Poor left in lurch if world overheats

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/poor-left-in-lurch-if-world-overheats/2007/04/01/1175366080776.html?sssdmh=dm16.253533

Andrew Revkin in New York
April 2, 2007

THE world's richest countries, which have contributed by far the most to the atmospheric changes linked to global warming, are spending billions of dollars to limit their own risks from its worst consequences, such as drought and rising seas.

But despite long-standing treaty commitments to help poor countries deal with warming, these industrial powers are spending just tens of millions of dollars to limit climate and coastal hazards in the world's most vulnerable regions - most of them overwhelmingly poor.

On Friday, a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body that has been assessing global warming since 1990, will underline this growing divide, say scientists involved in writing the report. Wealthy nations far from the equator will not only experience fewer effects, but will withstand them better, they say.

Climate change will inflict steadily rising costs that could become astronomical if greenhouse gas emissions rise unabated and countries delay preparations for the likely impacts, the report will say.

Two-thirds of greenhouse gas emissions come in nearly equal proportions from the US and Western European countries. These and other wealthy nations are investing in windmill-powered desalination plants, in flood barriers and floatable homes, and in grains and soybeans genetically altered to flourish even in a drought.

By contrast, Africa accounts for less than 3 per cent of the global emissions of carbon dioxide from fuel burning since 1900, yet its 840 million people face some of the biggest risks from drought and disrupted water supplies, according to the latest scientific assessments. As the oceans swell with water from melting ice sheets, it is the crowded deltas in southern Asia and Egypt, along with small island states, that are most at risk.

"Like the sinking of the Titanic, catastrophes are not democratic," said Henry Miller, a fellow with the Hoover Institution. "A much higher fraction of passengers from the cheaper decks were lost. We'll see the same phenomenon with global warming."

Although rich countries are hardly immune from drought and flooding, their wealth will largely insulate them from harm, at least for the next generation or two, many experts say. Cities in Australia, Texas and California, for example, are already building or planning desalination plants.

"The inequity of this whole situation is really enormous if you look at who's responsible and who's suffering as a result," said Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN climate panel.

Dr Miller said the world should focus less on trying to cut greenhouse gases rapidly and more on helping regions at risk become more resilient.

Relief organisations, including Oxfam and the International Red Cross, foreseeing a world of worsening climate-driven disasters, are turning their attention towards projects such as expanding mangrove forests as a buffer against storm surges, planting trees on slopes to prevent landslides and building shelters on high ground.

Industrialised countries bound by the Kyoto Protocol, the climate pact rejected by the US and Australian governments, project that hundreds of millions of dollars will soon flow via that treaty into a climate adaptation fund.

But for now, the actual spending in adaptation projects in the world's most vulnerable spots, totalling about $US40 million ($50 million) a year, "borders on the derisory", said Kevin Watkins, the director of the UN Human Development Report Office, which tracks factors affecting the quality of life around the world.

The New York Times, Agence France-Presse

here is a letter i wrote to my local MP - and copied to Rudd and Garrett - ahead of a National Climate Change Summit being organised by Kevin Rudd on Saturday 31 March in Canberra.

Please feel free to steal ideas and concepts to write your own letter to your MP.

Cameron

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Dear Annette Ellis,

I am sure I will not be the only one writing to you to express their views on what we - and possibly you in a future Labor government - can and should be doing to tackle the challenge of global warming ahead of Mr Rudd's National Climate Change Summit next Saturday in Canberra.

As someone who works every day on issues of sustainability, social justice, fair trade, creating sustainable communities, empowering young people to take action on climate change - the opportunity of the National Summit excites me.

Recently we have seen a paradigm shift on these issues and they are rapidly becoming mainstream. Government's around the world are coming to grips with the catastrophe that awaits them if we fail to do nothing. Everywhere you look, there are features, columns, articles, TV shows on how to save the planet in one way or other.

This zeitgeist and polling clearly shows Australian - like so many others in the world - are willing to make changes in their own lives, are even willing to make sacrifices, and want (perhaps even demand) clear commitments and actions from Government.

The Coalition has let Australia down by playing games with its big brother, the Bush Administration, and avoiding - even denying the issues - and we are now in a dire situation. Like so many other Australians, I am looking to Labor to come forward with bold, visionary, and nation-building policies and commitments to action and real change that will transform our communities and our country - while also playing a lead role in the international community. We have high hopes for what a Labor government might achieve working with business and community groups who have been moving on these issues for a decade or more. We stand ready to support you at the polls and in the field to make these things happen.

