To Quote Samuel Taylor Coleridge…

Water conservation is perhaps one of the most important challenges humanity faces in the coming century, but it is still one that is overlooked and taken for granted by those fortunate enough to have regular access to the benefits of a clean water supply. Clean drinking water, indoor pluming, bottled mineral water, (flavored or otherwise), year-round green lawns, swimming pools, corporate farms in the desert, artificial lakes, diverted rivers, hydraulic electric plants–these are the luxuries of the rich, of which almost everyone is in America and Europe is in comparison to rest of the world. The many ways modern, developed societies use water truly displays our ignorance, arrogance, and sheer non-appreciation for this most important of resources, which has led to a growing GLOBAL water crisis.

There is always someone who quips, “The Earth is around 70% water, how can we be having a water crisis?” Yes, there is a huge about of water on our planet, but only about 3% is fresh water, most of which is frozen in polar icecaps, leaving less than 1% easily, (depending on if you have the technology), accessible for human consumption. And consume it do we ever. Over 70% of human water usage is dedicated to agriculture, of which nearly half is wasted through inefficient irrigation, evaporation, etc. In order to maintain these wasteful practices, (something which America and China are particularly culpable), we divert rivers and drain lakes and wetlands–thus destroying valuable ecosystems. And whatever water we don’t use, we pollute with sewage and chemical runoff from our farms, factories, and very homes.

The global south has born the brunt of the water crisis, particularly in Africa and the Middle East where booming populations mixed with depleted traditional water sources, (such as underground aquifers, lakes, and rivers), have created a state of increased tension which has only exacerbated various conflicts. Unfortunately, in the rush for these countries to develop, they have adopted many of the water practices and suggestion of the global north, which, to be quite frank, is a terrible model for sustainable water use.

It it important to realize that water shortages affect the global north as well where the struggle over water rights have increased dramatically over the last 50 years. Think about the droughts which afflicted much of the western US between 1999 and 2004, or the water shortages which hit Los Angeles in 2009. Just the past Sunday this article came out regarding the water quality of Norman Oklahoma’s own Lake Thunderbird, which revealed that the city’s principle water source  has already been classified as a Sensitive Water Supply by the state.

Dr. Baxter Vieux, a civil engineering and environmental science professor at the University of Oklahoma, said the need to keep a pretty lawn is a big problem for the lake’s water quality. “There’s a culprit,” Vieux said. “And we’re all a little bit guilty.”

Vieux said residents and others dump about 20 tons of fertilizer in Lake Thunderbird each year. He said the fertilizer in run-off water causes algae to grow at an alarming rate, causing the lake’s water quality to drop and creating an environment where fish and other animals may not be able to get as much oxygen as they need.

But it’s not just Norman and its residents who are the problem. Several other cities, including Oklahoma City, lie within Lake Thunderbird’s watershed. Vieux said urban development in the Lake Thunderbird watershed is expected to double by 2030 as sprawl creeps into the outer limits of Norman, Midwest City and Oklahoma City. He said all the added impervious surfaces — things like concrete that don’t allow water to soak in — will cause the lake’s water quality to decrease further.

Those are some of the facts and figures human water habits, but what does it mean in terms of the quality of life, social justice, development and world politics? In regards to water issues in the global south many development organizations like to fund well-drilling projects, seeing it as a relatively cheap, quick, and simple way to provide easily accessible water to rural communities. Some of the benefits of well-drilling projects are the freeing up of time for village women, (who would otherwise spend a majority of their day fetching water), having a clean source of drinking water, (which cuts down on disease), and having a steady water source for irrigation of fields, (which results in better crops, more food and money). Sounds perfect, right?

Unfortunately there is a down side. For example, in Yemen development organizations drilled wells in villages and for local agriculture around the country. As this article points out, by encouraging well drilling for farming and western style crop irrigation instead of the traditional rainwater irrigation, Yemen has now exhausted its underground aquifers and, as a result, its drinking water supply. Similar situations have occurred around the world, where by becoming dependent on man-made water works, (such as wells, dams, artificial canals, etc), communities neglect traditional water conservation practices in favor of a quick, easy source.

The problem is that having this easy source of water also allow communities and agricultural practices to expand beyond the natural limits of the ecosystem.But what happens when the well-pump breaks, the river becomes polluted, the lake shrinks, or the aquifers run dry? Suddenly communities are faced with drought, disease, famine, (if they depend on sustenance agriculture), and a host of other problems. In urban areas the major problems become water rationing and increasing water prices–which then raises a human rights question. Should people have to pay for clean water? After all, we can not survive without water so is it ethical for companies, cities, governments, etc., to charge people for it and to deny water to other communities in need? It is these issues which lie at the heart of various water disputes, such as those between Oklahoma and Texas, Israel, Jordan and Lebanon, and the Central Asian states.

We, as a global community, need to start addressing water management seriously. Water conservation in the global north is pitifully low, while water sources in the global south are insufficient for their current needs–at least when using current day practices. Water management is a huge issue which extends into environmental conservation, human rights, security studies, meteorology, politics, global trade, agricultural practices, scientific development, even religion, (for example the Indus river is sacred for many Hindu religious traditions). Water literally affects every single living thing on this planet every day and it can not and should not be ignored.

It certainly gives you something to think about next time you have a drink….

No Longer Protected.

News and analysis…

Anti-discrimination politics  is a surprisingly tricky issue, despite it being about the relatively basic idea that you don’t deny certain benefits or punish people based on skin- tone, ethnicity, gender, religions, sexual orientation, etc. However, there is the counter argument that you also shouldn’t protect certain groups based on these attributes. There is always a struggle on where we draw the line between anti-discrimination and minority protectionism. While there are certainly those who honestly oppose group-based legal protection out of the belief that it only causes more harm  in the long run, (through being sheltered rather than being viewed a equals under the eyes of the law),  there are also those who  hide their bias and bigotry under such arguments. One must wonder which is the case in Gov. McDonnell’s (VA) recent overturning of an order protecting gay and lesbian state workers. Here is a link to the memo.

TPMDC | Gay and lesbian state workers in Virginia are no longer specifically protected against discrimination, thanks to a little-noticed change made by new Gov. Bob McDonnell.

