resources for the Future think tank.
If President Barack Obama, a Democrat, can define himself as the environmental candidate, he could have a large advantage over a Republican, Krosnick said. If however, a Republican softens his or her stance on climate and Obama, who has failed to pass a climate bill in his first term, moves more to the center, it may not be a factor in the election.
Some 71 percent of the Americans who believe warming is happening think that it is caused either partly or mostly by humans, while 27 percent believe its is the result of natural causes, the poll found.
While more Americans believe in global warming, the skeptics are becoming more entrenched in their belief that it is not happening. In 2010 the certainty of skeptics was 35 percent, while it was 53 percent in 2011. Again, the Republican climate skeptics are influencing that, Krosnick said.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll of 1,134 adults, including 932 registered voters, had a margin of error of 3 percentage points for all respondents and 3.1 points for registered voters.
http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/tre78d5b2-us-usa-poll-ipsos/
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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Big Bunny
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| | Re: The Propaganda Continues VI
« Reply #299 on Sept 20, 2011, 12:02pm » | |
Obama's envoy for climate change casts doubt on Kyoto protocol
Todd Stern hints progress at climate talks in South Africa may stall with insistence on limits on greenhouse gas emissions
* Fiona Harvey, environment correspondent
* guardian.co.uk, Monday 19 September 2011 21.38 BST
President Barack Obama's chief climate change negotiator has issued a warning over the future of the Kyoto protocol, casting doubt on a key plank of international climate talks this December in South Africa.
Todd Stern, the US president's envoy for climate change, said the European Union was the only remaining "major player" that would potentially support a continuation of the protocol after its provisions expire in 2012. The lack of support from other countries bodes ill for the forthcoming talks at Durban.
The Kyoto protocol is an international agreement that imposes limits on the greenhouse gas emissions from some signee countries that was negotiated in the Japanese city of Kyoto in 1997.
Kyoto is the only treaty which binds nearly all of the world's industrialised countries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions but Stern cast doubt on its future.
"Of the major players in the Kyoto protocol, my sense is that the EU is the only one still considering signing up in some fashion to a second commitment period. Japan is clearly not, Russia is not, Canada is not and Australia appears unlikely."
His words were the broadest hint yet by one of the most influential figures at the talks that the negotiations may stall unless the Kyoto protocol is dropped.
Behind the scenes, many experts are advising that arguments over the future of the protocol are likely to be fruitless. Sir David King, the British government's former chief scientific advisor, told the Guardian recently that the protocol should be dropped, as it was only an impediment to reaching a new international agreement on averting global warming.
The future of the protocol is a key question at the United Nations climate negotiations, because most big developing countries have stipulated that the 1997 treaty must be continued as a condition of any future climate change agreement.
Those developing countries are furious that rich countries are thinking of dumping the hard-fought protocol, which they insist must be the foundation of any future agreement.
Disagreement between developed and developing countries on whether to ditch the protocol was one of the biggest reasons why the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009 failed to reach a clear conclusion.
The US does not take part in Kyoto protocol discussions, because it has never ratified the treaty and the current administration has followed its predecessor in vowing not to do so.
However, as the chief climate change negotiator for the world's biggest economy, Stern's views carry enormous weight in the debate on possible future international measures.
"The Kyoto protocol is one of the toughest if not the toughest part of the negotiations," Stern admitted. "The US is not part [of those discussions] but what happens to [the protocol] is relevant to whether there will be understandings on future regimes [and these] are still controversial and difficult subjects."
He said that the US had participated, in recent days, in international "conversations about future regimes" on controlling greenhouse gas emissions, and the question of whether there should be a single global regime on cutting emissions or one that could run concurrently with a continuation of the Kyoto protocol. Other issues discussed included whether any future regime should be legally binding.
However, Stern said there had been no discussions on trying to find a way forward among a smaller number of countries, outside the UN process. Some countries have privately criticised the UN process for the unwieldy and bureaucratic nature of its negotiations.
Stern warned that the US would not countenance a new climate regime that contained "escape hatches" for some countries, and hinted that countries now labelled as "developing" should be drawn into taking on obligations on emissions.
"It could not be on the basis of categories of countries that were articulated in 1992 [when the parent treaty to the Kyoto protocol was signed]," he said. In that parent treaty, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, to which the US is a signatory, economies such as China, India and Brazil were judged to be developing and thus escaped obligations to cut their emissions.
However, the rapid growth of these economies in the past two decades has changed the international scene, in the US view.
Stern's words were an indication that big emerging economies such as China – the world's second biggest economy by output – must take on legally binding obligations if the US were also to consider doing so.
At the negotiations in Copenhagen and last year in Cancun, China, India and a few other big emerging economies agreed to curbs on the future growth of their emissions but fell short of pledging absolute reductions, and the resulting agreements do not have the legal status of a fully articulated treaty like the Kyoto protocol.
Stern insisted that he was "not pessimistic" about the prospect of important progress being made at Durban towards a new international agreement on climate.
No one expects that any significant new agreement will be signed this year. There will be another, bigger conference at the end of next year in Rio de Janeiro.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/20....hange-emissions
|
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident."
Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860
"In the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, breathe the same air, and we all cherish our children’s future."
John F. Kennedy |
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