As Miss Duvekot already pointed out, this weekend she and me are back to back ( 96, if you pardon me this tasteless pun) in NRC-Handelsblad, 'the mind's grindstone' as the paper calls itself. ( The 'Ghost's Grindstone' sounds better but I'm not sure they're talking phantoms here.)
I was asked to illustrate an interview with professor Weizenbaum, who left Germany in the 30's with his furrier-parents, stood at the cradle of computers at MIT (U.S.A.), denounces now both MIT for working with the Pentagon and his own invention of digital psycho-therapy, hates Bush, returned to Berlin to live opposite the Berlin Dom, doesn't believe his grandchildren will die a natural death, says: 'Who only has a hammer sees the whole world as a nail' and hopes to celebrate his 85th birthday soon, in spite of his doctor's alarming opinion...
When the journalist left he said: 'Wish me a happy landing' and added with a big smile that everything he'd told him had been a lie.
The leaders of the group of eight industrial nations have agreed to make an agreement on climate change in what Tony Blair calls "a major, major step forward".
Wow....I say, wow.
The concrete development coming out of the G8 summit is that the US has agreed to work with other nations towards "substantial cuts" in greenhouse gases within a UN framework. China and developing nations will also be involved in emissions cuts and a new international deal is to be completed by the end of 2009. Though there is no agreement on details, Blair is optimistic about the results and the road ahead.
Mr Blair told reporters there is now agreement. "The important thing is we now have an agreement - one; that we need a new worldwide agreement on climate change," he said.
"Two; that at the heart of that should be a substantial reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
"Three; in the process that will then work out what that cut in emissions should be there will be serious consideration given specifically to the goal of halving emissions by 2050.
"This is an agreement in which we want all the major countries to be involved including America, China, India and others - the developed and the developing world."
"We agreed... that CO2 emissions must first be stopped and then followed by substantial reductions," the German chancellor said.
"Now we have an agreement that there will be a climate change deal, it will involve everyone, including the US and China, and it will involve substantial cuts."
Previously, the US has flatly opposed being a part of any post-Kyoto deal. However, mounting political pressure within the US has been seen as a key factor in Bush's willingness to negotiate with the international community. There's still no accounting for the American media though, as ABC was quick to put a different spin on today's events:
Surprise, surprise.
Negotiations resume in Bali this coming December.
After initially sounding somewhat limp with respect to President Bush's proposed "US led" global warming strategy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has since come out strong saying that it was "non-negotiable" that the United Nations should take the lead in global efforts to combat climate change and vowed to make no compromises that disregard the scientific evidence on the issue.
"I will not go for a 'lazy compromise' ... I will not get involved in diluting definite scientific findings like those of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental panel on climate change," she said.
The US proposal promises to do nothing to reduce global emissions and has been widely criticized in the international community, despite having effectively fooled the US media machine. It also opposes hard caps on emissions, a carbon trading scheme and the objective goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius - all elements endorsed by the European Union. Maybe the problem is that Bush doesn't have a clue what "2 degrees Celsius" is.
Climate change negotiations will take place at the upcoming G8 summit on June 6th - 8th.
Update 1:13pm: Merkel's comments were echoed by Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who today rejected Bush's proposal and insisted that nations come to an agreement under the UN and not through US led negotiations.
Heading into this month's G8 climate change talks in Germany, North America is rapidly asserting itself as the world's biggest nemesis.
Following last week's leaked memo showing the Bush administration's continued opposition to hard caps on carbon emissions, the President himself has now made a new proposal that threatens to hijack the international process - by placing the US in a lead role in negotiations with the world's top 15 greenhouse gas emitters. In making this offer, Bush openly asserts that the US is opposed to hard caps on emissions, carbon trading, and the EU's goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius.
Canada is offering little better. Saturday's Globe reports that Prime Minister Stephen Harper wants to act as a bridge between Europe, the US and Asia. The basis for this bridge is recognizing Canada's right to produce more emissions than other countries because of our spiraling oil sands emissions.
Yet, the most embarrassing part of these developments is the reaction of British PM Tony Blair and German Chancellor Angela Merkel who both offered a stunning level of praise to Bush's proposal.
Tony Blair hailed the Bush initiative as an important step forward. "For the first time America's saying it wants to be part of a global deal".
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor and host of next week's G8 summit, also welcomed the initiative. "I think it is positive, and the US president's speech makes it clear that no one can avoid the question of global warming any more," Ms Merkel said of the proposal. "This is common ground on which to act."
By calling Bush's transparent diversionary tactic "a step forward" and "common ground" these European leaders are framing the failure of future climate change talks. As posted here last week, the most destructive approach is allowing the US - which under the current administration has no intention of solving global warming - an active voice in negotiations. European nations have to show the leadership the world needs and dismiss the US from negotiations and work to bring China and India fully on board international efforts.
Proving that politicians are concerned with self interest and not principles, the Bush Administration is opposing a proposed coal mine on the Canadian side of the BC - Montana border, citing potential downstream environmental impacts in the US.
Federal officials chose not to address the inherent hypocrisy of shouting down a coal mine affecting Montana's environment, while endorsing mountain top removal mining that is destroying entire valleys in the Appalachian states.