McDonnell (R) on Feb 5. signed an executive order that prohibits discrimination “on the basis of race, sex, color, national origin, religion, age, political affiliation, or against otherwise qualified persons with disabilities,” as well as veterans.

It rescinds the order that Gov. Tim Kaine signed Jan 14. 2006 as one of his first actions. After promising a “fair and inclusive” administration in his inaugural address, Kaine (D) added veterans to the non-discrimination polity- and sexual orientation.

Human Rights Campaign |Gov. McDonnell first opposed protecting employees based on sexual orientation when he was Attorney General, arguing that the state’s discrimination policy should be defined by the legislature. His new order, which includes all previously protected categories including race, sex, religion and age – but not the previously protected category of sexual orientation – was signed on Feb. 5, but was first reported on Wednesday, Feb. 10. Current attorney general Ken Cuccinelli supports Gov. McDonell’s legal reasoning. The Governor has released a policy he recently sent to staff members and Cabinet secretaries indicating that his office would not discriminate “for any reason,” but his message could hardly be clearer: discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity is not prohibited.

Hampton Roads | On Monday, McDonnell said that Kaine’s executive order on the subject remains in place, save the “sexual orientation” passage he objects to.He and Kaine jousted on the topic four years ago when McDonnell was attorney general – McDonnell argues that such employment policies are the province of the legislature, not the governor.

And he told reporters Monday his policy will remain what it was when he was the state’s top prosecutor – discrimination won’t be tolerated in the state work force.

“The only thing I care about is will they work hard, will they follow the vision that I’ve outlined for state government, will they have a servant’s heart, do they love Virginia and will they get results,” he said.

Box Turtle Bulletin | This action by their governor is an open invitation for supervisors or managers to fire or demote employees. And it is likely to happen.But what is even more likely to occur is abuse, harassment, and antagonizing of gay people. If a coworker calls someone a “damn pervert”, that’s not going to be punished. If the morning meeting is started by a daily f*ggot joke, there’s no recourse. If a state employee shares how they lost the paperwork of the “flaming queen in my line” to gales of laughter, that will not be illegal discrimination. And posting big signs quoting Leviticus or “protecting marriage” will not be an indication of a hostile workplace.

Outside The Beltway | Not a particularly surprising development.  McDonnell is an unabashed evangelical and social conservative and Virginia is, outside the DC suburbs where I live, a staunchly conservative state.

Further, McDonnell’s office issued a statement saying, “It shall be the policy of the office of the Governor to ensure equal opportunity in the workplace, encourage excellence by rewarding achievement based on merit, and prohibit discrimination for any reason. Hiring, promotion, discipline and termination of employees shall be based on qualifications, performance and results.”  One presumes that will in fact be the case.

Indeed, it’s difficult to see how the state government could win a suit in which there was blatant discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation regardless of the state of this executive order.   My sense, then, is that this is a sop to the base with no meaning.  It’s interesting, though, that this was done with so little fanfare that we’re just now hearing about it.

Best of the web…

In Cairo Trash City, School Teaches Reading and Recycling  |  The News Hour

For generations, the Zabaleen people have hauled away Cairo’s refuse and lived on the fringes of society. But thanks to an enterprising recycling school, the poor and mostly illiterate inhabitants of “Trash City” are receiving education and job training for the first time. Fred de Sam Lazaro reports from Egypt.

Dalai Lama ‘Very Happy’ With Obama Talks  |  Huffington Post

Report from a Pashtun Teen  |  On the Ground

Sher Bano is a 17-year-old Pashtun girl from Pakistan who spent last year as an exchange student in Evanston, Illinois, as part of the Youth Exchange and Study (YES) Program. She is now back in the city of Peshawar in the northwest of Pakistan, but is unable to attend formal school because of insecurity there. As a guest blogger, she’ll be writing about life in Pakistan from the perspective of a teenage girl who has spent time in the West.

One of my American friends once asked me if I traveled by camel in Pakistan. Needless to say, my answer was no. But Americans should know more about life in Pakistan than just this. Pakistanis as a whole are democratic, progressive and mostly secular in their attitudes; it is because of this that a religious party could almost never win an election here.

Climate of Doubts

Analysis …

Massive snowfalls on the East Coast last week ramped up the debate over climate change, with both sides claiming that the storms proved their points. According to the New York Times, global warming skeptics called the record-setting precipitation global cooling, while climate scientists said that the storms are consistent with changing weather patterns spurred by rising global temperatures. That debate, which comes on the heels of “Climategate” — in which climate-change critics claim that some data has been falsified and a prominent climate scientist has admitted that some of the data on global warming was not well organized — may have changed the discussion about global warming, and not for the better, some experts say.

Project Syndicate |  “Climate evangelism is an apt description of what the IPCC has been up to, for it has exaggerated some of the ramifications of climate change in order to make politicians take note. Murari Lal, the coordinating lead author of the section of the IPCC report that contained the Himalayan error, admitted that he and his colleagues knew that the dramatic glacier prediction was not based on any peer-reviewed science. Nonetheless, he explained, ‘we thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action’.”

The Intersection |  “For my part, I am convinced the fundamental factor is that our camp egregiously misunderestimated the skeptic/denial camp and what it was capable of. Our thinking went something like this: “the science keeps getting stronger, and now we have Obama…the tide has turned.” And so we were lulled into a false sense of security. Now, there is a hell of a lot of regrouping to do, and I am not even sure where to begin. But one thing is certain: We should never again assume that science alone is going to make the political difference on this issue, no matter how strong it gets.”

MoJo Blogs |  “The CRU emails mostly seemed overblown to me, and taken by themselves they’d probably have blown over pretty quickly. But start adding all this other stuff — even if none of it really affects the core claims of climate change — and the public is going to tune out even more than it already has unless the climate community either provides some explanations post haste or else makes credible commitments to clean up its act in the very near future.”

Global Post |  “‘There’s nothing like a very cold winter to convince another percentage of the American public that global warming is not happening,’ said American University professor Matthew Nisbet at Harvard University this week. Indeed, the Republican Party in Virginia seized on the mid-Atlantic “snowpocalypse” to produce an advertisement criticizing Democrats in Congress who support “cap-and-trade” policies that provide economic incentives to reduce pollution emissions.”

