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This year is so far tied for the hottest year in a temperature record dating back to 1850 in a new sign of a warming trend, the three major institutes which calculate global warming estimates told Reuters. UN climate talks resume next week in Cancun, Mexico, where expectations are no longer for a comprehensive deal to slow warming, but smaller progress for example to curb deforestation, in a bid to agree a pact next year or later. The previous conference in Copenhagen last year fell short of hopes, but about 140 countries have agreed a non-binding deal to try and limit warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius. Temperatures are now about 0.8 degrees above pre-industrial levels, and 2010 is about 0.5 degrees above the 1961-1990 average, near the record, with two months data still to collect. Even with a possible cool end to the year, 2010 is expected to be no lower than third in a record where 1998 and 2005 are warmest. The UN panel of climate scientists says higher temperatures mean more floods, heatwaves and rising sea levels. "I think it's too close to call. Based on these numbers it'll be second, but it depends on how warm November and December are," said Phil Jones, director of Britain's Climatic Research Unit (CRU), at the University of East Anglia, which says 1998 was the record year so far. By contrast, scientists at the U.S. space agency NASA say that surface temperatures through October were above the previous record year, which it says was 2005. Differences between years are only a few hundredths of a degree. "I would not be surprised if most or all groups found that 2010 was tied for the warmest year," said NASA's James Hansen. And the US National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said that 2010 was a "dead-heat" for the record. "Our data show 2010 being virtually tied with 1998, through October," said Deke Arndt, from NCDC. The three institutes use similar observations, but in slightly different ways. For example, NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) takes greater account of Arctic weather staions, where warming has been fastest. SCEPTIC Some sceptics have argued that because the last temperature peak was in 2005 or 1998, that global warming must have stalled. Most scientists reject that view, saying that whether or not 2010 is the hottest year is less important than the long-term trend, which is up, due to manmade greenhouse gas emissions. The period 2000-2009 was the warmest decade on record. Scientists also point to natural variation, and in particular the El Nino Pacific weather phenomenon associated with warm weather worldwide. 1998 was a strong El Nino year. "The trend is overwhelming, particularly over the past 50 years," said Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN panel of climate scientists. "I wouldn't read these numbers for a particular year as very compelling, we have to take a historical view," he told Reuters. In one of the biggest bets on climate change, James Annan, a climate scientist at the Frontier Research Center for Global Change in Japan, has a $10,000 wager made in 2005 with two Russian solar physicists who are sceptical about global warming. He will win if average world temperatures are higher from 2012-17 than they were from 1998-2003. "Things are progressing smoothly," he said. The UN's World Meteorological Organisation will publish an estimate on Dec. 2 of where 2010 ranks. It compiles data from a wider range of sources, both measured temperatures and climate models. It lists 1998 and 2005 as the warmest years. "We have indications that it would match one of the three warmest years," said Omar Baddour, head of climate data management operations at in Geneva. | 0 |
Russian President Vladimir Putin left the G20 summit in Brisbane early as US President Barack Obama accused Russia of invading Ukraine and Britain warned of a possible "frozen conflict" in Europe. Several Western nations warned Russia of further sanctions if it did not withdraw troops and weapons from Ukraine. "I think President Putin can see he is at a crossroads," said British Prime Minister David Cameron. "If he continues to destabilize Ukraine there will be further sanctions, further measures. "There is a cost to sanctions, but there would be a far greater cost in allowing a frozen conflict on the continent of Europe to be created and maintained." Obama said Russia's isolation was unavoidable. "We would prefer a Russia that is fully integrated with the global economy," he told a news conference. "But we are also very firm on the need to uphold core international principles.... you don't invade other countries or finance proxies and support them in ways that break up a country that has mechanisms for democratic elections." Before leaving the G20 Summit, Putin said a solution to the Ukraine crisis was possible, but did not elaborate. "Today the situation (in Ukraine) in my view has good chances for resolution, no matter how strange it may sound," Putin said. He skipped a working lunch at the summit to leave early, citing the long flight home and need for sleep. Russia has denied any involvement in the conflict in Ukraine that has killed more than 4,000 people this year. CLIMATE CHANGE Security and climate change overshadowed G20 talks on boosting global economic growth at the summit, although the leaders did sign off on a package of measures to add an extra 2.1 percentage points to global growth over five years. "This will add more than $2 trillion to the global economy and create millions of jobs," said a communique issued at the end of the meeting, which also committed to tackle global tax avoidance denying government's billions of dollars in revenue. The United States and other nations overrode host Australia's attempts to keep climate change off the formal agenda. Australia is one of the world's biggest carbon emitters per capita. The final communique called for strong and effective action to address climate change with the aim of adopting a protocol, with legal force, at a U.N. climate conference in Paris in 2015. "The most difficult discussion was on climate change," an EU official told reporters on condition of anonymity. "This was really trench warfare, this was really step by step by step. In the end we have references to most of the things we wanted." Obama put climate change squarely on the G20 agenda with a speech on Saturday calling on all nations to act, and committing $3 billion to the Green Climate Fund. Japan pledged $1.5 billion to the fund on Sunday. World leaders also agreed to unite in the fight against Ebola, which Britain's Cameron said was not only a humanitarian crisis but also a security threat. "The best way we can keep out people safe from Ebola is by tackling it at source," he said. RUSSIAN SANCTIONS Sanctions against Russia aimed at sectors like oil and banking, as well as individuals close to Putin, are squeezing its economy at a time when falling oil prices are straining the budget and the rouble has plunged on financial markets. "At this point the sanctions we have in place are biting plenty good," Obama said after the summit. "We retain the capability, and we have our teams constantly looking at mechanisms in which to turn up additional pressure as necessary." Earlier in the day, Obama, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe lined up together against Russia, vowing to oppose what they called Moscow's efforts to destabilize eastern Ukraine. European leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel also warned of more sanctions unless Russia ends its support for pro-Russian separatist rebels. EU foreign ministers will meet on Monday to consider further steps, including additional possible sanctions on Russia. | 0 |
UN climate talks have made progress at the half-way mark but many of the toughest issues such as greenhouse gas emissions targets for 2020 are deadlocked, delegates said on Saturday. "We have made considerable progress over the course of the first week," Connie Hedegaard, the Danish cabinet minister who presides over the Dec. 7-18 meeting in Copenhagen, told delegates trying to work out a new pact to slow climate change. Delegates said negotiators had advanced on texts such as defining how new green technologies such as wind and solar power can be supplied to developing nations and in promoting use of forests to soak up greenhouse gases. "We see the contours of a technology mechanism emerging, " said Michael Zammit Cutajar, who chairs negotiations on new goals for all nations. But delegates said there were deep splits on issues such as raising funds for poor nations and sharing out the burden of greenhouse gas emissions curbs before a closing summit of more than 110 world leaders on Dec. 17-18. The Pacific Island of Tuvalu, fearing that rising sea levels could wipe it off the map, stuck to its calls for consideration of a radical new treaty that would force far deeper cuts in greenhouse gases than those under consideration. "The fate of my country rests in your hands," Ian Fry, leading the Tuvalu delegation, told the meeting. "I make this as a strong and impassioned plea...I woke this morning and I was crying and that was not easy for a grown man to admit," he said, his voice choking with emotion.
TUVALU Hedegaard said she wanted more consultations until next week on the Tuvalu proposal, which has been opposed even by some developing nations led by China and India. Fry said that Tuvalu's fears were widely shared by small island states. The European Union offered 7.3 billion euros ($10.8 billion) of climate aid over the next three years on Friday. The United Nations wants to raise $10 billion a year from 2010-12 in quick-start funds to help the poor cope with global warming and move away from fossil fuels. But few other nations have offered quick-start cash. In the longer term, the United Nations estimates the fight against global warming is likely to cost $300 billion a year from 2020, largely to help developing nations adapt to impacts such as droughts, floods and heatwaves. A panel of UN climate experts said in a 2007 scenario that rich nations would have to cut emissions by about 25-40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 to avoid the worst of global warming. Offers by rich nations for cutting emissions, mostly from greenhouse gases, so far total about 14-18 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. Developing nations such as China, the number one emitter ahead of the United States, are expected to slow the rise of their emissions without absolute cuts. They say they need to burn more energy to help end poverty. | 0 |
The White House summit, part of US
efforts to step up engagement with a region Washington sees as critical to its
efforts to push back against China's growing power, had been expected earlier
in the year, but scheduling was delayed by COVID-19 concerns. White House press secretary Jen Psaki
said the summit of the Association of Southeast Asian leaders (ASEAN) will
commemorate 45 years of US-ASEAN relations. "It is a top priority for the
Biden-Harris Administration to serve as a strong, reliable partner and to
strengthen an empowered and unified ASEAN to address the challenges of our
time," she said in announcing the summit. On a visit to Malaysia in December, US
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said the 10-member ASEAN bloc was
"essential to the architecture of the Indo-Pacific region." He said the summit was expected to
discuss the crisis caused by last year's military takeover in Myanmar and
issues such as pandemic recovery, climate change, investment and
infrastructure. The Biden administration has declared
the Indo-Pacific and competition with China its principal foreign policy focus,
which it is keen to maintain despite the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Biden joined ASEAN leaders in a virtual
summit in October, the first time in four years Washington had engaged at top
level with the bloc. He pledged to stand with ASEAN in defending
freedom of the seas and democracy, and said Washington would start talks on
developing a regional economic framework, something critics say US Asia
strategy has lacked since his predecessor Donald Trump quit a regional trade
pact. The Biden administration announced a
12-page strategy for the Indo-Pacific in early February, in which it vowed to
commit more diplomatic and security resources to the region to counter what its
sees as China's bid to create a regional sphere of influence and become the
world's most influential power. Read full story The document reiterated US plans to
launch a regional economic framework in early 2022, but few details of that
have emerged and the Biden administration has been reluctant to offer the
increased market access Asian countries desire, seeing this as threatening
American jobs. | 1 |
The Czech government agreed on Friday to sue the European Union's executive body over its demand that the country cut its proposed annual carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in 2008-2012, the industry ministry said. The Commission responded that it was confident its decision on the Czech plan would stand up to a challenge in court. The European Commission has cut the annual allocation of carbon emission rights for the Czech Republic to 86.8 million tonnes per year in 2008-2012 from 101.9 million demanded by the Czechs, down from 97.6 million tonnes in 2005-2007. "I believe that because of a complicated model and bad data, the European Commission damaged the Czech Republic in its allocation of emission rights," Czech Industry and Trade Minister Martin Riman said in a statement. The ministry statement added the European Commission did not consult with the Czechs when calculating expected 2008 emissions. The Czechs have said the lower emission rights could harm the economy, which is experiencing strong growth in large part due to the benefits of joining the European Union in May 2004. But European Commission spokeswoman Barbara Helfferich told a news conference in Brussels that the decision would be upheld. "We are confident the decision of the Commission stands up in court," she said. The emissions trading scheme is the 27-nation EU's key tool to fight climate change and meet commitments to cut emissions under the Kyoto Protocol. Neighbouring Slovakia filed a lawsuit against the EU's executive in February as the first EU member country to go to court over the Commission's demands to cut emissions. Poland and Hungary are also said to be considering legal action against the Commission over their allocations. | 0 |
Key developing states rallied to an EU roadmap for a binding pact to fight global warming on Friday, but draft agreements emerging at UN climate talks showed deep divisions remained and Europe said the negotiations could yet collapse. The EU plan sets a 2015 target date for a new deal that would impose binding cuts on the world's biggest emitters of heat-trapping gases, a pact that would come into force up to five years later. EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said Brazil and South Africa, whose growing economies are heavy polluters, now supported binding cuts to emissions of the greenhouse gases that cause rising sea-levels and increasingly extreme weather. But speaking to reporters in the South African port of Durban she said an agreement was far from certain before the talks' scheduled end on Friday. "The success or failure of Durban hangs on a small number of countries who have not yet committed to the (EU) roadmap and the meaningful content it must have," Hedegaard said. "If there is no further movement from what I have seen until 4 o'clock this morning, I don't think there will be a deal in Durban. That's what we are faced with." A draft text emerged that could legally bind more than 30 industrialised countries to cut emissions under a second phase of the Kyoto Protocol -- the only global pact that enforces carbon cuts. However, it would likely only be adopted if all emitters agreed to take on legal targets in a separate, broader agreement that would bind China, India and the United States. Climate experts doubted the wording of the second text would be acceptable, as it merely referred to a "legal framework," stopping short of a legally binding treaty that the European Union and many developing countries are demanding. "In the next years we will not have a legal regime, nothing will control the big emitters, the developed countries. without that framework everyone can do what they want," said Rene Orellana, chief negotiator for Bolivia and part of the ALBA group of Latin American nations, said if the proposed texts went through. "This is not just the death of Kyoto, it's the death of the planet. We need a regime to control emissions, to enforce compliance," he said. Critics also complain the texts are unclear about when emissions cuts must come into force and how deep the reductions will go. UNDER PRESSURE The EU strategy at the conference has been to forge a coalition of the willing designed to heap pressure on the world's top three carbon emitters -- China, the United States and India -- to sign up to binding cuts. None are bound by the Kyoto Protocol. Washington says it will only pledge binding cuts if all major polluters make comparable commitments. China and India say it would be unfair to demand they make the same level of cuts as the developed world, which caused most of the pollution responsible for global warming. Many envoys believe two weeks of climate talks in Durban will at best produce a weak political agreement, with states promising to start talks on a new regime of binding cuts in greenhouse gases. Anything less would be disastrous, they say. U.N. reports released in the last month show time is running out to achieve change. They show a warming planet will amplify droughts and floods, increase crop failures and raise sea levels to the point where several island states are threatened with extinction. The Durban talks are scheduled to wrap up on Friday but are widely expected to extend long into the night and even Saturday. The dragging talks frustrated delegates from small islands and African states, who joined a protest by green groups outside as they tried to enter the main negotiating room. "You need to save us, the islands can't sink. We have a right to live, you can't decide our destiny. We will have to be saved," Maldives' climate negotiator Mohamed Aslam said. Karl Hood, Grenada's foreign minister and chairman of the 43-nation Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) whose members are in the frontline of climate change, said the talks were going around in circles. "We are dealing with peripheral issues and not the real climate ones which is a big problem, like focusing on adaptation instead of mitigation," he said. "I feel Durban might end up being the undertaker of UN climate talks." | 0 |
Climate change is already causing friction and international instability in some parts of the world but looms as an even greater threat to peace in the future, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said. In an interview with Reuters before Monday's start of the UN Conference on Climate Change in Bali, Steinmeier said those talks need to move the issue of global warming beyond the melting glaciers to more immediate, if less photogenic, perils. He said it was time to look at tensions already being caused by the dwindling of natural resources, diminishing access to fresh water, shifts in vegetation and mass migration as well as the future conflicts that loom because of climate change. Steinmeier also said it was vital that none of the world's leading nations opt out of any agreement reached in the talks to be launched in Bali, designed to hammer out a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, a pact to curb global warming that runs to 2012. "Bali is only the start of a long process yet I truly hope the delegates will be able to agree on medium- and long-term goals to slow global warming," said Steinmeier, who often speaks out on the foreign policy implications of climate change. "I hope no one will leave Bali having distanced themselves from the process. If ... a timetable for realistic negotiations can be set up, then I'd say the aims and purpose of Bali will have been accomplished." Delegates from nearly 190 countries meet on the Indonesian island from Dec. 3 to 14. The aim is to launch a concentrated effort to agree on a follow-up to the Kyoto Protocol by 2009. The United States and developing nations such as China and India have no limits on emissions under Kyoto. Washington wants a new deal agreed at a U.N. meeting in Copenhagen in late 2009. BEYOND MELTING ICEBERGS "What we don't need from Bali is another ringing of the catastrophe alarms," said Steinmeier, who helped Chancellor Angela Merkel prod the United States and other key industrial allies to agree at Germany's G8 summit in Heiligendamm on the need for "substantial" cuts in emissions and a 2009 U.N. deal. "We need to move beyond the reports of melting icebergs -- everyone's aware of that by now. People know the problem is serious. The delegates can now get to work on the problem. There's no need for a media showcase to convince anyone." Steinmeier said climate change is reducing access to water and changing vegetation patterns, causing tension in the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa. "I run into the same problems in a lot of places," he said. Steinmeier said the planting of a Russian flag on the seabed at the North Pole was a harbinger of potential troubles. "The struggle for natural resources in the wake of climate change has become visible even at the North Pole," he said, noting a few years ago no one thought it would be possible to exploit the previously inaccessible seabed below Arctic ice. Denmark also claims part of the Arctic through its Greenland province. International law states five nations with a coastline in the Arctic -- including Canada, the United States, Norway -- have a 320 km (200 mile) economic zone north of their shore. "From a technological standpoint it's still a challenging prospect but climate change has fired the imagination of engineers and that's had a political impact. It woke people up. "You see a growing nervousness. For me that proves there must be some truth to the thesis that access to resources, especially energy, could upset international relations. "I'm not talking about war but ruptures. There is a risk divergent interests can lead to conflict. That's why we must help now to prevent future disputes. There's still time." | 0 |
But over the weekend, a bushfire destroyed the beloved getaway, one of Australia’s oldest nature resorts — drawing tears from neighbours and alarm from officials who warned that climate change and drought threatened to bring Australia its worst fire season on record. “This is an omen, if you will,” said Andrew Sturgess, who is in charge of fire prediction for the state of Queensland, where the lodge had stood in Lamington National Park. What is happening now “is a historic event,” he said at a news conference. “Fire weather has never been as severe this early in spring.” Experts and some state officials, agreeing with that assessment, have been quick to identify climate change as a major cause — a controversial argument for some people here in a country that is heavily reliant on the coal industry, with a conservative government that has resisted making climate policy a priority. But the recent flames spreading not just through the country’s dry middle but also into its rainforests are one of many data points that make the patterns and problems undeniable. Fire season itself has become nearly a year-round trial, according to fire officials. Independent studies have also shown that the number of hot days in Australia has doubled in the past 50 years, while heat waves have become hotter and longer. Extreme weather events, such as flooding and cyclones, have intensified in frequency and strength, as well. “We’re seeing records breaking left and right,” said Robert Glasser, a visiting fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and the former head of the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. “This isn’t the new normal,” he added. “We’re going to see much worse — the pace of the change is going to accelerate.” Joëlle Gergis, a climate scientist and writer at the Australian National University, warned that Australia’s experience “is a sign of things to come.” She said she was especially alarmed by the losses near the Binna Burra in the Gold Coast hinterland. “It is devastating to see these usually cool and wet rainforests burn,” she said. “Although these remarkable rainforests have clung on since the age of the dinosaurs, searing heat and lower rainfall is starting to see these wet areas dry out for longer periods of the year, increasing bushfire risk in these precious ecosystems.” Some experts believe an especially horrific fire season could be enough to push Australia to make climate policy more of a priority, at least in terms of planning for climate disasters. In a radio interview Saturday, Prime Minister Scott Morrison promised continuing support for the affected areas and said the federal government had been adding resources to help. But already, the current fire season is straining firefighters and raising questions about whether Australia has the equipment and capacity to handle such extreme events. On Monday, fire officials in Queensland and New South Wales identified dozens of bushfires still burning across both states. Hundreds of firefighters are combating the blazes, and at least 20 structures have been destroyed over the past three days, including the Binna Burra Lodge. A volunteer firefighter was critically injured Friday with burns to his hands, arms, legs, back and face. And conditions do not seem likely to improve: Roughly 65 percent of Queensland and 98 percent of New South Wales is currently affected by drought, Gergis said, and meteorologists are predicting dry windy weather for the next few days, which threatens to spread the fires far and wide. “It hurts many people of different generations. We all feel the pain,” said Steven Noakes, the chairman of the Binna Burra Lodge. Although his house was intact, he said, many of his neighbours had lost their homes to the blaze and more destruction was expected. “It’s a devastating impact and it generates a range of emotions,” he said. “It’s difficult.” © 2019 New York Times News Service | 0 |
SYDNEY, Oct. 9 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - The global economic boom has accelerated greenhouse gas emissions to a dangerous threshold not expected for a decade and could potentially cause irreversible climate change, said one of Australia's leading scientists. Tim Flannery, a world recognized climate change scientist and Australian of the Year in 2007, said a UN international climate change report due in November will show that greenhouse gases have already reached a dangerous level. Flannery said the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report will show that greenhouse gas in the atmosphere in mid-2005 had reached about 455 parts per million of carbon dioxide equivalent -- a level not expected for another 10 years. "We thought we'd be at that threshold within about a decade," Flannery told Australian television late on Monday. "We thought we had that much time. But the new data indicates that in about mid-2005 we crossed that threshold," he said. "What the report establishes is that the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is already above the threshold that could potentially cause dangerous climate change." Flannery, from Macquarie University and author of the climate change book "The Weather Makers", said he had seen the raw data which will be in the IPCC Synthesis Report. He said the measurement of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere included not just carbon dioxide, but also nitrous oxide, methane and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). All these gases were measured and then equated into potentially one gas to reach a general level. "They're all having an impact. Probably 75 percent is carbon dioxide but the rest is that mixed bag of other gases," he said. COLLISION COURSE Flannery said global economic expansion, particularly in China and India, was a major factor behind the unexpected acceleration in greenhouse gas levels. "We're still basing that economic activity on fossil fuels. You know, the metabolism of that economy is now on a collision course, clearly, with the metabolism of our planet," he said. The report adds an urgency to international climate change talks on the Indonesian island of Bali in December, as reducing greenhouse gas emissions may no longer be enough to prevent dangerous climate change, he said. UN environment ministers meet in December in Bali to start talks on a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol on curbing climate change that expires in 2012. "We can reduce emissions as strongly as we like -- unless we can draw some of the standing stock of pollutant out of the air and into the tropical forests, we'll still face unacceptable levels of risk in 40 years time," he said. Flannery suggested the developed world could buy "climate security" by paying villages in countries like Papua New Guinea not to log forests and to regrow forests. "That 200 gigatonnes of carbon pollutant, the standing stock that's in the atmosphere, is there courtesy of the industrial revolution, and we're the beneficiaries of that and most of the world missed out," he said. "So I see that as a historic debt that we owe the world. And I can't imagine a better way of paying it back than trying to help the poorest people on the planet." | 0 |
China will 'eat our lunch', Biden warns While Xi has called for “win-win” cooperation, Biden has called China America’s “most serious competitor” and vowed to “out compete” Beijing. On Thursday, Biden told a bipartisan group of US senators at a meeting on the need to upgrade US infrastructure the United States must raise its game in the face of the Chinese challenge. Biden said he spoke to Xi for two hours on Wednesday night and warned the senators: “If we don’t get moving, they are going to eat our lunch.” “They’re investing billions of dollars dealing with a whole range of issues that relate to transportation, the environment and a whole range of other things. We just have to step up.” The White House said Biden emphasised to Xi it was a US priority to preserve a free and open Indo-Pacific, a region where the United States and China are major strategic rivals. He also voiced “fundamental” concerns about Beijing’s “coercive and unfair” trade practices, as well as about human rights issues, including China’s crackdown in Hong Kong and treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, and its increasingly assertive actions in Asia, including toward Taiwan. White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Biden also expressed concern about China’s lack of transparency over the coronavirus. All the rights issues Biden mentioned were ones Beijing has explicitly told his administration it should stay out of. Xi told Biden confrontation would be a “disaster” and the two sides should re-establish the means to avoid misjudgments, China’s foreign ministry said. Xi maintained a hardline tone on Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Taiwan, calling them matters of “sovereignty and territorial integrity” he hoped Washington would approach cautiously. The call was the first between Chinese and US leaders since Xi spoke with former President Donald Trump last March 27, nearly 11 months ago. Since then, relations between the world’s two biggest economies have plunged. Trump blamed China for starting the COVID-19 pandemic and launched a series of actions against China, including a trade war and sanctions against Chinese officials and firms considered security threats. Xi congratulated Biden on his election in a message in November, even though Biden had called him a “thug” during the campaign and vowed to lead an international effort to “pressure, isolate and punish China.” OPEN LINE OF COMMUNICATION The Biden administration has signalled it will maintain pressure on Beijing, and has endorsed a Trump administration determination that China has committed genocide in Xinjiang. At the same time, it has pledged to take a more multilateral approach and is keen to cooperate with Beijing on issues like climate change and persuading North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons. Biden has stressed the relationship he established with Xi when vice president under Barack Obama, through more than 24 hours of private meetings and 17,000 miles of travel together. On Thursday, he said he had a good conversation with Xi and knew him well. However, a senior administration official told reporters ahead of the call Biden would be “practical, hard-headed, clear-eyed” in dealings with Xi. At the same time, the official said, Biden wanted to ensure they had the opportunity to have an open line of communication. Chinese officials have expressed some optimism bilateral relations will improve under Biden and have urged Washington to meet Beijing halfway. Readouts of the call from both sides mentioned areas for potential cooperation, honing in on climate change and fighting COVID-19. China’s foreign ministry said Xi had quoted back to Biden the US president’s saying that “America can be defined in one word: Possibilities.” “We hope the possibilities will now point toward an improvement of China-US relations,” it quoted Xi as saying. The editor-in-chief of the Chinese Communist Party-backed tabloid, the Global Times, said in a tweet the fact that the call lasted two hours was “a very positive message” that showed “in-depth communication.” Bonnie Glaser, an Asia expert at Washington’s Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said there was room for cooperation, but differences were wide. “The concerns highlighted by President Biden are in essence all Chinese core interests. So narrowing differences is going to be very challenging,” she said. “Xi did not suggest that there are preconditions for bilateral cooperation on issues such as climate change, so that is one positive takeaway.” Another CSIS expert, Scott Kennedy, said that while Xi had proposed extensive bilateral exchanges, things would take time, given Biden’s plans for a thorough review of strategy. “We may end up not far from where things are now, in terms of overall tone, but it’s also possible the two sides will find a pathway to stabilise their relationship, both the extent and manner of competition as well as areas of cooperation,” he said. A US official said Washington was in a position of strength after consultations with allies and partners to lay out concerns about China’s “aggressive activities and abuses.” He said the administration would look in coming months at adding “new targeted restrictions” on sensitive technology exports to China and also that there would be no quick moves to lift Trump administration tariffs on Chinese imports. | 0 |
Fiji's Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama, who will preside at the Nov 6-17 talks of almost 200 nations in Bonn, says he wants more urgent action to cut greenhouse gases as part of the 195-nation Paris Agreement. "The human suffering caused by intensifying hurricanes, wildfires, droughts, floods and threats to food security caused by climate change means there is no time to waste," he said in a statement on Sunday outlining his goals. Delegates will work on a detailed "rule book" to help guide the 2015 Paris climate accord, which set a goal of ending the fossil fuel era this century by shifting to renewable energies such as wind and solar power. But Trump doubts that human activities are the main cause of climate change - a finding endorsed most recently by US scientists in a report on Friday - and said in June that he will quit the Paris pact. A formal pullout will take until November 2020 and delegates say there are wide uncertainties about how far Washington will balance Trump's pro-coal agenda with the conference's goals.
