by David Steven | Sep 22, 2009 | Climate and resource scarcity, Europe and Central Asia
Today, Ban-Ki Moon, worried by fading prospects for a climate deal at Copenhagen, will try and knock heads (of state) together at his Summit on Climate Change. Here’s the list of speakers:
H.E. Mr. Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations
Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, Chair, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
H.E. Mr. Barack Obama, President of the United States of America
H.E. Mr. Mohamed Nasheed, President of the Republic of Maldives
H.E. Mr. Hu Jintao, President of the Peoples Republic of China
H.E. Mr. Yukio Hatoyama, Prime Minister of Japan
H.E. Mr. Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda
H.E. Mr. Fredrik Reinfeldt, Prime Minister of Sweden
H.E. Mr. Óscar Arias Sánchez, President of Costa Rica
H.E. Mr. Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France
Professor Wangari Muta Maathai, Founder, Green Belt Movement, Kenya (Civil Society)
Ms. Yugratna Srivastava, Asia-Pacific UNEP/TUNZA Junior-Board representative, India, age 13 (Youth)
H.E. Mr. Tillman Joseph Thomas, Prime Minister of Grenada
H.E. Mr. Ahmad Babiker Nahar , Minister of Environment and Urban Development of Sudan
H.E. Mr. Lars Løkke Rasmussen, Prime Minister of Denmark
It’s a pretty standard list – major powers (check), regional balance (check), soon-to-be-submerged-island-state (check), boffin (check), civil society (check), token youth (check). But then you hit the European problem. The Swedes hold the Presidency and thus speak for the EU. Rasmussen is there because he’s going to shoulder a lot of the blame if Copenhagen fails to deliver. But how on earth has Nicolas Sarkozy managed to clamber onto the platform?
It beggars belief that, just when Europeans most need to speak with a single voice, the French president is – once again – giving his ego free rein. Or have I missed something?
by David Steven | Sep 19, 2009 | Climate and resource scarcity, North America
Later on today, delegates at the Values Voter Summit will gather for a breakout session with Dr Calvin Beisner from the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation.
The title? Global Warming Hysteria: The New Face of the Pro-Death Agenda.
The summit, praised by the Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder for presenting the ‘mild-mannered’ face of mainstream American conservatism (gulp), will hear that a belief in manmade climate change rests on “an unbiblical view of God, mankind, and the environment.”
Climate change policies, they will be told, will cause hundreds of millions of deaths. And this loss of life will not be accidental. Environmentalism is rooted in “hostility to humanity”. Fear of global warming is being deliberately stoked to prepare the way for a new Holocaust that will drastically reduce global population.
“If people are the problem,” the event’s publicity asks, “what’s the final solution?“ (more…)
by Alex Evans | Aug 17, 2009 | Climate and resource scarcity, Influence and networks
Thought the populist right wing opposition to healthcare reform was bad? Just wait til you see what’s in store on climate change…
A leaked memo sent by an oil industry group reveals a plan to create astroturf rallies at which industry employees posing as “citizens” will urge Congress to oppose climate change legislation. The memo — sent by the American Petroleum Institute and obtained by Greenpeace, which sent it to reporters — urges oil companies to recruit their employees for events that will “put a human face on the impacts of unsound energy policy,” and will urge senators to “avoid the mistakes embodied in the House climate bill.”
API [says] that the campaign is being funded by a coalition of corporate and conservative groups that includes the anti-health-care-reform group 60 Plus, FreedomWorks, and Grover Norquist’s Americans For Tax Reform.
That’s from TPM, who also have a copy of the full text of the API memo. Be in no doubt as to the potential impact of this kind of lobbying: news is just breaking in the US that the White House is “ready to abandon the idea of giving Americans the option of government-run insurance as part of a new health care system”.
The “grassroots” opposition to healthcare reform in the US is a fascinating case study which climate nerds should study obsessively – noting not only that (a) battles of this kind are not won with facts, but also that (b) it’s not simply a case of corporate astroturf lobbying.
(more…)
by Alex Evans | Aug 10, 2009 | Climate and resource scarcity, Economics and development
The FT has a big splash this morning on how concerns about future climate policy and the global downturn are both driving a move away from global supply chains and towards more regional ones.