MediaMatters |  “Media outlets have referenced the emails apparently stolen from University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) in their recent reports on “record snowfall” and criticisms of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), suggesting that the emails “undermined” global warming research or reporting claims about what they “appeared to show.” Those media did not report, however, that scientists and fact-checkers have found that the emails, in the words of FactCheck.org, “have been misrepresented by global-warming skeptics” and “don’t change [the] scientific consensus on global warming.”

Best of the Web …

Rethinking Work: Journalism as Labor  |  Global Comment

Communication, conversation, is inherently a good thing—more people having access to the tools to do that is as well. News organizations get scooped all the time without going out of business—getting scooped by bloggers occasionally won’t drive them further into the red. Indeed, it might drive them to wonder why so many people want to read that blog instead of their paper.

But the hard work of public interest reporting is too important to leave up to whims and volunteers, and if left solely to the market, will be done the same way much professional driving is done now: in service of the wealthy and powerful.

The Comedy Circuit: When Your Brain Gets the Joke  |   New Scientist

TWO polar bears are perched on a block of floating ice. One says to the other: “Do you know, I keep thinking it’s Thursday…”

To some, this kind of surreal humour is side-splitting. Others are baffled by it and can’t even raise a smile. Yet despite the importance of humour to human psychology, it is only the advances in brain imaging during the past decade that have enabled neuroscientists to pin down how the brain reacts when a joke tickles us. Armed with this knowledge, they are now solving the puzzle of why some jokes are funny to some people but leave others cold.

So what is a joke, exactly? Most theories agree that one condition is essential: there must be some kind of incongruity between two elements within the joke, which can be resolved in a playful or unexpected way.

Want to Serve? Be Gay or Lesbian; Don’t Be A Homosexual  |  Marc Ambinder @The Atlantic

Great job by the folks at the CBS News and New York Times polling department. They’ve uncovered a classic example of how language influences perceptions in polling. 59% of Americans agree that “homosexuals” ought to be able to serve in the U.S. military. But 70 percent believe that “gays and lesbians” ought to be able to serve in the military. So what are we to make of these confused Americans? “Homosexual” has become a pejorative term, too clinical, associated with a medical condition. But “gays and lesbians” are our friends — all around us, part of the community.

‘Avatar’ in the West Bank  |  Truthdig

Some Palestinians in Billin, the West Bank town famous for its civil disobedience, have taken a cue from the movie “Avatar.” Demonstrators have painted themselves blue, citing a parallel between their cause and that of the film’s indigenous protagonists, who fight against a foreign occupying force.

• Informed Comment  | “Yeah, but the implication from the film is also that you need some good people from the Israeli Army and academia to help out if the Na’vi aren’t to be obliterated.”

Big Brother and the Internet.

News and Analysis…

At a recent meeting of the D.C. based Online Safety and Technology Working Group (OSTWG) the FBI once again pushed for expanded data retention on the part of internet service providers (ISPs). Always a touchy subject in relation to privacy rights, the FBI is trying to extend the regulations to require ISPs to record which web sites costumers visit and retain the records for two years; a demand which generated much conversation among technology and justice groups over the feasibility and wisdom of such an action.

CNET | FBI Director Robert Mueller supports storing Internet users’ “origin and destination information,” a bureau attorney said at a federal task force meeting on Thursday.

As far back as a 2006 speech, Mueller had called for data retention on the part of Internet providers, and emphasized the point two years later when explicitly asking Congress to enact a law making it mandatory. But it had not been clear before that the FBI was asking companies to begin to keep logs of what Web sites are visited, which few if any currently do.

The FBI is not alone in renewing its push for data retention. As CNET reported earlier this week, a survey of state computer crime investigators found them to be nearly unanimous in supporting the idea. Matt Dunn, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in the Department of Homeland Security, also expressed support for the idea during the task force meeting.

The Technology Liberation Front | But the strongest objection came from John Morris of the Center for Democracy & Technology, who rightly noted that no amount of government subsidies for data retention could prevent leakage of sensitive private data. For this reason and because of the basic civil liberties at stake whenever the government has access to large pools of data about its citizens, Morris argued that we need to strike a balance between how we protect children & the values of free society. Dave McClure of the US Internet Industry Association (USIIA) seconded this point powerfully: If such vast data is retained, it will be abused.

The Next Web | Another concern is whether or not such a law for logging data explicitly for the purpose of federal investigation in some way violates the Constitution. For example, American citizens are entitled to an expectation of privacy. In my opinion, this if you’re just visiting a website in your home that doesn’t have any social features, this activity should be considered private. If, on the other hand, you’re on a site interacting with users, then you’re being less private.

Personally, any proposals for data logging set off my internal Orwellian sensors. The FBI argument will be that more data will allow for better policing of criminal activity, but that’s also the problem: all of the user data collected would be more or less for the purpose of prosecuting people. And the last thing we need in the US is more ways to put people in jail.

Ars Technia | The two-year data retention request has remained consistent over the last four years, even as the Europeans have tightened up many of their data retention policies. That might be, in part, because the US has no equivalent to the EU’s Article 29 Working Group, made of of national data privacy commissioners; here, the push for privacy comes largely from nonprofits outside the government, not from within.

But Europe does face conflicts between its privacy advocates and law enforcement, instructive to consider since the EU is ahead (in a temporal sense) of the US on these issues. While the Article 29 group pushes Internet companies to retain data for no more than six months, the 2006 EU Data Retention Directive requires ISPs and Internet companies to retain certain kinds of data for six months to 24 months. The rule has to be made into law by each EU member state, and was to be fully in place by the end of 2009. Each state can choose whatever retention period it likes best, and can even go beyond two years if desired. (Much like the FBI’s request, the EU rule requires source and destination information, but not the actual contents of communications.)

The US has not adopted either comprehensive data privacy or data retention legislation. The FBI has not been shy about making its views on the matter heard, but the fact that four years have passed without Congress giving the Bureau what it wants shows what a low priority the matter remains.