People march during a demonstration under the banner "Protect the climate - stop coal" two days before the start of the COP 23 UN Climate Change Conference hosted by Fiji but held in Bonn, Germany Nov 4, 2017. Reuters
Thomas Shannon, a career diplomat who once called climate change "one of the world's biggest challenges", will head the US delegation. A US official said Shannon currently planned to give no interviews. People march during a demonstration under the banner "Protect the climate - stop coal" two days before the start of the COP 23 UN Climate Change Conference hosted by Fiji but held in Bonn, Germany Nov 4, 2017. Reuters Thousands of people demonstrated against coal in Bonn on Saturday with banners saying "Protect the climate: stop coal". Organisers estimated that 25,000 took part, while police put the number at 10,000. In Germany, the issue of whether to end coal production has been one of the sticking points in coalition talks between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her would-be allies in government: the Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats. Worldwide, coal still plays a big role in the economy, especially in emerging economies such as China and India. The International Energy Agency says coal supplies a third of all energy used worldwide. On Monday, the UN's World Meteorological Organization will issue a report about where 2017 ranks on a list of the hottest years. NASA data show it is on track to be second warmest, behind 2016, in records dating back to the 19th century. | 0 |
The White House is optimistic about climate change legislation in Congress and hopes an announcement to jumpstart the nuclear power industry will appeal to Republican skeptics, a top adviser to President Barack Obama said. The Obama administration will announce on Tuesday an $8.3 billion loan guarantee to help Southern Co. build two reactors, helping to invigorate the nuclear power industry after nearly three decades in which no new plants have been built. Carol Browner, Obama's top energy and climate adviser, said she was hopeful about progress on energy and climate legislation that is currently stalled in the US Senate. "I'm always optimistic, as is the president," Browner told Reuters Insider in an interview. "We're working hard, and we're encouraged by the conversations that are going on. Obviously this is very important legislation and we're going to do everything we can to make it happen," she said. Browner noted that Republicans, many of whom oppose the climate bill, would take note of Obama's efforts to reach out on the issue of nuclear energy. "We also hope that Republicans and others, supporters of nuclear (power), will take note that the administration is prepared to provide leadership on issues that are important to solving our energy future and creating a different energy future," she said. | 0 |
The talks aim to spur bigger commitments to start reducing manmade greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and keep the rise in the global average temperature since pre-industrial times to well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit), to stave off the worst effects of climate change. "Delegates from the LDC Group remain concerned about the logistics of getting to Glasgow," Sonam Phuntsho Wangdi of Bhutan, chair of the group of the 46 Least Developed Countries, said in a statement. "Our countries and our people are among the worst affected by climate change – we must not be excluded from talks deciding how the world will deal with this crisis, determining the fate of our lives and livelihoods." Some 20 LDCs such as Ethiopia, Haiti and Bangladesh are on Britain’s coronavirus "red list", which means their delegates will have to quarantine in a hotel for up to 10 days before attending the "COP 26" talks, which run from Oct 31 to Nov 12. Britain has said it will pay the quarantine costs of delegates from red list countries, and has cut the time to five days from 10 for those who are vaccinated. It has also said it is distributing COVID-19 vaccines to delegates struggling to get them. On Tuesday, Climate Action Network (CAN), a coalition of more than 1,500 environmental groups, called for the talks to be postponed because of delegates' difficulties in obtaining vaccines. CAN said Britain had been slow to provide the vaccines it has promised and many countries were likely to miss out. | 1 |
Southeast Asia is one of the world's most vulnerable regions to climate change and could face conflict over failing rice yields, lack of water and high economic costs, a major Asian Development Bank report shows. The region's economies could lose as much as 6.7 percent of combined gross domestic product yearly by 2100, more than twice the global average loss, according to the ADB's report on the economics of climate change in Southeast Asia. "By the end of this century, the economy-wide cost each year on average could reach 2.2 percent of GDP, if only market impact is considered...(to) 6.7 percent of GDP when catastrophic risks are also taken into account," the British-government funded report said. This compared with an estimated global loss of just under 1 percent of GDP in market impact terms, the Manila-based ADB said. The global economic downturn could delay funding for climate change mitigation measures by regional governments. Yet this was the time to offer incentives for green investment schemes in the energy and water sectors, said the study focusing on Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. These schemes could involve the shift to renewable and clean energy options for the power and transport sectors across Southeast Asia, home to nearly 600 million people. In particular, cutting carbon emissions from forest fires and deforestation was crucial since these were major contributors to the region's total emissions, it said. Renewable energy such as wind, solar, biomass and geothermal also offered great potential in slashing emissions. VULNERABLE But if nothing was done globally to fight climate change, Southeast Asia could suffer a decline in rice output potential of about 50 percent on average by 2100 against 1990 levels. The yield drop ranged from 34 percent in Indonesia to 75 percent in the Philippines, with the fall forecast to start in 2020 for the four nations. Southeast Asia is one of the most vulnerable regions to climate change because of the high economic activity along its long coastlines, and its heavy dependence on agriculture, forestry and other natural resources. Unless the pace of climate change was checked, millions of people in the region would be left unable to produce or purchase sufficient food. "More people will be at risk of hunger and malnutrition, which will cause more deaths. The possibility of local conflicts may increase," said the report. Annual mean temperature in the four countries could also rise by an average 4.8 degrees Celsius by 2100 from 1990 levels if global emissions keep growing. This would intensify water shortages in the dry season and raise flooding risks during wet periods. The report says an increase in extreme weather events, such as droughts, floods and storms, and forest fires arising from climate change would also jeopardize export industries. It said the region, which contributed 12 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions in 2000, had made significant efforts to counter climate change, but most steps were reactive and offered short-term benefits with implementation patchy. Raising public awareness of climate change and its impact, increased funding and enhancing policy coordination, were crucial, it added. Stepping up measures to adapt were also needed. These included scaling up water conservation and management, developing heat-resistant crop varieties, more efficient irrigation systems and enhanced awareness-raising programs to prepare for more forest fires. | 3 |
Indian and Pakistani officials began their first formal peace talks since the 2008 Mumbai attacks on Monday in a meeting pushed by the decision of their leaders to meet during a World Cup cricket match between the two countries. The two home secretaries, the top civil servants in charge of security issues, met in New Delhi to repair relations between nuclear rivals broken off after the Mumbai attacks when Pakistani militants killed 166 people in a three-day shooting spree. The talks are due to end on Tuesday, but the focus has already turned to Wednesday's World Cup cricket semi-final between the two old rivals after Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh invited Pakistani Prime Minister Yusaf Raza Gilani to the game. Progress in Monday's talks was anyway expected to be small. They are about preparing the groundwork for a ministerial meeting in July that would put issues like Kashmir, terrorism and trade on the negotiating table in what is known as the "composite dialogue." The two countries, which have fought three wars since their independence from British rule in 1947, agreed in February to resume formal peace talks. In a goodwill gesture ahead of the cricket match, President Asif Ali Zardari will also free an Indian national, Gopal Das, who has been languishing in a Pakistani prison for 27 years as an alleged spy. Wednesday's match has been heralded as "cricket diplomacy," something of a tradition between the two countries that has at least helped ease tensions in the past. Former Pakistani President Mohammed Zia ul-Haq visited India in 1987 to watch a one-day match when the two countries' armies were eyeball-to-eyeball on the border. In 2005, Pakistan's then military ruler, Pervez Musharraf, travelled to India to watch a match but the trip effectively turned into a summit and the two leaders agreed to open up the militarised frontier dividing the disputed Kashmir region. "Going by past experience, however, cricket diplomacy has sadly been about short-lived atmospherics," The Times of India said in an editorial. The match has turned the northern city of Chandigarh into a fortress. There will be a "no fly zone" around the stadium and commandos will patrol the city. Anti-aircraft guns will be placed near the stadium, the Times of India reported. Touted as "the mother of all cricket contests," the game between the two cricket-mad nations has reportedly seen requests from business tycoons, including India's richest man, Mukesh Ambani, to allow them to park their private jets in Chandigarh. Tickets sell on the black market for as much as $2,000 (1,250 pounds) in a country where 450 million live on less than $1.25 a day. SCEPTICISM ON ALL SIDES Pakistanis will be sceptical that Singh is simply playing to his domestic audience and trying to distract from a string of corruption scandals that have effectively paralysed the Congress-led government for months. "If the Indians have invited the prime minister and the president, there is no harm in going there, because this is a gesture," said Ejaz Haider, a Pakistani political analyst and contributing editor for Friday Times, "But this gesture in itself is not going to result in any breakthrough in substantial terms." Many Pakistanis also see little chance the ruling Congress party and its powerful, ruler-behind-the scenes Sonia Gandhi are really interested in making peace overtures. It is a risky issue for any Indian leader, one that wins few votes and would quickly backfire if there was another attack in India blamed on Pakistan. India, for its part, has always been sceptical about peace talks with civilian leaders in Pakistan, who play second fiddle to a more hawkish military intelligence service and army. TIME FOR A CHANGE But there may be new political winds blowing. The 78-year Singh was born in Pakistan before moving to India after Partition in 1947. Peace with Pakistan would secure his political legacy, threatened by months of corruption scams that have led the opposition to call for his resignation. Pakistan is also facing an increasingly difficult regional environment. India's new economic clout has seen it grow in influence with Pakistan's traditional ally, the United States. New Delhi has also been increasingly involved in aid to Afghanistan, see as Islamabad's backyard. In one sign that India may be taking these talks more seriously, the Times of India reported on Sunday that New Delhi wanted to open channels of communications with the Pakistan army chief and the head of its intelligence service, seen as the real powerbrokers in any talks. Singh's perceived determination may win similar commitment from the other side. "This kind of reputation that the PM has, in my view it helps," said Naresh Chandra, a former Indian ambassador to the United States. "It creates a climate that you can do business with this prime minister. It encourages the Pakistani side to do so." | 0 |
Delta Air Lines said on Tuesday it has added a $3 surcharge each way on fares purchased in the United States for flights between the United States and Europe, a move that would help offset the cost of the EU's new Emissions Trading Scheme. Delta is the first major US airline to raise the price of US-to-Europe flights since the European Union's carbon law kicked in on Sunday. Europe's highest court last month backed the controversial EU law to charge airlines for carbon emissions on flights to and from Europe. A spokesman for Delta, the second-largest US carrier, said the surcharge was added on January 2, but he declined to say whether its purpose was to shift the burden of the EU requirements to its customers. It remains to be seen whether other carriers will match the Delta surcharge. Unmatched surcharges and fare increases can fail if rivals do not launch similar price increases. "When airlines raise prices they're testing two things: the appetite of their competition and the appetite of consumers," said Rick Seaney, chief executive of Farecompare.com, which tracks air fares. "If either one of these two balk, they typically have to roll back those increases." Airline experts have said US carriers must add the cost to ticket prices or risk eroding their margins on trans-Atlantic flights. Some industry watchers predict airfares between the United States and Europe could rise $50 to $90 as airlines attempt to pass along the expense. Seaney said he was not aware of other carriers that have matched the Delta surcharge. Antitrust laws prevent US airlines from publicly discussing their future pricing. Germany's Lufthansa, however, told passengers on Monday to brace for higher ticket prices because of the EU scheme to tackle climate change. Under the EU plans, airlines touching down or taking off in the 27-nation European Union and three neighboring nations must account for their CO2 emissions. The United States, China, India and others have attacked the scheme, saying it infringes their sovereignty. They argue that the EU should not act alone. Some have warned of counter-measures. Airlines for America, the US airline industry group that challenged the EU law, said it was reviewing its legal options. The group has estimated that the emission law could cost the U.S. airline industry $3.1 billion from 2012 through 2020. Other industry experts say it will be difficult to gauge the overall impact of the scheme. "There's not a question that our airlines are doing things to prepare for the obligation," said Nancy Young, vice president of environmental affairs for Airlines For America, in an interview on Friday. "Our airlines have shown by their actions that they are respecting the rule of law," Young said. She said carriers have invested money in measuring their carbon emissions on flights to and from Europe. Young declined to speculate on whether carriers were likely to pass the new cost along to passengers immediately. She said some global airlines are considering whether it is feasible to avoid landing in Europe during some of their connecting flights to dodge the EU charge. "You're seeing airlines are looking into that," she said. The US airline industry is struggling to maintain its financial footing after a years-long downturn that has been exacerbated by volatile oil prices. Airline capacity cuts in recent years have enabled them to charge more for tickets, but at least five recent attempts to raise fares have failed since October, according to data from Farecompare. | 0 |
Chief adviser Fakhruddin Ahmed leaves for New York on Sept 22 to attend the 62nd United Nations general assembly. Fakhruddin will present a country paper at the general assembly on Sept 27. He will also speak at a climate change conference and highlight the impacts on Bangladesh on Sept 24. Foreign Adviser Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury will also accompany the interim government head. "The chief adviser will present in his country paper the background of assuming the office by the caretaker government and the ongoing reform measures carried by his government," Chowdhury told journalists Thursday at a press briefing at the foreign ministry. The foreign adviser said the Fakhruddin would co-chair the afternoon session on climate change with the prime minister of the Netherlands on September 24. On the sideline of the assembly, the chief adviser would hold talks with Italian prime minister Romano Prodi and Afghan president Hamid Karzai on bilateral issues. "The chief adviser will also join a reception hosted by the US President George W Bush," the foreign adviser said, adding that president Bush would not
attend the function. The chief adviser will fly home on Sept 30. "I will hold talks with foreign ministers of a number of countries on the sideline of the UN general assembly," said Chowdhury, who was scheduled to return on Oct 8. | 1 |
The business observers pointed to several steps by world leaders they said could boost sustainable business and investing efforts to mobilise the vast sums of money needed to wean the world off fossil fuels. These include a pledge by financial firms with a combined $130 trillion in assets to focus on climate change, the creation of a global standards body to scrutinise corporate climate claims, and pledges to cut methane emissions and to save forests. Jefferies managing director Aniket Shah said although many of the steps lacked specific promises, they showed a global consensus forming to tackle climate change that will make it easier to for private investors and governments to put in money and effort. "There's a certain power of signalling of intentions that can't be dismissed here," Shah said. He pointed to the goal set by India's prime minister, Narenda Modi, on Nov 1 for his country to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2070. Although two decades later than what scientists say is needed to avert catastrophic climate impacts, the pledge was still more than India had offered in the past and could be accelerated with financial help from developed nations, Shah said. Peter Lacy, Accenture’s global sustainability services lead, said that for investors and companies, the most significant step at the conference was the creation on Nov 3 of the International Sustainability Standards Board, meant to create a baseline for companies to describe their climate impact. Lacy called it a seismic moment for business and in line with the hopes of CEOs Accenture surveyed ahead of the conference. The new board, Lacy said, "will give investors and stakeholders a much better understanding of related risks and opportunities and help guide the allocation of the huge amount of capital needed as the world transitions to net zero," he said via email. LACK OF DETAIL Critics say many of the conference's key announcements lack specifics and give companies wiggle room. For instance, banks, insurers and investors pledged to work to cut emissions to net zero by 2050, but each entity has made its own net zero commitments "with potential overlap across initiatives, institutions and assets," according to the group's press statement. Leslie Samuelrich, media of Green Century Capital Management in Boston, which does not invest in fossil fuel stocks, said she worries bigger investment firms signed on so quickly to carbon-reduction pledges advertised at Glasgow because their terms might be too easy to meet. "The speed with which some have adopted this makes me cautious," Samuelrich said. But other finance executives say it is inevitable businesses will move to cut emissions under pressure from customers and to chase profits. Mark Haefele, chief investment officer for UBS Global Wealth Management, said promising areas include renewable energy, transport and batteries. Diplomats now must hash out rules on areas like constructing markets to help businesses price carbon and how much developed nations will help poorer ones. On a call with journalists on Friday, David Waskow, a director of the nonprofit World Resources Institute, said he was more optimistic than a week ago that the attendees would strike meaningful agreements. "I think the beginning of the week actually did lay good groundwork. Not to say everything is all rosy," he said. | 0 |
An Iranian opposition group urged European Union leaders meeting in Brussels on Thursday to take its armed wing off the bloc's terrorism list, saying its inclusion was in breach of a European court ruling. The European Court of First Instance last year annulled an EU move to freeze the funds of the People's Mujahideen, the armed wing of France-based National Council of Resistance of Iran which says it renounced military activity in 2001. But the 27 nation-bloc has kept the group on its blacklist, saying the court, Europe's second highest, only annulled an old list and not its most recent version, where the group also appears. "This makes a mockery of the rule of law," Maryam Rajavi, president-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), said in Brussels. "The resistance of a nation against religious fascism has been unjustly labelled as terrorist for economic interests," she said of accusations the European Union did not want to upset the Tehran leadership for fear of damaging major trade ties. "This is the moment of choice for leaders of Europe, the choice between respecting the rule of law and arbitrary behaviour," she told a news conference where the group produced a list of around 50 EU lawmakers it said supported their assertion. The court had annulled the bloc's decision to blacklist the group for failing to give a fair hearing or adequate reasons. An EU official said the bloc has meanwhile sent the group a letter informing it of the reasons behind its inclusion on the list. The EU's terrorism list is not on the agenda of the talks on Thursday and Friday of the bloc's leaders, which are to focus on fighting climate change. | 0 |
Indian art might be just the solution for investors seeking a safe haven at a turbulent time. Take a vivid landscape by avant-garde artist Francis Newton Souza hanging on a wall in Indian art dealer Ashish Anand's New Delhi gallery. With a price tag of $400,000, the painting might not seem like a bargain but Abnand says it will probably be worth $2 million within the next two years. Art dealers and experts say the Indian art market is still undervalued and there is money to be made for those with the means to pay the six figure prices that works by some of India's leading artists fetch at auctions. "I think Indian art is a one-way bet in the long term. That's why I will allocate money to it," said Philip Hoffman who runs the Fine Art Fund based in London. "If you look 50 years down the line, what you pay now is peanuts compared to what you will have to pay for the great Indian artists," he told Reuters at an Indian art summit in New Delhi in August. The prices of Indian art have gone up considerably but not at the levels of Chinese art, which has seen prices soar due to enormous interest at home and abroad. Dealers believe Indian works have plenty of room to appreciate, especially as South Asian art begins to draw a Western audience. "The growth potential is huge," said Hugo Weihe, Christie's international director of Asian Art. "The Indian art market is particularly strong within India and that's different from the Chinese contemporary. You have that component plus we are now reaching out to an international component every season." Often depicting vivid and colourful scenes of Indian life and culture, Indian art has long been popular among wealthy Indians, whose ranks are growing rapidly in a booming economy. Yet until recently Western collectors had not taken much interest in classical and contemporary Indian artists. That is starting to change. Weihe predicts that sales of Indian art at Christie's auctions might reach $30 million this year, compared with $680,000 in 2000. SKYROCKETING VALUATIONS Asia's art scene has blossomed in the past five years driven by the continent's rapid economic growth. Valuations have skyrocketed as Asian art has become an investment for speculators and a symbol of affluence for a growing pool of local collectors. The record for a contemporary Indian art work was set in June when Francis Newton Souza's piece 'Birth' was sold for $1.3 million pounds ($2.3 million). The figure was, nevertheless, significantly lower than the $9.7 million record price for Chinese artist Zeng Fanzhi's piece 'Mask Series 1996 No. 6' sold at an auction in Hong Kong in May. Works by famous Indian artists such as Maqbool Fida Husain and Syed Haider Raza currently go under the hammer for anywhere from $200,000 to $1 million. Yet industry players expect prices to shoot up to between $5 million to $10 million in the next few years. Neville Tuli, a manager of a $400 million art fund in India, believes that Indian art will appreciate by between 18 to 25 percent per year in a climate in which art is increasingly seen as a secure investment. "Financial institutions and their HNIs (high net worth individuals) are recognisrecognizinging the inherent stability in the art object as a capital asset," said Neville Tuli, a manager of a $400 million art fund in India. "Hence given its low correlation to economic circumstances and other related factors, the proportion of art within the alternative asset allocation is increasing significantly," he added. HOT MONEY CANVASES ART But as with all investments, there are risks. The Indian market is vastly different from the Western art markets because in India, art is viewed more as a financial investment rather than a collectors item, art fund managers said. "It has gone up 200 times in five years," said Hoffman, of the London-based Fine Art Fund, adding that the Indian market consisted of 70 percent speculators and 30 percent collectors. This trend of rapid buying and selling, makes it difficult to predict long term value. "Let's say you've got a Gupta," Hoffman said, referring to Subodh Gupta, one of India's hot new artists whose pieces sell for between $800,000 to $1 million. "It's a financial commodity like a stock," Hoffman said. "You need the Bill Gates of this world to say I want a Gupta and I don't give a damn how much it cost. It's going into my collection and it's not for sale," he added, saying a growing pool of collectors will give the market stability. Art experts would like to see more people like Kusam Sani, a wealthy fashion consultant based in Delhi, who is one of the few art collectors who keeps the art they buy. "I have a 40 foot dining room and it's covered with work, but I can't buy anymore because I've got no more space," said Sani, who has been collecting paintings since she was a teenager. Greater government investment in art infrastructure and museums will give the market stability in the long term, experts said, although they noted that so far the Indian government has shown little political will to support such projects. There are also bureaucratic hurdles such as permits to export works of art and requirements to register antiques with government bodies that turn acquisitions of Indian art into a headache for dealers and collectors abroad. But despite the market's shortcomings, art dealers, Weihe and Hoffman are bullish on Indian art. "The Indian market will mature when the real collector base is grown up and put the money is put to one side," Hoffman said. "In the long run, all these artists are going to be global, they just happen to be local at the moment." | 1 |
TOKYO, July 01 (Reuters/bdnews24.com)- UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the Group of Eight rich nations on Tuesday to stick with a three-year old pledge to raise African aid levels to $25 billion a year, after a report the leaders may be about to backtrack. "I would like to urge and emphasize that leaders of G8 should implement their commitment which was made at the Gleneagles summit meeting," Ban said at a news conference in Tokyo, referring to the G8's 2005 summit meeting in Scotland.
"When it comes to climate change ... and the global food crisis, these campaigns should be led by the industrialized countries -- they have the capacity, they have the resources, and I hope the leadership demonstrates their political will," he said. Ban's comments come less than a week ahead of the G8 summit in northern Japan on July 7-9.
They follow a report by the Financial Times newspaper on Sunday that said a draft communique for the summit failed to cite a specific aid target to Africa as set at Gleneagles.
At that summit in 2005, G8 nations pledged to raise annual aid levels by $50 billion by 2010, $25 billion of which was for Africa. This was reiterated at last year's summit in Germany.
Experts have expressed concerns about the pledge, saying donor countries may fail to meet their promises, which are not legally binding and are hard to track in actual spending.
African development, as well as the food crisis and climate change, will be on the agenda for next week's G8 summit.
Eight other major economies, including China and India, will also meet on July 9 on the sidelines of the G8 summit to discuss climate change.
Eager to show leadership ahead of the summit, Japan hosted an African development conference in May at which it vowed to double development assistance to Africa over the next five years.
Ban, who will take part in the summit, also called for the G8 nations to reach an agreement on long-term cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases at the meeting.
"I hope that at the Hokkaido summit meeting the leaders will be able to agree on a shared vision, how the future agreement will look and also commit themselves to expand and build on the existing agreement," he said.
In Japan, the G8 nations are expected to formalize a goal of halving the world's greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, after agreeing last year in Germany to seriously consider the target.
But doubts persist about whether and how far the leaders will be able to go beyond last year's agreement.
Britain's climate envoy said last week that a breakthrough is unlikely in talks on global warming at the summit.
Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said in June that the G8 nations would not be setting a medium-term target for cutting CO2 emissions by 2020 or 2030, seen as necessary by environmentalists as a way to achieving the long-term goal. | 0 |
CHICAGO, Tue Dec 16, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Insisting on the need to develop new forms of energy, US President-elect Barack Obama on Monday chose as his energy secretary a Nobel physics laureate who is a major promoter of alternative fuels. Obama named Steven Chu, the winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize in physics who was an early advocate for finding scientific solutions to climate change, to head the Energy Department. Chu will work closely with former Environmental Protection Agency head Carol Browner, whom Obama named to a new post that will coordinate White House policy on energy and climate change. "In the 21st century, we know that the future of our economy and national security is inextricably linked with one challenge: energy," Obama told a news conference. "All of us know the problems that are rooted in our addiction to foreign oil. It constrains our economy, shifts wealth to hostile regimes and leaves us dependent on unstable regions." "To control our own destiny, America must develop new forms of energy and new ways of using it. And this is not a challenge for government alone -- it's a challenge for all of us." Obama also named Lisa Jackson, former head of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, to run the Environmental Protection Agency. He named Nancy Sutley, a deputy mayor of Los Angeles, to head the White House Council on Environmental Quality. To round out his energy and environment team, Obama will name Colorado Democratic Sen. Ken Salazar, a former environmental lawyer, as secretary of the interior, transition aides and Democratic sources said. The Department of the Interior leases public lands for oil and gas drilling. Obama said he would officially announce his choice for the Interior department later this week. The president-elect will hold a meeting of his key economic team on Tuesday. Transition officials would give no details but said the meeting would include nominees for all the top financial posts including the Treasury Department, National Economic Council and the Office of Management and Budget. Obama's energy and environmental team will play a major role in his quest to revive the U.S. economy by boosting renewable energy use and creating millions of "green" jobs that will ease America's reliance to foreign oil. The president-elect, who takes office on Jan. 20, pointed out that other U.S. presidents over the past three decades had pledged to make America less dependent on foreign energy supplies.
'THIS TIME WE CANNOT FAIL' "This time has to be different. This time we cannot fail, nor can we be lulled into complacency simply because the price at the pump has for now gone down from $4 a gallon," he said. Obama's choices were applauded by environmentalists who said they showed he was serious about combating global warming and about moving toward more "green" jobs. Obama's energy and environment team will also be charged with developing policies to reduce carbon emissions blamed for global warming. He said his nomination of Chu should send a signal his administration will "value science." "We will make decisions based on the facts, and we understand that facts demand bold action," Obama added. The Bush administration has had a rocky relationship with the scientific community and was at times accused by critics of ignoring scientific evidence in its efforts to make political points on issues such as global warming. Obama, who has begun to lay out plans for a massive recovery plan to stimulate the economy and create about 2.5 million jobs, said many of them should be "green" jobs. "We can create millions of jobs, starting with a 21st century economic recovery plan that puts Americans to work building wind farms, solar panels, and fuel-efficient cars." Obama has set a goal of making public buildings more efficient, modernizing the electricity grid and reducing greenhouse gas emissions while preserving national resources. He refused to answer directly a reporter's question on whether he would reinstate the presidential ban on offshore drilling, which President George W. Bush recently revoked. Also on Monday, Obama had a 5 1/2 hour meeting with his national security team, discussing a range of international challenges for the Obama administration, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama will hold another news conference on Tuesday to announce he has chosen Chicago superintendent of schools Arne Duncan to be his nominee for secretary of education, a senior Democrat said on Monday. Duncan has seven years experience as chief executive of Chicago's public school system, the third largest in the country, and has earned a reputation for addressing issues such as how to raise teacher quality and transform weak schools. Tuesday's news conference will be held at 11:45 a.m. EST (1645 GMT) at an elementary school he and Duncan visited together in October 2005. | 0 |
Dzekyid's well-built house in Jangdam village has a hall filled with Buddhist scriptures and Thangka paintings, and a row of prayer wheels for his religious 76-year-old father, Tenzin, to spin twice a day. As a member of China's ruling Communist Party, Dzekyid is an atheist. "This house is possible because of good government policies. My heart is wholly with the party, not even one bit with religion," said Dzekyid, whose family was showcased to a group of reporters on a government-organised tour of Tibet, an area where access to foreign journalists is normally barred. Government officials in both Beijing and Tibet vetted the reporters from media organisations who were invited to join the trip. On the closely supervised tour, there was little opportunity to interact with ordinary Tibetans without government officials in attendance. China is pushing to transform the mindsets and values of Tibetans to bring them into the country's modern mainstream, which includes urging the region's devout Buddhists to focus less on religion and more on material prosperity. "Tibet has some bad old habits, mainly due to the negative influence of religion that emphasises the afterlife and weakens the urge to pursue happiness in the current life," said Che Dhala, chairman of the Tibet Autonomous Region. On the trip to Tibet, officials showcased poverty-relief programmes that include relocation of families to better homes, schooling, vocational training, and business development efforts such as a climate-controlled mushroom farm. The efforts are part of China's push to eradicate rural poverty nationwide by the end of this year. Officials also described efforts to "manage the minds" of Tibetans, who for centuries lived in a deeply religious society with a belief in reincarnation and a devotion to their spiritual leader. The head of Caiqutang village, Dekyi Paldron, described how poor households who receive free new government housing "should not" set up a family room for worshipping Buddha, a common feature in traditional Tibetan houses, because they "shouldn't be two-faced" after benefiting from the atheist Communist Party. "If space is taken up by the Buddha room, the boy and girl may have to squeeze into one bedroom - this is not ideal for the healthy development of either child," another official told the visiting journalists. China seized Tibet after troops entered the region in 1950, in what Beijing calls a "peaceful liberation." In 1959, spiritual leader the Dalai Lama fled China after a failed uprising, and the long-impoverished region has been one of the most politically sensitive and restricted parts of China. PRAY LESS, WORK MORE Recipients of poverty relief are told to curb their spending on religion and to instead invest in increasing their earning power and in their children. At a vocational school in Nyingchi, a signboard stated that the school uses ideological and political education to fight against "separatism", denounce the Dalai Lama and to prevent religion from making people "passive".
People buy food at a street stall in a market alley in the old city of Lhasa, during a government-organised tour of the Tibet Autonomous Region, China, Oct 14, 2020. REUTERS
"Ten years ago, villagers competed among themselves to see who donates more to temples. Now they compete to see whose son or daughter has a stable government job, or who owns a car," Karma Tenpa, deputy propaganda minister for the Tibet Autonomous Region, told Reuters. People buy food at a street stall in a market alley in the old city of Lhasa, during a government-organised tour of the Tibet Autonomous Region, China, Oct 14, 2020. REUTERS Pictures of the Dalai Lama, once commonly displayed in Tibetans' houses, are banned, but framed posters of President Xi Jinping were visible inside all the homes the journalists were shown. Propaganda slogans urging allegiance to China and the Communist Party are conspicuous along roadsides and billboards in Tibet. Critics say China's efforts linking poverty eradication to an embrace of a secular life and the Communist Party infringe on human rights. "The Chinese government's efforts to force Tibetans to change their way of life to the one the government approves is a violation of their fundamental human rights, including their freedoms of thought and religion," Maya Wang of Human Rights Watch told Reuters. A recent Reuters report based on official documents described how growing numbers of rural Tibetans were being pushed into recently built training centres, where they are trained to be factory workers in a programme that some critics have called coercive - a characterisation China rejects. "At first we have to go around explaining to the nomads and herders why they should go for skills training to earn higher wages. Now that they see the benefit of doing so, they come to us automatically," Lin Bei, a poverty alleviation official, told Reuters. FAME OR SHAME Families who practise good hygiene or have other desirable attributes receive credits for goods such as washing powder or towels, Lin said. The best are listed as "Five Star Families" on the village notice board. Those deemed to show undesirable behaviour are named and shamed. "If someone has been lazy, drunk alcohol, hung out at the teahouse or played games instead of taking care of his family, we will call him out at the village meeting," said Lin, who is a member of China's ethnic Han majority. Dzekyid, who like many Tibetans uses only one name, encourages his neighbours to support the party and its programmes. His house was built with a government grant of nearly $20,000. "Praying to the gods and Buddha can't get me this," he told Reuters. | 2 |
President George W Bush prepared for an Asia-Pacific summit in Australia, saying on Friday the United States would consider a peace treaty with North Korea if it gave up nuclear arms. Washington has been accused of ignoring Asia as it focuses on Iraq, but on the eve of this weekend's Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, Bush weighed into major regional issues. "We must press the regime in Burma (Myanmar) to stop arresting, harassing, and assaulting pro-democracy activists for organising or participating in peaceful demonstrations," Bush said in a speech to Asia-Pacific business executives in Sydney. The comments come a day after hundreds of Buddhist monks held a group of government officials for several hours and torched their cars in anger against the military that rules impoverished Myanmar, formerly called Burma. Bush also said China should allow more freedoms ahead of the 2008 Olympic Games and later after meeting South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun offered the possibility of a treaty with Pyongyang. "We're looking forward to the day when we can end the Korean War. That will happen when Kim Jong-il verifiably dismantles his weapons programme," said Bush. "If you could be a little clearer..." Roh urged the president. Bush then said more directly that he was referring to a formal peace agreement. Fighting in the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an inconclusive truce. Bush's comments follow several weeks of apparent progress in ending a crisis over the weapons programme of a country he had once bracketed with pre-war Iraq and Iran in an "axis of evil". A Foreign Ministry spokesman for China, which fought along side the North in the Korean War and was a party to the original ceasefire, said Roh had raised the issue in a meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao earlier in the day and Beijing had a "positive attitude" toward the prospect of a truce. Next week, nuclear experts from the United States, China and Russia will visit North Korea to conduct a survey of nuclear facilities to be disabled, U.S. envoy Chris Hill said on Friday. The inspections "would mark another important step toward denuclearization of the Korean peninsula", said Hill in Sydney. Myanmar's crackdown on protests against huge fuel price rises also drew expressions of dismay from other Asia-Pacific nations. China, Myanmar's closest ally which is usually reticent when it comes to the affairs of others, also sounded frustrated with its southeast Asian neighbour. "We hope to see reconciliation and improvement in the situation in Burma," said a foreign ministry spokesman. But while Bush was reinforcing his Asian credentials, Russian President Vladimir Putin was seeking to forge new links. "Closer ties with APEC naturally complements our own plans of economic development of Siberia and the Far East," Putin said. Putin signed a major deal on Friday to buy Australian uranium to fuel civilian nuclear plants -- a day after snaring a $1 billion arms sale deal with Indonesia. Australia holds 40 percent of the world's reserves, but only agreed to sell uranium to Moscow after guarantees it would not be resold to Iran or Syria. Russia has close ties with both states. Putin is vying with the United States and China for a leading role in the region and wants Russia to host 2012 APEC summit. Putin and Bush met in Sydney but did not delve deeply into any sensitive subjects, instead the men reminisced about fishing. Bush on Friday offered to host a meeting of Southeast Asian leaders at his Texas ranch, as he sought to counter perceptions that he was not paying enough attention to the region. He also said he planned to name an ambassador to the 10-nation Association of South East Asian Nations, or ASEAN. On the issue of trade, Bush said he was ready to show flexibility to jump-start the moribund Doha round of world trade talks, which he called a "once-in-a-generation" opportunity. But he said intransigence by just a handful of countries could bring negotiations to a standstill. Host Australia has placed climate change at the top of the APEC leaders' agenda and Bush says he will support a strong statement on global warming. But there is a split in APEC over climate change, with Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer conceding there were "very difficult negotiations" underway. "If we can get a good declaration out of this, that will be a very great achievement. But I make no predictions about how those negotiations will go," Downer told reporters. | 0 |
BONN, Germany, 8 April (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Climate negotiators meet in Bonn on Friday for the first time since the fractious Copenhagen summit but with scant hopes of patching together a new legally binding UN deal in 2010. Delegates from 170 nations gathered on Thursday for the April 9-11 meeting that will seek to rebuild trust after the December summit disappointed many by failing to agree a binding UN deal at the climax of two years of talks. Bonn will decide a programme for meetings in 2010 and air ideas about the non-binding Copenhagen Accord, backed by more than 110 nations including major emitters China, the United States, Russia and India but opposed by some developing states. The Accord seeks to limit world temperature rises to below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F), but without saying how. "We need to reassess the situation after Copenhagen," said Bruno Sekoli of Lesotho, who speaks on behalf of the least developed nations who want far tougher cuts in greenhouse gas emissions to limit temperature rises to less than 1.5 C. Many nations favour progress on practical steps in 2010, such as aid to developing nations to combat climate change that is meant to total about $10 billion a year from 2010-12 under the Copenhagen Accord, rising to $100 billion (65.7 billion pounds) a year from 2020. Delegates said perhaps two extra sessions of talks were likely to be added before the next annual ministerial talks in Cancun, Mexico, from November 29-December 10. That would mean a less hectic pace than last year's run-up to Copenhagen. "There has been a constructive attitude" in informal preparatory talks in Tokyo and Mexico, said Harald Dovland, a Norwegian official who is the vice-chair of UN talks on a new deal to succeed the existing Kyoto Protocol. COPENHAGEN But it is unclear what will happen to the Copenhagen Accord. The United States is among the strongest backers of the Copenhagen Accord, but many developing nations do not want it to supplant the 1992 Climate Convention which they reckon stresses that the rich have to lead the way. "I don't believe that the Copenhagen Accord will become the new legal framework," Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat, told reporters in a briefing about Bonn last week. He also doubted a legally binding deal would be reached in 2010, saying he hoped Cancun would agree the basic architecture "so that a year later, you can decide or not decide to turn that into a treaty." The 2011 meeting is in South Africa. Wendel Trio, of environmental group Greenpeace, said many nations had to toughen their targets for curbing greenhouse gas emissions if they wanted to stay below a 2 degrees Celsius rise. "The pledges so far will probably take us to somewhere between 3.5 and 4 degrees Celsius," he said. That would spur dangerous changes such as floods, heatwaves, droughts, more extinctions and rising sea levels. In other signs of a revival of talks, the United States will host a meeting of major economies in Washington on April 18-19, top US climate negotiator Todd Stern said on Wednesday. He said he did not know if a legal UN treaty could be reached in 2010. One hurdle to a pact is that US legislation to cap emissions is stalled in the US Senate. | 0 |
“I think we will see a significant pivot in the tourism industry in 2021,” said Gregory Miller, the executive director of the nonprofit Center for Responsible Travel, noting that the focus is “not on who is benefiting the travel business, but who’s benefiting the community.” The following are some of the many sustainable initiatives that have been started during the pandemic, awaiting the return of travelers. — A marine heritage site From Dana Point, California, whale-watching operations take visitors on boat trips to see gray whales, blue whales and, on occasion, racing megapods of dolphins. They also pick up discarded, deflated balloons — which might be mistaken for food by sea creatures. “We tell people, don’t celebrate with balloons, because this is where they end up,” said Donna Kalez, the co-president of Dana Wharf Sportfishing & Whale Watching, a recreational guide service. She and Gisele Anderson, a co-president of another whale-watching operation, Captain Dave’s Dolphin & Whale Watching Safari, wanted a way to signal to the world that their region is not just a great place to see whales, but to learn about and protect them. They found it in the Whale Heritage Site programme from the nonprofit conservation association World Cetacean Alliance to which they applied. In late January, Dana Point received the designation a Whale Heritage Site, the first in the United States. The Whale Heritage Site designation is meant to identify to travelers not only whale-rich areas, but those that are engaged in conservation, education and cultural celebrations of whales. An initial pair of sites, The Bluff, South Africa, and Hervey Bay, Australia, were designated in 2019. In addition to Dana Point, a region off Tenerife, Spain, was also named a Whale Heritage Site this year. “It’s a new program but we think it could be what National Parks are to the US,” said Ben Williamson, the programs director for World Animal Protection, US, a global animal welfare nonprofit which is a partner on the heritage site project. “We think rolling out these landmarks for sustainable and responsible tourism gives tourists and the travel industry a marker to show how the wildlife experience should be done.” World Animal Protection promotes viewing animals in the wild rather than in captivity, such as at SeaWorld San Diego, about an hour south of Dana Point. Seven more candidate sites globally are currently under review for certification. A deep coastal canyon below Dana Point draws whales and dolphins close to shore, and the town is home to a whale festival that has been running for 50 years. Its sustainable whale-watching operations will be audited every three years to maintain heritage site status. “This isn’t a designation for life. You need to work to keep it,” Anderson said of plans for future beach cleanups and citizen science initiatives and continuing work to instruct recreational boaters on keeping safe distances from whales. — Colorado electrifies its byways A key component of Colorado Gov Jared Polis’ climate action plan — which calls for the state to obtain 100% of its energy from renewable sources by 2040 — is electrifying transportation. More than 30 fast-charging stations for electric vehicles are planned or available on Colorado’s interstates and highways, or highly trafficked “corridors.” Greatly expanding the range of electric cars, charging facilities about 50 miles apart are coming in June to six of the state’s 26 Scenic & Historic Byways, which traverse rural areas and are popular with road trippers. By encouraging drivers to spend time in towns with charging stations while their car is being replenished, the initiative combines economic development and sustainable transportation. Andrew Grossmann, the director of Destination Development for the Colorado Tourism Office, calls the first electrified byways an “initial skeletal installation,” with capacities for a minimum of two cars at each station. While many newer model electric vehicles can go more than 200 miles on a charge, “having them in place more closely helps reduce range anxiety,” he said. To use the new system, travelers would have to arrive by electric vehicle, as few are available from rental car companies. However, the Dollar and Thrifty rental car franchises at the Eagle County Regional Airport near Vail have agreed with the state to add 10 electric vehicles before the end of the year. And Vail has 28 public charging ports and nearly 20 stations at hotels, including Sonnenalp Vail. For local drivers, electrifying remote byways is a passport to travel. “We want to go not just to Vail, but Clear Creek, South Park and places that are less discovered by tourists because we’re the locals, so that’s a game changer for us,” said Don Dulchinos, 64, a technology consultant based in Boulder, who owns a 2012 Chevy Volt and runs a Facebook page for electric vehicle owners in the state. — Biking adventures that start in the city Since 1976, when it organised a cross-country bike ride in celebration of the nation’s bicentennial, the nonprofit Adventure Cycling Association has specialized in mapping long-distance cycling routes across the United States. But this year, the organisation, which encourages bicycle transportation, aims to take travel-by-bike to urban areas in an effort to bridge environmental and social sustainability. Its new Short-Trips Initiative, which will kick off in June, will create maps and suggested itineraries for trips from one to three nights from eight cities — Atlanta; Austin, Texas; Boston; Los Angeles; Minneapolis; San Francisco; Seattle; and Washington, DC — with plans for 30 cities by 2023. “We wanted to focus on letting people know they can have a great adventure even if they’re going for one night,” said Eva Dunn-Froebig, the project director of the initiative. A major programme focus is to diversify the cycling scene, which the association describes as predominantly male and white. In addition to reaching urbanites, the initiative includes recruiting ambassadors from each city, especially among Black, Indigenous and other people of colour to lead occasional short trips and share their bike camping expertise. “I think the ACA is trying to catch up with the social environment,” said Jess Kim, 30, a transportation engineer in Seattle and avid bike camper who is Asian American and plans to apply to become an ambassador for the initiative. She calls it a “step in the right direction” in offering flexible rides to those with constrained schedules, targeting racially diverse communities and partnering with organizers like herself who are working on making cycling more inclusive. As a practical matter, the ACA says anyone can bike camp, which might include having a family member drive a support vehicle with camping gear or fashioning bike carriers from kitty litter containers. “The best bike for your first tour is the bike you already have,” said Dan Meyer, the deputy editor of the association’s Adventure Cyclist Magazine. — Saving pangolins The only fully scale-covered mammal, pangolins curl up in an armoured ball when threatened. It’s those scales, used in traditional Asian medicine practices, that largely make them the quarry of poachers. According to the Coalition to End Wildlife Trafficking Online, more than 1 million of the small, ant-eating animals have been illegally traded in the last 10 years. Eight species of pangolins, native to Asia and Africa, range from vulnerable to critically endangered. “What we’re looking at here is yet another man-made extinction. And because of the silent and elusive nature of the pangolin, it could be a very silent extinction,” said Les Carlisle, the director of conservation at andBeyond, which runs safari camps and game preserves in Africa, and has started a program to rehabilitate pangolins rescued from illegal trading. The goal is to establish a breeding programme. Last year, a captive pangolin was recovered by authorities, rehabilitated at the Johannesburg Wildlife Veterinary Hospital and eventually relocated to the 70,560-acre andBeyond Phinda Private Game Reserve, a private preserve and safari camp, in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, where it gave birth to a pup, the first in the area for an estimated 40 years. While the preserve is heavily guarded and the pangolin rehabilitation program is ongoing, its managers won’t say how many pangolins are living on the property for fear of drawing the attention of poachers. Guests at one of the Phinda lodges, which have reopened, can join a researcher from the conservation team during a general health check of a pangolin. But don’t expect to see one of the shy, nocturnal creatures on a game drive. “Rangers who have worked on reserves with pangolins have gone years without seeing one,” Carlisle said. — Carbon capture for the people Travel has a chronic carbon problem. The emissions associated with travel, by car, ship or by air, make sustainable travel a stumbling block right from departure. Carbon offsets have long been a balancing alternative, though most experts agree offsetting isn’t enough to slow or reverse climate change. Tomorrow’s Air, a new climate action group incubated by the Adventure Travel Trade Association, is taking a different tack, both technologically and socially. It champions carbon removal and storage, as done by the Swiss company Climateworks — an expensive process that filters carbon dioxide from the air, sometimes injecting it underground in basalt rock, where it mineralises over time. While the process seems sound, “the question is, is it scalable?” said Howard Herzog, a senior research engineer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who has studied carbon capture for more than 30 years, noting the high cost of running the technology relative to the amount of carbon removed. “It’s a lot cheaper to not emit than to try to capture it later.” Though the emerging technology is indeed costly — one Peruvian tour operator estimated that mitigating a flight between London and Lima with carbon capture technology would cost $5,040 — Tomorrow’s Air aims to excite people about the future of carbon removal, invest in it and create a community of travelers and travel companies around it that will eventually be large enough to sway companies and governments to engage. “We’re providing ways for travellers and travel companies to support the scale-up of carbon removal technology,” said Christina Beckmann, the co-founder of Tomorrow’s Air. “We thought, what if we got travel, which is 10% of global GDP, or some portion of it, united around carbon removal with permanent storage? We could really do something.” Tomorrow’s Air is pursuing that goal by planning online Airbnb Experiences tours of a carbon capture plant. And it has partnered with artists who focus on the climate, showcasing their work on its website. It also sells subscriptions starting at $30, of which 80% is invested in a carbon removal company; 20% funds further educational efforts. The group is holding its first convention (virtual, of course) Friday, bringing together what it calls “climate clever travelers and brands” to talk not just about carbon capture, but where to go and how to be a more sustainable traveler, a step in harnessing consumer demand to climate change action. “It’s practical, it’s affordable and it’s a way to be a part of what will hopefully be a growing traveler’s collective where by eventual size maybe we can take some things to scale,” said Ann Becker, 68, a business and travel consultant living in Chicago and a member of Tomorrow’s Air. c.2021 The New York Times Company | 2 |