For those not familiar with the process, mountain top removal is essentially sawing the top off a mountain and dumping the refuse into neighbouring valleys in order to cheaply access coal seems lying underneath - for the apparent purpose of boosting mercury levels in water and and destroying global climate.
The main difference between the case in BC and mountain top removal in the US being that the latter is far more destructive, and more importantly, that the coal companies working in the Appalachians had the had the good sense to contribute to Bush's campaign, whereas the one in BC did not.
Having said that, BC citizens will take whatever help they can get in ensuring environmentally responsible industry at home.
By a margin of 367-58, the Democrat led US House passed new legislation that would fund the upgrade and modernization of the sewage systems affecting 40 million Americans to the tune of $1.7 billion over five years.
The legislation would target combined sewer systems - older systems that collect rainwater runoff, domestic sewage and industrial wastewater in one pipe - which become overloaded during heavy rainfall and are currently responsible for the release of 850 billion gallons of untreated sewage into the environment each year.
The new bill would also go a long way in addressing sewage pollution in the Great Lakes. Earlier this year, Sierra Legal released the first ever analysis of sewage pollution in the Lakes, and found that combined sewage systems were one of the biggest reasons why 93 billion litres of raw sewage enters the lakes each year.
The fate of the spending, however, will likely fall to the president. Bush has already said that he opposes the bill, as he is committed to funding the destruction of water system infrastructure in Iraq to the tune of $275 million per day.
You'd think they could take a week off from Iraq and fund some basic water improvements on the home front.
When he quits power this summer, British PM Tony Blair plans to continue the fight against global warming by bypassing US President Bush and going directly to State governments to bring them onside with European actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Blair has already shown his ability to do exactly this by reaching agreements with California Governor Schwarzenegger earlier last year. Meanwhile, northeastern states are moving forward with their own climate change plans in the face of absent leadership from Washington.
President Bush has sent his latest budget package to Congress. It is a plan that continues to drastically cut funding for the environment while offering half a billion dollars for new nuclear research and development, another half billion for the massive proposed nuclear waste disposal site in Yucca, Nevada, the doubling of the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and the leasing of oil and gas rights in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Environmental programs facing the funding axe include:
- a 40 percent cut, a $98 million reduction, to the Weatherization Assistance Program, which conserves energy by helping low-wage workers and retirees on fixed incomes to insulate their homes.
- $44 million cut from clean water funding.
- a 60% cut to Land and Water Conservation Fund which offers matching grants to States and local governments for the acquisition and development of public outdoor recreation areas and facilities.
- a reduction of the endangered species recovery program by 7.5 percent for a $5.5 million cut.
- elimination of the Landowner Incentive and Private Stewardship Grants programs, which help private landowners conserve at-risk wildlife - a $29 million cut.
- $400 million cut from rail travel (Amtrak)
- $4 million cut from the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences
- proposals are also tabled to sell up to 950 million acres of federal lands to raise $334 million over 10 years. The money is needed to fund schools in rural areas, which the US can't otherwise afford while spending $195 million a day on the war in Iraq.
All in, Bush's budget cuts appropriated funding for natural resources and the environment by nearly $1.5 billion. The sole winner in the environment was the National Park System, which saw a budget increase of $258 million in preparation for the park system's 100th birthday in 2016.
It's time for the Democrats to earn their pay cheques.
Seventeen people died in a suicide car bomb in Iraq over the past day as a part of the continuing violence waged for the protection of American access to oil.
Meanwhile, 65 have died in the US as winter storms continue to grip the so called Sun Belt states. To date, the cold snap has featured snows in the Malibu resort area of California and 33 deaths in the unlikely states of Texas and Oklahoma.
In northern Europe, 10 people have died and hundreds of air flights have been cancelled due to violent storms and hurricane force winds slamming into Great Britain, Germany, the Netherlands and France. The storms have also forced the cancellation of hundreds of air flights, including 123 at London's Heathrow, in addition to shutting down ferries, closing schools and roads, and causing the abandonment of a container ship listing in the English Channel. Germany currently has 40,000 volunteers on standby in anticipation of damage and flood.
So where is the greatest risk? In the savage unpredictability of unstable climate? or in the irrational fear of a decimated Muslim nation whose 95th ranked GDP could scarcely buy a plane ticket across the Atlantic, let alone pose a genuine threat to the US? The Bush administration has its own answer, and they continue to spend $300 million dollars per day to ensure the growing impacts of global warming by subsidizing the United States ongoing oil addiction through their war in Iraq.
Fair comparison? You decide. But the fact remains that top analysts estimate the total cost of the war will be $1.2 to $2 trillion dollars. A fraction of that total could make the United States the global leader in solving climate change while simultaneously offering all citizens the security of our survival - as a civilization and a species.
Senior members of the British government are saying that US President George Bush is ready to make a historic shift in his government's position on global warming. The announcement is expected during the President's upcoming State of the Union address where British officials anticipate the President to acknowledge the reality of global warming and move towards a cap on US greenhouse gas emissions.
Bush and Blair held private talks on climate change before Christmas, and there is a feeling that the US President will now agree a cap on emissions in the US, meaning that, for the first time, American industry and consumers would be expected to start conserving energy and curbing pollution.
This year's State of the Union address is scheduled for Tuesday, January 23rd.