Best of the web…

Vegetative State Patients Can Respond to Questions  | BBC News

The research, carried out in the UK and Belgium, involved a new brain scanning method.

Awareness was detected in three other patients previously diagnosed as being in a vegetative state.

The study in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that scans can detect signs of awareness in patients thought to be closed off from the world.

Patients in a vegetative state are awake, not in a coma, but have no awareness because of severe brain damage.

Costa Rica Elects Female President  | Aljazeera

Costa Ricans have elected their first female president, with Laura Chinchilla, the ruling party candidate, taking 47 per cent of the vote.

Chinchilla declared victory early on Monday, with votes way ahead of her rivals and above the 40 per cent needed to avoid a run-off.

Study Finds Tree Growth Spurt  | The New York Times

Forests in the eastern United States appear to be growing faster in response to rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, a new study has found.

The study centered on trees in mixed hardwood stands on the western edge of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland that are representative of much of the those on the Eastern Seaboard.

All are growing two to four times as fast as normal, according to a study published in Tuesday’s issue of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The Jolly Green (Energy) Giant?

News and analysis…

In light of President Obama’s remarks concerning clean energy during his 2010 State of the Union address and his meeting with the Republican caucus on Jan. 28th, there has been a flurry of media activity concerned with finding out who leads in producing clean energy technology. The answer? China. While a small fraction of China’s domestic energy production currently comes from alternative energy, the Chinese government is actively encouraging the increase of domestic clean energy use. While the United States should hardly emulate China, it is certainly worth considering what the United State’s largest competitor in the realm of energy consumption is doing in the area of clean technology…

The New York Times | TIANJIN, China — China vaulted past competitors in Denmark, Germany, Spain and the United States last year to become the world’s largest maker of wind turbines, and is poised to expand even further this year.

China has also leapfrogged the West in the last two years to emerge as the world’s largest manufacturer of solar panels. And the country is pushing equally hard to build nuclear reactors and the most efficient types of coal power plants.

These efforts to dominate renewable energy technologies raise the prospect that the West may someday trade its dependence on oil from the Mideast for a reliance on solar panels, wind turbines and other gear manufactured in China.

Tomas Friedman: Dayton Daily News | China’s leaders know their country is in the midst of the biggest migration of people from the countryside to urban centers in history. This is creating a surge in energy demand which China intends to fill with clean, homegrown sources.

In the last year alone, so many new solar panel makers emerged in China that the price of solar power has fallen from roughly 59 cents a kilowatt hour to 16 cents, according to The Times’s bureau chief here, Keith Bradsher.

With so fevered a push for capacity growth, the Chinese government will take it any way they can get it, and if it means creating a new global industry, all the better. Remember, investor certainty is much less an issue in the Chinese context already, where the government makes the rules and the investments. U.S. companies have no certain market for their products – be it energy equipment or green power – and have no incentive to “bet the house” on E.T.

Meanwhile, China last week tested the fastest bullet train in the world — 217 miles per hour. And Bradsher noted that China has nearly finished building a high-speed rail route from Beijing to Shanghai at a cost of $23.5 billion. Trains will cover the 700-mile route in five hours.

By comparison, Amtrak trains require at least 18 hours to travel a similar distance from New York to Chicago.

Clean Techies | Friedman and others may be right that China is doing an exceptional job putting forth a very green face to the world — and, indeed, they are delivering. As Bradsher reports, “China intends for wind, solar and biomass energy to represent 8 percent of its electricity generation capacity by 2020….[t]hat compares with less than 4 percent now in China and the United States.” Bradsher continues, noting correctly, “China’s biggest advantage may be its domestic demand for electricity, rising 15 percent a year.”

In other words, while U.S. lawmakers – and even those in the green movement – continue to jostle over where money should be directed (subsidies for green power purchase, green tech research and development, energy efficiency) and debate whether we can stem the anticipated tide of growth in demand for environmental benefit, the Chinese have one directive: more capacity, now! And, a lot of it, from anywhere. They are not shy (nor ambivalent) about capacity growth. After all, it means economic growth.

Reuters | A new Chinese law requires power grid operators to buy all the electricity produced by renewable energy generators, in a move that will increase the proportion of energy that comes from renewable sources in coal-dependent China.

The amendment to the 2006 renewable energy law was adopted on Saturday by the standing committee of the National People’s Congress, China’s legislature, the Xinhua news agency said.

The amendment also gives authority to the State Council energy department, together with the State Council finance department and the state power authority, to “determine the proportion of renewable energy power generation to the overall generating capacity for a certain period.”

The Washington Post | In the State of the Union Address last Wednesday, President Obama said “the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy and America must be that nation.” At the same time, on the other coast, 75 clean energy investors, entrepreneurs, and researchers were debating whether the U.S. can gain this leadership position. They agreed that even though Silicon Valley leads the world in technology, it is not clear if it will ever lead in Cleantech. The Valley may develop some breakthrough technologies, but without government help these are unlikely to translate into global leadership. The technology world is rightfully allergic to government assistance and intervention. Cleantech is different, however, and we aren’t dealing with a level global playing field.

The Knowledge Economy Institute Leadership Summit, which I attended, was held at the Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), in Emeryville, California. The question posed: what will it take for the U.S. to achieve global leadership in the clean-energy economy? The group concluded that the U.S., by far, has the strongest innovation platform in the world. But other countries may well reap the benefits of its research efforts. China, in particular, is making massive investments and has a huge advantage from focused policy and large markets. Even though China is not likely to produce its own innovation, it will continue to appropriate U.S. technology and gain a major advantage by combining this with its manufacturing prowess. American firms which are increasingly choosing to build design and manufacturing operations in China will provide it with additional advantage.

DAVOS Dairy | In China, the government poured an estimated $440 billion into clean energy last year. It is investing heavily in renewable energy and nuclear power. It also is pursuing efforts to make extraction of its vast coal reserves cleaner. Already home to one-third of the globe’s solar-energy manufacturing capacity and 400 solar-energy companies, China is expected to surpass Spain this year as the No. 3 country in terms of wind power installations, behind Germany and the United States.