Shehabuddin Kislu from New York New York, Sep 26 (bdnews24.com)—Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, secretary general of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), has highly appreciated prime minister Sheikh Hasina's leadership during the global economic downturn. Ihsanoglu, on Friday, also greeted Bangladesh's standpoint in the international forum of climate change and environmental movement. Hasina met with him at a reception hosted by the OIC chief, said her press secretary Abul Kalam Azad to bdnews24.com. "Nothing can be accomplished by a single country," she said in the meeting and sought assistance from the OIC. Ihsanoglu assured her of providing assistance. Earlier, Hasina met with the Commonwealth secretary general Kamalesh Sharma and discussed matters that concern Bangladesh, Azad added. Hasina will give her speech in the general assembly in Bangla later on Saturday. | 1 |
But square off a Nobel laureate and a former US Treasury chief against a firebrand professor from a state university in New York, and an otherwise obscure debate over “modern monetary theory,” or MMT, becomes a centre ring battle over how the Democratic Party should shape economic policy ahead of the 2020 presidential election. Over the past three weeks, New York Times columnist and Nobel economics prize winner Paul Krugman, along with former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, have used social media, television appearances and news columns to rebut the ideas of Stephanie Kelton, an economics professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Kelton, who advised democratic socialist US Senator Bernie Sanders in his 2016 run for the Democratic presidential nomination, is a staunch advocate of MMT, which promotes the idea that government spending, and deficits as needed, should be used to meet the full employment and inflation mandates currently tasked to the US Federal Reserve. The intense back-and-forth exchanges have ranged from wonky money and savings demand charts to flat-out insults, with Krugman calling Shelton’s thinking “a mess” and Summers panning MMT as “the voodoo economics of our time” in a Washington Post column. Kelton responded to Summers’ jibe with a Twitter video clip from the US TV sitcom “Happy Days” famous “jumping the shark” episode in 1977, which has come to connote the moment when an established phenomenon crosses into absurdity or irrelevance. “This isn’t a fight I intend to lose,” she said on Twitter on Tuesday, shortly before Summers appeared on CNBC to say, in reference to Kelton’s theories, that “one thing that every American ought to support are the laws of arithmetic.” The war of words could be dismissed as social media fun and games, except it represents a fundamental debate, gaining intensity ahead of the Democratic presidential nominating contests, over how to finance a “Medicare for All” healthcare restructuring, a “Green New Deal” environmental program, and other initiatives. Those sweeping ideas are now at the centre of several of the emergent 2020 campaigns. They have already become a talking point for Republican President Donald Trump, who has said it shows the Democratic Party has embraced “socialism.” With $22 trillion in outstanding US government debt and chronic annual deficits driven by entitlement and other legal commitments like interest payments, economists across the political spectrum and at the Fed argue the country is already on an unsustainable fiscal path and needs to tread carefully. To support those and other ideas being debated by the Democratic presidential contenders, Kelton’s approach would involve a full-on reengineering of how the United States uses debt and deficits, and how its central bank works. That would likely be a non-starter in more normal times. But a decade after the 2007-2009 financial crisis and recession, even the most mainstream of thinkers, including Summers and influential figures like the International Monetary Fund’s former chief economist, Olivier Blanchard, are rethinking how governments should manage their fiscal affairs. The general notion: In an era when trillions of dollars of central bank purchases of bonds, also known as quantitative easing, and massive cuts in US taxes have failed to spark either inflation or significantly higher interest rates, it is probably safe to borrow much more, and invest it toward productive public projects. Jason Furman, who was chairman of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers for most of former President Barack Obama’s second term, said on Tuesday the Obama administration, even as it crafted ambitious programs, was sensitive to how extra spending effected the ratio of total government debt to gross domestic product, and assumed it was good to keep that ratio stable or declining. Today, “I have a lot of people pushing me, why? Why does it need to be 80 (percent) as opposed to 120, or 40? What’s the evidence?” Furman, now a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, said at the Peterson Institute of International Economics in Washington. “I have just lost my ability to have any economic conviction around that as an anchor. Definitely it should not go to infinity.” Short of that, Furman, Blanchard and others say the United States should not shy away from spending on projects that offer benefits for the cost involved. Blanchard, in particular, said running higher deficits to save the planet was a “good idea.” They still see a limit out there somewhere, but as long as the US economy grows faster than the interest rate paid on government debt, it’s likely safe to keep borrowing. The current ratio of US publicly-held debt to GDP is around 76 percent. Kelton takes a more expansive view of what the government can and should do, even in the face of possible blowback from bond and currency traders. “‘Bond markets and foreign exchange markets won’t let us’ is a pretty terrible way to build a case against a political and economic program to save the planet,” she tweeted. She has not yet aligned herself with a 2020 presidential candidate publicly, but some of her ideas, such as a guaranteed government-funded job for anyone who wants to work, have found a home among Democratic contenders like US Senator Kamala Harris of California. And Kelton has been intent in her response to the recent attention, matching Krugman and others tweet by tweet in maintaining that the US government’s monopoly over dollar issuance - the printing press - could be used to set whatever level of demand is needed to maintain full employment and finance climate change and other programs. It’s an idea Fed Chairman Jerome Powell dismissed in a congressional hearing last week, and which Summers and others say has backfired in other countries through higher inflation or a currency crash. But it’s gained enough traction that opponents have felt compelled to respond. “There is no left and right here. There is only magical thinking with regular folks paying the price when the spell breaks,” Betsey Stevenson, who was on the staff of the CEA during the Obama administration, said of MMT on Twitter. “MMT didn’t deregulate the banks. MMT didn’t bail out Wall St and let millions lose their homes. MMT didn’t push a too-small stimulus over price tag fears,” Kelton responded. | 0 |
A reported confidential Iranian technical document describing Tehran's efforts to design an atomic bomb trigger was forged by Washington, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told a US news program on Monday. Ahmadinejad was asked by ABC News about a Times of London report last week on what it called a confidential Iranian technical document describing a four-year plan to test a neutron initiator, the part of a nuclear warhead that sets off an explosion. "They are all fabricated bunch of papers continuously being forged and disseminated by the American government," he told the US network in an interview in Copenhagen, Denmark, after he attended the United Nations conference on climate change. Reports that Iran is working on a bomb trigger are "fundamentally not true," said Ahmadinejad. The Times of London published on December 14 what it said was the Farsi-language document, along with an English translation, entitled, "Outlook for Special Neutron-Related Activities Over the Next Four Years". The document describes steps to develop and test parts for a neutron initiator, a device that floods the core of highly enriched uranium with subatomic particles to touch off the chain reaction of a nuclear explosion. Last week Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast called the report "baseless ... not worthy of attention, intended to put political and psychological pressure on Iran." Iran, the world's No. 5 crude oil exporter, says its uranium enrichment program is aimed at generating electricity so that it can export more gas and oil. The West believes Iran wants bombs from enrichment because of its record of nuclear secrecy. | 0 |
BEIJING Oct 22, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - A top Chinese official and senior US politicians warned on Thursday that the world must deal with climate change urgently, but said if the two top emitting nations work more closely together they could spur rapid improvements. Vice Premier Li Keqiang, widely touted as the country's prime minister in-waiting, said China was keen to smooth the path to a new global deal on warming and willing to step up consultation ahead of a major summit to be held in Copenhagen in December. "We should be aware of the severity and urgency of coping with climate change, and we should also seize this precious development opportunity," Li told a summit of academics, businessmen and officials from the two countries. Mutual distrust has sometimes hobbled discussions between the two nations about curbing emissions, although there has been plenty of investment and trade in green technology. Beijing says it is still a developing nation and should not be asked to make promises that will hinder its efforts to lift it out of poverty, while many in Washington are wary of making commitments they fear could give China an economic edge. But Li said that the US and China were well positioned to work together on climate change, reinforcing a message President Hu Jintao's gave his US counterpart Barack Obama on Wednesday. "China and the US have different national situations and we are at different development stages, but we face similar challenges in terms of responding to climate change," he added. Hu said closer cooperation on fighting climate change could help improve overall ties between the two, and added that he was optimistic Copenhagen would be successful, even though the latest round of negotiations has run into trouble. Officials have touted climate change as an area where both sides have much to gain from working together, and much to lose if they cannot reach a deal to limit greenhouse gas production. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the Beijing meeting that the countries, which often face friction over issues including trade and human rights issues, should take advantage of their combined economic might to push for change. "As the world's two largest emitters of carbon, the United States and China have a responsibility to lead the world in developing and adopting clean technologies, and as two of the world's largest economies our nations have the power to build a thriving global marketplace for these technologies. "As always, we are more likely to succeed when we work together," she said in a video address. White House Science Adviser John Holdren said that though Obama was facing bruising battles over other major policy issues like health care reform, climate change was still a top priority. "The President's focus and his administration's efforts on completing energy climate legislation as rapidly as possible have not faded in the slightest," Holdren said in a video address. China on Wednesday also signed a deal with India, which it said would improve ties between two developing nations and boost the chances of success in Copenhagen. "The agreement will certainly benefit international efforts to fight climate change, and will help ensure we reach a positive result in the Copenhagen negotiations," Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu told a regular news briefing. | 1 |
The WEF had in December postponed the event for the business and
political elite a month before it was due to take place, citing the
difficulties of holding such an in-person conference amid the spread of the
Omicron coronavirus variant. "After all the virtual meetings taking place in the last two
years, leaders from politics, business and civil society have to convene
finally in person again," WEF founder and Chairman Klaus Schwab said in a
statement. "We need to establish the atmosphere of trust that is truly
needed to accelerate collaborative action and to address the multiple
challenges we face." Topics on the agenda will include the pandemic recovery, tackling
climate change, building a better future for work, accelerating stakeholder
capitalism, and harnessing the technologies of the fourth industrial
revolution, it said. The WEF will coordinate closely with the Swiss government on the
public health situation, it said, adding the meeting would take place as long
as conditions were in place to guarantee the health and safety of participants
and the host community. | 0 |
Climate change will hurt Indonesia's orangutan population, already under threat from the rapid rate of deforestation, by reducing their food stock, a leading conservation group said on Wednesday. Dubbed as the last of Asia's great apes, orangutans once ranged the region but a recent UN environment programme estimate said only between 45,000 and 69,000 orangutans remained in Borneo and 7,300 in Sumatra. The WWF said climate change would add to the pressure already caused by human-induced activities such as rampant illegal logging and massive conversion of forests into plantations. "A longer dry season will reduce the abundance of fruits and will negatively impact orangutan populations because females are more likely to conceive during periods when food resources are not limited," the WWF report said. "Climate-change induced fire will also negatively impact orangutan populations by fragmenting their habitat and reducing the number of fruit bearing trees, which can take many years to mature and fruit." Environmentalists say rampant illegal logging, lethal annual forest fires and the massive conversion of forests into plantations for palm oil and pulp wood have helped place orangutans on the world's list of endangered species. "We have seen an example in East Kalimantan, where there was once an abundance of fruits at the beginning of the year followed by a long period of massive shortage," WWF conservationist Chairul Saleh told Reuters at the launch of the report. "This affected migration patterns and reproduction," he said, "It has hurt the population of orangutans there." A United Nations report in 2002, which raised alarm about the plight of the apes, had projected that most of the habitat suitable for orangutans would be lost by 2032. In February, UNEP had put the date at 2022. Saleh warned that a combination of rising temperature and deforestation would drive thousands of orangutans out of the forests into villages and plantations to look for food. "It's happening. Already orangutans are invading plantations to eat palm oil seedlings and get killed for it," Saleh said. "But what should they do? Their living space is shrinking and there is simply no food." | 0 |
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina left Dhaka Tuesday night for the Swedish capital Stockholm to participate in the 'European Development Days 2009' from Oct 22 to 24. "Global climate changes are affecting Bangladesh. I will speak of how Bangladesh can be saved from these adverse effects at the European programme," Hasina said of her trip just before her departure, during a visit to the Hajj camp. The annual programme, hosted by the European Commission and EU presidency, aims to make the EU members' development aid and activities more effective. This year's European Development Days is expected to bring together some 4,000 people and 1,500 organisations from the development community. Delegates from 125 countries will be represented, including heads of state, leading world figures and Nobel prize winners among them. The three-day program will address issues of citizenship, responses to the global economic downturn, democracy and its relation to development and climate change. Hasina will visit Qatar on her way home. She is to reach Doha on Oct 26 and meet with Qatar's Ameer on that day. She will fly home the next day. The prime minister left the country on a regular Qatar Airways flight at 9:45pm. Finance minister AMA Muhith, foreign minister Dipu Moni, agriculture minister Matia Choudhury saw her off at the airport. | 1 |
Speaking at a
pre-election town hall event on RTL television on Sunday, Merkel called on
German carmakers, all of which have been caught using workarounds to cheat
nitrogen emissions tests, to work to re-establish public trust in diesel. "We need diesel if
we are to achieve our climate protection goals," she said. Diesel cars emit less
of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide but emit more of the nitrogen dioxide that
can cause breathing problems in high concentrations. She told one car owner
that the more modest compensation received by German car owners compared with
their US counterparts was the result of very different legal systems in the two
countries. Nonetheless, Germany's
carmakers needed to compensate owners whose cars were less valuable as a result
of the scandal as best as possible, she said, otherwise "the German car
industry, which is admired the world over, could suffer substantial harm". The future of the auto
sector, Germany's biggest exporter and provider of 800,000 jobs, has become a
hot election issue as politicians blame executives and each other for the
sector's battered reputation after Volkswagen's admission almost two years ago
that it had cheated US emissions tests. | 0 |
President Barack Obama pledged to pursue greater U.S. engagement in Asia, pragmatic cooperation with China and a push for deeper trade ties with the region in a major speech in the Japanese capital on Saturday. Tokyo is the first stop in Obama's nine-day Asian tour, which also takes him to Singapore for an Asia-Pacific economic summit, to China for talks likely to feature climate change and trade imbalances, and to South Korea, where North Korea's nuclear ambitions will be in focus. Obama, on his first trip to Asia since becoming leader, reaffirmed Washington's alliance with Japan, strained of late by a row over a U.S. military base and questions about the future of the relationship as both countries adapt to a rising China. "But while our commitment to this region begins in Japan, it does not end here," Obama, who met new Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama for a summit on Friday, said in his prepared speech. "So I want every American to know that we have a stake in the future of this region, because what happens here has a direct affect on our lives at home," Obama told an audience of about 1,500 people at Tokyo's Suntory Hall. "This is where we engage in much of our commerce and buy many of our goods. And this is where we can export more of our own products and create jobs back home in the process." Obama, who will be spending three of his nine days in Asia in China, said Washington would approach the rising regional power "with a focus on our interests." "And it is precisely for this reason that it is important to pursue pragmatic cooperation with China on issues of mutual concern -- because no one nation can meet the challenges of the 21st century alone, and the United States and China will both be better off when we are able to meet them together." APPEAL TO NORTH KOREA Obama also urged an unpredictable North Korea to return to stalled multilateral talks on its nuclear programme. "We will not be cowed by threats, and we will continue to send a clear message through our actions, and not just our words: North Korea's refusal to meet its international obligations will lead only to less security, not more," he said. Fresh government figures on the U.S. trade deficit could add urgency to Obama's efforts to seek greater export opportunities in China and other Asian countries. America's trade gap ballooned in September by 18.2 percent to $36.5 billion, according to U.S. Commerce Department figures released in Washington on Friday. It was the largest monthly increase in more than 10 years and was driven both by higher oil prices and a surge in imports from China. The import growth may reinforce U.S. concerns that China's currency is undervalued against the dollar, which U.S. manufacturers say gives Chinese companies an unfair trade advantage. Obama also reiterated his call for balanced global and regional growth. "First, we must strengthen our economic recovery, and pursue growth that is both balanced and sustained," he said. "Now that we are on the brink of economic recovery, we must also ensure that it can be sustained. We simply cannot return to the same cycles of boom and bust that led us into a global recession. We cannot follow the same policies that led to such imbalanced growth." | 0 |
Fuelled by searing temperatures and high winds, more than 200 fires are now burning across the southeastern states of New South Wales and Victoria, threatening several towns. Long queues formed outside supermarkets and petrol stations near high-danger areas and shelves were emptied of staples like bread and milk, as residents and tourists sought supplies to either bunker down or escape. More than 50,000 people were without power and some towns had no access to drinking water, after catastrophic fires ripped through the region over the past few days, sending the sky blood red and destroying towns. Authorities urged a mass exodus from several towns on Australia's southeast coast, an area hugely popular in the current summer peak holiday season, warning that extreme heat forecast for the weekend will further stoke raging fires. "The priority today is fighting fires and evacuating, getting people to safety," Prime Minister Scott Morrison told reporters in Sydney. "There are parts of both Victoria and New South Wales which have been completely devastated, with a loss of power and communications." -- Eight people have been killed by wildfires in the eastern states of New South Wales and Victoria since Monday, and 18 are still missing, officials said on Thursday. -- A naval ship arrived on Thursday at the southeastern coastal town of Mallacoota, where 4,000 residents and visitors have been stranded on the beach since Monday night. Up to 800 people are expected to be evacuated on the first trip, state Premier Daniel Andrews said. The HMAS Choules is expected to make two or three voyages over coming days, state authorities said. -- "It is hell on earth. It is the worst anybody's ever seen," said Michelle Roberts, owner of the Croajingolong Cafe in Mallacoota, told Reuters by telephone from her cafe in Mallacoota. Roberts hoped to get her 18-year-old daughter out on the ship to get away from the spot fires and thick smoke that continue to engulf the town. -- Five military helicopters were en-route to the south coast to back up firefighters and bring in supplies like water and diesel, the Australian Defence Force said on Thursday. The aircraft will also be used to evacuate injured, elderly and young people. -- Traffic on the main highway out of Batemans Bay on the NSW coast was bumper to bumper after authorities called for the town to be evacuated. Residents of the town reported was no fuel, power or phone service, while supermarket shelves were stripped bare of staples. "Everyone's just on edge," local resident Shane Flanagan told Reuters. -- The New South Wales state government declared a state of emergency, beginning on Friday, giving authorities the power to forcibly evacuate people and take control of services. The state's Kosciuszko National Park, home to the Snowy Mountains, was closed with visitors ordered to leave due to extreme fire danger. -- Prime Minister Scott Morrison urged those waiting for help and those stuck in traffic jams "to be patient ... help will arrive." -- Dairies in New South Wales that had lost power were being forced to dump milk. "That is the tragedy of what is occurring as a result of these disasters," Morrison said. -- Temperatures are forecast to soar above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) along the south coast on Saturday, bringing the prospect of renewed firefronts to add to the around 200 current blazes. "It is going to be a very dangerous day. It's going to be a very difficult day," NSW Rural Fire Service (RFS) Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons said -- PM Morrison said the fires will burn for "many, many months ... unlike a flood, where the water will recede, in a fire like this, it goes on and it will continue to go on ... until we can get some decent rain." -- PM Morrison, forced to defend his government's limited action on climate change, blamed a three-year drought and lack of hazard reduction for the unprecedented extent and duration of this year's bushfires. -- Bushfires so far this season have razed more than 4 million hectares of bushland and destroyed more than 1,000 homes, including 381 homes destroyed on the south coast just this week. | 1 |
India's prime minister and US President Barack Obama meet next week to strengthen ties, with the emerging Asian power increasingly playing a bigger role on global issues such as climate change and trade. Manmohan Singh's three-day state visit starting on November 23 is seen by New Delhi as a touchstone of Obama's intention of sustaining a relationship that deepened under his predecessor George W. Bush. India is also widely seen as a key geopolitical player in helping bring stability to a South Asian region overshadowed by violence in Afghanistan and Pakistan as well as militant attacks like last year's raids on Mumbai. Singh and Obama will hold talks on issues ranging from curbing carbon emissions - where the two sides are poles apart - to multi-billion dollar defense contracts and speeding up the completion of a landmark civilian nuclear deal signed last year. Singh's trip will be the first state visit of the Obama administration, highlighting the prime minister's personal push for broadening ties with Western economies and moving India away from decades of mistrust with Washington. The success of the trip may be measured by whether the two leaders manage to dispel any doubts of Washington's commitment to New Delhi in a region where it rivals China and Pakistan -- both seen as U.S. foreign policy priorities. "The relationship is good, but lacks a central defining issue, such as the civilian nuclear deal, that defined the relationship during the presidency of George Bush," said Walter Andersen of Johns Hopkins University's South Asia Studies center. "(The visit) provides an opportunity for India and the U.S. to introduce new ideas for regaining the bilateral relationship's strategic momentum." President Bill Clinton started U.S. efforts to build ties with modern India when the Cold War ended nearly two decades ago and India began to liberalize its economy in the 1990s. FOCUS ON CHINA, PAKISTAN His successor Bush elevated relations with a 2008 civilian nuclear deal that ended an embargo imposed in 1974 after New Delhi tested a nuclear bomb. Bilateral trade went from $5.6 billion in 1990 to about 43 billion in 2008, a 675 percent rise. But Obama's early focus on Pakistan to fight the Taliban and emphasis on relations with China irked some in India, which had hoped to build on Bush's legacy. "In terms of important but second-tier issues -- trade, climate change, even defense sales and counter-terrorism -- relations are good, and may get better," said Stephen Cohen, a South Asia specialist at the Brookings Institution think tank. "However, there seems to be a parting of the ways at the strategic level." U.S. strategy for Afghanistan, focused partly on Pakistan which Washington sees as a necessary ally, has been criticized as ignoring the concerns of regional countries such as India, which competes with Islamabad for influence in Kabul. India and Pakistan have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947. India, whose long-running border dispute with China has sharpened in recent months, sees the Asian giant's huge influence over the U.S. economy as leverage Beijing enjoys over Washington. India also worries about Chinese support for Pakistan. Beijing is concerned about the Dalai Lama's presence in India. "So when India sees Obama preoccupied with China and Pakistan it gets worried," Chintamani Mahapatra, foreign policy professor at the New Delhi-based Jawaharlal Nehru University. "It will look for a statement that will acknowledge a greater role for India in the region and assuage the fact that the Obama administration has so far marginalized New Delhi." But Washington values India's importance as an economic power, its huge market, a booming IT industry, its military might and potential as a counterweight to China. Among the nettlesome issues Singh will discuss is the nuclear deal held up now for want of liability protection for American firms and nuclear fuel reprocessing rights for India. India will also hope Obama declares his support for a permanent seat for Indian on the U.N. Security Council. "We can talk strategy, we can talk economics, we can talk the great global issues of the day," said consultant Frank Wisner, former U.S. ambassador to India. "We need India's cooperation if we are to achieve any of our objectives." | 0 |
The British government will provide 1 billion pound sterling in aid to Bangladesh for the next four years (2011-15). "Climate change, poverty and governance are the key areas where the aid will flow in," said visiting British state minister for international development Alan Duncan on Wednesday. He was talking to reporters after a meeting with finance minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith at the planning ministry. The aid is double than the amount Bangladesh is currently receiving, he said. Bangladesh is a wet country and it is vulnerable to climate change, he said adding, "It's [Bangladesh] playing a leading role in this regard." DFID country head Chris Austin said social service, economic growth, improved governance and climate change are the four areas where the aid will come in. "We're working with the government on allocation for each of the sectors," he said. Muhtih said the British minister gave him some important suggestions about social security as it is declining. "We may do something about it," The finance minister said the UK minister suggested identifying the problems in exploration of mineral resources. "They wanted to know why foreign companies are not interested in exploration in the country." The finance minister said even the UK was facing economic problem and even then they did not reduce the assistance for Bangladesh. Duncan arrived in Dhaka on Monday on a three-day visit. (1 pound sterling = 120.319 Tk) | 1 |
Britain could have new nuclear power plants built and running as soon as 2016 if the government confirms its backing for nuclear as a possible cleaner alternative to fossil fuels, British Energy said on Tuesday. The nuclear power firm, Britain's biggest energy producer, said it was inviting potential partners to submit proposals to build new nuclear plants in anticipation the government will give the firm go ahead in the next few months. "We have today launched a process to invite potential partners for new nuclear generation projects in the UK," Chief Executive Bill Coley said in a statement. "Construction of new nuclear power stations is critical to meeting the UK's security of supply and climate change objectives." Coley told reporters on a conference call that Britain could see the first of the new plants completed as soon as 2016. "It is not unrealistic to expect you could have new nuclear on line in 2018 or you could perhaps go ahead of that depending on how the (planning) process works." "There's a lot of uncertainty in this. 2016 may be an optimistic number and 2018 might be a pessimistic number," added finance director Stephen Billingham. The UK government said in July it believed nuclear power had a role to play in future electricity generation, in part because it produces less carbon than fossil fuels and so would help it meet targets to reduce gases responsible for global warming. Following consultation, the government is expected to confirm its policy on new nuclear power stations in the spring and if given the green light it would pave the way for the first nuclear plants to be built in Britain since Sizewell B in eastern England opened in 1995. British Energy hopes a new generation of plants will be built on its land. Coley said he favoured the firm's Hinkley site in western England and Sizewell as locations. "I could actually envisage a scenario where initially there may well be two nuclear plants under construction at the same time in parallel." "At quite a few sites we do have land adjacent. At Sizewell and Hinkley for example." French power company EDF has said it would like to build new nuclear reactors in Britain, while analysts believe Germany's RWE and E.ON could also be interested. British gas group Centrica might also be interested in investing to take the power from the new plants, they add. A decision to back a new fleet of nuclear power plants would boost the global nuclear industry as it starts to recover from the 1986 explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear plant. But a nuclear renaissance would also be politically divisive, with environmentalists saying it is too dangerous to consider. British Energy, which is capable of providing a fifth of the country's electricity needs, said it expected to complete repair work at its Hunterston and Hinkley power stations by the end of March or early April, broadly in line with expectations. It said adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) in the nine months to Dec. 31 rose to 775 million pounds ($1.5 billion) from 462 million a year ago, as higher electricity prices helped to offset a dip in output. The firm also said it had fixed price contracts in place for about 46 terawatt hours (TWh) for its 2007-8 financial year at an average price of about 44 pounds per megawatt hour (MWh). Analysts said this was good news given the recent fall in energy prices, but warned that the decline in prices would eventually have an impact. "The big hit on British Energy is likely to happen in 2008-9, where is we mark to market against current forward electricity prices (28 pounds per MWh) our EBITDA forecast would come down by some 55 percent," Citigroup analysts wrote in a research note. At 0845 GMT, British Energy shares were down 2 percent at 415-1/2 pence, reversing an early rise to as high as 437-1/2 pence. | 0 |
As government and business leaders prepare to meet at the forum in Davos, Switzerland this week, the world's nations are divided over who should pay for lowering emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for a growing number of extreme weather events.Recessions in Western economies since the global financial crisis have slowed carbon emission growth but also left governments with scarcer state funds to channel into green technologies.The Green Growth Action Alliance, which compiled the study on behalf of the WEF, said the extra spending was needed to promote other forms of energy generation and greater efficiency in sectors including building, industry and transport.The $700 billion, part of which would promote cleaner energies such as wind, solar or hydro-power, would be on top of about $5 trillion projected to be spent each year on infrastructure under a scenario of business as usual until 2020."Shaping a global economy fit for the 21st century is our greatest challenge," former Mexican President Felipe Calderon and chair of the Alliance wrote in the report.The Alliance is a public and private group tied to the WEF that was launched at a Group of 20 meeting in Mexico last year.The study said a $36 billion annual rise in global public spending to slow climate change - less than the estimated $50 billion cost of damage by Superstorm Sandy in the United States in October - could unlock far greater private investment.It suggested a $36 billion jump in state spending to $126 billion a year, from a current $90 billion, might trigger $570 billion from private investors if properly managed.It noted that the world population was set to rise to about 9 billion by 2050 from 7 billion now."Greening the economy is the only way to accommodate 9 billion people by 2050," said Thomas Kerr, Director of Climate Change Initiatives at the WEF.COMBINED EFFORTGovernments and the private sector have often failed to work in tandem to mobilise funds to combat climate change."There is still private sector money going to climate destruction," said Jake Schmidt, international climate policy director at the National Resources Defense Council in Washington. "To deal with climate change, everyone has to be moving in the right direction.""And the key to all of this is how do you unlock big sources of private finance... Sovereign wealth funds, pension funds have a lot of capital. Mobilizing them would be the holy grail."The WEF-commissioned report pointed to some hopeful signs -- global investment in renewable energy in 2011 rose to a new record $257 billion, up 17 percent from 2010.But UN climate negotiations in Qatar in December ended with little progress on a global framework for emissions cuts.Instead, governments agreed to devise a new United Nations pact to limit climate change that would enter into force from 2020.A study published in the science journal Nature this month said it would be far cheaper to act now to keep global warming within an agreed UN limit of 2 degrees Celsius than to wait until 2020. | 3 |
Dhaka, Aug 6 (bdnews24.com)— The government on Monday signed a $12.5 million grant agreement with the World Bank 'to build climate change resilient communities' in coastal areas. The grant will be provided from the Multi-Donor Trust Fund titled Bangladesh Climate Change Resilience Fund (BCCRF) built with the development partners' contribution. Additional Secretary of the External Relations Division Arastoo Khan and Christine E Kimes, Acting Head, the World Bank's Dhaka Office signed the agreement. Khan said as per the agreement, of the total US$125 million trust fund, 90 percent will be implemented by the government and 10 percent by the NGOs. "So this US$12.5 million will be channelled to the NGOs," he said and added that Palli Karma-Sahayak Foundation (PKSF) will be the implementing agency for the NGOs as had been decided by the governing council of the fund. Highlighting Bangladesh's climate vulnerabilities, Kimes said two-thirds of its land area were less than 5 metres above sea level and 'highly susceptible to flooding.' She said crops and livelihoods of the rural poor in low-lying coastal areas were 'adversely affected by saline water intrusion into aquifers and groundwater.' Kimes said the goal of the project was to increase the resilience of communities to flood, drought and saline water intrusion risks through 'the implementation of community-based climate change adaptation activities.' PKSF's Deputy Managing Director Fazlul Khader said they would detail their activities 'as per the need of the coastal people.' Additional Secretary Khan said apart from the Trust Fund, there were other two climate change resilience funds in Bangladesh. The government has its own funds where it is injecting $ 100million every year while there is Climate Change Investment Fund of the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, he said. | 3 |
US President Barack Obama is unlikely to sign climate legislation ahead of a UN global warming meeting in Copenhagen that starts in early December, the White House's top climate and energy coordinator said on Friday. "We'd like to be (finished with) the process. That's not going to happen," Carol Browner said at a conference called the First Draft of History. She said the administration is committed to passing comprehensive energy and climate legislation "on the most aggressive timeline possible." Democratic Senators John Kerry and Barbara Boxer unveiled a climate bill this week but it remained unclear whether it would win the required 60 Senate votes for passage. Even if the bill does pass, the Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives would have to reconcile their versions of the bill in committee. That would leave little time for Obama, who has made climate one of his top issues, to sign the bill before 190 nations are due to meet in Copenhagen from early December in hopes of hammering out a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol on global warming. The U.S. Congress has been focused on health care legislation, delaying work on the Kerry-Boxer bill. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters later on Friday that Obama would consider attending the climate talks in the Danish capital if heads of state were invited. Browner said she did not know if a global agreement on binding cuts in greenhouse gas emissions could be made in Copenhagen. But she had hope for progress saying the world's top leaders recognize global warming is a problem. "Copenhagen isn't the end of a process, it is the beginning of a process," she said. The administration has been pleased with recent talks with China, the world's top greenhouse gas polluter, on tackling climate change, she added. STATES Browner expressed optimism Congress would pass the bill in due time but said the administration has options if that did not happen. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency could work with states that already have formed carbon markets to extend those programs, said Browner, former head of that agency. "That may be a way in which you could form a regime using these models that are already out there," she said. Ten eastern U.S. states have formed the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. In addition, California and several other states in the West plan to regulate six greenhouse gases from smokestacks and tailpipes beginning in 2012. | 0 |
Eating less meat and dairy could help tackle climate change by reducing the amount of methane gas emitted by cows and sheep, a British government agency says. In an email leaked to vegetarian campaign group Viva, an official of Britain's Environment Agency expressed sympathy for the green benefits of a vegan diet, which bans all animal product foods. The official said the government may in future recommend eating less meat as one of the 'key environmental behavior changes' needed to combat climate change brought on by the production of greenhouse gases. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has already announced it is looking into the benefits of low environmental impact diets, including reducing the amount of animal protein eaten. The email was written by an agency official to a member of the public who had written to support a vegan diet. "Whilst potential benefit of a vegan diet in terms of climate impact could be very significant, encouraging the public to take a lifestyle decision as substantial as becoming vegan would be a request few are likely to take up," it said. "You will be interested to hear that Defra is working on a set of key environmental behavior changes to mitigate climate change. Consumption of animal protein has been highlighted within that work. "As a result, the issue may start to figure in climate change communications in the future. It will be a case of introducing this gently as there is a risk of alienating the public majority." Cattle and sheep release millions of metric tons of methane gas a year into the environment through flatulence. In New Zealand, for example the 55 million farm animals produce some 90 percent of the country's methane emissions. Several European nations, including Germany and the Netherlands, have promoted policies that make methane capture a money-spinner for farmers. In the UK, the National Farmers' Union, said it was working on similar projects, and rejected government moves to encourage less meat intake. In a statement it said: "To suggest that people eating less meat and diary products will have a significant impact on the fight against global warming seems rather dubious." Defra denied that it was telling people to give up meat. "It isn't the role of government to enforce a dietary or lifestyle change on any individual," it said. The Environment Agency said it believed a vegan diet was a matter of personal choice. | 0 |
Greenland's ice losses are accelerating and nudging up sea levels, according to a study showing that icebergs breaking away and meltwater runoff are equally to blame for the shrinking ice sheet. The report, using computer models to confirm satellite readings, indicated that ice losses quickened in 2006-08 to the equivalent of 0.75 mm (0.03 inch) of world sea level rise per year from an average 0.46 mm a year for 2000-08. "Mass loss has accelerated," said Michiel van den Broeke, of Utrecht University in the Netherlands, who led the study, in Friday's edition of the journal Science. "The years 2006-08, with their warm summers, have seen a huge melting," he told Reuters of the study with colleagues in the United States, the Netherlands and Britain. "The underlying causes suggest this trend is likely to continue in the near future," Jonathan Bamber, a co-author at the University of Bristol, said in a statement. The computer models matched satellite data for ice losses -- raising confidence in the findings -- and showed that losses were due equally to meltwater, caused by rising temperatures, and icebergs breaking off from glaciers. "This helps us to understand the processes that affect Greenland. This will also help us predict what will happen," van den Broeke said. Until now, the relative roles of snowfall, icebergs and thawing ice have been poorly understood. Greenland locks up enough ice to raise world sea levels by 7 meters (23 ft) if it ever all thawed. At the other end of the globe, far-colder Antarctica contains ice equivalent to 58 meters of sea level rise, according to U.N. estimates. COPENHAGEN About 190 governments will meet in Copenhagen from December 7-18 to try to agree a UN pact to slow global warming, fearing that rising temperatures will bring more powerful storms, heatwaves, mudslides and species extinctions as well as rising sea levels. The study said losses of ice from Greenland would have been roughly double recent rates but were masked by more snowfall and a re-freezing of some meltwater before it reached the sea. In total, Greenland lost about 1,500 billion tons of ice from 2000-08, split between icebergs cracking into the sea from glaciers and water runoff. "The mass loss would have been twice as great," without offsetting effects, Van den Broeke said. The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated in 2007 that world sea levels could rise by 18-59 cms by 2100. A natural expansion of water as it warms would account for most of the rise, rather than melting ice. Greenland's current rate, of 0.75 mm a year, would be 7.5 cms if continued for 100 years. "This is...much more that previous estimates of the Greenland contribution," van den Broeke said. | 0 |
Data from the US space agency NASA and the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration showed that in 2015 the average temperature
across global land and ocean surfaces was 0.90 degree Celsius (1.62 degrees
Fahrenheit) above the 20th century average, surpassing 2014’s previous record
by 0.16 C (0.29 F). Scientists at the United Kingdom's Met Office and East
Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit also published data on Wednesday confirming the
US agencies findings. This was the fourth time a global temperature record has
been set this century, the agencies said in a summary of their annual report. “2015 was remarkable even in the context of the larger,
long-term warming trend,” said Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard
Institute for Space Studies. The sharp increase in 2015 was driven in part by El Niño, a
natural weather cycle in the Pacific that warms the ocean surface every two to
seven years. But scientists say human activities – notably burning fossil fuels
- were the main driver behind the rise. "The 2015 data continues the pattern we’ve seen over
the last four to five decades," said Thomas Karl, director of NOAA’s
National Centers for Environmental Information. The latest El Niño started in late 2015 and will last until
spring 2016. It is among the strongest ever recorded but Schmidt and others say
the weather phenomenon played just a supporting role in the earth's temperature
rise. More than halfway to UN
target The 2015 data underscores the urgency of cutting greenhouse
gas emissions if the world is to hold temperature increases to well below 2
degrees Celsius, the target agreed to by more than 190 countries at climate
talks in Paris last December, scientists said. With the global mean surface temperature in 2015 more than 1
degree Celsius above late-19th century levels, the world is now halfway to the
UN target, which would require stronger greenhouse gas emissions cuts. "This announcement should put pressure on governments
to urgently implement their commitments to act against climate change, and to
increase the strength of their planned cuts in annual emissions of greenhouse
gases," said Bob Ward, policy director of the Grantham Research Institute
on Climate Change and the Environment in London. In the United States, some Republican lawmaker and those sceptical
of human-caused climate change have pointed to a slowdown in temperature rise
after the last powerful El Niño in 1998 as a sign that climate change is not a
serious problem. Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz said in December
at a hearing on climate change science that there had been no significant
global warming for the past 18 years. NOAA's Karl said that with two back-to-back years of record
warming, likely to be followed with a third next year, any doubts that have
been raised by sceptical lawmakers about a pause in global warming can be put
to rest.