If you are not yet aware, GetUp (though which we are organising on this issue) has set out the following Five Point Action Agenda calls on the next Federal Parliament of Australia to:

1) Ratify Kyoto and commit to 30 % reduction of greenhouse gases emissions by 2020

2) Introduce an emissions trading scheme with significant caps on carbon emissions

3) Lead a green energy revolution to slash our vast amounts of energy waste

4) Make renewable energy law, with a 12% legislated electricity target from renewable energy by 2012

5) Invest in a public transport system fit for the 21st century

I would add to this some ideas / thoughts of my own.

* As Mr Rudd and other Labor politicians have pointed out, we must tackle the climate change issue while also tackling our water problems. Reducing water use and waste, along with energy use and carbon emissions, should be pursued hand in hand.

Mandatory grey water systems for all households before they can be sold within 5 years, waterless and low water use public infrastructure in all capital cities, incentives for industry to utilise the same technologies - these should all be part of the mix. Such initiatives will drive innovation, create businesses and industry contributing to a common good, bring prices down for such technologies, and enable us to save massive amounts of water - and avoid the need to spend billions on dams, salination plants, etc. Grey water use on a mass scale is probably also part of the policy mix.

* Review the UK Sustainable Consumption Roundtable report and its recommendations, including microwind for power on schools, carbon taxes on flights, transport solutions, etc. However, perhaps most useful, is to understand the implementation frameworks in terms of changing WITH the electorate, ensuring people can't rort the system, and that it doesn't disadvantage the poor and marginalised. You can find the report here: http://www.sd-commission.org.uk/publications.php?id=367

* I also strongly urge Labor to look at the recommendations it made as part of the Senate inquiry on corporate responsibility. Such strategic changes to business and government department behaviour and reporting will send the right messages to capital and investment markets and provide more financial resources for 'goods' over 'bads.

* I encourage the Australian government to introduce a market-driven national carbon trading scheme for both industry and individuals that operates within a national 'carbon rationing system'. Such a scheme will create a market incentive to reduce emissions and invest in new processes to meet their targets. It is essential that no group is permitted concessions from the scheme but rather given the opportunity to buy-in as they see best.

The general idea - and for more info you can look at the proposals by the UK Environment Minister - is for the government to establish a national carbon regulation body that sets annual carbon emissions caps. It allocates the relevant percentage of current carbon creation to individuals and households for free, and makes the rest available to business on auction. Money raised by the government through this auction is used to invest in public infrastructure and technology development programs that will assist with reaching the target amount. Then within the allotted national carbon emissions cap, invididuals and businesses can trade carbon, sell it back to the regulator, etc.

The total carbon allowable is brought down each year until a 'sustainable' target is reached. Further, participation will create an environment where responsibiltiy for emissions is accepted and the 'embedded' carbon in goods and services better understood. The personal financial rewards for investing in a carbon saving and trading will further accelerate the opportunites for change in the workplace. As new products and systems are created they can be exported, further stimulating the Austrlian carbon economy.

Annette, I am sure you appreciate the import of the position we find ourselves in at this juncture of history. This is not just about an election win, or the current generation of Australians - its about the futures of all Australians and everyone around the world. Climate is something that effects the planet - and many of our brothers and sisters in more vulnerable environments and circumstances are already suffering the negative impacts of global warming. This is not something we can afford to dither about. We need swift, decisive action - albeit evidence based - at government level that sends the right message to the community and business.

I urge you to pursue, with your colleagues and in partnership with community and business leaders, an informed, bold and visionary agenda on the global warming issue and the future of Australia and the world.

Cameron

in a passionate speech last night, our prime minister john howard followed his pal george W in defending our role in iraq, pledging to stay the course, etc.

as part of the speech, he attacked the labor party opposition, and its leader kevin rudd, over their inconsistent approach that differentiates iraq and afghanistan - with the policy of a staged withdrawal from iraq while supporting further troop mobilisation in afghanistan.

howard's speech probably finds a lot of ears out there that like what he says and agrees that it seems inconsistent to support troop deployments in afghanistan while pushing for troop withdrawals in iraq. to some, i'm sure, the views expressed by labor smack of political expediency, i.e. iraq is unpopular, so lets go with that. howard is presenting his 'staying the course' to demonstrate his political acumen and his willingness to make tough decisions.

i have always thought of iraq and afghanistan as very different war zones. while iraq has always seemed to me to be an illegal conflict and driven by oil and such, afghanistan seemed to have more legitimacy and support (though getting the energy from the central russian states to the coast seems to have certainly played a role as well).