Companies are increasingly looking closer to home for their components, meaning that for their US or European operations they are more likely to use Mexico and eastern Europe than China, as previously. “A future where energy is more expensive and less plentifully available will lead to more regional supply chains,” Gerard Kleisterlee, chief executive of Philips, one of Europe’s biggest companies, told the Financial Times.
Mr Kleisterlee said businesses needed to find ways to build an economy on a sustainable basis ahead of the Copenhagen summit on climate change later this year, with “a review of global logistics and transport” one of the important steps. He said that until now cheap transport costs had meant “Mexico wasn’t competitive with China for supplying the US”. But he now forecasts that companies such as Philips will use countries such as Ukraine for supplying Europe rather than Asia.
Nor are climate regulation and the downturn the only drivers towards a more regional world – there’s also the prospect of a return to very expensive oil in the near future. If you’re wondering what that means for global supply chains, look no further than what started to happen during 2007:
…competitiveness in steel had already shifted away from Chinese exports and back to North American producers. Soaring transport costs – first on importing iron ore to China from Australia or from halfway around the world in Brazil, and then on exporting finished steel overseas to North America – added as much as an additional $90 onto the cost of what was then $600 per ton of hot rolled steel. That more than offset the Chinese wage advantage on what, thanks to technological change, had become as little as an hour and a half of labor time for that ton of steel.
For the first time in over a decade, made-in-America steel had become cheaper than Chinese imports in the US marketplace. Long before the recession blew up the US steel market, Chinese exports to the US fell 20% between July 2007 and March 2008 – and US steel production was up 10% over the same period. All of a sudden American steel producers were winning back their home market. Who would have thought that tripil digit oil prices could breathe new life into America’s rust belt?
That’s Jeff Rubin, in his very highly recommended new book on what peak oil will mean for globalisation (regular readers will remember his CIBC World Markets research paper on Could Soaring Transport Costs Reverse Globalisation a little over a year ago) – go buy it.
If I were the Chinese government, I’d be worried. First you see your export sector getting hammered by triple digit oil prices. Then even when they crash to less than half of their pre-spike levels (though n.b. still way above their pre-2000 average of 10 or 20 dollars a barrel, even in the biggest recession since 1929), you find that the downturn’s still driving a shift towards regionalisation in trade.
Time to start investing heavily in a more endogenous growth model, perhaps…
by Michael Harvey | Aug 4, 2009 | Climate and resource scarcity, Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence, Europe and Central Asia, Global system, North America, UK
– In the week leading up to the first anniversary of the Russia-Georgia conflict, the FT reports on the lingering regional tensions still apparent, while openDemocracy assesses some of the war’s wider implications for the US, EU, China and Turkey. Georgia aside, James F. Collins, former US ambassador to Russia, highlights the current fragility of US-Russia relations and the importance of “sustained dialogue within a solid institutional framework” if measured progress is to continue.
– Elsewhere, in a taster of the forthcoming Quadrennial Defence Review (QDR), two senior Pentagon officials survey the global landscape and assess what this means for the US’s strategic outlook. The main challenge (alongside adapting to the realities of hybrid warfare and a growing number of failing states), Michele Flournoy and Shawn Brimley suggest, will likely revolve around competition for the global commons (sea, space, air and cyberspace). A successful approach, they argue, should see the US refocus its efforts on building strong global governance structures and taking the “lead in the creation of international norms”. Andrew Bast at WPR comments that this could once again herald a US foreign policy with Wilsonianism firmly at its core.
– Der Spiegel, meanwhile, takes an in-depth look at the growing global market for farmland. In what it labels the “new colonialism”, the article notes the implications of such investment flows for states in Africa and Asia, as well as gauging the impact on local farmers.
– Climatico assesses Nicolas Sarkozy’s climate change credentials, highlighting his “erratic behaviour” on the issue and suggesting that the French stance is one to watch in the run up to Copenhagen.
– Finally, an interesting PoliticsHome poll on attitudes of the British public to the country’s foreign policy. 65% of voters, it indicates, agree that foreign policy has weakened Britain’s “moral authority” abroad – a view held across the political spectrum. Perhaps more strikingly, however, a majority (54%) felt the country should scale down its overseas military commitments, even if this meant ceding global influence. Interestingly, 57% were in favour of humanitarian intervention. Writing in Newsweek, meanwhile, Stryker McGuire adds to the narrative of declinism. The current economic crisis, he argues, has finally put paid to Britain’s attempts to maintain its world role and place at the international top table.