"There is no
sign of a pause and slowing," Karl told reporters Wednesday, adding that
it is a safe bet that 2016 will break the 2015 record given the long-term trend
and the impact of El Niño in the first quarter of the year. | 0 |
“All our 45 workers are jobless now. The men are driving taxis and women are back to being housewives,” said CEO Farzad Rashidi. Reuters interviews with dozens of business owners across Iran show hundreds of companies have suspended production and thousands of workers are being laid off because of a hostile business climate mainly caused by new US sanctions. The Iranian rial has fallen to record lows and economic activity has slowed dramatically since US President Donald Trump withdrew from the big powers’ nuclear deal with Tehran in May. He imposed sanctions directed at purchases of US dollars, gold trading, and the automotive industry in August. Iran’s vital oil and banking sectors were hit in November. “We have lost around five billion rials ($120,000 at the official rate) in the last few months, so the board decided to suspend all activities for as long as the fluctuations in the currency market continue. It is stupid to keep driving when you see it’s a dead end,” Rashidi said. The country has already experienced unrest this year, when young protesters angered by unemployment and high prices clashed with security forces. Official projections indicate unrest could flare up again as sanctions make the economic crisis worse. Four days before parliament fired him August for failing to do enough to protect the jobs market from sanctions, labor minister Ali Rabiei said Iran would lose a million jobs by the end of year as a direct result of the US measures. Unemployment is already running at 12.1 percent, with three million Iranians unable to find jobs. A parliamentary report in September warned that rising unemployment could threaten the stability of the Islamic Republic. “If we believe that the country’s economic situation was the main driver for the recent protests, and that an inflation rate of 10 percent and an unemployment rate of 12 percent caused the protests, we cannot imagine the intensity of reactions caused by the sharp rise of inflation rate and unemployment.” The report said if Iran’s economic growth remains below 5 percent in coming years, unemployment could hit 26 percent. The International Monetary Fund has forecast that Iran’s economy will contract by 1.5 percent this year and by 3.6 percent in 2019 due to dwindling oil revenues. Iran’s vice president has warned that under sanctions Iran faces two main dangers: unemployment and a reduction in purchasing power. “Job creation should be the top priority ... We should not allow productive firms to fall into stagnation because of sanctions,” Eshaq Jahangiri said, according to state media. But business owners told Reuters that the government’s sometimes contradictory monetary policies, alongside fluctuations in the foreign exchange market, price increases for raw materials, and high interest loans from banks have made it impossible for them to stay in business. Many have not been able to pay wages for months or had to shed significant numbers of workers. A manager at the Jolfakaran Aras Company, one of the biggest textile factories in Iran, told Reuters that the firm was considering halting its operations and hundreds of workers might lose their jobs. “Around 200 workers were laid off in August, and the situation has become worse since. There is a high possibility that the factory will shut down,” the manager said, asking not to be named. Ahmad Roosta, CEO of Takplast Nour, was hopeful that a drought in Iran would provide a boost for his newly launched factory, which produces plastic pipes used in agriculture. “I will wait one or two months, but I will have to shut down if the situation remains the same ... The farmers, who are the main consumers of our products, cannot afford them,” Roosta told Reuters. The sanctions have affected the Iranian car industry, which had experienced a boom after sanctions were lifted two years ago and it signed big contracts with French and German firms. French carmaker PSA Group (PEUP.PA) suspended its joint venture in Iran in June to avoid US sanctions, and German car and truck manufacturer Daimler has dropped plans to expand its Iran business. Maziar Beiglou, a board member of the Iran Auto Parts Makers Association, said in August that more than 300 auto parts makers have been forced to stop production, threatening tens of thousands of jobs in the sector. A spokesperson for Iran’s Tire Producers Association blamed the government’s “changing monetary policies over the last six months” for problems in the sector. “Fortunately tire factories have not slowed down, but the production growth that we had planned for was not achieved,” Mostafa Tanha said in a phone interview from Tehran. YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT Washington says economic pressures on Tehran are directed at the government and its malign proxies in the region, not at the Iranian people. But Iran’s young people, bearing the brunt of unemployment, stand to lose the most. Maryam, a public relations manager in a food import company, lost her job last month. “The prices went so high that we lost many customers ... In the end the CEO decided to lay off people and started with our department.” She said the company had stopped importing, and people who still worked there were worried that it might shut down after selling off its inventory. Youth unemployment is already 25 percent in a country where 60 percent of the 80 million population is under 30. The unemployment rate among young people with higher education in some parts of the country is above 50 percent, according to official data. Armin, 29, has a mechanical engineering degree but lost his job in the housebuilding industry when the sector was hit by recession following the fall of rial. “The property market is slowing because high prices have made houses unaffordable ... It is getting worse day by day,” he told Reuters from the city of Rasht in northern Iran. Nima, a legal adviser for startups and computer firms, believes sanctions have already affected many companies in the sector that depended on an export-oriented model and hoped to expand in the region. He said even the gaming industry in Iran has felt the sanctions pinch: “The situation has become so severe that many of these teams decided to suspend development of their games and are waiting to see what will happen next. Without access to international markets, they see very little chance of making a profit.” Saeed Laylaz, a Tehran-based economist, was more sanguine. He said youth unemployment was a product of Iran’s demographics and government policies, and sanctions were only adding to an existing problem. “The sanctions, the uncertainty in the market and Rouhani’s zigzag policies have put pressures on the economy and the job market, but I predict that the market will find a balance soon,” Laylaz told Reuters. “We will defeat this round of sanctions as we have done in the past,” said Laylaz who met Rouhani last month with other economists to offer advice on economic policies. | 5 |
There is little hope the 193-nation UN General Assembly will achieve much in the annual five-day marathon of speeches. But on the sidelines,US officials plan to lobby allies for pledges of concrete military assistance to help defeat Islamic State, whose hardline Sunni Islamist fighters have taken over swaths of Syrian and Iraqi territory.UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said more than 140 heads of state or government will attend the assembly's annual "general debate", which begins on Wednesday and ends Sept. 30. He noted an unusually large number of serious conflicts: in the Middle East, Africa and Ukraine."The world is facing multiple crises," Ban told reporters."All have featured atrocious attacks on civilians, including children," he said. "All have dangerous sectarian, ethnic or tribal dimensions. And many have seen sharp divisions within the international community itself over the response."UN officials and delegates say the top issue for Western and Arab leaders is the rampage of Islamic State militants, who are blamed for a wave of sectarian violence, beheadings and massacres of civilians."Together, we will address the horrendous violence in Syria and Iraq, where conflict and governance failures have provided a breeding ground for extremist groups," Ban said.US President Barack Obama is expected to use the UN podium on Wednesday to call for more countries to join his coalition of more than 40 nations to prevent IS from expanding its territory. The United States has been bombing IS targets in Iraq for the past month but has yet to bomb Syria.The White House said it was unlikely that Obama would meet with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani while both are in New York this week.But Secretary of State John Kerry is expected to meet with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif at which they are expected to discuss Iran's atomic program and IS.On Friday, Kerry told a special meeting of the Security Council that Iran could play a role in helping tackle IS, an apparent shift in the US position. Both Iran and the United States have ruled out military cooperation.Ebola outbreakIn addition to speeches by Obama, Rouhani and other high-profile leaders, other important attendees making their UN General Assembly debut this week include Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.On Wednesday, Obama will chair a rare summit meeting of the UN Security Council on the problem of foreign fighters. He last chaired a council summit in 2009 on eradicating nuclear weapons.At Wednesday's meeting, the council plans to adopt a resolution demanding countries "prevent and suppress" recruitment and travel of foreign fighters to join extremist militant groups like IS by ensuring it is a serious criminal offence under domestic laws. Foreign fighters in ISare believed to be the group's cruellest.UN member states will also tackle the Ebola crisis in West Africa.Obama and other leaders will also attend a high-level meeting on the exponentially worsening hemorrhagic fever outbreak that has devastated Liberia, Sierra Leone and other countries in the region.The meeting comes just after the Security Council declared Ebola a "threat to international peace and security" and established the first-ever UN mission dedicated to tackling a public-health threat.Since the current outbreak was first detected in March, Ebola has infected at least 5,357 people, according to the World Health Organization, mostly in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. It has also spread to Senegal and Nigeria. The virus has killed an estimated 2,630 people.Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf had been due to speak at the General Assembly this week but cancelled her trip to New York because of the Ebola crisis.While the General Assembly speeches are going on, senior foreign ministry officials from the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China are meeting in New York with Iranian officials. They will try to break a deadlock in talks aimed at ending sanctions in exchange for curbs on Iran's nuclear program. Foreign ministers from the six powers may join the talks in the course of the week.Even though a Nov. 24 deadline for a long-term deal is a mere two months away, diplomats close to the talks say a deal in New York is unlikely.Just ahead of the General Assembly on Tuesday, UN chief Ban will convene a global summit meeting on climate change that aims to set the stage for a major environmental conference in Paris next year. Obama is expected to use the session to highlight strides the United States has made on climate change.There will also be high-level side meetings on conflicts in Syria, Libya, South Sudan, Ukraine, the Central African Republic, Mali, the Israeli-Palestinian problem, and the UN war on poverty. | 0 |
Negotiations to revive the Doha Round must restart "very quickly" for a global trade deal to be salvaged after July's failed ministerial meeting, mediators of the seven-year-old talks said on Friday. "I have the sense that politically there is a readiness to have another go," New Zealand ambassador Crawford Falconer told lawmakers at an Inter-Parliamentary Union meeting in Geneva. Falconer, who chairs the World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiations on agriculture, said the seven economies whose ministers sparred in July over an emergency tool for farmers had worked hard this week to resolve that dispute. If those seven -- the United States, European Union, Brazil, India, Japan, China, and Australia -- are able in meetings next week to narrow their gaps, Falconer said Doha Round talks involving the WTO's 153 members could then resume. "In my view, that process needs to happen very quickly," the farm chairman said. "The longer you are away from an implicit deal, the more difficulties you have putting Humpty Dumpty back together again." Economists believe a deal in the Doha Round could inject billions of dollars into the global economy, potentially creating jobs and raising incomes in the developing world. But many countries are reluctant to expose their key markets to more competition, and the talks have missed deadline after deadline since they began in Qatar in 2001. WTO Director-General Pascal Lamy convened the July summit in order to clinch a basic deal spanning farming and manufactured goods, with the intention of wrapping up Doha negotiations on cross-border services and other trade rules by the end of 2008. The July talks became ensnared on the question of when and how countries could invoke a "special safeguard measure" to protect poor farmers when import volumes spike or prices fall. Other issues, including cuts to the huge subsidies paid to U.S. cotton farmers, were not addressed in the talks, which collapsed after nine days. FRESH OFFERS Mexico's WTO ambassador Fernando de Mateo y Venturini told the Inter-Parliamentary Union session that he expected fresh offers soon in the Doha services talks he mediates. "Next year we should be able to conclude this Round," said de Mateo, whose name has circulated as a potential new chairman of the WTO's industrial goods talks following Canadian ambassador Don Stephenson's return to Ottawa this summer. WTO chief Lamy said this week that a core deal in farming and manufacturing could be completed by the end of this year, with a full deal formalised in 2009. But many diplomats have voiced concerns about ramping up negotiations before a new U.S. administration takes office in January, given Washington's stance may change as a result. Elections expected next year in India and the installation of a new European Commission at the end of 2009 also loom large. Still, Falconer said it was critically important to complete the Doha Round as soon as possible, both to reinforce the world economy and to clear the decks for another overhaul of world trade rules in light of climate change and other pressures. "The multilateral system as it relates to trade needs to tackle an agenda that is broader," he said. "Your chances of tackling a broader agenda are less likely if you are still trying to deal with the inherited agenda from Doha." | 0 |
On the shores of lake Nahuel Huapi, in the wild mountains of Argentina's Patagonia, live some of the world's most ancient trees. Known in Spanish as the alerce, the Patagonian cypress grows extremely slowly, but can reach heights over 50 metres (165 feet) and live for 2,000 years or more, putting some of them among the oldest living things on earth. For scientists who come from around the world to study them, the alerces give an exciting snapshot of years past. Argentine geoscientist Ricardo Villalba, a contributor to the Nobel Prize-winning United Nations report on climate change last year, studies what the ancient trees say about changing weather patterns. Like other trees, alerces form a new layer of wood under their bark every year. So samples taken straight through the trunk can help gauge what the weather was like in each year of the tree's life. "This has allowed us to see that in some sectors of Patagonia, the year 1998 was the hottest in the last 400 years," Villalba said during a recent expedition. "The marked tendencies that have occurred over the last few decades have no precedent in the last 400 or 500 years, which is as far as the registers in Patagonia have permitted us to analyze up until now." The tree rings show that temperatures in the 20th Century were "anomalously warm" across the southern Andes. At their worst, mean temperatures over the last century went up 0.86 degree Celsius (1.5 degrees Fahrenheit) when compared to temperatures in the previous 260 years. REACHING INTO THE PAST At the nearby Puerto Blest Biological Research Station, Villalba has been able to compare his results with those of other leading scientists. Evidence from tree rings is what scientists call proxy data, meaning they know the data is not exact but if it corroborates other proxy data -- like evidence of glacier retreat -- it can be used to draw real conclusions. The scientists have also been able to use their proxy data to test computer models used for predicting climate changes in the future. "In this part of the world there is a decrease in precipitation in the last decade and a very marked increase in temperature, which is entirely what the computer models predict for global change," said researcher Brian Luckman of the University of Western Ontario and the InterAmerican Research Institute. "So we can use some of the results that we have to verify and to test some of the computer models and to see if they really give realistic pictures of what has happened in the past or what will happen in the future." Tree rings also provide a long-term perspective in the climate change debate, such as in the question of whether global warming is a result of human activity or is part of a natural earth cycle. The more scientists learn about those natural cycles and about weather patterns in the past, the more they are able to answer that question. And the alerces still have a lot more information to provide. "The Alerce has the peculiarity of longevity and of being very resistant to wood decay," Villalba said. "So you can find buried material or subfossil material that can be used to extend these chronologies further back into the past." When these chronologies are fully compiled, they could provide a new source of data currently only available from ice core samples, ocean sediments and ancient pollen. And that would help scientists reach further into the past, far beyond human records, which began in 1856 -- when the British Meteorological Society began collecting data around the world. | 6 |
The talks aim to spur bigger commitments to start reducing manmade greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 and keep the rise in the global average temperature since pre-industrial times to well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit), to stave off the worst effects of climate change. "Delegates from the LDC Group remain concerned about the logistics of getting to Glasgow," Sonam Phuntsho Wangdi of Bhutan, chair of the group of the 46 Least Developed Countries, said in a statement. "Our countries and our people are among the worst affected by climate change – we must not be excluded from talks deciding how the world will deal with this crisis, determining the fate of our lives and livelihoods." Some 20 LDCs such as Ethiopia, Haiti and Bangladesh are on Britain’s coronavirus "red list", which means their delegates will have to quarantine in a hotel for up to 10 days before attending the "COP 26" talks, which run from Oct 31 to Nov 12. Britain has said it will pay the quarantine costs of delegates from red list countries, and has cut the time to five days from 10 for those who are vaccinated. It has also said it is distributing COVID-19 vaccines to delegates struggling to get them. On Tuesday, Climate Action Network (CAN), a coalition of more than 1,500 environmental groups, called for the talks to be postponed because of delegates' difficulties in obtaining vaccines. CAN said Britain had been slow to provide the vaccines it has promised and many countries were likely to miss out. | 0 |
NUSA DUA, Indonesia, Sun Dec 16, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - A "historic" Bali deal. A "Berlin Wall" dividing rich and poor nations on global warming policy falls. A "new chapter" for Washington after six years of climate disputes with many of its allies. And now comes the hard part. After all the praise for the agreement hammered out at the 190-nation Bali meeting to work out a long-term climate treaty involving all nations by late 2009, governments will have to work out the details. "We will have two tremendously demanding years, starting right in January," said Humberto Rosa, head of the European Union delegation, after a dramatic US U-turn on Saturday paved the way for a deal to start negotiations on a global pact. The world has a lot to do to slow soaring emissions and time is running short, even though the UN Climate Panel says warming can be beaten at a cost below 0.1 percent of world gross domestic product annually until 2030. Negotiators left Bali speaking of a historic breakthrough and promising urgent action to fight climate change that could bring more floods, droughts, storms, heatwaves and rising seas. But in the marathon talks on the Indonesian resort island they spent more than 7 hours one night, for instance, arguing over whether the final text should urge poor countries to take "action" or make a "contribution" to combating climate change. The phrase "cut emissions" was not used. Working out a fair share of the burden between the United States, China, Russia and India, the top four greenhouse gas emitters, and the rest of the world will be one of the most complex diplomatic puzzles in history. U.S. PRESIDENT The talks will test relations between rich and poor and may be partly in limbo until a new president takes office in the White House after George W. Bush steps down in January 2009. Few want to make promises until new U.S. policies are clear. "If there's a major change in the (U.S.) government policy I expect that there will be a greater acceleration in the execution of commitments," said Indonesian Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar. A first meeting on the "Bali roadmap" is likely to be held in Ghana in early 2008, with four sessions around the world each year and culminating with a deal in late 2009 in Copenhagen. While poor nations ended up promising only vague "action", developed nations dropped a clear references, favoured by the European Union but opposed by the United States, to a need for rich nations to axe greenhouse gas emissions by 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 to avert the worst of climate change. Both the United States and many nations which accepted the 1997 Kyoto Protocol are well above 1990 levels. "Cuts that deep, that fast, are simply impossible," said James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said of the 2020 goal. Still, he said, the deal was a "new chapter" in climate diplomacy after Bush rejected Kyoto in 2001, saying emissions caps would harm the U.S. economy and that Kyoto wrongly excluded targets for developing nations. Kyoto binds 37 rich nations to cut emissions by an average of 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12. The U.N. says a new deal is needed by 2009 to give parliaments time to ratify and to guide investors, in everything from solar power to coal. De Boer said Bali tore down "the Berlin Wall of climate change" between rich and poor under Kyoto, which only sets commitments for rich nations. In future, all will take part. Among incentives for poor nations, Bali laid out schemes to slow deforestation, sharing "clean" technologies and a new fund to help vulnerable people adapt to droughts or rising seas. Angus Friday of Grenada, who represents small island states, said the "Bali roadmap" was disappointing and could have been agreed by e-mail instead of sending more than 10,000 delegates on carbon-spewing jets for two weeks to Bali. The talks marked a much more assertive tone by developing nations such as China and India, which won the last-minute showdown that forced the United States to give ground and promise to do more to share clean technology in a final deal. "This was China's coming-out party," said Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists. Many said the roadmap would help. "Everybody is in his car and everybody has petrol for the road," said German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel. "Without carbon dioxide, I hope." | 0 |
China's 2021-2030 policy plans are under close scrutiny as the United Nations climate change conference gets under way in Madrid, especially after a new UN report said the world needs to cut carbon dioxide by 7.6% a year over the decade in order to limit temperature rises. But with the country's economic growth at its slowest in nearly 30 years, industry data as well as speeches from leaders and industry officials suggest a willingness to lean on coal for power, especially in old mining regions. "We continue to work hard to advance the fight against climate change, but on the other hand, we are indeed facing multiple challenges such as developing the economy, improving the people's livelihoods, eliminating poverty and controlling pollution," said Zhao Yingmin, China's vice environment minister, at a briefing last week. Beijing promised this year to show the "highest possible ambition" when revising its emissions pledges next year, although it did not commit to more stringent binding targets. But it has built 42.9 gigawatts of new coal-fired power capacity since the start of last year, with another 121 GW under construction. That compares with 35 GW of coal-fired power added in 2017 and 38 GW in 2016. Although no net figures are available, regulators also approved 40 new mines with nearly 200 million tonnes of annual capacity in the first three quarters of 2019, compared with 25 million tonnes in all of 2018. Major state-owned utilities want to shed as much of a third of their older and less-efficient coal-fired capacity in an effort to reduce debt, according to a government document seen by Reuters and confirmed by four sources. But even if they go ahead, the cuts will be offset by newer capacity added elsewhere. In October, Premier Li Keqiang urged energy officials to promote clean mining and coal-fired power. Ambitious proposals to cap CO2 and fossil fuel use are no longer expected to be included in the 2021-2025 five-year plan, researchers said. As it looks to stimulate the economy, Beijing may face less internal pressure to accelerate carbon cuts after hitting previous targets with relative ease. China brought down carbon intensity - CO2 generated per unit of economic growth - by 45.8% from 2015-2018, beating its target by two years. Some forecasts say it could bring CO2 emissions to a peak by 2022, eight years ahead of schedule. "About this CO2 peak by 2030, I think we will be earlier than 2030," Fu Chengyu, former chairman of oil giant Sinopec, said during a recent panel discussion. "That's a good thing, but I see a slowdown in efforts at the government level that is dragging us down." SHORTAGES? A major concern remains the economic fortunes of coal regions like Shanxi, which still relies on the fuel for half its jobs and 80% of its energy. "The fact that Shanxi's economy relies heavily on coal is unlikely to change in the coming years," said a scholar at a provincial government think tank, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. Much of the debate centres on how well renewables can supply reliable "baseload" power to China in the future and support major initiatives like vehicle electrification. According to a research institute run by the State Grid Corporation, China will need 1,250 gigawatts to 1,400 gigawatts of coal-fired power over the long term to guarantee stable electricity supplies, up from around 1,000 GW now. Yang Fuqiang, senior adviser with the US-based Natural Resources Defence Council, said the debate depended on electricity demand forecasts: annual growth of less than 4.5% would require no new coal plants. Though some policymakers have argued capacity is sufficient, with existing plants capable of providing more power, the amount of new approvals suggests the government will err on the side of caution. "Since coal is still a major resource, we will continue to rely on coal when we need it - and right now for instance, the economy is slowing and renewables are still relatively weak," said Lin Boqiang, dean of the China Institute for Energy Policy Studies. | 0 |
Parliamentary elections were supposed to happen first under the roadmap unveiled after the army deposed Islamist President Mohamed Mursi in July after mass protests against his rule.But critics have campaigned for a change, saying the country needs an elected leader to direct government at a time of economic and political crisis and to forge a political alliance before a potentially divisive parliamentary election.Opponents say it risks creating a president with unchecked power. Were that Sisi, who is widely tipped to win the vote, it would restore the army's sway over a post controlled by military men until Mursi was propelled to office last year by the Muslim Brotherhood.Sisi's Islamist opponents view him as the mastermind of a military coup and a crackdown that has killed hundreds of Mursi's supporters and jailed thousands more.In further unrest, one person was killed and five others were wounded on Monday in the Mediterranean town of Damietta in clashes between opponents and supporters of Mursi. Such incidents have taken place almost daily since Mursi was removed.In Cairo, a court sentenced 139 Brotherhood members to two years in jail and a fine of 5,000 Egyptian pounds ($720) each for engaging in violent actions, protesting and rioting.The Interior Ministry said it arrested 15 pro-Brotherhood female students in Al-Azhar University for Islamic Learning for causing chaos and inciting violence.The university has been a main stage of violent protests since the start of its fall semester in September. Nine Azhar students have been killed in clashes with the police since then, of whom three died on Friday and Saturday after the government designated the Brotherhood group a terrorist organization.That announcement came after 16 people were killed in a suicide attack on a police station in the Nile Delta last Tuesday, an attack the Brotherhood condemned and blamed on a radical faction based in the Sinai Peninsula.SISI YET TO DECLARE PRESIDENTIAL BIDA draft constitution concluded on December 1 opened the way for a change in the order of the elections by leaving open the question of which should come first.Secular-leaning politicians who want the presidential election before the parliamentary polls lobbied interim head of state Adly Mansour during four recent meetings, according to officials familiar with what was discussed."The forces that attended the four meetings agreed, with a large percentage, to have the presidential elections first and that means that most likely the presidential elections will be first," said one of the officials.An army official added: "Presidential elections are most likely to be held first, as it seems to be the demand of most parties so far."Holding the presidential election first would "accelerate the process of bringing Sisi as head of state", said Mustapha Kamel Al-Sayid, a professor of political science at Cairo University."The people who are pushing for a change are doing so because they would like to have him as head of state."Sisi, 59, has yet to announce his candidacy. An army official familiar with his thinking said last week he was still undecided as he weighs up the manifold problems facing a country in deep economic crisis.But he may have no choice. His supporters see Sisi as the only man able to restore stability after three years of turmoil.And analysts say the powerful security apparatus will be putting pressure on him to run as it presses a crackdown on the Brotherhood and combats militant attacks that have spiraled since Mursi's overthrow.There have been three bombings in the last week, the bloodiest of them an attack on a police station that killed 16 people in the city of Mansoura, north of Cairo. The state blamed the Brotherhood, which condemned the attack. A radical Islamist group, Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, claimed responsibility.The Brotherhood won five elections after Mubarak's downfall in 2011. It is boycotting the army's political roadmap.In an interview broadcast late on Sunday, interim Prime Minister Hazem el-Beblawi sidestepped a question on whether the presidential election would be held ahead of the parliamentary vote, saying the focus should be on the forthcoming referendum.The referendum has been set for January 14-15.The draft says steps towards holding the first of the elections should be begin no later than 90 days from the ratification of the constitution. Mansour said on Sunday the government was committed to holding both presidential and parliamentary elections within six months of its approval.The Islamist Nour Party, which came second to the Brotherhood in the last parliamentary elections, had said secular parties wanted to push back the parliamentary election because they were worried about losing to Islamists again.The Nour, an ultraorthodox Salafi party, supported the removal of Mursi. Sherif Taha, the party spokesman, said the Nour would not object to holding the presidential election first if that was the result of "consensus".He also said the government must offer clear guarantees that the parliamentary election would follow.In Washington, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel voiced concern about developments in Egypt in a call to Sisi. He stressed the need for political inclusiveness, a Pentagon spokesman said."Secretary Hagel also expressed concerns about the political climate in advance of the constitutional referendum, including the continued enforcement of a restrictive demonstrations law," he said.($1 = 6.9386 Egyptian pounds) | 4 |
From the outset, one of the biggest issues has been moving money from those rich nations that have produced most of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions since the industrial revolution to developing nations that want funds to help shift their growing economies to a lower-carbon future. But the breakdown stems from 1992 when countries agreed on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change -- and much has changed over the past two and a bit decades, including the rapid rise of Asian economies. Back then, China was one-third its current economic size and it has seen its greenhouse gas emissions grow almost three-fold between 1990 and today, according to the International Energy Agency. And until the past year or so, a prolonged energy boom bolstered exporting nations in the Gulf. As a result, a re-reckoning is in order, richer nations argue. They want a new climate agreement in Paris to recognise a more diverse pool of climate finance "donor countries" who will contribute to the goal of raising $100 billion a year by 2020 and more in the years beyond to help developing nations grow and cope with the effects of climate change. "The whole notion of what defines developing countries is hamhanded and artificial," said Paul Bledsoe, a former energy and climate aide to former US president Bill Clinton. Romania vs Saudi One European Union source said it was unfair that a nation like Romania, ranked 52 in per capita wealth this year and with a GDP 8 times its size in 1992, has to pay when Saudi Arabia, ranked ninth, one notch below the United States, does not. Not a chance, say many of those who have climbed up the rich list since 1992. "Let me be very clear about it: Climate finance is a pure role for the annex one countries,” said Energy Minister Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber of the United Arab Emirates, referring to the countries on the rich list. The UAE is now ranked as the world’s fifth-richest nation on a per capita basis by the World Bank. "We would like to see developed countries fulfil their pledges to provide funds and to support the various mechanisms for tech transfer, adaptation and capacity building. All of this has been agreed over the past few years." Seven of the 10 richest countries measured in GDP per capita identified by the World Bank are considered developing countries in the United Nations climate negotiations and would not have an obligation to provide climate aid to poorer countries. Negotiators from 195 countries are trying to agree an accord in Paris to slow climate change by steering the global economy away from its ever-growing reliance on fossil fuels. They have until Friday to come up with an accord. The negotiators are wrestling with how to revise the issue of "differentiation" between rich and poor countries, which not only hampers discussions around climate finance but other aspects of a potential deal. While the UAE and China, among others, have made voluntary contributions toward financing cleaner energy in some of the world's poorer nations, they reject the idea of being required to contribute toward the $100 billion goal. The UAE through its renewable energy assistance program has financed renewable energy projects from solar in Fiji and Afghanistan to a mini hydroelectric project in Argentina, Al Jaber says. | 0 |
Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore said on Sunday he was optimistic that a growing "people-power" movement would push the world's leaders to take action to stop global warming. The former US vice president likened the campaign to the ban-the-bomb movement of past decades, and urged leaders at a UN climate conference in Bali, Indonesia, to issue a mandate for a strong treaty to curb greenhouse gases. Gore, who shared the 2007 peace prize with the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for raising awareness and advancing climate science, will receive the prize in Oslo on Monday with the IPCC's chairman Rajendra Pachauri. The prize was announced in October. "I have one reason for being optimistic, and that is that I see throughout my own country, the United States of America, and throughout the world the rising of the world's first people-power movement on a global basis," he said. Gore pointed to an international grassroots nuclear-freeze movement which helped push US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to sign arms controls deals in the late 1980s, and said the climate campaign was even broader. Gore and Pachauri will travel from Oslo to Bali where governments are meeting to try to launch negotiations towards an environmental treaty to succeed the Kyoto protocol which expires in 2012. "It is my great hope that the meeting in Bali will result in a strong mandate empowering the world to move forward quickly to a meaningful treaty," Gore said. CIVILISATION THREAT Gore, whose Oscar-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" called for immediate action on the environment, urged for curbs on carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas blamed by scientists for global warming. "The engines of our great global civilisation are now pouring 70 million tonnes of global warming pollution into (the atmosphere) every single day. It is having the consequences long predicted by the scientific community," he said. "It is now abundantly clear that we cannot continue this process," he said. Pachauri, seated next to Gore at Oslo's Nobel Institute under ceilings adorned with white peace doves, urged world leaders to consider tough steps to tackle global warming. "If we were to carry out this stringent mitigation, one of the scenarios that we have assessed clearly shows that we have a window of nearly seven years," Pachauri said. "That means by 2015 we will have to see that emissions of greenhouse gases peak no later than that year and start declining thereafter." "The time for doubting the science is over. What we need now is action," said Pachauri, an Indian who is head of a body of around 2,500 climate scientists from more than 130 nations. Referring to US civil rights leader Martin Luther King, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 and said "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," Gore said: "In the same way, CO2 increases anywhere are a threat to the future of civilisation everywhere." | 0 |
“Iraq is between friends who are 5,000 miles away from us and a neighbour we’ve had for 5,000 years,” Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi said in a New Year’s Day telephone call with Trump, according to a close adviser, Abdul Hussain al-Hunain. “We cannot change geography and we cannot change history, and this is the reality in Iraq.” Iraq is caught in a vise. Many Iraqis were furious that the United States violated their country's sovereignty by carrying out airstrikes on Iraqi soil. A spate of strikes in December killed at least two dozen members of a pro-Iranian Iraqi military unit, provoking the assault on the US Embassy. A separate strike last week killed Iran’s top military commander, the deputy chief of a coalition of Iraqi militias and eight other people, leading to a vote by Iraq’s Parliament to expel US forces from the country and a counterstrike by Iran on two US military posts in Iraq early Wednesday. But acceding to the political pressure to rid the country of US troops would be a “disaster” for Iraq, militarily and economically, a senior Iraqi official said. The main mission of the roughly 5,200 US troops stationed at a handful of bases around Iraq is to help the country fight the Islamic State group. If they leave, the official said, it would not only hamper that battle but also have a host of knock-on effects, from the departure of troops from other coalition countries to dire financial hardship if, as Trump has threatened, the United States imposed economic sanctions.
Mourners, some standing on the flags of Israel and the United States, gather for the funeral of the funeral ceremony of Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a commander in the Popular Mobilization Forces, at a mosque in Baghdad on Tuesday, Jan 7, 2020. He appears on the banner in the background together with Iranian Maj Qasem Soleimani, top. (Sergey Ponomarev/The New York Times)
“Yes, there is big pressure from our people to have the troops leave,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters. “But we can bear this big pressure much better than we can bear the departure of the Americans.” Mourners, some standing on the flags of Israel and the United States, gather for the funeral of the funeral ceremony of Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a commander in the Popular Mobilization Forces, at a mosque in Baghdad on Tuesday, Jan 7, 2020. He appears on the banner in the background together with Iranian Maj Qasem Soleimani, top. (Sergey Ponomarev/The New York Times) For now, however, Abdul-Mahdi seems to be moving ahead with plans to implement Parliament’s will. On Friday, he said that he had asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to send a delegation from the United States to discuss steps for withdrawal. Pompeo fired back that the United States would do no such thing, despite the military’s frequent refrain that it is a guest of the Iraqi government and will comply with its host’s demands. “We are happy to continue the conversation with the Iraqis about what the right structure is,” he said at a news conference Friday. But the US mission in Iraq is to train Iraqi forces to fight the Islamic State, he said, and “we’re going to continue that mission.” After the Iraqi Parliament vote Sunday, Trump threatened to impose “very big sanctions” on Iraq if it ousted US forces — “sanctions like they’ve never seen before.” He also said that Iraq would have to reimburse the United States for billions of dollars it had invested in a major air base there. But for many Iraqis, booting out the Americans was long overdue. Although many remain grateful that the United States ousted longtime dictator Saddam Hussein and fought alongside Iraqi forces to drive out the Islamic State, they are still pained by US military mistakes and decisions, including massive civilian casualties during the war that followed the US invasion and the humiliating abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. The recent US airstrikes killed Iranian proxy fighters who were also members of the Iraqi security forces — and considered heroes by many Iraqis for their role in helping fight the Islamic State. The final straw appears to have been the US drone strike last week that killed the Iranian military leader, Gen Qassem Soleimani, and the deputy chief of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, the armed groups that have fought against the Islamic State.