William Rhodes, senior vice chairman of Citigroup and board vice chairman of the National Committee on U.S.-China relations, predicted that Beijing’s research into storing carbon emissions underground could soon lead to a major breakthrough.

In the United States, meanwhile, President Barack Obama faces an uphill battle in Congress to pass politically-sensitive legislation aimed at capping carbon emissions.

“China has the type of centralized industrial policy that we can’t match and don’t want in the United States or the European Union,” said Fred Krupp, president of Environmental Defense, a U.S. advocacy group. “What we have to compete with China is the power of our marketplace. A clear and declining cap on carbon emissions will send the essential market signal to industry, and that will engage our market directly in this competition.”

Best on the web…

Baptists In Haiti Could Face U.S. Kidnapping Charges | NPR

Haiti’s prime minister said Monday it’s clear to him that the 10 U.S. Baptists who tried to take 33 children out of his quake-ravaged country without permission “knew what they were doing was wrong.”

Prime Minister Max Bellerive said his country is open to having the Americans go before courts in the United States because his own nation’s judicial system was devastated by the Jan. 12 earthquake.

The aborted Baptist “rescue mission” has become a distraction for a crippled government trying to provide basic life support to millions of earthquake survivors.

But the prime minister said some legal system needs to determine whether the Americans were acting in good faith — as they claim — or are child traffickers in a nation that has struggled to fight exploitation of children.

Al Franken’s Anti-Rape Amendment Makes Defense Budget | The Huffington Post

President Barack Obama’s 2011 defense budget proposal includes language that would prevent the government from working with contractors who deny victims of sexual assault the right to their day in court.

Four husbands under Islam | Salon.com

It’s scandalous for a Saudi woman to publicly voice a sense of entitlement to equal rights — but sexual rights in particular? Now, that — that will bring her a lawsuit, threats, slander and infamy. Such is the case for female journalist Nadine Bedair, who recently penned an article for the Egyptian daily newspaper Al Masry Al Youm titled, “My Four Husbands and I.” Mmhm: “My Four Husbands.” You hardly have to read beyond the headline to forecast the shitstorm ahead — but, of course, you’d be missing out on her delightfully daring indictment of polygamy if you didn’t.

Money for Nothing? Or Buying Votes?

Analysis …

The U.S. Supreme Court last week issued a 5-4 ruling Thursday that struck down prohibitions on political campaign contributions by corporations, saying that such measures aimed at control infringe on corporate First Amendment free speech rights. The decision means that corporations and unions will be able to spend unlimited funds on independent campaign expenditures. Reactions to the decision ranged from outrage by some who said the ruling has made U.S. democracy more corrupt to indifference because such practices are already in place anyway. What do you think of the ruling?

The American Prospect |  “If the Court rigidly insists that Congress can regulate only to prevent quid-pro-corruption, narrowly defined, then Citizens United has implications that extend well beyond what corporations can do. Justice Kennedy’s own opinion even hints at the possibility, as he notes that the evidence supporting the “soft money” limits – which apply across the board — rests on evidence about the connection between money and political access. While Justice Kennedy backed off from saying anything definitive, we may find that it was the Court’s discussion of corruption, not corporations, that matters most in the long run.”

Matt Welch @CNN |  “Even if you just can’t bring yourself to believe that people who take civil liberties seriously have long-held serious civil libertarian criticisms of campaign-finance laws, or if you simply think they’re all wrong, I’ll offer this last salve: It has never been easier for groups of citizens to swarm together and flow money through the Internet toward campaigns and candidates who excite them. Ask Ron Paul — or more relevantly, Barack Obama — what’s more powerful: $10 million from Dr. Evil Industries, or $10 each from 1 million people who can actually vote?”

Julian Sanchez |  “Why is it that so many people who clearly do think books and magazines and talk radio shows enjoy unambiguous constitutional protection, despite being corporate funded or operated, are simultaneously absolutely sure that paid broadcast spots are in an utterly different category? If one is above all concerned with exacerbating the translation of economic inequality into political inequality, it seems rather odd.  In effect, it means you only get to use your corporate money to get your agenda on the airwaves if (like GE or Time Warner) you’re big enough to buy them wholesale. But that’s OK, because you can pump money into all those other means of trying to influence voters; it’s just broadcast advertising that’s out. So I’d like to flip the reductio question around and ask: Given that people seem to mostly agree that all this other stuff constitutes protected political speech, why do so many people have such a different attitude about paid ads?”

Informed Comment |  “In Web 3.0 consumers will likely download content via the internet at will. Media is becoming pull media– individuals pull down what they want when they want it. Television may have to go to an iTunes model of charging per episode. In a pull-media world, for advertisers of any sort, whether pushing products or candidates, to get their message out and control it will become more and more difficult. Pull-media allows a fracturing of viewership (or participation– many consumers will be playing games rather than watching passively). The fact is that viewership for the 4 networks has already plummeted, and the advertising rates that companies now pay them to air commercials are unrealistically high, and appear to be a function of habit. What else could you do? There are hundreds of channels, then you add in the video blogs, the online gaming, and the blogs. Even if a network only pulls in a household share of 9 for the evening rather than the household share of 65 that that Gunsmoke used to on CBS, at least you’ve got that many households in one place, which is rarer and rarer. One of the few things Rupert Murdoch is right about is that there is not enough advertising to spread throughout the internet so as to support any particular newspapers or magazines. The buy of a half-hour attack ad by e.g. Morgan Stanley on CBS dissing Obama on October 25, 2012 just may not mean then what it would have meant in 1960 when CBS had a large proportion of television viewers and most Americans were television viewers, and there were only 3 networks. And if the attack ad is inaccurate, it will be shredded on social media or just ignored. All the vicious attacks on Obama, after all, did not prevent his landslide victory, since voters were tired of Republican shenanigans. Reality is still more important than media depictions of it.”

Alas, a Blog |  “As I think about it more…say goodbye to stopping global warming. In fact, bring it on!!! And there go environmental regulations!! And our food system will be going STRAIGHT to hell. No pass go, do not collect $200. Let us not even begin to think of the effects on the rest of the world. Remember how corporations did nasty things to Latin America with the full backing of the US gov’t? Does anyone think that they will stop now? Bolivia for instance, is already under pressure for its lithium.”

