How to deal with petty theft a la Big Society
H/t Microdave.
How to get the media’s attention for another environmental summit
As governments struggle to agree what to use next year’s Rio+20 meeting for, it is encouraging to see that Secretary General Sha Zukang has this pithy quote at the ready for the world’s disinterested news desks.
“The environment is getting worse day by day. The resources are depleting very quickly day by day and the population is increasing day by day.” (Source)
Promising. Very promising.
h/t Natalya Sverjensky.
So what exactly was the point of the IEA’s emergency stocks release?
Oil prices rallied more than $3 a barrel on Wednesday, recovering all the losses triggered by last week’s decision by rich consuming nations to release strategic oil stocks.
Brent crude, the global benchmark, jumped to a peak of $112.48 a barrel, the highest since last Thursday, when the International Energy Agency announced its members would sell 60m barrels of oil, the third co-ordinated sale from the reserves in the organisation’s history.
Amid heavy selling in the days that followed the IEA’s move, Brent traded as low as $102.28. Since that level was reached on Monday, however, prices have rallied 10 per cent, or just over $10 a barrel. A reappraisal of the impact of the IEA’s intervention triggered the reversal. Traders have shifted their focus to an expected oil supply squeeze in the next few years instead of the prospect of an additional 2m barrels a day of oil for a month.
“The reality remains that the current market is still grappling with a structural change that has effectively resulted in the gain of some five years of oil demand in one year,” said Amrita Sen, oil analyst at Barclays Capital.
That’s Jack Farchy in the FT, today. I did wonder what the IEA thought was going to happen if the reason for high oil prices is structural rather than just a short term shock…
The IEA’s emergency stocks mechanism was built to respond to short-term, sudden-onset shocks. But if (as the FT’s Javier Blas argues), Libya’s oil production is “not going to recover any time soon”, and emerging economy demand for oil is proving notably robust, then that’s not a shock at all. It’s structural. And if it’s structural, then how does releasing stocks solve anything?
Global Dashboard post, 24 June
What happens in Palestine after the UNGA vote in September?
Talking to a senior Middle East expert a few weeks back, I was struck by his blunt assessment that after the UN General Assembly vote on Palestinian statehood in September, he fully expected there to be a third intifada immediately afterwards – except that this time, it would be nonviolent. So it was interesting to see this little nugget in Haaretz today:
As September draws nearer, the Israel Defense Forces has been conducting drills in order to contend with the possibility of a mass civilian uprising in the West Bank in the wake of the Palestinian bid to seek unilateral recognition in the United Nations.
“A non-violent protest of 4,000 people or more, even if they only march to a checkpoint or a settlement, and especially if the Palestinian police does not deter them, will be unstoppable,” one IDF officer claims. “Such a great number of determined people cannot be stopped by tear gas and rubber bullets.”
Another high ranking IDF official serving in the territories claimed that “if we are to face protests similar to those in Egypt or Tunisia, we will not be able to do a thing.”
Why is there only one MDG on education but three on health?
Did you ever wonder why it should be that there’s only one Millennium Development Goal on education, but no fewer than three on health (specifically, on child health, maternal health and HIV/AIDS)?
I found out the answer yesterday, while talking to some of the people involved in pulling together the MDGs a little over a decade ago. The reason, apparently, is because the UN system has three agencies leading on different parts of health – UNICEF on kids’ health, UNFPA on maternal health and UNAIDS on HIV – and they each wanted an MDG of their own. Bless. Hurrah for system coherence.