Graffiti on the walls surrounding the US Embassy in Baghdad on Thursday, Jan 9, 2020. As US-Iran tensions flare, Iraq is caught in the middle. (Sergey Ponomarev/The New York Times)
“We are in a state of enthusiasm in Iraq,” al-Hunain said. “The process of the US withdrawal reclaims a part of Iraq’s dignity after the airstrikes and violations of Iraqi sovereignty.” Graffiti on the walls surrounding the US Embassy in Baghdad on Thursday, Jan 9, 2020. As US-Iran tensions flare, Iraq is caught in the middle. (Sergey Ponomarev/The New York Times) The feeling is especially strong among Shiite Muslims, who make up a majority in Iraq; many have ties to Iran’s Shiite theocracy. Iran has long sought the ouster of US troops, which it views as a threat on its border. But the unanimous vote in Parliament — taken in the heat of the moment, with no consideration of the potential consequences and costs to the country — suggests more unity than may be the case. Only 170 out of 328 members voted, with most Sunni Muslim and Kurdish members refusing to attend. One of the few Sunni members who did attend the session, Ahmed al-Jarba, raised a red flag, saying that the departure of US troops might benefit Iran. After the Americans leave, he asked, “Are our neighbors our friends or our masters?” referring to Iran. “Are we going to hand the country’s wealth and decisions into the hands of neighboring countries?” Al-Hunain, the senior adviser to the prime minister, said that Abdul-Mahdi’s hope was that if the US forces left, Iran would no longer have security concerns about them and would leave Iraq alone. Senior Iraqi government officials, diplomats and scholars laid out the opposite scenario: Iraq, they said, could be forced into the arms of Iran, deprived of US dollars, and isolated from the West. As worrying — even for Iran — is the risk that the Islamic State might return if there are no Americans to help fight it. The Sunni extremist group no longer controls territory in Iraq and is much diminished, but it still launches near-daily attacks. A second senior Iraqi official and a senior Western diplomat said that if the Americans left, so would European and other coalition forces because they depend on US logistical and technical support. The US hospital at the Baghdad International Airport, for instance, treats the personnel of all 30 countries in the international coalition. The economic sanctions that Trump threatened would be intended not only to punish Iraq but also to effectively extend the administration’s pressure campaign against Iran. The two countries’ economies are closely entwined. Iraq would risk being cut off from its main source of dollars because its account at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York could be frozen. Iraq deposits the proceeds of its oil sales there, withdrawing them to pay government salaries and contracts. The United States could also end the waivers that allow Iraq to buy Iranian gas to fuel its electricity generators in the south, which supply at least 35% of the country’s power. Iraq could seek another source, but it could be difficult to find one on short notice. The other option — making do with less electricity — could spawn unrest in the south as soon as the weather heats up, as electrical shortages did in 2018. American and other foreign companies might reduce or suspend operations if they become concerned about safety. A number of American contractors left in the days after Soleimani’s death because they wanted to stay out of the line of fire. So far, Abdul-Mahdi appears willing to face those potential consequences. If he harbors any thoughts of compromise, he has kept them to himself, perhaps wary of the anti-American political climate. “It looks like the decision making and opinion in the prime minister’s office is turning eastward,” a senior Iraqi official said. “They are almost in denial about what a drastic path they are going down.” The problem, said Joost Hiltermann, the Middle East and North Africa program director for the International Crisis Group, is that no one in the government is seriously considering possible compromises. “The Iraqis don’t want either the United States or Iran, but if they have to have one, they would rather have both because they balance each other out,” he said. “The US is a counterweight to Iran.” There are a few glimmers of potential ways out. Abdul-Mahdi’s adviser, al-Hunain, said that while the US forces are not welcome now, the government does want other international forces to stay. Talks with other coalition countries could open the door to keeping at least some Americans, those arguably needed to sustain the coalition and help fight the Islamic State. The Europeans, for their part, would like to preserve the ability to fight the Islamic State in Iraq, fearing that any relaxing of pressure would allow the group to reconstitute. A senior Western diplomat said the British and French were working to outline an alternative mission for the international forces relying on a smaller number of troops focused on ensuring that “the gains made against ISIS are not lost.” Perhaps the most promising sign that Abdul-Mahdi might be open to compromise was his request for a briefing paper from Iraq’s National Security Council on the options for proceeding with the parliamentary mandate. Abdul-Mahdi is an economist and has served as finance minister, a background that gives him an understanding of the price of economic isolation even if he now seems more swayed by political concerns. The council provided three options, according to a senior official who works closely with the council: The first was to require US troops to leave as quickly as possible, an approach that could at least deter Iranian-backed armed groups from attacking them. The second option was a negotiated withdrawal, which would slow the drawdown and potentially allow the fight against the Islamic State to go on in some places even as troops were withdrawing from others. The third was a renegotiation of the agreement with the US-led coalition that might allow for some troops to stay, which would open the door to having other international forces stay as well. The National Security Council recommended Option 3. © 2020 The New York Times Company | 1 |
In an interview with CNBC, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said the Trump administration will make an announcement on fuel efficiency standards for cars "very soon," stressing that he and President Donald Trump believe current standards were rushed through. Pruitt, 48, is a climate change denier who sued the agency he now leads more than a dozen times as Oklahoma's attorney general. He said he was not convinced that carbon dioxide pollution from burning fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal is the main cause of climate change, a conclusion widely embraced by scientists. "I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact," he told CNBC. "So no, I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see," Pruitt said. "But we don’t know that yet, we need to continue to debate, continue the review and analysis.” Trump campaigned on a promise to roll back environmental regulations ushered in by former President Barack Obama, including those aimed at combating climate change. He framed his stand as aimed at boosting U.S. businesses, including the oil and gas drilling and coal mining industries. "We can be pro-growth, pro-jobs and pro-environment," Pruitt said Wednesday afternoon in a Houston speech at CERAWeek, the world's largest gathering of energy executives. Scientists immediately criticized Pruitt's statement, saying it ignores a large body of evidence collected over decades that shows fossil fuel burning as the main factor in climate change. "We can’t afford to reject this clear and compelling scientific evidence when we make public policy. Embracing ignorance is not an option," Ben Santer, climate researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, said in a statement. The Supreme Court unleashed a fury of regulation and litigation when it ruled in 2007 that greenhouse gases are an air pollutant that can be regulated under the Clean Air Act. Two years later, the EPA declared carbon dioxide and five other heat-trapping gases to be pollutants. Pruitt said the Supreme Court's decision should not have been viewed as permission for the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide emissions. "Decisions were made at the executive branch level that didn't respect the rule of law," Pruitt said in his Houston speech. Regulating CO2 Pruitt has previously said the EPA should not regulate CO2 without a law passed by Congress authorizing it to do so. The Republican-controlled Congress could potentially issue a strong signal to the EPA that carbon dioxide should not be regulated by the agency, a move that would undermine many Obama-era rules aimed at curbing emissions. "Administrator Pruitt is correct, the Congress has never explicitly given the EPA the authority to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant and the committee has no plans to do so," said Mike Danylak, spokesman for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, the panel that oversees the EPA. When asked at his confirmation hearing in January whether he would uphold the EPA endangerment finding, Pruitt said it was the "law of the land" and he was obliged to uphold it for now. Pruitt declined to respond to a question from a reporter after his Houston speech on whether he would now seek to overturn the endangerment finding. As Oklahoma’s attorney general, Pruitt and another dozen attorney generals unsuccessfully challenged the endangerment finding in a federal appeals court. "The mask is off. After obscuring his true views during his Senate confirmation hearings, Scott Pruitt has outed himself as a pure climate denier," said David Doniger, director of the climate program at the Natural Resources Defense Council. The new EPA chief said he was committed to ensuring thorough processes for environmental rules and regulations to reduce "regulatory uncertainty." Pruitt added that he shared Trump's view that the global climate accord agreed by nearly 200 countries in Paris in 2015 was a "bad deal." Trump promised during his campaign for the White House to pull the United States out of the accord, but has since been mostly quiet on the issue. | 0 |
The decline underscores the catastrophic consequences of climate change while also offering some hope that some coral reefs can be saved if humans move quickly to rein in greenhouse gases. “Coral reefs are the canary in the coal mine telling us how quickly it can go wrong,” said David Obura, one of the report’s editors and chair of the coral specialist group for the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The 14 percent decline, he said, was cause for deep concern. “In finance, we worry about half-percent declines and half-percent changes in employment and interest rates.” Especially alarming, the report’s editors said, is the trajectory. The first global bleaching event occurred in 1998, but many reefs bounced back. That no longer appears to be the case. “Since 2009, it’s a constant decline at the global level,” said Serge Planes, a research scientist at the Center for Island Research and Observatory of the Environment in Moorea, French Polynesia, who also edited the report. Although coral reefs cover a tiny fraction of the ocean floor, they provide outsized benefits to people. Their fish supply a critical protein source to 1 billion people. Their limestone branches protect coasts from storms. Their beauty supports billions of dollars in tourism. Collectively, they support an estimated $2.7 trillion per year in goods and services, according to the report, which was issued by the International Coral Reef Initiative, a partnership of countries and organisations that works to protect the world’s coral reefs. Perhaps 900 species of coral exist, and the researchers noted that some appear more resilient to the heat and acidification that accompany climate change. Unfortunately, those tend to be slower-growing and not the more familiar, reef-building varieties that support the richest biodiversity. Terry Hughes, who directs a centre for coral reef studies at James Cook University in Australia and who was not involved with the analysis, also cautioned that the vast data underlying it, collected by more than 300 scientists in 73 countries, may skew toward healthier reefs. “Researchers and monitoring programs often abandon sites that become degraded, or don’t establish new studies there, because nobody wants to study a reef that is covered in silt and algae instead of corals,” Hughes said. Still, he and the report both emphasised that corals could recover or regenerate if the world limited global warming. “Many of the world’s coral reefs remain resilient and can recover if conditions permit,” the report said. Although tackling climate change is the most important factor in saving coral reefs, scientists said, reducing pollution is also critical. Corals need to be as healthy as possible to survive the warming temperatures that have already been locked in. Harmful pollution often includes human sewage and agricultural runoff that can cause algae blooms, as well as heavy metals or other chemicals from manufacturing. Destructive fishing practices also harm reefs. The report comes just before world leaders convene next week to discuss a new global agreement on biodiversity. While some are pushing to protect the most pristine reefs, Obura said this approach would not suffice. “People are so dependent on reefs around the world, we need to focus a lot of effort on the mediocre reefs, or all the other reefs, as well,” Obura said. “We need to keep them functioning so that people’s livelihoods can continue.” ©2021 The New York Times Company | 0 |
It strongly criticised Blair on a range of issues, saying the threat posed by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's supposed weapons of mass destruction had been over-hyped and the planning for the aftermath of war had been inadequate. Blair responded that he had taken the decision to go to war "in good faith", that he still believed it was better to remove Saddam, and that he did not see that action as the cause of terrorism today, in the Middle East or elsewhere.
"The intelligence assessments made at the time of going to war turned out to be wrong. The aftermath turned out to be more hostile, protracted and bloody than ever we imagined," the former prime minister, looking gaunt and strained, told reporters. "For all of this, I express more sorrow, regret and apology than you will ever know." The only Labour prime minister to win three general elections, Blair was in office for 10 years until 2007 and was hugely popular in his heyday, but Iraq has severely tarnished his reputation and legacy. The inquiry report, about three times the length of the Bible, stopped short of saying the war was illegal, a stance that is certain to disappoint Blair's many critics. "We have, however, concluded that the circumstances in which it was decided that there was a legal basis for military action were far from satisfactory," said John Chilcot, the inquiry's chairman, in a speech presenting his findings.
Blair said the report should exonerate him from accusations of lying, which have been made by relatives of some of the 179 British soldiers who died in the conflict. "The report should lay to rest allegations of bad faith, lies or deceit," he said in a statement. "Whether people agree or disagree with my decision to take military action against Saddam Hussein; I took it in good faith and in what I believed to be the best interests of the country." 'Shambolic episode' Relatives of some of the British soldiers who died in Iraq said they would study the report to examine if there was a legal case to pursue against those responsible. "We all know who the key players are ... who took part in this most shambolic episode in British politics. We would like to see all those key players face some form of accountability," said Reg Keys, whose son, 20-year-old Lance Corporal Thomas Keys, was one of those killed. "If that's through the legal channels, then we will look at that and see what's viable and appropriate. It has been passed over to lawyers."
The report shed light on what happened between Blair and Bush in the months leading up to the March 2003 invasion, an interaction that has long been the subject of speculation about secret deals and pledges. In a memo dated Jul 28, 2002, eight months before the invasion, Blair told Bush: "I will be with you, whatever. But this is the moment to assess bluntly the difficulties." "The planning on this and the strategy are the toughest yet. This is not Kosovo. This is not Afghanistan. It is not even the Gulf War." Chilcot said Blair had sought to influence Bush's decisions, offering Britain's support while suggesting possible adjustments to the US position. But the inquiry chairman added that Blair had over-estimated his ability to influence US decisions on Iraq. His report also said there was no imminent threat from Saddam at the time of the invasion in March 2003, and the chaos in Iraq and the region which followed should have been foreseen.
By 2009 at least 150,000 Iraqis, mostly civilians, had died, and more than a million had been displaced. The report said Britain had joined the invasion without exhausting peaceful options and that it had undermined the authority of the United Nations Security Council by doing so. Flawed intelligence "It is now clear that policy on Iraq was made on the basis of flawed intelligence and assessments. They were not challenged and they should have been," Chilcot said. He also said that Blair's government's judgments about the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were "presented with unjustified certainty". No such weapons were discovered after the war. Chilcot said Blair changed his case for war from focusing on Iraq's alleged "vast stocks" of illegal weapons to Saddam having the intent to obtain such weapons and being in breach of UN resolutions. "That was not, however, the explanation for military action he had given before the conflict," Chilcot said. Iraq remains in chaos to this day. Islamic State controls large areas of the country and 250 people died on Saturday in Baghdad's worst car bombing since the US-led coalition toppled Saddam. The inquiry's purpose was for the British government to learn lessons from the invasion and occupation that followed. "We cannot turn the clock back but we can ensure that lessons are learned and acted on," Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron told parliament in a statement on the inquiry.
"It is crucial to good decision-making that a prime minister establishes a climate in which it's safe for officials and other experts to challenge existing policy and question the views of ministers and the prime minister without fear or favour." Jeremy Corbyn, the current leader of the Labour Party and a fervent pacifist, told parliament that the war was an act of aggression based on a false pretext that had fuelled and spread terrorism across the Middle East. | 1 |
PHOENIX (Reuters) - The Obama administration faced mounting pressure on Sunday to overhaul immigration policy, as prominent Hispanic politicians and street protesters decried a new Arizona law as a violation of civil rights. Immigration reform is a bitterly contested political issue in the United States but a top priority for Hispanics, who are the largest minority in the nation and an important power base for President Barack Obama and his Democratic Party. Their anger flared on Friday when Arizona's Republican Governor Jan Brewer signed into law a bill requiring police to determine whether people are in the country legally and to question them if there is suspicion they're not. It also forces immigrants to carry their alien registration documents at all times US Representative Luis Gutierrez, a Democrat and chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Immigration Task Force, was among those who planned to attend a protest rally at the state capitol buildings in Phoenix on Sunday. "I am going there to let the people of Arizona know that they are not alone in fighting against bigotry and hatred," the Illinois Democrat said in a statement, adding that the new law was a "serious civil rights catastrophe that Republicans in Arizona are unleashing on immigrants." The law has raised fears that Hispanics will be racially profiled and police will actively hunt down illegal immigrants, who are estimated to number about 10.8 million in the nation and are the backbone of the shadow economy. It is also expected to spark a legal challenge and has become a hot issue in the run-up to the mid-term congressional elections in November, when Democrats will defend their majorities in the US Senate and House of Representatives. Republicans, who made some gains with Hispanic voters under former President George W. Bush, are seen as particularly vulnerable on the immigration issue, which had until recently been eclipsed by the fight over healthcare and climate change. Obama, who easily carried the Hispanic vote in the 2008 presidential election, called the law a "misguided" effort that showed the need for an immigration overhaul at the federal level. Democratic leaders signaled last week they want to pass an immigration bill this year that would provide a path for some 11 million people in the United States illegally -- many of them Hispanics -- to gain citizenship. The move angered Republicans, including US Senator Lindsey Graham who withdrew from an effort to fashion a compromise climate change bill, one of Obama's main domestic priorities. Hispanics and other groups have pushed for the immigration legislation, which would also increase border security and reform rules for temporary workers in the United States, which is important to the business community. Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey told CNN's "State of the Nation" program on Sunday that Hispanics might stay away from the polls in November without a serious effort by Obama to deal with immigration this year. "They see it as a civil rights issue of their time," he said, referring to the Latino community. BORDER SECURITY The protest in Phoenix drew a few thousand people, some toting US flags and passing out T-shirts emblazoned with "Legalize Arizona." Ramon Garcia, an activist who traveled from Tucson to take part in the rally said, "I feel very strongly that the law is extremely unconstitutional and racist, and it violates both human and civil rights." Republicans in Arizona, which has an estimated 460,000 illegal immigrants, pushed for the new law amid growing worries over border security. The state shares a busy border with Mexico, where violence linked to drug cartels has soared. Concerns spiked last month after a prominent cattleman was shot dead on his ranch in southeast Arizona. Police followed tracks from the scene of the shooting to the Mexico border but made no arrests. Arizona's US Senators Jon Kyl and John McCain have announced a ten-point plan to boost border security, including sending the National Guard to help secure it, erecting fences and increasing funds for policing. McCain, who lost the 2008 election to Obama, faces a tough primary challenge in his re-election bid from conservative J D Hayworth this year. Hayworth has called for tough enforcement of illegal immigration and tight security of the border. Meanwhile at the state level, immigrant rights groups are promising to boost voter registration among Arizonans opposed to the law in a bid to defeat Brewer in November. "Governor Brewer has to be held responsible for signing what is now an international shame on the state of Arizona," said Jennifer Allen, executive-director of Border Action Network, an immigrant rights group. Brewer's office said it had no comment on Sunday. | 0 |
European Union leaders on Friday named former Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez, a past critic of Turkey's EU membership bid, to head a "reflection group" to study the long-term future of the 27-nation bloc. The panel was the brainchild of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, a vehement opponent of Turkish accession, who called in August for the EU to create a group of "wise people" to consider Europe's final borders. The mandate has since been changed to look at the future of the region in 2020-2030, focusing mostly on the economic challenges of globalisation. Sarkozy said on Friday the group would study the issue of EU borders, not specifically Turkey. But Sarkozy appeared to have scored a point by stealth with the choice of Gonzalez, a socialist who governed Spain from 1982 to 1996. Spanish newspapers quoted the ex-premier in May 2004 as telling a Universal Forum of Cultures in Barcelona there were limits to the enlargement of Europe, which should "stop at the borders of Turkey" because of social and cultural differences. Asked about those comments, Gonzalez's spokesman Joaquin Tagar told Reuters in Madrid on Friday: "He was just expressing a theoretical opinion, not taking a definite position on the matter. He was just pointing out the difference between European and Turkish culture." Pressed to say what Gonzalez's position on Turkey's candidacy was now, he said: "What he has been saying in recent times is that if the European Union has a commitment to Turkey, it should honour it." WHERE DOES EUROPE END? The reflection group, which will number no more than nine people, is mandated to look at "the stability and prosperity of the Union and of the wider region," touching on the sensitive issue of EU enlargement. The formulation deliberately left open whether Turkey would be part of the Union or the wider region in 2020-2030. "We cannot talk about the European project without raising the question of its territory," a French diplomat said. The panel will also look at issues such as energy, climate change and justice matters. It is due to report its findings to EU leaders in June 2010. Former Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga and Jorma Ollila, the chairman of mobile phone giant Nokia , were named as the two vice-chairs of the panel. Some politicians were critical of the choice of a leader from the 1980s to study the EU's future. "If you ever wanted to see Jurassic Park in reality, then this appointment (of Gonzalez) is just that," said Graham Watson, leader of the Liberal Democrat political group in the European Parliament. "It's not about age, but all three of the panel so far represent old Europe." But Spain voiced delight at the choice of Gonzalez, who has been canvassed for top European jobs but never received one. "It's a very happy day for the Spanish people, for Spain, and for Europe," Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos told reporters. | 0 |
TATA Steel's European unit Corus said it will cut about 1,500 jobs in Britain as part of a restructuring of its loss-making long products unit, as it faces steep rises in energy and environmental costs. Like others in the industry, Tata Steel has faced a margin squeeze since last year as the price of raw materials increases while demand from sectors like construction, key clients for long products like beams, remains muted. Tata Steel said refocusing towards high-value markets would involve closing or mothballing parts of its Scunthorpe plant, reducing capacity there by a quarter. "No company can sustain this level of losses," Karl-Ulrich Koehler, Chief Executive of Tata Steel's European operations, said, adding the unit had made "significant losses" over the last 12 months. Tata Steel reports full year results next week. He said the start to 2010 had been encouraging, prompting the company to bring back mothballed capacity at Scunthorpe, but demand failed to recover as fast as expected. "The continuing weakness in market conditions is one of the main reasons why we are setting out on this difficult course of action. Another is the regulatory outlook," he added. "EU carbon legislation threatens to impose huge additional costs on the steel industry." Though not due until 2013, planned changes to the European Union's emissions trading system are already unsettling the sector, with trade body Eurofer planning a legal challenge to EU rules and some in the sector warning heavy industry could be forced out of Europe. Koehler added there was also uncertainty over further carbon cost increases from the government. In March, Britain announced the introduction of a fixed carbon price from April 1, 2013 of 16 pounds per tonne, rising to 30 pounds per tonne by 2020. ENERGY PRICES HIT CORUS Rising energy prices, driven by a 20 percent rise in oil prices since the start of the year, were another reason for Friday's cutbacks. Industrial companies such as Corus make up a large share of energy consumers and their exposure to rising bills is a major concern, according to the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IME). "Manufacturers are worried, and the government needs to make sure it doesn't force energy intensive industries out of the UK and into countries with more lax climate change targets," said IME President John Wood. The government has pledged to help energy intensive industries to deal with rising costs. Tata Steel's European operations account for two thirds of its global capacity of about 30 million tonnes, while the booming Indian operations contribute a quarter. Tata Steel also has units in Thailand and Singapore. Worldwide, Tata Steel employs 80,000 people. | 0 |
The frustrations span the spectrum from those of the party’s
liberal wing, which feels deflated by the failure to enact a bold agenda, to
the concerns of moderates, who are worried about losing suburban swing voters
and had believed Democratic victories would usher a return to normalcy after
last year’s upheaval. Democrats already anticipated a difficult midterm climate,
given that the party in power historically loses seats during a president’s
first term. But the party’s struggle to act on its biggest legislative
priorities has rattled lawmakers and strategists, who fear their candidates
will be left combating the perception that Democrats failed to deliver on
President Joe Biden’s central campaign promise of rebooting a broken
Washington. “I think millions of Americans have become very demoralised
— they’re asking, what do the Democrats stand for?” said Sen. Bernie Sanders,
the Vermont independent in charge of the Senate Budget Committee. In a lengthy
interview, he added, “Clearly, the current strategy is failing, and we need a
major course correction.” Rep. Tim Ryan, a Democrat from a blue-collar Ohio district
who is running for the state’s open Senate seat, said his party isn’t
addressing voter anxieties about school closures, the pandemic and economic
security. He faulted the Biden administration, not just for failing to pass its
domestic agenda but also for a lack of clear public health guidance around
issues such as masking and testing. “It seems like the Democrats can’t get out of their own
way,” he said. “The Democrats have got to do a better job of being clear on what
they’re trying to do.” The complaints capped one of the worst weeks of the Biden
presidency, with the White House facing the looming failure of voting rights
legislation, the defeat of their vaccine-or-testing mandate for large employers
at the Supreme Court, inflation rising to a 40-year high and friction with
Russia over aggression toward Ukraine. Meanwhile, Biden’s top domestic priority
— a sprawling $2.2 trillion spending, climate and tax policy plan — remains
stalled, not just because of Republicans but also opposition from a centrist
Democrat. “I’m sure they’re frustrated — I am,” said Sen. Dick Durbin
of Illinois, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, when asked this week about the
chamber’s inability to act on Biden’s agenda. Discussing the impact on voters
before the midterm elections, he added, “It depends on who they blame for it.” The end of the week provided another painful marker for
Democrats: Friday was the first time since July that millions of US families
with children did not receive a monthly child benefit, a payment established as
part of the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief plan that Democrats muscled through
in March without any Republican support. Plans to extend the expiration date for the payments, which
helped keep millions of children out of poverty, were stymied with the collapse
of negotiations over the sprawling domestic policy plan. And additional
pandemic-related provisions will expire before the end of the year without
congressional action. “That’s just about as straightforward as it gets,” said
Ryan. “If the Democrats can’t get on with a tax cut for working families, what
are we for?” In recent days, Biden has faced a wave of rising anger from
traditional party supporters. Members of some civil rights groups boycotted his
voting rights speech in Atlanta to express their disappointment with his push
on the issue, while others, including Stacey Abrams, who is running for
governor in Georgia, were noticeably absent. Biden vowed to make a new forceful
push for voting right protections, only to see it fizzle the next day. And last week, six of Biden’s former public health advisers
went public with their criticisms of his handling of the pandemic, calling on
the White House to adopt a strategy geared to the “new normal” of living with
the virus indefinitely. Others have called for the firing of Jeffrey Zients,
who leads the White House pandemic response team. “There does not seem to be an appreciation for the urgency
of the moment,” said Tré Easton, a senior adviser for Battle Born Collective, a
progressive group that is pushing for overturning the filibuster to enable
Democrats to pass a series of their priorities. “It’s sort of, ‘OK, what comes
next?’ Is there something that’s going to happen where voters can say, yes, my
life is appreciatively more stable than it was two years ago.”White House
officials and Democrats insist that their agenda is far from dead and that
discussions continue with key lawmakers to pass the bulk of Biden’s domestic plans.
Talks over an omnibus package to keep the government open beyond Feb. 18 have
quietly resumed, and states are beginning to receive funds from the $1 trillion
infrastructure law. “I guess the truth is an agenda doesn’t wrap up in one
year,” said White House press secretary Jen Psaki. While there’s widespread agreement around the electoral
peril that the party faces, there’s little consensus over who, exactly, is to
blame. Liberals have been particularly scathing in their critique of two
centrist senators, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona,
and their long-standing objections to undermining the Senate filibuster, as
well as Manchin’s decision to abruptly reject the $2.2 trillion spending plan
last month. For months, Democratic lawmakers, activists and officials have been
raising concerns about sinking support among crucial segments of the party’s
coalition — Black, female, young and Latino voters — ratings many worries could
drop further without action on issues like voting rights, climate change,
abortion rights and paid family leave. “In my view, we are not going to win the elections in 2022
unless our base is energised and ordinary people understand what we are
fighting for, and how we are different than the Republicans,” Sanders said.
“That’s not the case now.” But many in the party concede that the realities of their
narrow congressional majorities and united Republican opposition have blocked
their ability to pass much of their agenda. Some have faulted party leaders for
catering to progressives’ ambitions, without the votes to execute. “Leadership set out with a failed strategy, and while I
guess, maybe they can message that they tried, it actually isn’t going to yield
real laws,” said Rep. Stephanie Murphy, a Florida centrist, who is retiring but
has signalled aspirations for a future Senate run. Rep Cheri Bustos, a Democrat from rural Illinois, said
Democrats should consider less ambitious bills that could draw some Republican
support to give the party accomplishments it can claim in the midterm
elections. “We really kind of need to reset at this point,” said
Bustos, who is retiring from a district that swung to Donald Trump in 2020. “I
hope we focus on what we can get done and then focus like crazy on selling it.” Biden effectively staked his presidency on the belief that
voters would reward his party for steering the country out of a deadly pandemic
and into economic prosperity. But even after a year that produced record job
growth, widely available vaccines and stock market highs, Biden has not begun
to deliver a message of success nor focused on promoting his legislative
victories. Many Democrats say they need to do more to sell their
accomplishments or risk watching the midterms go the way of the off-year
elections, when many in the party were surprised by the intensity of the
backlash against them in races in Virginia, New Jersey and New York. “We need to get into the business of promotion and selling
and out of the business of moaning and groaning,” said Bradley Beychok,
president of American Bridge 21st Century, a Democratic group. Others say that as president, Biden has fallen out of step
with many voters by focusing on issues like climate change and voting rights.
While crucial for the country, those topics aren’t topping the list of concerns
for many voters still trying to navigate the uncertainties of a pandemic
stretching into a third year. “The administration is focused on things that are important
but not particularly salient to voters and sometimes as president you have to
do that,” said Matt Bennett, a co-founder of Third Way, a moderate Democratic
think tank. “Now, we need to begin to move back to talking about the things
that people do care about." © 2021 The New York Times Company | 0 |
At least 62 people have died and more than 70,000 have become homeless as Peru's rainy season has delivered 10 times as much rainfall than usual, authorities said Friday. About half of Peru has been declared in emergency to expedite resources to the hardest hit areas, mostly in the north where rainfall has broken records in several districts, said Prime Minister Fernando Zavala. Peru is bracing itself for another month of flooding. A local El Nino phenomenon, the warming of surface sea temperatures in the Pacific, will likely continue along Peru's northern coast at least through April, said Dimitri Gutierrez, a scientist with Peru's El Nino committee. Local El Ninos in Peru tend to be followed by the global El Nino phenomenon, which can trigger flooding and droughts in different countries, said Gutierrez. The U.S. weather agency has put the chances of an El Nino developing in the second half of 2017 at 50-55 percent. While precipitation in Peru has not exceeded the powerful El Nino of 1998, more rain is falling in shorter periods of time - rapidly filling streets and rivers, said Jorge Chavez, a general tasked with coordinating the government's response. "We've never seen anything like this before," said Chavez. "From one moment to the next, sea temperatures rose and winds that keep precipitation from reaching land subsided." Some scientists have said climate change will make El Ninos more frequent and intense. In Peru, apocalyptic scenes recorded on cellphones and shared on social media have broadened the sense of chaos. A woman caked in mud pulled herself from under a debris-filled river earlier this week after a mudslide rushed through a valley where she was tending to crops. Bridges have collapsed as rivers have breached their banks, and cows and pigs have turned up on beaches after being carried away by rivers. "There's no need to panic, the government knows what it's doing," President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski said in a televised event, urging people to stay clear of rivers. In Lima, the capital, classes have been suspended and running water has been restricted after treatment systems were clogged - prompting a rush on bottled water that produced shortages at some supermarkets. The vast majority of people affected by the extreme weather are poor, including many who built makeshift homes on floodplains that had been dry for 20 years, said Chavez. "There's no electricity, no drinking water...no transit because streets are flooded," said Valentin Fernandez, mayor of the town Nuevo Chimbote. Chavez said Peru must rethink its infrastructure to prepare for the potential "tropicalization" of the northern desert coast, which some climate models have forecast as temperatures rise. "We need more and better bridges, we need highways and cities with drainage systems," said Chavez. "We can't count on nature being predictable." | 0 |
About 110 nations including all major greenhouse gas emitters led by China and the United States back the non-binding Copenhagen Accord for combating climate change, according to a first formal UN list on Wednesday. The list, helping end weeks of uncertainty about support for the deal, was issued by the UN Climate Change Secretariat three months after the pact was agreed at an acrimonious summit in the Danish capital. The accord, falling short of a binding treaty sought by many nations, sets a goal of limiting global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) but does not spell out what each nation has to do. | 0 |
Nearly 200 nations agreed on Saturday to a sweeping plan to stem the loss of species by setting new 2020 targets to ensure greater protection of nature and enshrine the benefits it gives mankind. Environment ministers from around the globe also agreed on rules for sharing the benefits from genetic resources from nature between governments and companies, a trade and intellectual property issue that could be worth billions of dollars in new funds for developing nations. Agreement on parts of the deal has taken years of at times heated negotiations, and talks in the Japanese city of Nagoya were deadlocked until the early hours of Saturday after two weeks of talks. Delegates agreed goals to protect oceans, forests and rivers as the world faces the worst extinction rate since the dinosaurs vanished 65 million years ago. They also agreed to take steps to put a price on the value of benefits such as clean water from watersheds and coastal protection by mangroves by including such "natural capital" into national accounts. Services provided by nature to economies were worth trillions of dollars a year, the head of the U.N. Environment Programme, Achim Steiner, said in a statement, adding businesses from banks to miners were key in halting rapid loss of ecosystems. "These goals recognize and value the irreplaceable benefits that nature provides to people in the form of food, fuel, fiber, fodder and freshwater that everyone depends on," Andrew Deutz, director of international government relations for US-based The Nature Conservancy, told Reuters. Delegates and greens said the outcome would send a positive signal to troubled UN climate negotiations that have been become bogged down by a split between rich and poor nations over how to share the burden in curbing greenhouse gas emissions. UN climate talks resume in Mexico in a month. "TORTUOUS NEGOTIATIONS" "We're delighted there's been a successful outcome to these long and tortuous negotiations and I think it shows that these multilateral negotiations can deliver a good result," said Peter Cochrane, head of Australia's delegation in Nagoya. Delegates agreed to a 20-point strategic plan to protect fish stocks, fight the loss and degradation of natural habitats and to conserve larger land and marine areas. They also set a broader 2020 "mission" to take urgent action to halt the loss of biodiversity. Nations agreed to protect 17 percent of land and inland waters and 10 percent of coastal and marine areas by 2020. Currently, 13 percent of land and 1 percent of oceans are protected for conservation. The third part of the deal, the Nagoya Protocol on genetic resources, has taken nearly 20 years to agree and sets rules governing how nations manage and share benefits derived from forests and seas to create new drugs, crops or cosmetics. The protocol could unlock billions of dollars for developing countries, where much of the world's natural riches remain. "The protocol is really, really a victory," Brazil's Environment Minister Izabella Teixeira told reporters. It will also mean changes for businesses. "This isn't a boring protocol. It will regulate billions of dollars for the pharmaceutical industry," said Tove Ryding, policy adviser for biodiversity and climate change for Greenpeace. Karl Falkenberg, head of the European Commission's environment department, said it would also fight poverty. "We finally have something that is going to give great results for the environment, for the poor people," who will be able to earn money in exchange for access to genetic materials, he said after the talks ended. Delegates and greens had feared the ill-feeling that pervaded climate negotiations after last December's acrimonious meeting in Copenhagen would derail the talks in Nagoya. "There's been a mood of change. I think the failure of the Copenhagen meeting last year perhaps has meant a new realisation that we need to more flexible in negotiations," said Jane Smart, director of conservation policy for the International Union for Conservation of Nature. | 0 |
BEIJING, Sep 15, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - China's President Hu Jintao will present China's new plans for tackling global warming at a United Nations summit on climate change later this month, the country's senior negotiator said on Tuesday. "He will make an important speech," Xie Zhenhua told reporters ahead of Hu's trip next week to the United Nations and the G20 summit of major rich and developing economies in Pittsburgh. Hu "will announce the next policies, measures and actions that China is going to take," added Xie, who steers China's climate policy as vice director of the powerful National Development and Reform Commission. Xie said China will strengthen its policies and take on responsibilities in keeping with its level of development and practical capacities, but declined to give further details. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will host a special summit on September 22, to discuss climate change. The head of the UN's Environment Programme has warned that if world leaders do not spur on negotiations, talks to agree a new climate pact in Copenhagen in December risk failure. Xie reprised China's position that it is the responsibility of developed nations to lead the way in making big cuts to their own emissions and providing funding and technical support to developing nations to cope with climate change. But he said the world's top greenhouse gas polluter -- measured on a yearly basis -- was aware of the need for rapid action. Rich countries have urged China to offer a firm timetable for controlling and eventually reducing its greenhouse gas emissions. "China has a deep appreciation of the importance and urgency of climate change," Xie told a briefing in the Chinese capital. | 0 |
The period of January to October 2014 is already among the warmest ever recorded, and a warm ending to the year could easily make it top, according to US and British data.Skeptics who doubt the necessity of a shift away from fossil fuels to stop the Earth's climate from heating up point out that world average temperatures have not risen much since 1998, despite rising greenhouse gas emissions.
But the final ranking for 2014, due next year, may influence public and business perceptions about the severity of climate change. Almost 200 governments are due to agree a UN deal to combat global warming in Paris in December next year."2014 is more likely than not to be the warmest year," Tim Osborn, a professor at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, told Reuters, saying manmade greenhouse gas emissions are tending to push up temperatures.He said there were many uncertainties about where 2014 would rank because of natural variations in temperatures late in the year. Also, a big volcanic eruption might spew out ash that dims sunshine, cooling the planet.The UN's World Meteorological Organization (WMO) will publish a preliminary ranking for 2014 on Dec 3, during annual UN talks in Peru which will prepare the Paris accord.
Promises for action by China, the United States and the European Union have made a global deal more likely, but any agreement will probably be too weak to halt rising temperatures despite new scientific warnings of powerful storms, floods, desertification and rising sea levels.Of the WMO's three main data sources, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) ranks January-October 2014 as the warmest such period on record, NASA as the second-warmest and the British Met Office and University of East Anglia as the third-warmest.
