An interactive map of which houses in the London Borough of Haringey waste most heat:
Thermal images of homes have been taken by a light aircraft fitted with military spy technology to record the heat escaping from people’s houses.
Maps identifying individual homes have now been placed on the internet to encourage occupiers to reduce their wastage and carbon emissions by fitting insulation and turning the thermostat down.
Michael Tomasky has a thoughtful piece about Al Gore in the current New York Review of Books. He doesn’t reckon there’s much prospect of Gore running:
When the Democrats’ front-runners were Clinton and Edwards, the case for a Gore candidacy was more convincing; there was room for one more heavyweight. But Obama seems to have taken up much of the space that Gore could have occupied. When Gore’s name is tossed into polls, he still comes out third, usually well behind Clinton and Obama… Democratic voters tell pollsters they’re quite satisfied with the current candidates (more so than Republican voters are). And even though Democrats say they admire his recent work on climate change and obviously wish he’d been president for the last seven years, whether he has appeal to independents is an open question.
Well, of course we all admire Citizen Al’s principled stance on climate change. Don’t we? Well, actually no. The thing about Gore on climate change is that for all the PowerPoint presentations and sounding of planetary alarm bells, he offers practically no specificity about what should happen after Kyoto’s expiry in 2012. Why is he able to get away with that? Simple: none of the environmental groups offer any details either, so given the complexity of the subject, who’s going to point out that Gore’s emperor is wearing no clothes?
When Brown and Blair ran with Make Poverty History in 2005, they knew that a timetable for giving 0.7 per cent of national income to aid was a prerequisite for any kind of cover from the advocacy groups. Not so with the green NGOs: just look at the lamentable policy position of umbrella group Stop Climate Chaos, who mumble that governments should limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius, but then – like Gore – fail to address any of the key points, such as that:
I tried to ask Gore about this during one of his vaunted presentations, at the Royal Society of Arts last year. Did he accept that stabilising the climate safely would entail a quantified ceiling, and that this would mean developing country targets; and if so, what thoughts did he have on what would constitute fair shares to the atmosphere? Gore blustered and blew, but nevertheless definitively ducked the question.
Not so with Angela Merkel. She may not have produced a zappy film, but credit where it’s due: she’s a lot further ahead on climate change than Al Gore.
Yesterday was a day of high political action here in Islamabad. Nawaz Sharif is now under virtual house arrest in Saudi Arabia, but at least he has a lavish mansion to rattle around in.
Meanwhile, the impact of locking large areas of Rawalpindi, home to Islamabad’s airport, fell heavily on ordinary Pakistanis. Imran Naeem Ahmad reports:
Former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s return to Islamabad was brief yet in the run-up to his arrival and subsequent deportation, the public remained at the receiving end of the callous authorities who laid a mighty siege of the town.
From barbed wires to tractor trolleys and from long-bodied trucks to picket fences – all resources were brought into use to block major roads leading to the Islamabad International Airport that left commuters and residents facing great trouble…
While Islamabad remained relatively quiet, the authorities in Rawalpindi felt the heat somewhat as groups of Sharif loyalists played hide and seek with police at Liaquat Bagh and the Katchery Chowk. This prompted the law enforcers to pull out their tear gas guns that they used excessively to disperse the crowds.
Caught in the exchanges were scores of innocent bystanders and pedestrians who were ruthlessly beaten by the police, although they were not creating trouble of any kind.
Watching General Petraeus’s powerhouse testimony today (wasn’t Crocker a crock in contrast?), I could think of two reasons for doubting the rosy message he had for us. (more…)
The Pakistan Spectator – a local blog – comments on Nawaz Sharif’s brief trip home:
The rationale of today’s drama was that Nawaz Sharif hadnt got the “Asheerbad” of Washington, and US wants a Musharraf-Benazir setup in Pakistan and that is why Uncle Tom directed the whole affair. Pakistani nation, Pakistani judiciary, Pakistani press, or Pakistani opposition at one side and the whims of Statue of Liberty at the other, and we all saw who won.
Its not the question of Nawaz Sharif. I am not really dying for him, far from it. I am just lamenting the contempt of court and the way all the Punjab was sealed. I am weeping because I have doubt now about my freedom and my independence. A two-penny policeman can do anything with me.
What’s a banana republic? A state without a spine of its own, dependent on foreign capital, subject to foreign influence and politically unstable. A state where, typically, the predominant influence is that of the United States.
Strong stuff, but reflective of a common belief here that outsiders are pulling, or attempting to pull, Pakistan’s strings. (more…)