this article - below - by william maley highlights the differences between iraq and afghanistan and in some ways makes sense of the labor / rudd position on the conflicts. (it just so happens that mr maley is in an office downstairs from me - i work in a cool place).

what do you think?

cameron

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http://www.apo.org.au/webboard/results.chtml?filename_num=139779

WARS - Two different places

Posted: 02-03-2007

Despite what the defence minister says, the most striking thing about the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan is how different they are, writes William Maley

BRENDAN NELSON has been having a rather rough time as Defence Minister. His is genuinely a portfolio in which loose lips sink ships, at least metaphorically. Last Thursday was quite a day for him. Not only did he create headlines with the statement that “there is no such thing as victory in Iraq,” he also attracted the ire of some veterans of the World War II campaign on the Kokoda Track with the assertion that “today we face something which is no less a risk to our culture, our values, our freedoms and way of life than was presented to us in 1942.”

This was, to put it mildly, a startling claim, not only because it reflected a profound misunderstanding of the existential threats Australia faced in 1942, but also because the Iraq conflict is a war of America’s and Australia’s choice in a way the Pacific war in 1942 certainly was not.

Partially buried by these dramatic utterances was another statement from Nelson on 22 February, this time in a doorstop interview, which attracted less attention but in a way deserved more. “The most important thing we’ve got to understand,” he claimed, “is that the same people that are causing all of the problems in Afghanistan are the same people that are causing problems in Iraq. We’re fighting the same people in two different places.”

Does Nelson truly believe this?

The most striking features of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are not their points of similarity, but their differences. A government that is blind to these differences risks badly botching its response to each country’s genuine but distinctive problems.

In both countries, the “enemy” forces defy simple description. Iraq is now enmeshed in a nasty civil war, a label that even the neo-conservative former US diplomat John Bolton is now prepared to use. However, its roots lie in a logic which should surprise no informed analyst.

Saddam Hussein’s regime saw a Sunni Muslim elite in a position of domination over a population which is about 60 per cent Shi’ite Muslims. The overthrow of Saddam held the promise of a permanent minority status for the Sunnis as a whole, and retribution against those Sunnis who had been Ba’ath Party members. The ill-considered de-Ba’athification decrees of the US-run Provisional Authority simply confirmed the fears of militant Sunnis, and drove them into classic patterns of “spoiler” behaviour. This was predictable.

It is cheaper and easier to be a wrecker than a builder, and the obvious targets for Sunni wreckers were members of the Shi’ite community. Leaders of the Shia of Iraq knowing that their numerical weight positioned them to benefit from electoral processes showed great patience in the face of both the Sunni spoiler tactics, and the inability of the coalition forces or the Iraqi Government to offer them protection. But eventually, their patience ran out, and Shi’ite militias lifted their own levels of activity, with some support from circles in the Shi’ite state of Iran. However, the impact of Iran’s support should not be exaggerated. A US National Intelligence Estimate in January 2007 concluded that “Iraq’s neighbours influence, and are influenced by, events within Iraq, but the involvement of these outside actors is not likely to be a major driver of violence or the prospects for stability because of the self-sustaining character of Iraq’s internal sectarian dynamics.”

The confluence of the Sunnis’ spoiler behaviour, and the disgust of Shi’ites at the failure of the US and its local allies to protect Shi’ite interests, has produced a very complex nationalist underpinning for political violence: large numbers of both Sunnis and Shi’ites would like to see the Coalition leave. In a survey conducted last September by the Program on International Policy Attitudes, 71 per cent of respondents stated that they would like the Iraqi Government to ask the US-led forces to withdraw within a year. Some 78 per cent believed that the US military in Iraq was provoking more conflict than it was preventing, and 61 per cent approved of attacks on US-led forces. It is this reality the loss of confidence on the part of a large slice of the Iraqi population that makes the Coalition’s position so dire, much more than any threat from “terrorism.” Some Sunni terrorists with attachments to al-Qaeda have indeed found their way to Iraq, and engaged in spectacular acts of barbarity, but to treat Iraq as the “front line” in a “war on terror” is to misread Iraq’s complexities very badly.