Best of the Web ..

The Advocate’s Foolish and Sad ‘Gayest City’ Ranking  |  Box Turtle Bulletin

I appreciate the Advocate for many reasons, not least of which is that they are a gay magazine that is still in business. But their recent effort to light-heartedly identify the “gayest cities” in the United States betrayed our community’s occasional inclination to still buy into the most negative stereotypes as though they define us.

Yes, It’s Perfectly OK to Have a Wind Turbine Near Your House  |  Global Comment

I too worry about unintended effects of wind energy on wildlife populations, particularly birds. We clearly need to minimize these impacts as much as possible. However, to limit wind production in a core wind-producing region because corporations and landowners worry the state will change makes no sense in the face of an urgent energy and climate change crisis. These localized concerns have far-reaching implications that affect national and international events, from funding for wind projects in Congress to rising sea levels and growing numbers of climate refugees in Bangladesh.

Human Rights as Animal Rights  |  alias Bruce

Recently, a person I was talking with suggested that when we talk about civil and human rights, we ought to start bringing the rights of non-human beings into the discussion as well. Her idea being that just as we link, say, black rights with women’s rights with gay rights, we need to begin to link the rights of humans with the rights of other sentient beings. So that the welfare of non-human animals becomes part of the everyday progressive discussion about “justice” instead of being quarantined to the PETA and environmentalist end of the table.

This project gets messy. Because it is full of human ideas that we cannot just slap onto animal consciousness. For starters, what exactly is “sentience?” Who has it and who doesn’t? Is it even a fair standard? Can a non-sentient existence rank as highly on a worth-of-experience scale as a sentient one? And what is “freedom” or “the pursuit of happiness” to a garter snake?

Making maps to fight disaster, build economies  |  TEDTalks

As of 2005, only 15 percent of the world was mapped. This slows the delivery of aid after a disaster — and hides the economic potential of unused lands and unknown roads. In this short talk, Google’s Lalitesh Katragadda demos Map Maker, a group map-making tool that people around the globe are using to map their world.

Public Hearings on Greenbelt Issues

The Greenbelt Commission has scheduled a public hearing on their Draft Amended Greenbelt Ordinance.  You can access a copy here.  This public hearing is preliminary to the ordinance going forward for City Council action.  The Greenbelt Commission has heard frequently from the Development Community.  The Commission now needs to hear from the rest of Norman’s citizens who are interested in this issue.

This meeting will be held Monday evening, January 25th, at 6:30 p.m. in the Multipurpose Room of City Hall.

Equally important to Norman’s future green spaces, as well as water quality and flooding avoidance is a hearing on the “stream planning corridors” recommended by the Storm Water consultants.  That meeting will be held in the City Council Chambers on Wednesday, January 27th at 5 p.m.

Additional information: Contact Mary Francis at mary.francis111@gmail.com.

Climate of Doubts

Analysis …

After intense talks in the past few weeks, delegates to the Copenhagen Climate talks passed an accord that recognizes the world’s need to halt the rise of global temperatures, but lacked targets for reducing carbon emissions. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called the accord, which was backed by the U.S., an “essential beginning,” but said it must be made legally binding next year. Many countries criticized the deal, saying it didn’t go far enough. Some watchers of the climate talks wondered whether the U.S. and other industrialized nations could muster the will or the vision to actually make changes necessary.

Open Left |  “A decade ago, the coalition of “Teamsters and turtles” that disrupted the WTO talks created some space for developing nations to more effectively oppose the agenda being pushed by US and other advanced industrial nations.  But many of those nations were not that prepared for opposition.  Ten years later, in Copenhagen, the what had been a fairly adventitious and partial convergence had matured to the point where the official representatives of the underdeveloped nations have become some of the most eloquent and advanced advocates for a fundamental transformation in how the world works.”

The Associated Press |  “Around the world, countries and capitalism are already working to curb global warming on their own, with or without a global treaty. In Brazil more rainforests are being saved, and in Chicago there’s a voluntary carbon pollution trading system. People recycle, buy smaller and newer cars, and change lightbulbs. But the impact of such piecemeal, voluntary efforts is small. Experts say it will never be enough without the kind of strong global agreement that eluded negotiators at the U.N. summit this past week in Copenhagen.”

CSMonitor.com |  “With several key decisions, Obama has set the scene for expanding the reach of climate-change imperatives – and science – into the lives of everyday Americans. He has made a “green economy” a hallmark of the $787 billion stimulus package passed in February. He has prioritized the cap-and-trade bill and put into effect new auto mileage standards. And the Environmental Protection Agency has for the first time characterized carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, as a pollutant that it can control.But he has spent virtually no time engaging the public about the truth of the science. The climategate scandal, in which leaked e-mails alleged that support for the manmade global warming scenarios were politicized, played directly into a growing ambivalence. The result could be flagging public support of drastic climate change measures, says Glenn Reynolds, a law professor at the University of Tennessee.”

Miller-McCune |  “As the year comes to an end, Congress is haltingly assembling a plan to reform the health care system, while world leaders scramble to effectively address climate change. Given that, on both issues, the status quo is clearly unsustainable, why is the process of making needed changes so problematic?
While the question of precisely who must sacrifice for the common good (you first, by all means) plays a huge role in both debates, another, less-obvious dynamic is also in play. According to New York University psychologist John Jost, humans have an innate desire to see the structure of their society as fundamentally just and, thus, a strong reluctance to making major changes.”

Religion Dispatches |  “Global warming has been described by skeptics and deniers as a religion, and not in flattering ways. But many organized religions are taking climate change seriously, as a science. And while the tensions between religion and science date back centuries, the current climate change movement acts as a playing field where an atheist like Christopher Hitchens stands in agreement with an evangelist like Rick Warren: both believe it’s real and deserves urgent attention. Yet there is one issue that makes both camps squeamish: rapid population growth, which scientists say will make some regions even more vulnerable to climate change. Neither religious “creation care” advocates nor traditional environmentalists feel fully comfortable talking about it, and one major religious leader said it doesn’t even come up for discussion.”