NOAA says 2014 is on track to be the warmest on record. The rankings differ partly because scientists use different estimates for places with few thermometers, such as the Arctic."It probably is a bit premature to say 2014 will be the warmest year on record," said Michael Cabbage, spokesman for NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.The British data place 2014 third, fractionally behind 2010 and 1998, which both cooled toward the end of the year.Despite a slowdown in the pace of warming since 1998, the WMO says 13 of the 14 warmest years on record have been in this century. | 0 |
As the UN food aid agency was rewarded for its efforts to fight hunger and improve conditions for peace in conflict-affected areas, Gernot Laganda said the coronavirus shock had made clear aid cannot keep pace with multiplying threats. "You won't get to zero hunger with humanitarian aid alone," said Laganda, head of climate and disaster risk reduction for the World Food Programme (WFP). "You need two parallel lanes of work: responding to extreme events and helping governments build systems that can manage risks," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. As COVID-19 has tested countries' ability to deal with stresses "like never before", growing knowledge of the gaps "is equally relevant in managing the climate emergency", he noted. Today, as hunger grows despite a global goal to eliminate it by 2030, WFP spends about 80% of its money responding to urgent crises in places from Afghanistan to East Africa, Laganda said. But as worsening extreme weather linked to climate change - and threats like the pandemic and conflict - push more people into hunger, the gap between what the agency can raise in donations and what it needs to spend is widening, he added. That is a problem likely to worsen as an economic downturn provoked by the pandemic tightens aid budgets around the globe. "Even with the prize now, whether we can fill this gap is a question," Laganda said in a telephone interview. At the award announcement, Berit Reiss-Andersen, chairwoman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, called on the international community to adequately fund the food aid agency. "This is an obligation, in our minds, of all states of the world, to ensure that people are not starving," she said. PREPARING FOR DISASTER To help close the funding gap, reduce suffering and get help to people quicker, WFP has invested in efforts to curb risks, through measures ranging from better early warning systems to insurance policies and social safety nets. In Bangladesh, hit this year by floods that covered a quarter of the country, early warning systems provided four-day notice of the coming deluge, WFP's Laganda said. That triggered "anticipatory" payouts - cash delivered via mobile phones through a social safety net programme - that gave 20,000 families resources to move their valuables out of harm's way. WFP, which helped set up the government systems through which it delivered the support, said experts had documented that each dollar of such spending can save $3 in humanitarian aid, as well as disruption and losses for families, Laganda said. Similarly, in drought-hit countries such as Zimbabwe and Mauritania, WFP is supporting insurance policies that provide quick payouts - four to six months faster than humanitarian aid usually arrives - when rains and crops fail, he said. Early assistance helps cash-short farmers avoid selling the oxen they need to replant fields next year or cutting down rain-regulating trees to sell as firewood - measures that can push them into a downward spiral, Laganda said. Reiss-Andersen of the Nobel Committee said tackling hunger means "not only providing food - it's about creating sustainable communities where the food production ... can support (their) people". "If (lack of) food is the reason for war and conflict, creating food-secure communities also creates safer communities who are less prone to conflict," she said, as the global prize was announced on Friday. BREAKING HUNGER CYCLE Laganda noted one big problem is that people who become reliant on humanitarian aid - often after crops fail, jobs and remittances dry up and all their assets are sold - usually struggle to survive again without it. Programmes like providing food vouchers or cash for people who work planting trees, digging ponds or restoring degraded farmland often last only through the disaster period, he noted. To help break the cycle, humanitarian spending should be combined with development aid to tackle poverty and build resilience longer-term, he said. Laganda also warned that while wealthier countries have so far avoided the worst of the hunger, conflict and climate crises affecting the rest of the world, they are not immune from shocks, as the coronavirus pandemic has made clear. From US wildfires and unprecedented heat to a string of destructive hurricanes, climate pressures "are knocking on everyone's door", he said. Sara Pantuliano, head of the London-based Overseas Development Institute, said the Nobel award to WFP should reinforce "the importance of looking at the longer-term impact of a number of crises - the pandemic being one, but also... climate change and other global pressures". Giving the prize to a UN agency could be seen as a push-back against nationalistic responses to international threats, she said. "Hopefully this is a moment that will focus minds to think how we need to reshape global cooperation," with an emphasis on broader alliances with business and civil society, she added. "We cannot address global crises in isolation." | 0 |
Rich nations sought to persuade China and India on Tuesday to agree to a goal of halving world greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 at a summit of major economies in Italy later this week. Environment ministers or senior officials from the 17-member Major Economies Forum (MEF) met in Rome, trying to end deadlock over a declaration that could be a step toward a new UN climate pact due to be agreed in Copenhagen in December. "Positions have not shifted," a delegate said of the talks, called at the last minute to help leaders agree a united front on climate change on Thursday in L'Aquila, Italy, during a Group of Eight summit. China and India have been opposed to a goal of halving world greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 as part of a declaration by MEF nations, which account for 80 percent of world greenhouse gas emissions. The G8 countries -- the United States, Japan, Russia, Germany, Britain, France, Italy and Canada -- adopted a "vision" of a 50 percent cut in global emissions by 2050 last year and want major developing nations to sign up too. But developing nations say the rich are to blame for most emissions from burning greenhouse gases since the Industrial Revolution and must set deep 2020 goals for cutting their own emissions before asking for help with 2050 goals. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi also told a news conference that China was resisting progress on the climate. VANGUARD "Europe wants to be in the vanguard, the Obama administration is in the same position, but there is strong resistance that I have encountered with the Chinese presidency," said Berlusconi, referring to a meeting on Monday. A June 30 MEF draft drawn up by the United States and Mexico said that: "We support an aspirational global goal of reducing global emissions by 50 percent by 2050, with developed countries reducing emissions by at least 80 percent by 2050." China and Indian officials have said that poor nations need to be allowed to use more energy to end poverty. China has recently overtaken the United States as top world emitter and India is fourth behind Russia. If the deadlock persists, US President Barack Obama, who sees the MEF as a step toward a UN deal, would end the July 9 meeting with just a "chair's summary" rather than a statement agreed by all 17 MEF leaders. "Only ambitious action by the G8 could break the deadlock in the negotiations," said Tobias Muenchmeyer of environmental group Greenpeace. He noted that China and India want rich nations to cut emissions by at least 40 percent by 2020 below 1990 levels and far higher climate investments. A separate climate draft for the G8, dated June 24, indicated progress toward setting a target of limiting a rise in world temperatures to two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial times. The European Union views 2C as a threshold for "dangerous" climate changes such as ever more heatwaves, floods, droughts and extinctions. The United States, Russia, Canada and Japan have not signed up for such a target at the G8. The G8 draft said "global emissions should peak by 2020 and then be substantially reduced to limit the average increases in global temperature to 2 Celsius above pre-industrial levels." | 0 |
The inaugural Bangabandhu chair professor at Bangkok’s Asian Institute of Technology talked on multidimensionality of challenges for a fast developing country like Bangladesh in sustainable energy transition at the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB) in Dhaka on Wednesday. Senior and mid-level faculty members from all departments and centres of the university joined the interactive session presided over by ULAB Pro-Vice Chancellor Prof Shamsad Mortuza, the university said in a media release. Prof Roy, a member of the Nobel Peace Prize 2007-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the coordinating lead author of its WGIII (mitigation), set the tone by explaining the “dire need” for a sustainable energy shift from a fossil-fuel-based one to a renewable-energy one, especially under the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) era. She explained why much focused renewable sources, like solar, wind or bioenergy, would not be sufficient for Bangladesh in the coming decades for such transition. We need a "just, sustainable, peaceful transition", and we need it fast, she emphasised. Drawing examples from Nordic countries, she argued how transforming the natural gas and coal-exploitation-centred expertise and infrastructure of Bangladesh could be capitalised on building geothermal and hydrogen fuel capacity, and it has to be started with pilot demonstrations. The talk by Prof Roy was followed by a discussion on pertinent technological, social, economic, and cultural issues. The conversations also explored the opportunities for Bangladeshi academics, researchers, and students to collaborate on joint research, to undertake academic activities, and to join capacity development with the AIT and other institutions and programmes in the region on energy, climate change, SDGs, blue economy, and evidence-informed policy influencing. | 2 |
Leaders of the world's top companies are set to meet Wednesday in Davos in buoyant mood. With the global economy enjoying one of its longest periods of growth since World War Two, confidence about corporate revenues is running at record levels, according to a survey by consultant PricewaterhouseCoopers released Wednesday. Over 90 percent of 1,100 chief executives surveyed expected revenues to grow over the next 12 months and a similar number see sales continuing to expand during the next three years. In all, 52 percent were "very confident" and 40 percent "somewhat confident" about their business in the year ahead -- a marked turnaround from five years ago when levels were half that. The upbeat mood reflects a corporate world basking in the benefits of four consecutive years of strong economic growth. That benign backdrop has also helped lift stock markets to new peaks this month. According to the International Monetary Fund, global growth will remain solid in 2007 at close to 5 percent, despite an expected slowdown in the U.S. economy. Dynamic growth in China, India and other emerging markets is the economic highlight for many business leaders. "CEOs around the world are increasingly positive about their ability to grow their companies and take advantage of the opportunities globalisation offers for new markets, new products and new customers," PwC Chief Executive Samuel DiPiazza said. Still, Gene Donnelly, head of the global advisory practice, says top executives remain level-headed. "When you take it down a level and look at the emphasis on mergers and acquisitions, for example, their intention -- at least as told to us -- is to finance nearly all of that with internal free cashflow rather than going to the debt markets," he said. "So, it seems to be a rational optimism." The upbeat mood was echoed by others monitoring the corporate pulse around the world. "Across our client base there is a high level of optimism, both in North America and across Europe," said David Thomlinson of rival consultancy Accenture. CLIMATE THREAT Nonetheless, there are clear risks. In addition to worries about terrorism and international security, the environment is moving decisively up the corporate agenda. Forty percent of CEOs in the PwC survey expressed concern about the threat posed by climate change. This figure dropped significantly, however, to only 18 percent among North American executives. Although the world has yet to devise a coherent strategy for fighting climate change, a growing number of CEOs appear to believe carbon emissions could become a serious cost for their business and failing to act also risks alienating environment-conscious customers. A separate Gallup survey of participants at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos found one in five now ranked the effects of climate change as an issue that leaders should concentrate on -- double the level recorded in 2006. | 0 |
European Union leaders agreed on Friday to send administrators and police to Kosovo ahead of an expected declaration of independence from Serbia. In a bid to soothe Balkan tensions over Kosovo's push for independence, they also offered Serbia a fast-track route to joining the bloc once it met conditions for signing a first-level agreement on closer ties. But Belgrade bristled at suggestions that the move was designed to compensate it for the looming loss of Kosovo, the majority Albanian province. Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic said any such trade-off would be "an indecent proposal". EU leaders declared after a one-day summit that negotiations on Kosovo's future were exhausted, the status quo was untenable and there was a need to move towards a Kosovo settlement. They stopped short of endorsing independence. "We took a political decision to send an ESDP mission to Kosovo. This is the clearest signal the EU could possibly give that Europe intends to lead on Kosovo and the future of the region," Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates, the summit chairman, told a news conference. ESDP is the European Security and Defence Policy. The 1,800-strong mission involves police, justice officials and civilian administrators. But when asked whether and when the EU would recognise Kosovo's independence, Socrates said talks on that issue were taking place at the United Nations. "The EU is not forgetting its responsibilities in this area. We are talking in terms of action and not inaction," he said. French President Nicolas Sarkozy told reporters the EU had "a difficulty with Kosovo, which everybody can see will be independent". Diplomats said Cyprus, Greece, Slovakia and Romania all object to recognising Kosovo's sovereignty without a UN Security Council resolution. "ON A PLANE"? A day after signing a treaty to end a long institutional stalemate, EU leaders switched focus to challenges posed by the Balkans -- a test of the EU's hopes of strengthening its foreign policy clout -- and by globalisation and immigration. On Serbia's bid to join the 27-nation bloc, the final summit communique said: "(The European Council) reiterated its confidence that progress on the road towards the EU, including candidate status, can be accelerated." Pro-EU moderates in Belgrade want EU candidate status by the end of next year, a timeframe EU Enlargement Commission Olli Rehn said last month was ambitious but feasible. Normally, it takes up to two years for Brussels to grant candidate status to an aspirant after signing a Stabilisation and Accession Agreement (SAA), the first rung on the EU ladder. The signing of an SAA with Belgrade has been held up by its failure to transfer Bosnian Serb wartime general Ratko Mladic to a UN war crimes tribunal in the Hague on genocide charges. Outgoing chief war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte urged EU leaders in Belgium's Le Soir not to be lenient on Belgrade and to maintain firm pressure on it to deliver indictees. "I am stupefied by the attitude of France, Germany and Italy who want to soften their position. As decisions must be taken by unanimity, I am counting on Belgium and the Netherlands to remain tough," she told the newspaper. Signing the agreement requires unanimity in the EU and Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen told reporters: "I want Mladic on a plane to the Hague before I will sign the SAA." Separately, EU leaders named former Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez to head a new "reflection group" to discuss the long-term future of the EU on issues ranging from enlargement to climate change and regional stability, diplomats said. Ex-Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga and the chairman of mobile phone company Nokia Jorma Ollila were named as two vice-chairs of the panel due to report in June 2010, they said. In addition to foreign policy issues, the leaders addressed public concern over the strain on European job markets from immigration and cheap imports, issues on which the EU hopes to focus now that the new Lisbon Treaty has been inked. Replacing the more ambitious constitution abandoned after French and Dutch voters rejected it in 2005, the Lisbon Treaty preserves most of the key institutional reforms but drops contentious symbols of statehood such as a flag and anthem. EU leaders hope the treaty will streamline the bloc's structures to cope with enlargement after it opened its doors to 12 mostly ex-communist states in 2004 and 2007. Critics say it will curb national sovereignty and put more power in Brussels. | 0 |
Australia's ruling Labor party is set for a narrow victory in upcoming elections, two new opinion polls showed on Monday, as speculation grew that Prime Minister Julia Gillard could call an election as soon as this week. While the robust economy, in its 17th year of growth, should be a winning ticket for Gillard, voters believe the opposition is the better economic manager, according to the polls. Gillard has also been seeking to reframe government policy in key areas such as climate and asylum seekers. Opinion polls published in Fairfax and News Ltd newspapers put Labor ahead of the conservative opposition at 52 percent versus 48 percent. "They're in front and they've got a primary vote that can deliver victory," John Stirton, research director with pollster Nielsen, told local radio. Gillard, 48, is Australia's first woman prime minister. She replaced Kevin Rudd on June 24, in a move that has resurrected Labor's electoral standing and reshaped Australian politics. Speculation Gillard may be set to call an election grew after Governor-General Quentin Bryce delayed leaving for a trip to Europe by a day until Saturday, sparking talk that Gillard could ask the representative of Australia's head of state, Queen Elizabeth, to dissolve parliament as early as this week. Gillard declined to comment on the timing when questioned by reporters on a trip to Adelaide, but said in a speech "in the days to come I will be putting forward more detailed arguments about some of the biggest challenges facing our nation. "I will be explaining the steps I think we need to take and asking for people's consideration of those steps. I will ask for the Australian people's trust to move Australia forward," she said. Political commentators said Gillard's words meant she may seek to call an election on Thursday or Friday this week. But commentators warned that Labor still risked losing an election expected in late August. "The coming of Julia Gillard to the Labor Party leadership appears to have stopped the decay in her party's fortunes," said The Age newspaper's national editor Tony Wright. "She has stopped the Rudd rot, though she hasn't been able to make any serious inroads into Labor's loss of the disaffected to the Greens." Labor took power in 2007 promising to tackle climate change, but under Rudd failed to implement a carbon trading scheme, a disappointment that saw Green voters desert Rudd. Labor needs to woo them back to ensure victory over the Liberal-National opposition. Gillard has acted quickly on key policies, ending a three-month row with mining companies over a new tax that was hurting the government in the polls, and proposing a regional asylum processing center, possibly in East Timor, to curb boatpeople arrivals. The tax deal has been generally accepted by voters, but her asylum policy has received criticism for being in its infancy. The cabinet will meet on Tuesday and was expected to discuss a new climate policy, but it is not clear whether Gillard will go as far as announcing a carbon tax as an interim measure before a full blown carbon trading scheme can be created. She has said a carbon price is inevitable, probably via a market-based scheme, but that any decision on such a scheme would not be until 2012 and not without community consensus. But voters want quick action on climate change, according to opinion polls and public comments in local media. Until now the political risk of announcing a carbon price ahead of an election has been the threat of rising power bills. But two new surveys suggest power bills will rise and energy investment will fall because of a lack of a carbon price. The lack of an emissions trading scheme and price on carbon would cost the Australian economy and consumers an extra A$2 billion by 2020 due to investment in less energy efficient coal-fired power plants, The Climate Institute estimates. | 0 |
"I was born in 1992. You have been negotiating all my life. You cannot tell us that you need more time," Christina Ora of the Solomon Islands complained to delegates at UN talks on fixing global warming. Her line from a brief, riveting speech to a 2009 climate summit in Copenhagen was emblazoned on activists' T-shirts at the latest UN talks in Mexico, expressing exasperation at small steps meant to slow floods, droughts, heat waves and rising sea levels. The two-week 190-nation conference in Cancun, a Caribbean resort, agreed on Saturday to step up action against climate change, including a goal of $100 billion a year to help the poor from 2020 and action to protect carbon-absorbing rain forests. Almost all admit it fell woefully short of action needed. Cancun underscored that a treaty, as urged by Ora, is out of reach because of disparate economic interests among China, the United States, OPEC oil exporters and Pacific islands. "Signs that climate change is happening and with catastrophic consequences are there -- flooding in Pakistan, heat waves in Russia, China," Norwegian Environment Minister Erik Solheim said. "This is a huge step forward but of course not sufficient based on science," he said of the Cancun agreements that at least restore some faith in the United Nations after Copenhagen fell short of the widespread goal of reaching a treaty. The U.N. panel of climate scientists in 2007 said greenhouse gas emissions would have to peak by 2015 to give a chance of limiting a rise in average temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F) above pre-industrial times -- a ceiling agreed to in Cancun. But based on current projections, that will not happen. Existing government policies for combating global warming will lead to a rise in world temperatures of about 3.6 C (6.5 F) above pre-industrial times, according to Niklas Hoehne, director of energy and climate policy at consultancy Ecofys. 'MATTER OF OUR SURVIVAL' Surging economic growth in emerging nations led by China and India are helping to ease poverty but are driving up world emissions even as rich nations' economies flounder. Such changes do not sound like much, but the difference between an Ice Age and now is only about 5 degrees C (9 F). A new treaty has eluded the world since a U.N. Climate Convention was agreed to in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The convention's 1997 Kyoto Protocol only binds about 40 rich nations to curb emissions during an initial period ending in 2012. Outside the conference hall, youth delegates wearing blue T-shirts with Ora's quote waved banners saying, "1.5 to stay alive." They say a temperature rise ceiling of 1.5 C (2.7 F) is needed to avoid the worst impacts. Even to some delegates, especially from vulnerable African nations and low-lying islands at risk of sea level rise, the talks seem like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. "This is a matter of our survival," said Colin Beck, who like Ora is from the Solomon Islands and a vice-chair of the Alliance of Small Island States. Average world temperatures have already risen about 0.8 degree C (1.4 F) since the Industrial Revolution and 2010 is set to be among the top three years on record, vying with 1998 and 2005, since records began in the 19th century. 'THINGS YOU CAN DO NOW' Despite the gloom, others say a response is happening away from the glacial U.N. talks, with investment shifts from coal, gas and oil toward renewable energies. China is investing heavily in projects ranging from solar power to high-speed rail links. "We've been trying to emphasize that the focus shouldn't solely be on the struggles with the treaty negotiations -- this word and that word -- because there are things you can do now," World Bank President Robert Zoellick said. "Business is not sitting back and waiting for this process to come to a result. ... The world is moving ahead anyway," said Yvo de Boer, climate adviser at audit, tax and advisory group KPMG and a former UN climate chief. He listed concerns over climate, energy prices, energy security, materials scarcity, consumer preferences and a realization that things had to change with the world population set to reach 9 billion by 2050 from 6.8 billion now. The UN panel of climate scientists says it is at least 90 percent likely that human activities are the main cause of most of the global warming in the past half-century. Natural causes cannot be completely ruled out. Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the panel, warned delegates in Cancun that one underestimated effect of climate change was that water expands as it warms, raising the oceans at the same time as more flows in from melting glaciers. The world is destined to experience a rise in sea levels of 0.4 to 1.4 metres (1-4 feet) simply because heat in the atmosphere will gradually reach ever greater ocean depths. | 0 |
CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts Aug 7(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - The fate of a US climate change bill will send signals to the rest of the world as to whether upcoming global climate talks will be "serious or not," one of the bill's co-authors said on Thursday. The bill, which aims to cut US emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, passed the House of Representatives and Massachusetts Representative Edward Markey said he hopes to see it make its way through Senate by the year's end. "This bill is a bill the world is waiting for to make a determination as to whether or not the negotiations that we will be undertaking in Copenhagen will be serious or not," Markey said in a speech at Harvard University in Cambridge. "The Chinese are looking at it, the Europeans, the rest of the world ... The bill is now pending in the Senate and my great hope is that we will see passage of that before the end of this year." Negotiators from about 190 countries are scheduled to meet in the Danish capital of Copenhagen in December for a round of talks aimed at getting rich nations to agree to cut their greenhouse gas emissions sharply and to help emerging economies -- which are rapidly becoming major emitters as they consumer more energy -- do the same. The climate bill, written by Markey and Representative Henry Waxman, to reduce US emissions of carbon dioxide, which contributes to global warming, by 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. One of the challenges facing the climate bill is the crowded legislative agenda. US President Barack Obama has also made health care reform a top priority -- leaving Congress to take on a thorny and emotional issue that Americans have been debating for decades. "These are the top two priorities of the President and the Congress and so they're going to be moving along simultaneously this fall within the legislative process," Markey told reporters after his speech. "Each of them will require, to some extent, success on the other. It's important for us to move forward on these together because the opponents of them are using both bills as reasons why President Obama is taking us in the wrong direction and we have to make the counter-argument that it's why he's taking us in the right direction." The climate bill, which uses a cap-and-trade system to lower emissions, made it narrowly through the House, carrying by just seven votes. The Senate is expected to try to produce its own version of the bill, which if passed would need to be harmonized with the House version. | 1 |
BRUSSELS, Fri Jun 19, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Europe will next week start moves to help China and India develop technology to trap and bury carbon dioxide underground in the fight against global warming, according to a draft European Commission document. Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), a process of burying harmful gases, is seen by some as a potential silver bullet to curb emissions from coal-fired power plants, which are multiplying rapidly worldwide and threaten to heat the atmosphere to dangerous levels. The European Union will start a consultation process on how finance and technology should be delivered to China and later India. This could be critical in securing their commitment to a new global deal on climate change at talks in Copenhagen in December. "China builds, every year, as much coal-fired power plant as the entire UK generating capacity," said a report prepared for consultations with industry and seen by Reuters on Friday. "Unless a way can be found of making this climate-compatible, we can never meet our climate objectives, regardless of what action we take in Europe," it added. While the technologies exist, utilities are reluctant to build CCS power stations without public funding because the CCS component adds over $1 billion to the cost of each plant. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY "A project of this size has never been done before," said Eric Drosin, a spokesman for ZEP, a European coalition of industry, scientists and those environmentalists that back CCS. "Knowledge sharing is crucial to the rapid deployment of CCS in China," he added. "We are willing to share all information except that which is covered by intellectual property rights." Many environmentalists oppose spending public money on the technology, saying it is untested and utilities already make massive profits while driving the planet towards irreversible climate damage. "Rather than trying to persuade China to bet on a technology that might not even work...the EU should help China invest in renewables and efficiency and leapfrog the fossil fuel-based energy model of the West," said Greenpeace campaigner Frauke Thies. The Commission's EU-China Near Zero Emissions Coal (NZEC) proposal will initially tap into about 60 million euros ($84 million) of existing EU development funding, but will also seek support from industry and taxpayers. "It is likely that the CCS component of the Chinese NZEC demonstration project alone will cost in total around 300 million euros," said the report. "We will seek to garner financial support from member states for this initiative, which in the first instance will affect China, then India, South Africa, OPEC and other emerging economies and developing countries," it added. In 2050, almost 60 percent of CO2 emissions from the power sector are projected to be captured, compared to virtually none today and almost 30 percent in 2030, said the report. | 0 |
London,Sep 18 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - The number of people living "on the edge of emergency" in Africa has nearly doubled to 220 million in just two years, a leading charity said on Thursday. CARE International said emergency aid to the impoverished and strife-ridden continent continued to arrive too late, was short-term and policies were targeted too heavily on saving lives rather than building resilience in the population. "The world's inaction on food emergencies has proved costly and it is the world's poorest people -- stripped of enough to eat -- who are paying the price," said Geoffrey Dennis, the charity's chief executive. "Governments, the UN, donors and aid agencies must take this opportunity to deliver the long-term structural reforms to the aid system that will protect the most vulnerable from emergency and build their resilience to food price rises, drought and other shocks." CARE's report "Living on the Edge of Emergency -- Paying the Price of Inaction" is timed to coincide with a summit in New York next week dedicated to the fight against poverty -- one of the key Millennium Development Goals (MDG) for 2015. It called for donors to fulfill existing aid commitments and then add some, focus on disaster risk reduction, early warning systems, food production and support for the poorest and make emergency aid and long-term development better coordinated. It also highlighted the more recently emerged threats to security and welfare that have added to older woes. Prices of staple foods have surged by an average of 83 percent in the past three years, climate change has already hit some of the poorest -- and therefore less resilient -- countries, biofuels have replaced food crops and increasing urbanization has compounded the problems. "It is a disgrace that, despite warnings, money is still being spent in the wrong ways," said Dennis. "Leaders at the MDG meeting must ensure that the aid system can rise to the challenge of the global food crisis or they will measure the cost in billions of wasted emergency funds and the suffering of millions of people pushed to and beyond the edge of yet more needless emergencies." | 0 |
China's foreign minister gave a spirited defence on Thursday of his country's right to host the 2008 Olympics in the face of criticism over human rights following talks with his British counterpart. As the Aug. 8 opening of the Games draws near, China's Communist rulers are deflecting a barrage of criticism over issues from its policies in Sudan to its use of the death penalty, but Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi came out swinging. "People in China enjoy extensive freedom of speech," he told reporters, following talks with British Foreign Secretary David Miliband. "No one will get arrested because he said that human rights are more important than the Olympics. This is impossible. "Ask 10 people from the street to face public security officers and ask them to say 'human rights are more important the the Olympics' 10 times or even 100 times, and I will see which security officer would put him in jail," Yang said. China pledged to improve its human rights record ahead of the Games, but experts and lawmakers told a U.S. government panel on Wednesday that such promises were not being kept. Last week, Chinese state prosecutors tried dissident Yang Chunlin, an unemployed factory worker, who faces charges of "inciting subversion of state power" after he called for human rights to take precedence over the Games. China also issued a white paper on Thursday which outlined many laws and principles which rights groups say are routinely ignored or violated. They include the right to freedom from unlawful detention, freedom of belief and speech, the outlawing of torture, and the freedom of ethnic minorities to practice and protect their customs and way of life. But that came with a caveat, which China has in past years repeated like a mantra: that China has a fundamentally different concept of human rights from the West, where the rights of the individual come first. Miliband said he raised the issue of rights in his talks with Chinese leaders, including individual cases, though he did not say which cases he mentioned. "We do not believe that issues of human rights should be restricted to the Olympic year. Those universal values ... are an issue for every year, not just for one particular year," he said. "We believe that the Olympics are an opportunity to celebrate the progress that has been achieved in China, China's commitment to work in a peaceful way with the whole international community, and does not require any sort of disavowal of values that we hold dear." NO BOYCOTT Miliband's six-day trip to Hong Kong, Shanghai, Chongqing and Beijing follows a visit by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to China last month, during which leaders agreed to expand bilateral trade to $60 billion by 2010 from $40 billion last year. In talks with Miliband that touched on the Iran nuclear issue, climate change and China-EU relations, Yang said they agreed to raise the share of financial services in their trade. They also discussed Africa, where China has growing trade and strategic links, and where Miliband said London and Beijing "should be indispensable allies of each other in supporting development and freedom from conflict". Among China's African allies is Sudan, where Beijing is a major investor in the oil sector, a relationship which prompted movie director Steven Spielberg to quit as artistic adviser to the Olympics, saying it was doing too little to halt bloodshed in the western Sudanese region of Darfur. Yang defended China's role in Sudan, highlighting its development aid, the engineering corps it deployed to join a force of United Nations and African Union peacekeepers, and its appointment of a special envoy on Darfur. He said that despite Spielberg's move, there was no widespread support for censuring the Beijing Games. "Don't tell me that there is international support for boycotting the Olympic Games on the grounds of China's human rights," he said. "This is not true." Speaking in Singapore, Sebastian Coe, who heads the London 2012 Olympics, said sport should be protected from politics. "We have to be very, very careful when we use international sport as the first line of foreign policy," Coe told Reuters. | 0 |
Each of those events would be daunting enough
on its own. Together, they pose a uniquely difficult challenge to Johnson as he
struggles to navigate his nation through the latest treacherous phase of the
pandemic. The electoral defeat exposed the vulnerability
of a prime minister who built his career on his vote-getting skills. Normally
reliable Conservative voters turned on the party in striking numbers, disgusted
by a steady drip of unsavoury ethics disclosures and a growing sense that the
government is lurching from crisis to crisis. The defeat came on top of a mutiny in the
ranks of Conservative lawmakers, around 100 of whom voted against Johnson’s
plan to introduce a form of COVID pass in England earlier in the week. Having
been politically rebuked, he now has less flexibility to impose new
restrictions to curb a virus that is spreading explosively. Johnson is betting he can avert a full-blown
crisis by massively accelerating Britain’s vaccine booster program. But so far,
the rate of infections is outrunning the percentage of people getting their
third shots. With cases of the omicron variant doubling every 2.5 days, public
health researchers warn that some type of lockdown might ultimately be the only
way to prevent an untenable strain on hospitals. “What on earth is the prime minister going to
do if the rising COVID numbers means he is getting strong scientific advice to
take further restrictive measures?” said Jill Rutter, a senior research fellow
at UK in a Changing Europe, a research institute. Johnson was able to pass his recent measures
thanks to votes from the opposition Labour Party. But that dramatised his
political weakness, Rutter noted, and resorting to it again would further
antagonise his own rank and file. “That’s politically a terrible place for the
prime minister to be,” she added. Indeed, Johnson needs to worry about fending
off a leadership challenge — a once-remote scenario now suddenly plausible as
Conservative lawmakers worry that the calamitous result in North Shropshire, a
district near England’s border with Wales, could translate into defeat in the
next general election. The victorious Liberal Democrat candidate,
Helen Morgan, overturned a majority of almost 23,000 won by former Conservative
lawmaker Owen Paterson at the last general election, in 2019. Paterson, a
former Cabinet minister who had held the seat since 1997, resigned last month
after breaking lobbying rules, despite an unsuccessful effort by Johnson to
save him. About the only reprieve for Johnson is that
Parliament recessed for the Christmas holiday Thursday. That will temper the
momentum behind any possible leadership challenge, at least until Conservative
lawmakers return to Westminster after the New Year and assess the state of
their party and the country. A prime minister who just a week ago was
promising to save Christmas may now need Christmas to save him. “I totally understand people’s frustrations,”
Johnson said Friday. “In all humility, I’ve got to accept that verdict.” But he
also blamed the news media, telling Sky News, “some things have been going very
well, but what the people have been hearing is just a constant litany of stuff
about politics and politicians.” Johnson’s standing has been weakened by
claims, widely reported in the papers, that his staff held Christmas parties in
Downing Street last year at a time when they were forbidden under coronavirus
restrictions. Cabinet Secretary Simon Case had been
investigating those allegations; but Friday evening, he abruptly withdrew after
a report surfaced that he was aware of a separate party held in his own office
last year. Although another civil servant, Sue Gray, will take over the
investigation, the latest disclosure is only likely deepen to public suspicion
about the government’s behaviour. Even before the election loss in North
Shropshire, there was speculation that Johnson could face a formal challenge to
his leadership, little more than two years after he won a landslide election
victory in December 2019. To initiate a no-confidence vote, 54 lawmakers
would have to write to the chair of the committee that represents Conservative
backbenchers, Graham Brady. Such letters are confidential, but analysts do not
believe that prospect is close. Even so, Friday’s result will increase jitters
in Downing Street. North Shropshire was one of the Conservative Party’s safest
seats, in a part of Britain that supported Brexit, Johnson’s defining political
project. Many Labour Party voters and others hostile to the Conservatives
coalesced around the Liberal Democrats, the party deemed most likely to defeat
the Tories in that region — a practice known as tactical voting. Were this to be repeated nationally in the
next general election, it could deprive the Conservatives of perhaps 30 seats
and, in a close contest, affect the outcome, said Peter Kellner, a former
president of the polling firm YouGov. “Tactical voting has a chance to make a
material difference to the politics of Britain after the next general election,”
he said. In recent weeks, Labour has moved ahead of the
Conservatives in several opinion surveys, which also recorded a steep drop in
Johnson’s approval ratings. Political analysts said that could also put the
prime minister in a vulnerable position, given the transactional nature of his
party. “The Tory Party is a ruthless machine for
winning elections,” said Jonathan Powell, a former chief of staff to Prime
Minister Tony Blair. “If that is continuing into an election cycle, the party
will get rid of him quickly.” But while the political climate remains
volatile, most voters are more preoccupied by the effect of the omicron variant
as they prepare for the holiday season. Scientists said it was too soon to say
whether the variant was less severe than previous ones, but they warned that
even if it was, that would not necessarily prevent a swift rise in hospital
admissions, given the enormous number of infections. “If you have enough cases per day, the number
of hospitalisations could pose potentially great challenges for any hospital
system,” said Neil Ferguson, a public health researcher at Imperial College
London, whose frightening projections about the virus prompted Johnson to
impose his first lockdown, in March 2020. Rutter said Johnson could yet emerge unscathed
if the variant is milder than feared, hospitals are not overwhelmed, and the
booster program is effective. Earlier this year, his fortunes revived when
Britain’s vaccination rollout was fast and effective, allowing him to remove
all restrictions in July. By weakening Johnson’s position, however, the
defeat in North Shropshire is also likely to embolden his rivals, among them
Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss. Any
resulting tensions within the Cabinet are likely to erode Johnson’s authority
further. All of that is a dangerous recipe for a prime
minister who may find himself forced to return to Parliament to approve further
restrictions. “In March 2020, he had massive political
capital coming off the back of that fantastic election victory,” Rutter said.