It is rather Afghanistan that faces the main threat from globalised terrorism, and it is there that resources should be concentrated to halt al-Qaeda’s recrudescence. It is simply mind-boggling that the US blundered off into Iraq before ensuring that al-Qaeda had been substantially obliterated in its hideouts on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Yet in contrast to what one finds in Iraq, the bulk of the Afghan population remains notably supportive of an international presence, and civil war has been avoided even though the population is also segmented on complex lines. The enemy here, while some use the expression “neo-Taliban,” is better seen as al-Qaeda in alliance with the old Taliban leadership, aided by a number of paid helpers doing its work in Afghanistan’s southern provinces, and by networks of supporters in Pakistan. Its core leaders sit nearby in Pakistan, and Pakistan provides a safe haven for its operations. Here is perhaps the key distinction between Afghanistan and Iraq. The Iraq conflict is largely generated by an internal dynamic. Afghanistan’s troubles are largely driven by an external terrorist force and by the foreign state from whose territory it is able to operate.

There is a role for Australia to play in Afghanistan, and an enhancement of Australia’s contribution there will enjoy bipartisan support. It is also time to put pressure on Pakistan, which is acting far more destructively in Afghanistan than Iran is in Iraq. But building wider support for a good cause like the Afghanistan commitment is not helped by linking it in any way to the Iraq fiasco. The people of Afghanistan deserve better. •

William Maley is director of the Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy at the ANU and author of Rescuing Afghanistan, published in APO’s Briefings series by UNSW Press. This article first appeared in the Canberra Times.

Photo: View off the rear ramp of a Chinook helicopter flying over eastern Afghanistan. Thomas Brouns/iStockphoto.com

hi folks

i found this useful! we need more of this in the wake of mr minchin's expressed views and an emerging backlash against al gore and the climate change issue.

cameron

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http://www.apo.org.au/linkboard/results.chtml?filename_num=142053

* Five carbon trading myths *

*The Climate Institute*

*Posted:* 14-03-2007

Economic analysis by CSIRO, ABARE and the Australian Business Roundtable on Climate Change shows that the early introduction of carbon price is affordable and will not make electricity more expensive. It will also be a billion-dollar international industry.

This fact sheet refutes some arguments about the potential problems of carbon trading.

Read the full text of Five carbon trading myths

http://www.climateinstitute.org.au/cia1/downloads/070207CarbonMythsFactSheet.pdf (PDF file)

Find more from The Climate Institute
http://www.climateinstitute.org.au

Find more articles on the topic The environment
http://www.apo.org.au/linkboard/list.chtml?topic=Theenvironment

this should be awesome!!!

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Afterworld gives a taste of things to come

http://www.smh.com.au/news/web/afterworld-gives-a-taste-of-things-to-come/2007/02/19/1171733657027.html

Asher Moses
February 19, 2007 - 12:20PM

The next generation of TV dramas will let viewers break free from the shackles of the couch and restrictive broadcaster schedules, says Sony Pictures Television.

In a first for the studio, it has acquired all international television, digital sell-through, gaming and mobile rights to a futuristic animated show called Afterworld.

Produced by Emmy Award nominee Stan Rogow (known for his work on Lizzie McGuire and All I Want for Christmas) and written by Brent Friedman (Mortal Kombat 2), Afterworld will be distributed across all platforms including TV, the web and mobile phones.

Accompanying this will be original web-only content to draw viewers even further into the plot.

SPT's description of the show says: "Afterworld is about life on earth after an inexplicable global event renders technology useless and 99 per cent of the population missing."

It follows New Yorker Russell Shoemaker as he unravels the mystery of the event and searches for his family.

The announcement of the deal was made by SPT's international arm, but the Australian division's managing director, Jack Ford, said he expected the show to launch locally within the next three or four months.

"It's a visionary program in my view - I don't think anything like it has ever been attempted before," he said.

Ford said he was in talks with local broadcasters to determine which would acquire the rights to distribute the show locally.

Episodes of Afterworld will be consumed as 130 two-minute episodes or, in the case of TV, 13 half-hour episodes.

Supplementing these will be the website, www.Afterworld.tv, which SPT said would offer "archived back episodes, daily journal entries, community blogs, interactive content applications and online games".

The result, SPT hopes, will be a far more immersive, flexible experience for today's "digital consumer".

In a statement, Friedman said: "As much as I've enjoyed working in all the conventional mediums, I believe we have created something that represents a new form of content - the online convergence of television and video games."

Australian broadcasters are already heading in this direction. Network Ten has just launched its revamped website, which offers sub-sites for individual shows that the network says will include downloadable content and community features.

"For some programs there will be the availability of full episodes, for others it will be highlights and short clips, for other programs it will be additional web-only content," Ten's general manager of digital media, Damian Smith, said when announcing the site revamp late last year.