On the Web …

Get Pregnant, Get Court-Martialed  |  Truthdig

Remember when protecting women’s rights was given as a justification for invading countries? Well, the U.S. general in northern Iraq has added pregnancy to the reasons why a soldier could be court-martialed—a list that includes selling weapons and taking drugs.

The Net Advantage  |  Prospect Magazine

It is impossible to know how the next few months in Iran will unfold, but the use of social media has already passed several tests: it has enabled citizens to coordinate with one another better than previously, to broadcast events like Basij violence or the killing of Neda Aga Soltan to the rest of the world, and, by forcing the regime to shut down communications apparatus, the protesters have infected Iran with a kind of technological auto-immune disease. However great the regime’s short-term desire to keep the protesters from communicating with one another, a modern economy simply cannot function if people can’t use their phones. The regime may yet crush protests, but even if they do, the events of June to November this year will still have broken the old illusion of a happy balance between democratic, theocratic, and military power in Iran.

Pearl Clutching and Urban Planning  |  Alas, a Blog

Our society likes to wring its hands and bleat about the poor pitiful children once the shooting starts, but we don’t tend to pay attention to the roots of the problems before everything goes wrong. This latest spate of failed gentrification efforts are going to have brand new bad areas springing up as the residents struggle to make it with no tax base, poor infrastructure, and the same old issues of race and class. It’s ridiculous to paint these pictures of scary bad areas that are the result of some foreign event horizon that no one can understand when we know how places get this way. For starters you get rid of the grocery stores, instead allowing liquor stores that sell food or whatever little corner stores spring up to be the only place within walking distance to get groceries. Then you take away (or never start) bus routes, and the ones that are in the area have shortened hours and limited routes so it’s difficult for the remaining population to get to work. Oh, let’s not forget schools that lack necessary equipment so the students are ill-equipped to succeed academically in a society where education is key. And of course there’s the added impact of poverty and institutional racism. Why the mention of racism? Well, how do you think we get to the place where only certain neighborhoods are allowed to turn into war zones? It’s no accident that I can get cops in my neighborhood to respond a lot faster than people living in Englewood.

Mr. Inhofe goes to Wash…er Copenhagen

Analysis…

Senator James Inhofe traveled across the vast Atlantic Ocean this week to make an appearance at the climate change summit in Copenhagen. “I figure you are going to hear from the other side,” Inhofe said, “so I wanted you to hear” this side. For those familiar with Inhofe’s stance against global warming, his speech at the conference was nothing new.  Yet, as he travels across the world to represent our great state of Oklahoma, in attempt to dissuade the public against the notion of  man-made global warming, you wonder what the rest of the country thinks of our Senator…

Grist |  The great leader of the Copen-deniers, U.S. Sen. James Inhofe (R), showed up on the Danish island of Copenhagen for a fly-by press event [Thursday] at the international climate treaty.
If the lack of significant media coverage is any indication, it was a waste of time for the lonely fringe senator from Oklahoma.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend the press conference, as it was organized very last minute. But if I had, these are the questions I would have asked:
1. Given that you are one of the largest recipients of funding from the oil and gas industry in the Senate, I am interested in knowing who paid for your flights over to Copenhagen?

2. Is your former assistant Marc Morano and/or CFACT providing support for your trip here?

3. What do you think of your top climate science adviser, Christopher Monckton, calling young Americans “Nazis” and“Hitler youth”?

4. Why did you not bring any of your Republican Senate colleagues? Your colleagues on Capitol Hill and the media have repeatedly stated that you’re all alone in your stance on climate change. What makes you think you’re in a position to say a US clean energy and climate bill will never happen?

5. Is it just a coincidence that you get so much money from the oil and coal industry and believe that climate change is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people?

Talking Points Memo DC |  Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) also made the trip despite a busy senate schedule that could have prevented his plan to, as he puts it, debunk global warming as an issue.
President Obama leaves [Thursday] tonight and plans to speak tomorrow, but [Thursday] morning Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dominated the news in Copenhagen by pledging the U.S. would support a $100 billion climate fund. But China is saying a global pact is unlikely.

The Washington Independent |  Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) made a quick stop in Copenhagen [Thursday] to deliver the message to international climate negotiators that he’s been telling the American public for months: there’s “zero” chance that the Senate will pass comprehensive climate legislation.
Inhofe’s drive-by press conference — he spent just two hours in Denmark — was intended to undercut the efforts of American negotiators, including President Obama, who are expected to commit to carbon emissions cuts in the range of 17 percent by 2020.
“I figure you are going to hear from the other side,” Inhofe said, and so he wanted to provide his perspective. Indeed, senators in favor of climate action got the first word: Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) highlighted American action on climate change in a Senate floor address Monday, and Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), speaking yesterday at the Bella Center in Copenhagen, promised that the United States would pass a climate bill.

The Green Blog |  The parade of US politicians to the climate change talks continued this [Thursday] morning when Republican Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma arrived for a two-hour visit to the Danish capital. His message for negotiators was that Congress will never pass a cap-and-trade bill to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and he reiterated his stance that man-made global warming is not occurring.
Inhofe, who held an impromptu press conference in the Bella Center, said the chances of passage of pending climate and energy legislation were “zero” and would remain so if such a bill was financially harmful to Americans in any way.
Inhofe has been one of the most ardent detractors of man-made climate change, and this morning was no exception. He said the recent hacking, and publishing, of e-mails from a prominent climate change research group at East Anglia University in England showed that “the science has been debunked.”

News…

Scientists crack ‘entire genetic code’ of cancer  |  BBC

Scientists have unlocked the entire genetic code of two of the most common cancers – skin and lung – a move they say could revolutionize cancer care.
Not only will the cancer maps pave the way for blood tests to spot tumors far earlier, they will also yield new drug targets, says the Welcome Trust team.
Scientists around the globe are now working to catalogue all the genes that go wrong in many types of human cancer.

Oklahoma Abortion Law ‘Invasive,’ Critics Say  |  NPR

In Oklahoma, a new law requires any woman seeking an abortion to first answer dozens of personal questions, including why she wants the procedure. That information, names omitted, would eventually be posted on a state Web site.
Those who support the measure say it will help them better understand why women are seeking abortions. Abortion rights advocates call the law intimidating and invasive, and this week, they are challenging it in court. Legal experts say the law is another test of how far states can go to regulate abortion.