“He’s managed in that time to pretty much squander that political capital,
certainly within his party.” ©2021 The New York Times Company | 4 |
A Newspoll survey conducted for The Australian newspaper
showed Morrison gaining a point to 44%, while opposition leader Anthony
Albanese falling 3 points to 39%, the largest lead the prime minister has held
over his rival since February. But the poll said Morrison's conservative Liberal-National
Party coalition, with a one-seat majority in the lower house of parliament,
could lose 10 seats to Albanese's centre-left Labour in a campaign set to focus
on cost-of-living pressures, climate change and questions over the major
parties' competence. A separate survey for the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper on
Monday predicted the ruling coalition could lose at least 14 seats, including
some previously deemed safe in resource-rich Queensland and Western Australia
states. A win for Labor would see it back in power for the first time since
2013. All 151 seats in the lower house will be up for election.
Morrison's Liberal-National coalition holds 76, Labour 68 and seven are held by
minor parties and independents. Morrison kicked off his election campaign from the marginal
seat of Gilmore in New South Wales - a narrow Labour gain from the Liberal
Party in the last election in 2019 - as he prepares to spend six weeks on the
road before the vote. "This election ... is about a choice," Morrison
said during a media briefing on Monday, describing Albanese's leadership as
"untested and unknown". "It's a choice between strong economic management and
strong financial management ... that contrasts to a Labor opposition who
Australians know can't be trusted to manage money." Albanese dismissed Morrison's attacks on his experience as a
leader saying he was "ready to govern", but fumbled answers to
questions from reporters about Australia's interest rates and jobless numbers. "The national unemployment rate at the moment is, I
think it's 5.4% ... sorry, I'm not sure what it is," Albanese said,
speaking during a media conference in Tasmania. Australia's unemployment rate dipped to 4.0% in February,
several months ahead of central bank forecasts as the economy rebounds, and
looks certain to fall into the 3% range for the first time since the early
1970s. Morrison has been touting his government's handling of the
economy after the emergence of the coronavirus and a faster rebound helped by
the lifting of most COVID-19 restrictions despite the threat from the omicron
variant. Recovery has also been boosted by surging prices for natural
resource commodities, of which Australia is a major exporter. | 0 |
HARARE, Thu Jun 26, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai said on Thursday there could be no negotiations with President Robert Mugabe if he went ahead with a one-man election on Friday. Tsvangirai said if Mugabe declared himself president and extended his 28 years of uninterrupted rule he would be shunned as an illegitimate leader who killed his own people. Africa's most iconic figure, Nelson Mandela, added his voice to a storm of African and international condemnation of the violence and chaos in Zimbabwe, in a rare political statement that showed the level of concern around the continent. Mugabe and his officials have remained defiant, however, saying the vote is a legal obligation. Deputy Information Minister Bright Matonga told al Jazeera television: "People are going to vote tomorrow. There is no going back." He said Tsvangirai should be out campaigning instead of trying to set conditions for Mugabe. The opposition leader, who withdrew from Friday's run-off last Sunday and took refuge in the Dutch embassy, tried to step up the pressure by telling Mugabe that his chances of negotiating an end to Zimbabwe's catastrophic collapse would end on Friday. "Negotiations will be over if Mr Mugabe declares himself the winner and considers himself the president. How can we negotiate?" Tsvangirai told London's Times newspaper. Mugabe, president since independence from Britain, has presided over Zimbabwe's slide from one of the region's most prosperous nations to a basket case with inflation estimated to have hit at least 2 million percent. He blames the crisis on sanctions by Britain and other Western countries. INTERNATIONAL CAMPAIGN Mugabe is facing a concerted international campaign to push him into calling off the vote by threatening he will be shunned by the world, including African allies once over-awed by his liberation hero status. Mandela said in a speech at a dinner for his 90th birthday in London that there had been a "tragic failure of leadership in our neighboring Zimbabwe." Tsvangirai told Mugabe that if he came to him after the vote he would tell the veteran leader: "I made these offers, I made these overtures, I told you I would negotiate before the elections and not after -- because it's not about elections, it's about transition. "You disregarded that, you undertook violence against my supporters, you killed and maimed ...How can you call yourself an elected president? You are illegitimate and I will not speak to an illegitimate president." On Wednesday, a security committee of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) -- urged postponement of the vote, saying Mugabe's re-election could lack legitimacy in the current violent climate. Regional power South Africa added to the pressure, saying a top negotiator was in Harare mediating talks on options including calling off the election. The ruling African National Congress, which has been severely critical of Mugabe, in contrast to President Thabo Mbeki, said it was not too late to call off the vote. "The ANC is convinced that it is not too late for President Mugabe to cancel the election, the run-off, and lead the country in a dialogue that will be for the good of all Zimbabweans," spokeswoman Jesse Duarte told BBC television. The United States said Mugabe's government should talk to Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change. "That offer obviously ought to be taken up. But it can't be taken up from a position in which the Zimbabwean authorities declare themselves the victors and then believe they can divide the spoils. That's not going to work," US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters in Japan. The SADC security troika, comprising African Union chairman Tanzania, Swaziland and Angola, called at its meeting near the Swazi capital Mbabane for talks between Mugabe's government and the opposition before a new run-off date was set. Zimbabwe's state media on Thursday quoted the SADC poll monitors -- the only large group in the country -- as saying they would stay for the vote despite Tsvangirai's withdrawal. Some 300 opposition supporters who sought refuge at the South African embassy on Wednesday were still in the grounds on Thursday, some wrapped in blankets. Police set up roadblocks on roads leading to the mission. | 2 |
Australian Prime Minister John Howard faces a crushing electoral defeat which could see him lose his own Sydney-based seat, a poll showed on Sunday. Howard, 11 years in power and facing re-election in a national vote tipped for November 10, trailed high-profile former television presenter Maxine McKew, 46 percent to 53 when votes were distributed to the two major parties, a Galaxy poll for The Sunday Telegraph newspaper and SBS television showed. McKew, recruited to the rival Labor Party to take on the conservative Howard, was also level with the veteran prime minister when voters were asked who would do the best job for the seat of Bennelong, held by Howard since 1974. The poll was conducted after Australia's central bank lifted interest rates last week to a decade high of 6.50 percent to head off inflation fuelled by strong domestic demand, unemployment at a 32-year low and rapid global growth. Interest rates have been hurting Howard, who secured his fourth election victory in 2004 on the slogan "Keeping interest rates low". The central bank has since lifted rates five times. Rates are also biting into support for Howard's Liberal-National coalition in key fringe suburbs where voters are struggling with large mortgages and a credit binge fuelled in part by the low-interest climate, successive polls show. Also hurting Howard is a charge of boundaries in his own seat, which now has a large Asian community and is in the top 20 electorates for residents who speak a language other than English at home, according to census figures. Howard has angered some immigrant families with policies making it harder for new arrivals, requiring them to adopt vague Australian values of "mateship" and "fair go" equality, while learning English to speed their assimilation into society. Senior Labor lawmaker Bob McMullan cautioned it would be hard to unseat Howard regardless of poll indications. "We're very near the end of this three-year term and people are open to the idea of change. But I think their voting intention isn't set in concrete at all, it's quite fluid," he told Australian television. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Howard's wisdom and experience would carry him over the line and youthful opposition leader Kevin Rudd, a Mandarin-speaking former diplomat, lacked a plan for Australia's future. "There's always controversy about the record of the incumbent and so on, it happens everywhere," Downer said. "I don't always want to seem Pollyanna-ish. I'm a person though who's pretty relaxed about the struggle that lies ahead." | 2 |
But the abbot, the Venerable Ambalangoda Sumedhananda Thero, barely registered the blast. Waving away the mosquitoes swarming the night air in the southern Sri Lankan town of Gintota, he continued his tirade: Muslims were violent, he said, Muslims were rapacious. “The aim of Muslims is to take over all our land and everything we value,” he said. “Think of what used to be Buddhist lands: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kashmir, Indonesia. They have all been destroyed by Islam.” Minutes later, a monastic aide rushed in and confirmed that someone had thrown a Molotov cocktail at a nearby mosque. The abbot flicked his fingers in the air and shrugged. His responsibility was to his flock, the Buddhist majority of Sri Lanka. Muslims, who make up less than 10% of Sri Lanka’s population, were not his concern.
File Photo: The Buddhist monk Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara Thero at a temple in Gintota, Sri Lanka, Nov 18, 2017. The New York Times
Incited by a politically powerful network of charismatic monks like Sumedhananda Thero, Buddhists have entered the era of militant tribalism, casting themselves as spiritual warriors who must defend their faith against an outside force. File Photo: The Buddhist monk Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara Thero at a temple in Gintota, Sri Lanka, Nov 18, 2017. The New York Times Their sense of grievance might seem unlikely: In Sri Lanka and Myanmar, two countries that are on the forefront of a radical religious-nationalist movement, Buddhists constitute overwhelming majorities of the population. Yet some Buddhists, especially those who subscribe to the purist Theravada strain of the faith, are increasingly convinced that they are under existential threat, particularly from an Islam struggling with its own violent fringe. As the tectonic plates of Buddhism and Islam collide, a portion of Buddhists are abandoning the peaceful tenets of their religion. During the past few years, Buddhist mobs have waged deadly attacks against minority Muslim populations. Buddhist nationalist ideologues are using the spiritual authority of extremist monks to bolster their support. “The Buddhists never used to hate us so much,” said Mohammed Naseer, the imam of the Hillur Mosque in Gintota, Sri Lanka, which was attacked by Buddhist mobs in 2017. “Now their monks spread a message that we don’t belong in this country and should leave. But where will we go? This is our home.” Last month in Sri Lanka, a powerful Buddhist monk went on a hunger strike that resulted in the resignation of all nine Muslim ministers in the Cabinet. The monk had suggested that Muslim politicians were complicit in the Easter Sunday attacks by Islamic State-linked militants on churches and hotels in Sri Lanka, which killed more than 250 people.
File Photo: A demonstration organised by a Buddhist monk in support of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s handling of the Rohingya crisis in Yangon, Myanmar, Oct 14, 2017. The New York Times
In Myanmar, where a campaign of ethnic cleansing has forced an exodus of most of the country’s Muslims, Buddhist monks still warn of an Islamic invasion, even though less than 5% of the national population is Muslim. During Ramadan celebrations in May, Buddhist mobs besieged Islamic prayer halls, causing Muslim worshippers to flee. File Photo: A demonstration organised by a Buddhist monk in support of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s handling of the Rohingya crisis in Yangon, Myanmar, Oct 14, 2017. The New York Times Because of Buddhism’s pacifist image — swirls of calming incense and beatific smiles — the faith is not often associated with sectarian aggression. Yet no religion holds a monopoly on peace. Buddhists go to war, too. “Buddhist monks will say that they would never condone violence,” said Mikael Gravers, an anthropologist at Aarhus University in Denmark who has studied the intersection of Buddhism and nationalism. “But at the same time, they will also say that Buddhism or Buddhist states have to be defended by any means.” The Military-Monastic Complex Thousands of people gathered in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city, in May as Ashin Wirathu, a Buddhist monk who was once jailed for his hate speech, praised the nation’s army. Since August 2017, more than 700,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar for Bangladesh. Behind it all was a campaign of ethnic cleansing by the army and its allies, with Buddhist mobs and the country’s security forces subjecting Rohingya Muslims to slaughter, rape and the complete erasure of hundreds of their villages. Ashin Wirathu has rejected the nonviolent teachings of his faith. Military-linked lawmakers deserved to be glorified like Buddha, he said at the rally. “Only the military,” he continued, “protects both our country and our religion.” At another protest last October, Ashin Wirathu slammed the decision by the International Criminal Court, or ICC, to pursue a case against Myanmar’s military for its persecution of the Rohingya. Then the monk made a startling call to arms. “The day that the ICC comes here is the day I hold a gun,” Ashin Wirathu said in an interview with The New York Times.
File Photo: Monks pray in the Bengala monastery in Yangon, Myanmar, Oct 4, 2017. The New York Times
Monks like Ashin Wirathu inhabit the extremist fringe of Buddhist nationalism. But more respected clerics are involved as well. File Photo: Monks pray in the Bengala monastery in Yangon, Myanmar, Oct 4, 2017. The New York Times At 82 years old, the Venerable Ashin Nyanissara, known more commonly as Sitagu Sayadaw, is Myanmar’s most influential monk. As hundreds of thousands of Rohingya were fleeing their burned villages, Sitagu Sayadaw sat in front of an audience of army officers and said that “Muslims have almost bought the United Nations.” The army and monkhood, he continued, “could not be separated.” Sitagu Sayadaw was pictured in May on a Facebook page linked to the Myanmar military, grinning among soldiers. He has offered up his faith’s greatest sacrifice: an army of spiritual soldiers for the national cause. “There are over 400,000 monks in Myanmar,” he told the commander of Myanmar’s armed forces. “If you need them, I will tell them to begin. It’s easy.” “When someone as respected as Sitagu Sayadaw says something, even if it is strongly dismissive of a certain group, people listen,” said Khin Mar Mar Kyi, a Myanmar-born social anthropologist at the University of Oxford. “His words justify hatred.” The Buddhist Right Returns When suicide bombers linked to the Islamic State blew up churches and hotels in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday, Buddhist nationalists felt vindicated. “We have been warning for years that Muslim extremists are a danger to national security,” said Dilanthe Withanage, a senior administrator for Bodu Bala Sena, the largest of Sri Lanka’s Buddhist nationalist groups. “Blood is on the government’s hands for ignoring the radicalisation of Islam,” Withanage said. After a few years of moderate coalition governance, a fusion of faith and tribalism is again on the ascendant in Sri Lanka. The movement’s champion is Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a former defence chief who is the leading candidate for president in elections due this year. Rajapaksa has pledged to protect religion in the country with the longest continuous Buddhist lineage. He is determined to reconstruct Sri Lanka’s security state, which was built during a nearly three-decade-long civil war with an ethnic Tamil minority. From 2005 to 2015, Sri Lanka was led by Rajapaksa’s brother, Mahinda Rajapaksa, an unabashed nationalist who justified the brutal end to the civil war by portraying himself as the nation’s spiritual saviour.
File Photo: A Sri Lankan Buddhist bows in front of Sitagu Sayadaw, one of Myanmar’s most revered Buddhist leaders, in Delgoda, Sri Lanka, Nov 18, 2017. The New York Times
Temples decorated their walls with pictures of the Rajapaksa brothers. Money flowed for radical Buddhist groups that cheered on sectarian rioting in which Muslims died. One of the founders of Bodu Bala Sena, or the Buddhist Power Army, was given prime land in Colombo, the capital, for a high-rise Buddhist cultural centre. File Photo: A Sri Lankan Buddhist bows in front of Sitagu Sayadaw, one of Myanmar’s most revered Buddhist leaders, in Delgoda, Sri Lanka, Nov 18, 2017. The New York Times Last year, Bodu Bala Sena’s leader, Galagoda Aththe Gnanasara Thero, was sentenced to six years in prison. But in late May, amid a changing political climate, he received a presidential pardon. On Sunday, he presided over a meeting of thousands of monks intent on making their political presence felt in the upcoming elections. Before his imprisonment last year, Gnanasara Thero placed his campaign in a historical context. “We have been the guardians of Buddhism for 2,500 years,” he said in an interview with The Times. “Now, it is our duty, just as it is the duty of monks in Myanmar to fight to protect our peaceful island from Islam.” © 2019 New York Times News Service | 2 |
With four times the population of the United States, an economy growing 8-9 percent a year and surging energy demand, India's race to become an economic power has propelled it to No. 3 in the list of top carbon polluters. India's greenhouse gas emissions will keep rising as it tries to lift millions out of poverty and connect nearly half a billion people to electricity grids. But it is also trying to curb emissions growth in a unique way, fearing the impacts of climate change and spiralling energy costs. The government is betting big on two market-based trading schemes to encourage energy efficiency and green power across the country of 1.2 billion people, sidestepping emissions trading schemes that have poisoned political debate in the United States and Australia. "The policy roadmap India is adopting to curb emissions is innovative -- something that will make industries look at making efficiency the centre-piece rather than some step that follows an ineffective carrot and stick policy," said Srinivas Krishnaswamy, CEO of green policy consultants Vasudha India. In the world's first such national market-based mechanism, called Perform, Achieve and Trade (PAT), India is starting a mandatory scheme that sets benchmark efficiency levels for 563 big polluting from power plants to steel mills and cement plants, that account for 54 percent of the country's energy consumption. The scheme allows businesses using more energy than stipulated to buy tradeable energy saving certificates, or Escerts, from those using less energy, creating a market estimated by the government to be worth about $16 billion in 2014 when trading starts. The number of Escerts depends on the amount of energy saved in a target year. LEARNING CURVE A three-year rollout phase is set to start in September and will help India curb about 100 million tonnes of carbon emissions, the government estimates. The rollout is aimed at working out hiccups in the process for companies to measure and report their energy use. India has already rolled out a renewable energy certificate (REC) trading scheme for wind, solar and biomass power plants. Green power comprises about 8 percent of energy production in India, while coal generates more than 60 percent, leading to a hefty coal import bill. Trading for the REC scheme, which currently occurs once a month, has picked up as more projects participate, underpinning a government plan to ramp up solar power from near zero to 20 gigawatts by 2022, about one eighth of power generation now. On May 25, a total of 14,002 RECs were traded during the REC trading session on the Indian Energy Exchange valued at $4.6 million, compared with 260 units at the previous session in April. But concerns remain about how both initiatives will evolve because of a lack of data and trained manpower as well as weak penalties for firms that refuse to comply. "India has an issue of manpower and data. You look at incomes, industrial activities are growing, the share market might boom but hiring manpower, (building up) capacity and institutions is a long-term game," said Girish Sant, energy analyst at non-profit think tank Prayas. Some analysts also point to technical gaps in the PAT scheme, including how various units of one company would be graded. There were also limitations that allow REC certificates to be traded only once, limiting the early entry of intermediaries or market makers. "In order to have an effective cap-and-trade or market mechanism that aids desired reduction in energy use, it is necessary to have targets that are neither too easy nor too difficult to achieve," said leading Indian clean energy project developer and advisory Emergent Ventures in a report on PAT. But industry observers said it still makes sense for India to opt for a national energy efficiency scheme rather than carbon emissions trading. "Because the target is intensity, so you are basically asking people to reduce their intensity and that matches the overall target," said Sant of Prayas. The government has pledged to cut carbon intensity -- the amount of carbon dioxide emitted per unit of economic output -- by between 20 and 25 percent by 2020, from 2005 levels. Emissions trading would need an absolute emissions cap, something India does not want to do, saying it needs to keep its economy growing and competitive. Adapting to the national policy and creating a unique market are a function of time and communication, said Vishwajit Dahanukar, managing director of Managing Emissions, a clean energy project developer, advisory and asset manager. "That's basically it. It's just early days," he told Reuters from Mumbai. Rival China is also looking at promoting energy efficiency but most of the government's planned efforts focus more on carbon emissions trading to achieve national climate and pollution goals. In April, a senior Chinese official said the government would launch pilot emissions trading schemes in six provinces before 2013 and set up a nationwide trading platform by 2015, Thomson Reuters Point Carbon reported. The programme would be based on provincial-level energy consumption targets. The Chinese government is also considering a cap-and-trade scheme for energy savings in its buildings sector, which accounts for 30 to 40 percent of the country's overall emissions. According to a government directive, the mechanism would create energy saving credits but the programme was still in the early planning stages, with trading some years away. "As Chinese industry is much more organised and the political system allows stringent monitoring, it becomes a little easier for them to use emissions trading," said Siddharth Pathak, Greenpeace India's policy officer for climate and energy, told Reuters. "Also the push back from Indian industry would be much more than China." | 2 |
NEW DELHI, Dec 8, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - China, Brazil, South Africa and India want a global climate treaty wrapped up by June 2010, according to a joint draft document prepared for the Copenhagen climate summit which opened on Monday. Some 192 countries gathered in the Danish capital for the world's biggest climate conference, meant to agree the outline of a new climate treaty. World leaders will attend the closing on Dec 18. Decisions by leaders to join the Copenhagen talks have buoyed the Dec. 7-18 meeting but time has run out to agree a full legal treaty, intended for next year. Copenhagen will instead merely agree a "politically binding" text. The four major emerging economies responsible for 30 percent of global carbon emissions targeted June to end talks on a legal text. Some other countries have suggested an end-2010 deadline. "The (negotiating) group shall complete its work by June 2010 and present the outcome of its work to the conference ... at the resumed session" of the Copenhagen meeting, the draft obtained by Reuters said. The draft recognised a scientific target to limit warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius and rejected the notion of border tariffs which added a surcharge on imports from high-polluting nations. "Parties shall not resort to any form of unilateral measures, including fiscal and non-fiscal border measures, against goods and services," it said. The draft did not specify how far rich countries should cut greenhouse gases by 2020, a key target year, nor how much money the four wanted from the industrialised world to help them prepare for climate change and cut their own greenhouse gas emissions. China and India have called on rich countries to cut their emissions by at least 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. When asked whether developing nations had dropped that demand, India's special envoy on climate change Shyam Saran in Copenhagen told Reuters: "The reason is that there are some countries in the G77 and China (the larger group of developing nations) who want a higher percentage. "You have the Alliance of Small Island States who say that the minimum should be 45 percent, not just 40 percent. So this is a matter for further discussion." The draft text called for a global climate fund to help developing countries prepare for and mitigate against climate change, to be administered by the Global Environment Facility. | 0 |
Or a chicken, or a salmon fillet, or any of a few hundred items that are hours from their midnight expiration date. Food that is nearly unsellable goes on sale at every one of S-market’s 900 stores in Finland, with prices that are already reduced by 30 percent slashed to 60percent off at exactly 9pm. It’s part of a two-year campaign to reduce food waste that company executives in this famously bibulous country decided to call “happy hour” in the hopes of drawing in regulars, like any decent bar. “I’ve gotten quite hooked on this,” said Kasimir Karkkainen, 27, who works in a hardware store, as he browsed the meat section in the Vallila S-market. It was 9:15 and he had grabbed a container of pork miniribs and 2 pounds of shrink-wrapped pork tenderloin. Total cost after the price drop: the equivalent of $4.63. About one-third of the food produced and packaged for human consumption is lost or wasted, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations. That equals 1.3 billion tons a year, worth nearly $680 billion. The figures represent more than just a disastrous misallocation of need and want, given that 10 percent of people in the world are chronically undernourished. All that excess food, scientists say, contributes to climate change. From 8 to 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions are related to food lost during harvest and production or wasted by consumers, a recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found. Landfills of rotting food emit methane, a gas that is roughly 25 times more harmful than carbon dioxide. And to harvest and transport all that wasted food requires billions of acres of arable land, trillions of gallons of water and vast amounts of fossil fuels. For consumers, cutting back on food waste is one of the few personal habits that can help the planet. But for some reason, a lot of people who fret about their carbon footprint aren’t sweating the vegetables and rump steak they toss into the garbage. “There’s been a lot of focus on energy,” said Paul Behrens, a professor in energy and environmental change at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. “But climate change is as much a land issue and a food issue as anything else.” Reducing waste is a challenge because selling as much food as possible is a tried, tested and ingrained part of all-you-can-eat cultures. Persuading merchants to promote and profit from “food rescue,” as it is known, is not so obvious.
Shoppers can choose from a variety of marked-down food items at the S-market in the Vallila neighbourhood in Helsinki, Aug. 22, 2019. Food that is nearly unsellable goes on sale at every one of S-market’s 900 stores in Finland, with prices that are already reduced by 30 percent slashed to 60 percent off at exactly 9pm as part of a two-year campaign to reduce food waste.
“Consumers are paying for the food, and who wants to reduce that?” said Toine Timmermans, director of the United Against Food Waste Foundation, a nonprofit in the Netherlands composed of companies and research institutes. “Who profits from reducing food waste?” Shoppers can choose from a variety of marked-down food items at the S-market in the Vallila neighbourhood in Helsinki, Aug. 22, 2019. Food that is nearly unsellable goes on sale at every one of S-market’s 900 stores in Finland, with prices that are already reduced by 30 percent slashed to 60 percent off at exactly 9pm as part of a two-year campaign to reduce food waste. A growing number of supermarkets, restaurants and startups — many based in Europe — are trying to answer that question. The United States is another matter. “Food waste might be a uniquely American challenge because many people in this country equate quantity with a bargain,” said Meredith Niles, an assistant professor in food systems and policy at the University of Vermont. “Look at the number of restaurants that advertise their supersised portions.” Nine of the 10 USsupermarket chains that were assessed by the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity last year were given a C grade or lower on food waste issues. Only Wal-Mart did better, largely for its efforts to standardise date labels and to educate staffers and customers. Some of the most promising food waste efforts are apps that connect food sellers to food buyers. Think Tinder, except one party in this hookup is a person and the other is an aging loaf of bread. Among the most popular is Too Good to Go, a company based in Copenhagen, with 13 million users and contracts with 25,000 restaurants and bakeries in 11 countries. Consumers pay about one-third of the sticker price for items, most of which goes to the retailer, with a small percentage paid to the app. In Denmark, food rescue has attained the scale and momentum of a cultural movement, one with its own intellectual godmother: Selina Juul, a graphic designer who immigrated from Russia at the age of 13. “I came from a country where there was a fear that we wouldn’t have food on the table tomorrow, where there were food shortages,” she said in a phone interview. “When we emigrated, I had never seen so much food. I was shocked. Then I was shocked again when I saw how much food people wasted.” In 2008, at the age of 28, she started a Facebook group called Stop Wasting Food. Within weeks, she was being interviewed on the radio. Soon after that, she came to the attention of Anders Jensen, buying director at REMA 1000, the largest supermarket chain in Denmark. “I was on a business trip to Scotland and I read about Selina in a newspaper,” Jensen recalled. “Around that time, we learned that every Dane was throwing out 63 kilos of food per year” — about 139 pounds — “and I was sitting in this airport thinking, ‘she’s right.’” After the two met in a Copenhagen cafe, REMA 1000 eliminated in-store bulk discounts. As of 2008, there would be no more three hams for the price of two, or any variations on that theme. “It exploded in the media because it was the first time a retailer said, ‘It’s OK if we sell less,’” Jensen said. REMA 1000 and Juul recognise that there is a limit to how much one company can do to reduce waste. Consciousness-raising was necessary. So Juul has enlisted famous Danes to join her cause. She’s co-writing a book on cooking with leftovers with Princess Marie, who worked in advertising and marketing before marrying into the Danish royal family. Celebrity chefs, like Rene Redzepi, have spread the word. Mette Frederiksen, the current prime minister, even made it a campaign issue this year. In Finland, reducing food waste has yet to become a political issue, but it is a selling point for at least one restaurant. Every dish on the menu of Loop, which is housed in a former mental hospital in Helsinki, is made from past-due ingredients donated by grocery stores and bakeries. Donations vary, so Loop’s chefs have no idea what they’ll be making until they walk into the restaurant’s kitchen. “It’s like an episode of ‘Master Chef’ every day,” said Johanna Kohvakka, founder of the nonprofit From Waste to Taste, which operates Loop. “But we try to make every dish look great so that people can share images online and say, ‘This was about to be wasted.’” Kohvakka says Loop turns a profit and could serve as a model for similar ventures. Executives at S-market in Finland make no such claims about their happy hour. Mika Lyytikainen, an S-market vice president, explained that the program simply reduces its losses. “When we sell at 60 percent off, we don’t earn any money, but we earn more than if the food was given to charity,” he said. “On the other hand, it’s now possible for every Finn to buy very cheap food in our stores.” It’s not unusual to find groups of S-market shoppers milling around with soon-to-be-discounted items from the shelves and waiting for the clock to strike at 9. “I’ve done that,” Karkkainen said, as he headed for the exits with his pork miniribs. Other Finns, it seems, haven’t fully embraced S-market’s anti-waste ethos. Harri Hartikainen, 71, was shopping one evening in Vallila and considered a 60percent off box of Kansas City-style grilled chicken wings. “I’ve never tried these before,” he said, dropping them into his shopping basket. “But it’s so cheap, if I don’t like it, I can just throw it out.” ©2019 The New York Times Company | 2 |
India hopes to wrap up a free trade agreement with ASEAN by March next year, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Wednesday in Singapore, and he vowed to show flexibility in negotiations. The Association of South East Asian Nations, which signed a landmark charter on Tuesday aiming for economic integration, is meeting leaders from Japan, China, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand in the annual "ASEAN+6" meeting. "I have no doubt that we all share a common political will to reach an agreement at the earliest," Singh said in his speech in the city state, a copy of which was released in New Delhi. "I want to assure you that on its part India has shown and will continue to show, the necessary flexibility and determination to achieve this objective. "We will work together with you to conclude the negotiations, as agreed, by March next year." The free trade agreement with India had stalled over agricultural tariffs. India is also negotiating a similar deal with the European Union and hopes to finalise it by end-2008. Singh said India and the ASEAN bloc should set a bilateral trade target of $50 billion by 2010, and also proposed setting up an India-ASEAN green fund with an initial investment of $5 million for pilot projects to promote clean technologies. New Delhi has also suggested an India-ASEAN network on climate change to pool and share expertise and exchange best practices to tackling global warming. "Once the fund is established I invite other countries to make contributions as well," Singh said. He said the Indian economy was now on a new growth trajectory and it was possible to sustain 9.0-10.0 percent economic growth annually for several years. The Indian economy, Asia's third largest, has grown at an average 8.6 percent for the past four years and is poised to grow at similar levels in the year to March 2008. | 0 |
Jiming at an event in Dhaka on Monday termed Quad “anti-China” and warned Bangladesh against any form of participation in the group, saying that it would “substantially damage” bilateral relations. Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen responded to Jiming’s remarks on Tuesday, saying that Bangladesh will take a decision based on "neutral and balanced" foreign policy. Ned Price, a spokesman for the State Department, was asked by a journalist about the matter during a daily press conference in Washington DC on Tuesday. “Well, we have taken note of that statement from the PRC ambassador to Bangladesh. What we would say is that we respect Bangladesh’s sovereignty, and we respect Bangladesh’s right to make foreign policy decisions for itself,” Price said. First established in 2007, Quad is an informal strategic dialogue established between the US, Japan, Australia and India. The initiative is widely regarded as a response to the growing economic and military power of China.
“We have an incredibly strong relationship with Bangladesh. We work closely with our partners there on a range of issues, from economic growth to climate change to humanitarian issues,” said Price. “And when it comes to the Quad, we’ve said this before, but the Quad, it’s an informal, essential, multilateral mechanism that right now conveys – convenes likeminded democracies – the United States, India, Australia, and Japan – to coordinate in the Indo-Pacific, and fundamentally, to push forward our goal of a free and open Indo-Pacific region.” Then US deputy secretary of state, Stephen Biegun, had discussed the Indo-Pacific Strategy with Bangladesh officials during his Dhaka visit in October last year. An open Indo-Pacific region will be “enormously” beneficial to Bangladesh as well as to its neighbours to work towards peaceful outcomes in the region, and to the US, he had said. “Unfortunately we are facing other challenges in the Indo-Pacific. I would not deny there are security concerns that affect and concern many of us who are Pacific nations or in the Indo-Pacific,” Biegun had said, in a clear reference to China. Before the Dhaka trip, he had visited India. New Delhi, wary of further antagonising China, has been careful to avoid being drawn into US-led alliances. But Biegun had said the United States had no plans to impinge on India's strategic autonomy, but to forge a relationship based on shared interests. | 1 |
“It was like walking through a nightmare,” he recalled. Shea Stadium in Queens, then the home of the New York Mets, had been transformed into a staging area. Valentine, then the Mets’ manager, assisted there. On Sept 21, 2001, the Mets hosted the Atlanta Braves in their first game in New York since the attacks. Mike Piazza smacked a home run in the eighth inning that lifted the Mets to a 3-2 victory, providing a level of catharsis for many in a reeling city and country. “It was a spontaneous moment of people coming together,” said Valentine, now 71. “Can that happen again in a nation that is so divisive now that it feels that we’re at war within our boundaries?” Twenty years after 9/11, the United States is at another moment of crisis, but the ties between sports and patriotism have severed for some and tightened for others. The jingoism at sporting events that temporarily surged in 1991 during the Gulf War and roared back after 9/11 now often drives wedges, after the largest social protests in history against systemic racism during a politicised pandemic. The playing of the national anthem and “God Bless America,” giant American flags, military flyovers and patriotic ceremonies are as ubiquitous at sporting events today as first downs, home runs and slam dunks. But the end of the war in Afghanistan, against a backdrop of social change and reflection on the dynamic between this country and its people, stokes debate on how or even whether such displays should continue. “I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with patriotism in sport,” said Ibtihaj Muhammad, the first Muslim American to win an Olympic medal, at the 2016 Olympic Games. “Sport bridges so many different people and in cultures and identities.” But, Muhammad said, it may be time to change how the patriotism is displayed a generation after 9/11. When she sees a military flyover, she wonders how it impacts the climate or whether the money can be better used in underserved communities. “And that’s a better way to celebrate our patriotism and our commitment to this idea of our nationality,” Muhammad said. “Why not try to elevate those who don’t have?” Steve Kerr, coach of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors, said friendly ribbing between fans, like he saw at a recent baseball game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Diego Padres, is a “very indirect” show of patriotism because of the spirit and energy. “But I also think that during the last two decades, we have all been subject to patriotic manipulation in many ways,” said Kerr, whose father, Malcolm, was the president of the American University of Beirut when he was shot and killed in Lebanon in 1984. “And because it’s directly related to the military and to the wars that we have been engaged in for two decades, it’s a strange dynamic at games, and I’m always conflicted by that dynamic.” In the 1960s, Pete Rozelle, the NFL commissioner at the time, dispatched players to Vietnam for goodwill tours and mandated that players stand at attention during the national anthem. In 1968, Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists at the Olympics in Mexico City. Nearly three decades later, the NBA suspended Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, a guard for the Denver Nuggets, for declining to stand during the anthem. In 2015, then-US Sens John McCain and Jeff Flake, both of Arizona, released a report disclosing that the Pentagon had paid the NFL and other sports leagues $6.8 million to host what they described as “paid patriotism.” “Unsuspecting audience members became the subjects of paid marketing campaigns rather than simply bearing witness to teams’ authentic, voluntary shows of support for the brave men and women who wear our nation’s uniform,” the report said. The back-and-forth of protest and compulsory patriotism at sporting events has come to a head over the past five years. In 2016, Colin Kaepernick began kneeling during the national anthem as a member of the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers, jump-starting the current wave of peaceful protests of social injustice and police brutality against Black people and other people of colour. At first, Kaepernick sat during the anthem. He decided to kneel after talking to Nate Boyer, a retired Army Green Beret who walked onto the University of Texas football team as a long snapper and signed to the Seattle Seahawks as an undrafted free agent. In this fraught political climate, many Republican politicians, including former President Donald Trump, have accused Kaepernick and other athletes who kneel during the anthem of disrespecting the military, even though Boyer recommended the gesture and Kaepernick has said repeatedly that that is not his intent. Boyer, on a recent telephone call, said he understood that some people saw it as disrespectful. “But what I don’t understand,” he said, “what really frustrates me, is why people can’t have a different perspective on that, and still respect each other.” He added: “Everything seems so one way or the other, all or nothing, right now. That’s just not what that flag represents to me. I don’t think it represents that to a lot of people.” The NFL did not respond to requests for comment from Commissioner Roger Goodell about shows of patriotism in the sport. Few athletes joined Kaepernick’s initial protest. Bruce Maxwell, a catcher for the Oakland Athletics whose father served in the military, became in 2017 the first MLB player to kneel during the anthem. “I did it because it was what was right,” Maxwell said, adding, “I was standing up for myself. I was standing up for my family. I was standing up for the people who couldn’t be heard and/or haven’t been heard.” By the summer of 2020, when waves of athletes protested after the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, kneeling was common in sports and almost universal in the NBA and the WNBA. In a whiplash reversal, athletes such as former New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees, who called kneeling “disrespecting the flag,” received criticism for their support of the patriotic exhibitions. The protests forced organisations such as US Soccer, FIFA and the NFL to reconfigure policies that required athletes to respectfully stand during the national anthem. But although the NBA embraced kneeling in the final months of its 2019-20 season, it pushed back when the Dallas Mavericks, at the direction of team owner, Mark Cuban, did not play the national anthem for several games at the start of the 2020-21 season. “We respect and always have respected the passion people have for the anthem and our country,” Cuban said in a statement through the team at the time. “But we also loudly hear the voices of those who feel that the anthem does not represent them. We feel that their voices need to be respected and heard, because they have not been.” The league required the team to start playing the anthem again. “The ritual of playing the national anthem prior to sporting events reinforces our sense of belonging,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said in an interview this week. “For generations in the US, people have turned to sports in difficult times in search of unity and togetherness. We saw that in the days and weeks following the events of 9/11, and we’re seeing it now during this pandemic. People crave that physical coming together because it provides a sense of stability and comfort. With sports, there is a real community aspect to them that is hard to find anywhere else.” But the anthem doesn’t resonate with everyone in the same way, said Charles Ross, chair of the African American Studies Program at the University of Mississippi. Francis Scott Key, the national anthem’s songwriter, owned enslaved people. “When you start talking about the millions of African Americans, their history and what their families have had to probably go through to get the opportunity to sit in that seat at that professional venue and get ready to see this game being played, they’ve got a very different kind of experience than the average white American and looking at America as this kind of holistic monolithic country,” Ross said. The vast majority of players in the NFL, NBA and WNBA are Black. States such Texas and Wisconsin are considering bills that would require that the national anthem be played before any sporting event held at sites financed in part by taxpayer money. Wisconsin state Rep Tony Kurtz, a military veteran, is one of the assembly members who proposed the bill in his state after Cuban did not play the anthem in Dallas. In May, the bill passed the state Assembly with a bipartisan vote, 74-22. “I was called a fascist, a Nazi, just a whole bunch of things,” said Kurtz, a Republican. “I just believe in our country. We are one nation. At the end of the day, we all still got to get along. I think that’s why it resonates so much with sports and why it resonates so much after 9/11. We needed unity in this country.” Wisconsin state Rep Don Vruwink, a Democrat, voted in the bill’s favour. But Vruwink, a longtime high school and youth sports coach, questioned the bill’s practicality, saying that it could not be enforced and that he worried it diluted the spirit of the anthem. “This bill wasn’t about the logistics,” Vruwink said. “It was about a culture war, in my mind. Forcing people to say, is it good or bad, or whatever, which is unfortunate.” Although this tension plays out at arenas, and causes fiery debates from the court to the halls of Congress, several sports commissioners, like Silver, still see a role for patriotic displays at sporting events. “Crisis brings out the best and worst in people and companies,” said MLS Commissioner Don Garber, adding: “I really believe that even during the most polarising times, sports seems to cut through all of that when it needs to most, and I continue to believe that our industry will continue to do so.” Among the major sports, Garber and Gary Bettman of the NHL were the only current commissioners in their roles on 9/11. That morning, Garber was about to enter the Lincoln Tunnel when he looked up and saw the first tower on fire. He spent the night in the office of his brother, Mitch, a longtime attorney for a law firm that represented police officers out of an office near ground zero. Cathy Engelbert, a longtime corporate executive and now the commissioner of the WNBA, worked across the street from the World Trade Center. In a statement, she said she remembered “vividly how sports played such a vital role in bringing our country together.” She added: “Two decades later, I still believe that sports continues to be unifying.” Bud Selig, MLB’s commissioner at the time, described baseball as an institution with important social responsibilities. The two most important instances, Selig said, were when Jackie Robinson broke the colour barrier and when baseball returned after 9/11. Then-President George W. Bush threw out the first pitch before Game 3 of the World Series at Yankee Stadium that year. “The reaction of the crowd showed that our country was on its way back,” Selig said in a statement. “It is inherent in every level of our game that the welfare of our country comes first.” Muhammad, who won a bronze medal with the US women’s sabre team at the 2016 Games, also became the first US Olympian in any sport to compete while wearing a hijab. After 9/11, hate crimes against Muslims escalated. Muhammad said “being a visible Muslim woman comes with its difficulties.” “I don’t think that my experience as an American and having lived through 9/11 is any different from anyone else’s, other than the Muslim community became, like, literal targets afterward,” Muhammad said. “And I remember just that change in which people saw me, in the way that I was treated even sometimes by teachers, because I was young when it happened.” And being Black, she said, is “10 times harder in this country.” But that, in part, fuels her willingness to show her patriotism, including in sports. “My parents made a very intentional effort to make sure that me and my siblings understood our own history as descendants of an enslaved community,” she said. “And so I am very proud of the country that my ancestors had built for free, and I don’t allow other people to dictate that connection to patriotism. I never have.” ©The New York Times Company | 2 |
Thirty meters from the kiln the heat is palpable. It is converting crushed stone to 'clinker' for cement at temperatures of 1,500 degrees Celsius. It was designed to burn pulverized coal. But rising coal prices have prompted Castle Cement, a unit of Germany's Heidelberg Cement HBCB.DH, to replace over half the coal with alternatives -- tires, bone meal, paper. Across Europe, companies are suffering under high energy costs. Oil hit a record high above $140 per barrel on June 26. "We've had to increase our use of secondary fuels such as whole tires, meat and bone meal, paper and plastics and recycled solvents," said Gareth Price, General Manager of the Ketton works. "This keeps our costs down and also reduces the amount of waste going to landfill." Beyond the 68 meter-long steel tube of the furnace, an enormous cylindrical mill grinds 130 tonnes of clinker an hour to a fine powder with a deafening rumble. It runs on electricity, which cannot be replaced with other fuels, and power prices have more than doubled in the past year. With a collapse in British house building following the credit crunch, the company's ability to pass costs onto customers is limited, putting pressure on the bottom line. Castle Cement is not alone in feeling the pressure. Shares in the world's top paper and packaging firms Stora Enso Oyj, UPM-Kymmene and Huhtamaki fell sharply earlier this month when the Finnish firms were forced to issue profit warnings on the back of higher energy costs. Companies in all sectors, from food makers such as Cadbury in the UK to Austria's RHI, the world's largest fire proof material maker, have warned that higher oil, gas, coal and power prices are pushing up the costs of manufacturing products and moving them to customers. FEELING THE PAIN Industry says the situation has reached a tipping point and urgent action is needed from the European Union and governments to avoid business closures and job losses. "The real pain is kicking in," David Gilett, director of IFIEC Europe, a lobby group for energy intensive industries across Europe, said. "If the forward prices for winter power and gas apply when it comes around to actually buying the power and gas, then there will be real difficulties." Crude, coal and gas prices have risen globally in recent years but businesses in Europe feel they have suffered more than other regions. Gilett noted that many countries subsidize energy prices, especially in Asia and the Middle East. In the United States, power and gas prices are often lower than those in liberalized western European markets. In the past nine months benchmark UK gas prices have been 20-30 percent above U.S. Henry Hub prices, according to data from oil giant BP Plc. Current baseload UK electricity prices of around 90 pounds per megawatt hour are also much higher than levels recorded at U.S. power hubs in recent weeks. European businesses blame a failure to implement proper competition in continental power and gas markets. They are now pressing the EU to push ahead with more vigour in implementing a planned directive that aims to foster competition by separating ownership of power and gas production activities from transportation infrastructure. "Europe needs to make sure its energy position is competitive with America and elsewhere," said Chris Tane, Chief Executive of Ineos ChlorVinyls, whose Runcorn plant for making chlorine uses as much electricity as nearby Liverpool, England's sixth-largest city. Industry says Europe's Emissions Trading Scheme is also boosting power prices and the impact on industry is likely to worsen if the EU presses ahead with its plans to make more sectors subject to CO2 emissions caps. Big energy users would also like to see changes in the tax system to ease their burden, such as cuts in taxes on fuel and power, accelerated depreciation for equipment and a variable corporate tax rate that fall when energy costs rise, Gilett said. GOVERNMENTS NOT LISTENING Loathe to give up tax revenues and more concerned with alleviating the impact of high fuel prices on the old and unemployed, governments have not taken heed of industry's case, Gilett said. "There seems to be no recognition at all of the pressures this is placing on the industrial core," Gilett said. With a weak economic climate often making it hard to pass higher energy costs on to customers, businesses are forced to make ever-greater efforts to use energy more efficiently. Castle Cement now mills as much cement as it can at night and the weekends, when electricity prices are lower. In future, it will try to schedule big maintenance projects that require plant shutdowns for the winter, when power prices are higher. Old machines have been replaced with more efficient versions. High energy costs require Price to run a tighter ship than in the past as operations must run smoothly and reliably to optimize energy use. Breakdowns caused by poor maintenance of machinery can shift activity to times when power costs are higher and lead to idling equipment elsewhere in the production chain. "Energy management is now a topic of everyday conversation. We are completely changing the way we work," he said. | 0 |
LAS VEGAS/LOS ANGELES,Wed Mar 11, (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Desert golf course superintendent Bill Rohret is doing something that 20 years ago would have seemed unthinkable -- ripping up bright, green turf by the acre and replacing it with rocks. Back then "they came in with bulldozers and dynamite, and they took the desert and turned it into a green oasis," Rohret said, surveying a rock-lined fairway within sight of the Las Vegas strip. "Now ... it's just the reverse." The Angel Park Golf Club has torn out 65 acres of off-course grass in the last five years, and 15 more will be removed by 2011, to help conserve local supplies of one of the most precious commodities in the parched American West -- fresh water. But Rohret's efforts have their limits. His and many other golf courses still pride themselves on their pristine greens and fairways and sparkling fountains, requiring huge daily expenditures of water. Aiming to cut per capita use by about a third in the face of withering drought expected to worsen with global warming, water authorities in the United States' driest major city are paying customers $1.50 per square foot to replace grass lawns with desert landscaping. Built in the Mojave Desert, Las Vegas leads Western U.S. cities scrambling to slash water consumption, increase recycling and squeeze more from underground aquifers as long-reliable surface water sources dry up. From handing out fines for leaky sprinklers to charging homeowners high rates for high use, water officials in the U.S. West are chasing down squandered water one gallon at a time. Nowhere is the sense of crisis more visible than on the outskirts of Las Vegas at Lake Mead, the nation's largest manmade reservoir, fed by the once-mighty Colorado River. A principal source of water for Nevada and Southern California, the lake has dipped to below half its capacity, leaving an ominous, white "bathtub ring" that grows thicker each year. "We are in the eye of the storm," said Pat Mulroy, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority. "As the realities of climate change began to manifest themselves at the beginning of this century, we had to get serious about it." For now, policymakers have emphasized the need to curb water use rather than urban growth, though the U.S. recession has put the brakes on commercial and housing development that otherwise would be at odds with the West's water scarcity. GETTING TOUGH Warm, dry weather has long made the American West attractive to visitors, but piped-in water has created artificial oases, luring millions to settle in the region. Las Vegas has ranked as one of the fastest-growing major cities. But scientists say climate change is shriveling the snow pack in California's Sierra Nevada, the state's main source of fresh surface water, and in the Rocky Mountains that feed the Colorado River, whose waters sustain seven states. Further pressure from farming and urban sprawl is straining underground aquifers, placing a question mark over the future growth of cities from Los Angeles to Tucson, Arizona. "There is going to have to be a big adjustment in the American Southwest and in California as we come to grips with limits in this century -- not just limited water, but also limited water supply," said James Powell, author of the book "Dead Pool," exploring challenges facing planners in the West. Reactions among local water authorities differ. In Phoenix, the United States' fifth-largest city, authorities say sustainable groundwater and ample surface water allocations from the Colorado and Salt rivers meet the city's needs, even factoring in growth through a moderate drought. The city is also recycling waste water and plans to pump some back into the aquifer as a cushion. Tucson will require new businesses to start collecting rainwater for irrigation in 2010. California requires developers of large housing projects to prove they have sufficient water. In Las Vegas, where rain is so infrequent that some residents can remember the days it fell in a given year, front-yard turf has been banned for new homes. The Southern Nevada Water Authority also has hired "water cops" to fan out into the suburbs to identify violations of mandatory lawn irrigation schedules and wasteful run-off. Repeat offenders get $80 fines. Major hotel-casinos such as the MGM Mirage and Harrah's Entertainment have adopted "green" building codes, including modifications designed to slash water use by 40 percent. Those measures are starting to pay off, with daily water use down 15 percent per person in the greater Las Vegas area. BUYING TIME In a wake-up call to California, water officials there recently announced that prolonged drought was forcing them to cut Sierra-fed supplies pumped to cities and irrigation districts by 85 percent. That has led many California cities, topped by Los Angeles, the nation's second-largest, to plan for rationing, including price-enforced household conservation and tough new lawn watering restrictions. "The level of severity of this drought is something we haven't seen since the early 1970s," Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said in unveiling his city's drought plan, which also would put more water cops on the beat. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last month called on the state's urban users to cut water consumption 20 percent or face mandatory conservation measures. The California drought, now in its third year, is the state's costliest ever. Complicating matters are sharp restrictions on how much water can be pumped from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta in northern California, which furnishes much of the state's irrigation and drinking supplies, to protect endangered fish species. Moreover, the severe dry spell is leaving the state more vulnerable to wildfires, which last year consumed some several Los Angeles suburbs. The previous year, fires forced a record 500,000 Southern Californians to flee their homes. PLANNING FOR THE WORST Conservation will buy time, experts say. But bolder steps are needed in anticipation of longer droughts and renewed urban expansion once the recession ends. Cities like Los Angeles and San Diego are revisiting an idea once abandoned in the face of staunch political opposition -- recycling purified sewer water for drinking supplies. Disparaged by critics as "toilet-to-tap," such recycling plans have gained new currency from the success of the year-old Groundwater Replenishing System in Orange County near Los Angeles. That system distills wastewater through advanced treatment and pumps it into the ground to recharge the area's aquifer, providing drinking supplies for 500,000 people, including residents of Anaheim, home of Disneyland. Water specialists also see a need to capture more rainfall runoff that otherwise flows out to sea and to change the operation of dams originally built for flood control to maximize their storage capacity. The situation in Las Vegas has grown so dire that water authorities plan to build a $3 billion pipeline to tap aquifers lying beneath a remote part of Nevada, a project critics call the greatest urban water grab in decades. Southern Nevada water czar Mulroy says a broader national conversation about water is needed -- but not happening. "We are talking about investing in public infrastructure, we are looking at building projects, but I get frustrated because we are doing it in complete denial of the climate change conditions that we are facing," she said. "We are not looking at where the oceans are rising, where the floods are going to occur, where things are going to go from that normal state to something extraordinary." | 0 |
It could produce the ultimate "hot chick flick", or it may erupt as a boiling international rant against the threat of global warming. But whichever way it goes, producers of an all-women directed interactive mobile phone film say it will be a "cinematic symphony of women's voices from around the world". The project -- entitled "Overheated Symphony -- is part of the Birds Eye View film festival taking place in London next month which showcases the work of female film-makers. Women across the world are being asked to make a short film -- a "quick flick" -- between 40 seconds and four minutes long on a mobile phone and then send it via the internet to a London-based film director who will pull them all together. Apart from the the overall theme "Overheated", there is no restriction on content or subject matter. "If it's hot, we'd like to see it," the project's Web site declares: "Ladies, wherever you are, whoever you are, we want you to join in."