Crying out for Humanity

“This is a matter of all humanity and all living things — all their past, their present, their future. It is not a question of loyalty to one group or one country, but all living things from this time on. It affects the existence not only of man, whose worth may be debatable, but of all life upon the earth. You have a duty to the whole world, not merely to one segment of one species. … I tell you that there will be an international agreement, and very soon. It will not come from the big nations where rivalries are strong. So the little nations must force them into such a compact and see that they abide by it.” — Pierce, in Leonard Wibberley’s The Mouse That Roared

This past weekend, Tuvalu delegate to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen Ian Fry made an emotional cry for help to the people of the world, particularly the U.S. The chief climate negotiator for the 12,000 people of the tiny island republic pleaded for world leaders to make agreements to save not only his nation, but the other small, low-lying island states in the world and to protect them from being inundated by rising seas caused by climate change. Christine Russell at The Atlantic quoted Fry:

“I woke up this morning crying, and that’s not easy for a grown man to admit,” Ian Fry, the chief climate negotiator for the 12,000 people of Tuvalu, told hundreds of delegates gathered in the conference’s Bella Center on Saturday. “The fate of my country rests in your hands,” he said, reportedly choking up as he spoke.

Russell compares Tuvalu’s dire situation to that of canaries in coal mines, and wonders whether large countries, such as the United States and China, who are the world’s largest producers of global warming-causing gases, are willing to go the distance in order to curb emissions, particularly since curbing emissions would cause large polluting countries to take huge political and economic hits.

The United States and the other large countries of the world — the ones creating the most pollution, the ones causing the most harm to the ecology of the planet and have the most protection from the fallout of that harm — are standing at a crossroads toward the future. They can either lean toward protecting business and political interests in order to keep or jockey for more power and position … or they can err on the side of humanity, on the caring relationships built on regard for other people — particularly those without power — that are the hallmarks if what really make us human. They also can either look to keeping the status quo or embarking on creativity that would benefit us no matter what might happen with the climate — even if it turned out that the climate scientists were wrong and that the world were not in peril.

Michael Westmoreland-White (hat tip to Bruce Prescott @Mainstream Baptists!) called the U.S. and other large, emissions-producing countries to meet this challenge, using Pascal’s Wager as a guideline. He wrote:

Consider:  If we gamble that the climatologists who warn of global warming and catastrophic climate change because of greenhouse gasses are right, what follows? Well, we have to spend much money and make major changes in our industrial processes and lifestyles that are potentially economically and socially disruptive. It will cost to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 80% by 2050, for example. And, if the warnings were overblown this would be a negative. But, even if fears of global warming are exaggerated (something I don’t believe–I think the evidence is overwhelming that, if anything, it’s happening faster and with more severity than we believed even a few years ago), the changes made to stop it will leave us with many benefits:  Cleaner air (because greenhouse gasses are also major air pollutants) with all the benefits that makes to health in society; energy independence since every society can switch to clean, renewable sources of energy (wind, solar, biofuels, geothermal, hydroelectric, perhaps others not yet discovered); greater national security and a more stable world (since the politics of oil will not intersect the volatile countries of the Middle East and central Asia); better public transportation (high speed trains, light rail, cleaner busses, etc.) which helps business and city planning; renewed manufacturing and ‘green collar’ jobs that cannot easily be outsourced; less destruction of the natural world in the frantic search for fossil fuels (the end of “mountaintop removal” and strip mining for coal which is destroying the Appalachian mountains in KY, VA, TN, WV, and NC at an alarming rate; no catastrophic oil spills killing sea life, etc.) ; cheap, clean sources of power which can lift much of the world out of poverty; healthier lifestyles (less consumption in the rich West, more walking and bicycling; eating local foods that don’t have to be transported thousands of miles, etc.); less habitat destruction of other species in the frantic search for oil and coal.

All of these things are good to have even if the threat of global warming proves to be overblown.

This makes great logical sense to me, and if I were to weigh in with the heart of a philosopher, a theorist, an economist — this is the same argument I would make toward why the U.S. and other nations should err on the side of curbing climate change.

But I have another piece of my heart to consider, that comes out of my ethics and understandings of the world that say we are only find our humanity in how we treat others. We have power only through how we engage it in our dealings with those who have none. In the U.S., most of us are sheltered from the most devastating effects of the already-changing climate. But can we turn a blind eye and deaf ear to our sisters and brothers across the world who are watching the waters rise to take away their homes, their ways of life, their livelihoods? Will we choose power and comfort over the safety and surviving and thriving of our fellow human beings?

I saw the 1959 movie The Mouse That Roared for the first time the other day, and it surprised me in ways that only classic movies that were ahead of their time can do. In that hilarious movie, a small country inadvertently wins a war against the U.S., and in doing so obtains a mega-weapon that they use to force world peace by making large countries with nuclear weapons disarm. They reason: The small countries know that they are dependent upon the larger ones, that their fortunes are tied up with the larger ones; the larger ones don’t ever feel that way. It’s time the larger countries understood that.

When it comes to climate change, we don’t need a single country to hold a weapon against us to force us to understand that unless we hang together, we hang separately. The threat exists and is real, and it already is menacing those around us. What will we do? I took heart from Cornel West’s words, from this autobiography, in which he prophetically lets us know what we need to do to entrust not only the safety and well-being of the world, but also our precious humanity:

Back to New York for a CNN-televised interview with The New York Times in which I lambaste Imperial America and the Ice Age of Indifference that casts a cold eye on the least of these, the most vulnerable among us — the orphans, the elderly widows, the relatively helpless children, and goes on to embrace poor people, working people, people of color, victims of violence, domestic, or international. One wants to look at the world continually through the lens of those people you want to be in solidarity with. This solidarity is manifested best by being part of activities connected to the worlds and experiences of the least of these.

I prayerfully ask our leaders to consider these acts of solidarity — to stand with Tuvalu and other countries whose fortunes are tied with ours — in considering climate policies for our future.

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