According to Sarah Turner, the British film director whose task it will be to create a final edit from the mobile phone contributions, the inspiration for "Overheated Symphony" was the 1927 film by German filmmaker Walter Ruttmann called "Berlin - Symphony of a Great City", which used a montage of still pictures from many sources to document city life. Like that work, Overheated Symphony will be "very abstract", says Turner. It will give those who contribute the chance to engage in a "dialogue of ideas" with women across the world. "Because they are films made by women, women's themes and issues are bound to be an integral part of the finished piece," she told Reuters. "I expect some of them to be quite intense, because this is quite an intense thing to respond to. We all have overheated moments, when we are angry about something, or upset, or when we are sexually hot. We might even end up having some menopause films, you never know." Turner is gathering the mobile films ahead of the March 2 deadline and will then produce a live edit of the symphony to be aired on March 9 at London's Institute of Contemporary Arts. Rachel Millward, director of the Birds Eye View festival, which is now in its third year, says the film is as much about new technology as it is about women and heat. "The way film and media are going is very much towards interactivity and multi-platform projects," she said. "We wanted to develop a project along those lines, and also one that had a kind of gamey feel to it -- the sense that everyone can join in and have a play." "Making a film from all these female voices around the world is quite a beautiful thing, but also it's about shooting down the idea that women are not up to date with technology." Contributors are being asked on www.birds-eye-view.co.uk to upload their cinematic efforts onto the festival's own youtube channel to be edited. And while Millward admits the end result is as yet unknown, she is confident it will be far more than the sum of its parts. "The great thing about this film is that you can't predict what it will be," she says. "It could be about climate change, or it could be about passion. I imagine it will be all of those things and more." | 0 |
The death toll continued to rise on Wednesday as landslides and flooding damaged homes and stranded thousands of tourists flocking to vacation spots and pilgrimage sites during Hinduism’s festive season, which coincides with the fall harvest. “Historically October is the start of post-monsoon,” said RK Jenamani, a senior scientist from India’s meteorological department. “But this time what happened was that western disturbances were very, very intense.” Cyclonic conditions in the Bay of Bengal off India’s east coast sent heavy winds and rainfall across the subcontinent, reaching the Himalayas in Nepal and spreading all the way down to the coastal ravines of India’s southwestern peninsula. In the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand, days of heavy rainfall — in one place, the most since 1897 — killed at least 46 people and left hundreds more stranded in hillside resorts, with flooded lakes swamping roads. South Asia’s monsoons have always arrived with fury. But the scenes of death and destruction playing out in the region are yet another reminder of the urgency of climate change, experts say. A warming climate will mean more frequent extreme rainfall in many parts of the world, scientists have said. India and its neighbours have struggled to square development projects intended to lift millions of people out of poverty with the risks of a changing climate. Highways and bridges have been built in remote districts increasingly prone to landslides and floods. And countries, particularly India, are relying heavily on coal to fuel growth, something that is likely to come under the spotlight at the United Nations’ COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, this month. Governments in South Asia are expected to push wealthy countries for financial aid to help them shift away from fossil fuels and toward cleaner sources of energy.
Floods, landslides kill at least 43 people in Nepal
That switch — if it happens — could take years, stalling not only international pledges to reduce global carbon emissions, but also projects to mitigate the effects of a less predictable and more dangerous climate. Meteorologists were not expecting the catastrophic rainfall that has deluged India and Nepal in recent days. About 100 people were evacuated from a Lemon Tree resort in Nainital, a former British colonial hill station in Uttarakhand. Hotel management staff remained to care for older adults, after rescue workers decided that an evacuation could be too risky for them given the hairpin turns and steep drops on the district’s narrow mountain road. “The water is receding now, but the vehicles are still stranded,” said Akriti Arora, a company spokesman. Uttarakhand officials feared the death toll could rise further as the receding waters exposed people trapped under the debris. Torrential rains also soaked southern India, triggering flash floods and landslides in the state of Kerala. A couple sailed through the flooded streets of their village in an aluminium cooking pot to get to their wedding. More than 40 people in Kerala drowned or were killed in the recent landslides and floods, said Neethu V. Thomas, a hazard analyst at Kerala’s disaster management agency. “All the forces are on the ground,” she said. Still, the forecast of another bout of heavy rainfall in the days ahead complicated a full assessment. “It’s difficult to get all of the details,” she said. This week, officials in Kerala opened overflowing dams, the first time state officials had made such a move since catastrophic flooding killed more than 400 people in 2018.
At least 34 dead after floods in north India
India deployed navy and air force personnel to assist with rescue efforts, and to force people living in the path downstream from the dam to evacuate. Landslides and floods also struck Nepal this week, with at least 50 people killed in inundated far-flung villages. Hundreds of houses in hilly areas were swept away. Highways were blocked, and a regional airport, its tarmac submerged, was forced to cancel flights. There, too, the cloudbursts surprised scientists, who had forecast that the Himalayan nation’s period of heavy rains had ended more than a week ago. Rice paddy that was ready for harvest was damaged in the rain, causing Nepal’s farmers to despair and prompting fears of a food crisis in one of the world’s poorest countries. “Rainfalls in October were reported in the past, too, but not to this intensity,” said Ajaya Dixit, an expert on climate change vulnerability in Nepal. “Climate change is real, and it is happening.” ©2021 The New York Times Company | 0 |
Brazil, China, India and South Africa have urged wealthy nations to hand over $10 billion to poor nations this year to help fight climate change. The funds were pledged in a non-binding deal agreed at last December's Copenhagen climate conference. The group - known as BASIC - said the money must be available at once "as proof of their commitment" to address the global challenge. The plea was issued after a meeting of the four nations in Delhi on Sunday. The four nations, led by China, also pledged to meet an end-month deadline to submit action plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Environment ministers and envoys from the four nations met in New Delhi in a show of unity by countries whose greenhouse gas emissions are among the fastest rising in the world. The bloc was key to brokering a political agreement at the Copenhagen talks in December and its meeting in India was designed in part to put pressure on richer nations to make good on funding commitments. "We have sent a very powerful symbol to the world of our intentions," the Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said at a joint press conference after seven hours of talks. The group discussed setting up a climate fund to help nations most vulnerable to the impact of global warming, which it said would act as a wakeup call for wealthier countries to meet their pledges on financial assistance and give $10 billion in 2010. Rich countries have pledged $30 billion in climate change funding for the 2010-12 period and set a goal of $100 billion by 2020, far less than what developing countries had wanted. The group in New Delhi said releasing $10 billion this year would send a signal of the rich countries' commitment. The four said they were in talks to set up an independent fund for the same purpose, but gave no timeline or figure. "When we say we will be reinforcing technical support as well as funds to the most vulnerable countries, we are giving a slap in the face to the rich countries," Brazil's Environment Minister Carlos Minc said through a translator. The non-binding accord worked out at the Copenhagen climate summit was described by many as a failure because it fell short of the conference's original goal of a more ambitious commitment to prevent more heatwaves, droughts and crop failures. China is the world's top CO2 emitter, while India is number four. China was blamed by many countries at Copenhagen for obstructing a tougher deal and has refused to submit to outside scrutiny of its plans to brake greenhouse gas emissions. China has pledged to cut the amount of carbon dioxide produced for each unit of economic growth by 40-45 percent by 2020, compared with 2005 levels. For India, that figure is up to 25 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels. Xie Zhenhua, deputy head of the powerful National Development and Reform Commission, said the world needed to take immediate action to fight climate change. But in the wake of a controversial exaggeration by the U.N. climate panel on the threat of global warming to the Himalayan glaciers, he called for an "open attitude" to climate science. "(There is a) point of view that the climate change or climate warming issue is caused by the cyclical element of the nature itself. I think we need to adopt an open attitude to the scientific research," he said through a translator. "We want our views to be more scientific and more consistent." | 4 |
Truck makers are divided into two camps. One faction, which includes Traton, Volkswagen’s truck unit, is betting on batteries because they are widely regarded as the most efficient option. The other camp, which includes Daimler Truck and Volvo, the two largest truck manufacturers, argues that fuel cells that convert hydrogen into electricity — emitting only water vapor — make more sense because they would allow long-haul trucks to be refueled quickly. The choice companies make could be hugely consequential, helping to determine who dominates trucking in the electric vehicle age and who ends up wasting billions of dollars on the Betamax equivalent of electric truck technology, committing a potentially fatal error. It takes years to design and produce new trucks, so companies will be locked into the decisions they make now for a decade or more. “It’s obviously one of the most important technology decisions we have to make,” said Andreas Gorbach, a member of the management board of Daimler Truck, which owns Freightliner in the United States and is the largest truck maker in the world. The stakes for the environment and for public health are also high. If many truck makers wager incorrectly, it could take much longer to clean up trucking than scientists say we have to limit the worst effects of climate change. In the United States, medium- and heavy-duty trucks account for 7 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. Trucks tend to spend much more time on the road than passenger cars. The war in Ukraine has added urgency to the debate, underlining the financial and geopolitical risks of fossil fuel dependence. Although sales of electric cars are exploding, large truck makers have only begun to mass-produce emission-free vehicles. Daimler Truck, for example, began producing an electric version of its heavy-duty Actros truck, with a maximum range of 240 miles, late last year. Tesla unveiled a design for a battery-powered semitruck in 2017 but has not set a firm production date. Cost will be a decisive factor. Unlike car buyers, who might splurge on a vehicle because they like the way it looks or the status it conveys, truck buyers carefully calculate how much a rig is going to cost them to buy, maintain and refuel. Battery-powered trucks sell for about three times as much as equivalent diesel models, although owners may recoup much of the cost in fuel savings. Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles will probably be even more expensive, perhaps one-third more than battery-powered models, according to auto experts. But the savings in fuel and maintenance could make them cheaper to own than diesel trucks as early as 2027, according to Daimler Truck. “The environmental side is hugely important, but if it doesn’t make financial sense, nobody’s going to do it,” said Paul Gioupis, CEO of Zeem, a company that is building one of the largest electric vehicle charging depots in the country about 1 1/2 miles from Los Angeles International Airport. Zeem will recharge trucks and service and clean them for clients such as hotels, tour operators and delivery companies. Proponents of hydrogen trucks argue that their preferred semis will refuel as fast as conventional diesel rigs and will also weigh less. Fuel-cell systems are lighter than batteries, an important consideration for trucking companies seeking to maximize payload. Fuel cells tend to require fewer raw materials such as lithium, nickel or cobalt that have been rising in price. (They do, however, require platinum, which soared in price after Russia invaded Ukraine. Russia is a major supplier.) A new truck costs $140,000 or more. Owners eager to clock as many cargo-hauling miles as possible won’t want their drivers to spend hours recharging batteries, said Daimler's Gorbach. “The longer the range, the higher the load, the better it is for hydrogen,” he said. But other truck makers argue that batteries are much more efficient, and getting better all the time. They point out that it takes prodigious amounts of energy to extract hydrogen from water. Instead of using electricity to make hydrogen, battery proponents say, why not just let the energy directly power the truck’s motors? That argument will become stronger as technical advances allow manufacturers to produce batteries that can store more energy per pound and that can recharge in minutes, rather than hours. A long-haul truck that can recharge in a half-hour is a few years away, said Andreas Kammel, who is in charge of electrification strategy at Traton, whose truck brands include Scania, MAN and Navistar. “The cost advantage is here to stay, and it’s significant,” Kammel said. The hydrogen camp acknowledges that batteries are more efficient. All the major truck manufacturers plan to use batteries in smaller trucks, or trucks that travel shorter distances. The debate is about what makes the most sense for long-haul trucks traveling more than 200 miles a day, the kind that carry heavy loads across the breadth of the United States, Europe or China. Most countries will struggle to produce enough electricity to drive fleets of battery-powered trucks, Daimler and Volvo executives say, arguing that hydrogen is a potentially unlimited source of energy. They envision a world in which countries that have a lot of sunlight, such as Morocco or Australia, use solar energy to produce hydrogen that they send by ship or pipeline to the rest of the world. Gerrit Marx, CEO of IVECO, a truck maker based in Italy, noted that Milan suffers power outages in summer when people run their air conditioners. Just imagine, he said, what will happen when people start plugging in electric vehicles. “If you have heavy-duty trucks also on the grid for charging, it’s not going to work,” he said. IVECO is manufacturing trucks for Nikola, the troubled American startup that plans to offer battery-powered and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. Hydrogen is also the only practical form of emission-free power for energy-hungry construction equipment or municipal vehicles such as firetrucks, Marx said. Much of the hydrogen produced today is extracted from natural gas, a process that generates more greenhouse gases than burning diesel. So-called green hydrogen produced with solar or water power is scarce and expensive. Hydrogen enthusiasts say the supply will expand quickly, and the price will come down, because of demand from steel, chemical and fertilizer producers that are also under pressure to reduce emissions. They will use hydrogen to run smelters and other industrial operations. “Less than 10 percent of green hydrogen will be directed to road transport,” said Lars Stenqvist, a member of the executive board of Volvo who is responsible for technology. “We will sort of piggyback on the demand and infrastructure from other industries.” Hydrogen has support from a formidable alliance of large corporations called H2Accelerate that includes truck makers Daimler, Volvo and IVECO; energy companies Royal Dutch Shell, OMV of Austria and TotalEnergies of France; and Linde, a German producer of industrial gas. Daimler and Volvo, normally intense rivals, have teamed up to develop fuel cells that convert hydrogen to electricity. Hydrogen boosters have been wrong before. In the 1990s and early 2000s, Daimler and Toyota invested heavily to develop passenger cars that would run on hydrogen fuel cells. But the price of batteries fell and their performance improved faster than that of hydrogen cars. (Daimler Truck and the Mercedes-Benz car division have since split into separate companies. The car division is no longer selling hydrogen vehicles.) To be sure, battery-powered trucks will also require major investment in high-voltage charging stations and other infrastructure. But building a charging network is likely to be much less expensive than establishing a green hydrogen industry along with the pipelines and tankers needed to transport the gas. Fears that the electrical grid can’t handle a fleet of battery-powered trucks are overblown, said Traton's Kammel. Long-haul trucks will tend to charge at night when demand from other energy users is low, he said. In the United States, he said, big trucks spend a lot of time in Midwestern and Western states with plenty of wind and solar energy. Whoever is right, battery-powered trucks will hit the road first. Daimler doesn’t plan to begin mass-producing a hydrogen fuel cell truck until after 2025, and in the meantime, it is planning to offer battery power as an option for smaller trucks, or large trucks that travel limited distances. Volvo and IVECO are pursuing similar strategies. The big risk for those companies is that the affordability and performance of batteries, which have already exceeded expectations, could make hydrogen trucks obsolete before they get to market. “The convenience disadvantages keep melting away,” Kammel said of battery power, “and the cost advantages keep growing.” © 2022 The New York Times Company | 0 |
Ukraine has accused Russia of sending soldiers and weapons to help separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine launch a new offensive in a conflict that has killed more than 4,000 people.British Prime Minister David Cameron blasted Russia's actions as unacceptable on Friday, warning that they could draw greater sanctions from the United States and the European Union."I would still hope that the Russians will see sense and recognize that they should allow Ukraine to develop as an independent and free country, free to make its choices," Cameron told reporters in Canberra."If Russia takes a positive approach towards Ukraine's freedom and responsibility, we could see those sanctions removed, if Russia continues to make matters worse then we could see those sanctions increased, it's as simple as that."Russia denies sending troops and tanks into Ukraine.But increasing violence, truce violations and reports of unmarked armed convoys traveling from the direction of the Russian border have aroused fears that a shaky Sept. 5 truce could collapse.The G20 leaders summit in Brisbane is focused on boosting world growth, fireproofing the global banking system and closing tax loopholes for giant multinationals.But with much of the economic agenda agreed and a climate change deal signed last week in Beijing between the United States and China, security concerns are moving to center-stage.Ukraine has not been a top focus during a pair of summits in Asia this past week, U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes said, although President Barack Obama did raise it briefly with Putin when both attended the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in China.Obama arrives in Brisbane on Saturday and will be discussing his frustration over Ukraine with a key bloc including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and Cameron."They've been key towards sending a shared message to the Russians and the Ukrainian government," Rhodes told reporters. "So it will be an opportunity for him to check in with them."CONSENSUS TO ALLOW PUTINThere had been calls from some in Australia to block Putin from attending the summit given Russia's actions in Ukraine and the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 by Russian-backed rebels, but the overwhelming consensus was against it.News reports that a convoy of Russian warships had arrived earlier this week in international waters north of Brisbane, the venue of the summit, also created a flutter.Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said it was unusual but not unprecedented for the Russian navy to be so far south."Let’s not forget that Russia has been much more militarily assertive in recent times," he said on Thursday. "We're seeing, regrettably, a great deal of Russian assertiveness right now in Ukraine."Merkel, speaking to reporters in Auckland, played down any threat posed by the warships but joined the leaders speaking out against Putin ahead of his arrival in Brisbane on Friday evening."What is concerning me quite more is that the territorial integrity of Ukraine is being violated and that the agreement of Minsk is not followed," she said, referring to the truce accord.In addition to Ukraine, the crises in the Middle East are threatening to overshadow the economic agenda.British nationals who become foreign fighters abroad could be prevented from returning home under new laws to deal with jihadists fighting in conflicts like Iraq and Syria, Cameron said in an address to the Australian parliament on Friday.As host, Australia will continue pushing its growth agenda despite growing security tensions."The focus of this G20 will be on growth and jobs," Abbott said at a press conference with Cameron. "You can't have prosperity without security."Canberra is pushing for an increase in global growth targets of 2 percent by 2018 to create millions of jobs and that goal appears on track. Over 1,000 policy initiatives proposed by G20 nations should add around 2.1 percent, the head of the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said.Taxation arrangements of global companies such as Google Inc (GOOG.O), Apple Inc (AAPL.O) and Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) have become a hot political topic following media and parliamentary investigations into how many companies reduce their tax bills.The OECD has unveiled a series of measures that could stop companies from employing many commonly used practices to shift profits into low-tax centers.Australian Treasurer Joe Hockey said Australia had won U.S. cooperation to launch an "aggressive crackdown" on tax avoidance. | 0 |
But the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, in a public report sent to the White House, has said, in effect: Don’t get your hopes up. After reviewing a variety of research reports, a panel concluded that the studies, of varying quality of evidence, do not offer a basis to believe that summer weather will interfere with the spread of the coronavirus. The pandemic may lessen because of social distancing and other measures, but the evidence so far does not inspire confidence in the benefits of sun and humidity. The report, sent to Kelvin Droegemeier, director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House and acting director of the National Science Foundation, was a brief nine-page communication known as a rapid expert consultation. Kristian Andersen, an immunologist at the Scripps Research Translational Institute in California and a member of the Standing Committee on Emerging Infectious Diseases and 21st Century Health Threats at the National Academies, said: “Given current data, we believe that the pandemic likely will not diminish because of summer, and we should be careful not to base policies and strategies around the hope that it will.” “We might very well see a reduction in spread in the beginning of the summer,” he added, “but we have to be careful not to put that down to a changing climate — it is plausible that such a reduction could be due to other measures put in place.” Human behaviour will be most important. Dr. David Relman, who studies host-microbe interactions at Stanford, said if a human coughs or sneezes enough virus “close enough to the next susceptible person, then temperature and humidity just won’t matter that much.” The report from the National Academies, independent agencies that advise the government and the public, cited a small number of well-controlled laboratory studies that show that high temperature and humidity can diminish the ability of the novel coronavirus to survive in the environment. But the report noted the studies had limitations that made them less than conclusive. It also noted that although some reports showed pandemic growth rates peaking in colder conditions, those studies were short and limited. A preliminary finding in one such study, by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, found fewer cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, in warmer climates, but arrived at no definitive conclusion. “Specially in the US, any effect, even in the summer months, may not be highly visible, so our real chance to stop this virus is indeed through taking quarantine measures,” said Qasim Bukhari, a computational scientist at MIT who is a co-author of the study. The report sent to the White House also struck a cautionary note: “Given that countries currently in ‘summer’ climates, such as Australia and Iran, are experiencing rapid virus spread, a decrease in cases with increases in humidity and temperature elsewhere should not be assumed,” it said. Pandemics do not behave the same way seasonal outbreaks do. For the National Academies’ report, researchers looked at the history of flu pandemics as an example. “There have been 10 influenza pandemics in the past 250-plus years — two started in the Northern Hemisphere winter, three in the spring, two in the summer and three in the fall,” the report said. “All had a peak second wave approximately six months after emergence of the virus in the human population, regardless of when the initial introduction occurred.” On March 16, Trump said the virus might “wash” through in warmer weather. Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s leading expert on infectious diseases, has expressed different opinions about the effect of summer on the virus, some more optimistic than others. In a livestreamed interview on Wednesday, Dr. Howard Bauchner, the editor-in-chief of The Journal of the American Medical Association, asked him about the fall, which Fauci said would be very challenging, after a period this summer when “it’s almost certainly going to go down a bit.” On March 26, however, in a conversation on Instagram with Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors, Fauci said that although it wasn’t unreasonable to assume the summer weather could diminish the spread, “you don’t want to count on it.” c.2020 The New York Times Company | 5 |
WASHINGTON, Fri Feb 13,(bdnews24.com/Reuters) - Hillary Clinton hopes to reassure allies jittery about US policy on North Korea and to set the tone for a productive relationship with China when she visits Asia next week on her first trip as secretary of state. Breaking with tradition, Clinton's inaugural journey will take her to Japan, Indonesia, South Korea and China rather than the United States' historic allies in Europe and the perennial trouble spots of the Middle East. Clinton leaves Washington on Sunday and plans to spend two nights in Tokyo, one each in Jakarta and Seoul, and then two in Beijing before returning to Washington on Feb. 22. While US President Barack Obama has not detailed his Asia policies, analysts said the visit itself was a powerful signal he wants to keep his campaign promise to consult allies such as Japan and South Korea after their perceived neglect by former President George W Bush. Clinton also hopes to lay the ground to work with China to curb the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran and to cope with the global financial crisis and climate change -- priorities that may mute any critique of the Chinese human rights record, which she famously criticized in a 1995 speech in Beijing. "This, in many ways, should be a listening tour," said Elizabeth Economy, director for Asia studies at the Council on Foreign relations. "We need to hear from the Chinese what ... their priorities are in the relationship with the United States because ... that is how we are going to get any leverage," she added. LONG LAUNDRY LIST Analysts advised Clinton not to confront the Chinese with a series of demands on her first visit as secretary of state. That said, the laundry list is long. The United States would like China to do more to support internal consumer demand and reduce its reliance on exports to generate its growth. It would also like to see the Chinese currency appreciate, making US exports more competitive and helping to narrow the vast US trade deficit with China. In announcing her trip, the State Department put "financial markets turmoil" as the first item on her Asia agenda on a list that included humanitarian issues, security and climate change but omitted North Korea -- a key issue in Tokyo and Seoul. In recent months, the North has repeatedly warned of war and threatened to destroy the conservative government in Seoul that has ended a decade of free-flowing aid to Pyongyang after taking office a year ago. There are also reports Pyongyang may be preparing to test its longest-range Taepodong-2 missile, designed to hit Alaska. Talks to end North Korea's nuclear arms program have been stalled for months with Pyongyang complaining that aid given in return for crippling its nuclear plant at Yongbyon is not being delivered as promised in a "six-party" deal it struck with China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and the United States. The secretive North has balked at a demand by the other powers that it commit to a system to check claims it made about its nuclear program, leaving the talks in limbo. While Clinton has said she is committed to the talks, and is expected to name retired diplomat Stephen Bosworth to lead the US delegation, there remains lingering anxiety in both Seoul and Tokyo that the Obama administration could cut them out should it pursue closer bilateral talks with North Korea. There are also fears the United States could accept a nuclear North Korea, a possibility analysts dismissed. "In Tokyo, she will reassure them of the primacy of the US-Japan alliance ... and in South Korea, she will remind them that Obama's commitment to talk with adversaries doesn't mean that we are going to allow North Korea to play Washington off against Seoul," said a US congressional aide. SUBTLE ON HUMAN RIGHTS Spliced between her stops in Japan and South Korea, Clinton plans to spend a night in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim country where Obama lived during part of his childhood. The visit appeared in sync with Obama's desire to forge a better US relationship with the Muslim world, where many of Bush's policies, including the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, were deeply unpopular. Clinton ends her trip in Beijing, which an aide said she last visited when her husband, former President Bill Clinton, was in the White House. As US first lady in 1995, Clinton critiqued Chinese policy at a UN conference in Beijing without citing China by name. "Freedom means the right of people to assemble, organize, and debate openly. It means respecting the views of those who may disagree with the views of their governments," she said. "It means not taking citizens away from their loved ones and jailing them, mistreating them, or denying them their freedom or dignity because of the peaceful expression of their ideas and opinions." Human rights groups including Amnesty International, Freedom House and the International Campaign for Tibet urged Clinton to speak out about suspected torture in police custody, censorship and abuses of human rights defenders. But analysts said Clinton could not afford to jeopardize Chinese cooperation on North Korea and other issues. "She is quite capable, in a diplomatic and subtle way, of bringing the issue up so that she has put a marker down without throwing it in their face," said Jack Pritchard of the Korea Economic Institute, a former White House Asia specialist. | 0 |
Africa must be bold and follow the examples of Brazil and Germany to plan an energy future around renewable and alternative sources, the head of the UN environment agency said on Thursday. Many of the plans being considered by African governments, including huge hydropower dams and fossil fuel plants, were simply "more of the same", UN Environment Programme executive director Achim Steiner told a development conference in Kenya. Many would be able to supply the huge appetite of industry and city dwellers on the world's poorest continent, he said, but they would "lock in" the rural majority to decades without power. "We should not live with the dream of a trickle-down of energy supply (to villages) in 20 to 30 years time ... Africa should not follow the technological path the rest of the world is willing to give it access to," Steiner said. "More imagination, honesty and boldness to set an African agenda ... is what the continent is screaming for today." Africa was rich in renewable energy resources like wind, solar and geothermal power, he said, which could be harnessed relatively cheaply to power small communities. African governments should be encouraged by a new focus in the West on fighting climate change through promoting clean energy generation and carbon financing, he said. And they should look to countries like Brazil and Germany, which he said took "strategic decisions" years ago to become leaders in biofuels and wind power respectively. "Everyone laughed at Brazil at the time ... The theory was they could not afford to invest in alternative energy," he said. "They spent $25 billion on public funds for the ethanol sector, but have saved $50 billion now on avoided oil imports." Steiner was speaking in Nairobi at the start of a major two-day meeting on sustainable development jointly organised by Japan, the United Nations and the World Bank. | 0 |
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