The outcome of the November midterm elections in the United States may well hinge on oil and atoms. The issue of atoms, namely Iran’s nuclear ambitions, is potentially more explosive. But the price of gas, since it hits consumers in the pocketbooks, may have the more immediate effect.
Hoff Stauffer should not be so apologetic and tenuous in his proposal for performance standards. If and when the world decides to become serious and really do something about global warming (and the considerable lag times normally encountered between decision and action suggest we are fast running out of time), I doubt the Kyoto Protocol will have anything to do with what emerges. Kyoto and its flexible mechanisms may represent an idealized vision of how pollution might be controlled in a perfect world, but the real world is far from meeting those conditions. The question we should be asking is: why would the world want to experiment with untried theory for this critical and time-sensitive problem?
The debate in the United States on global climate change is shifting from whether to do something about the problem to what to do. The conventional wisdom focuses on “cap and trade,” also known as tradable emissions permits. The Kyoto protocol, for instance, has instituted a cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gases (GHGs).
To the bankers and government officials who descended on the city state for the World Bank and International Monetary Fund annual meetings in September, Singapore may have looked like the perfect model of a globalized consumer society. Tellingly, for the first time, the annual meetings took place inside a giant shopping mall. Corporate logos dominated the venue, shoppers went happily about fulfilling their consumer duties, and the delegates were shrouded in a constant cloud of Muzak.
The debate in the United States on global climate change is shifting from whether to do something about the problem to what to do.1 Prudent people do not want to risk unacceptable adverse economic impacts, even if they are extremely concerned about global climate change. On the other side, equally prudent people do not want to risk accomplishing too little. The debate is stymied, even though several bills on global warming have been introduced into Congress. ÂThere will be no climate change legislation coming out of my committee this year, Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM) recently announced. ÂFrankly, I don’t know how to write it, and I don’t think anybody does.Â2
Even before the military ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra on September 19, Thai democracy was in severe crisis. The country had suffered a succession of elected but do-nothing or exceedingly corrupt regimes. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), which for all intents and purposes ran the country with no accountability from 1997 to 2001, further eroded the legitimacy of Thai democracy by imposing a program that brought great hardship to the majority. Thaksin stoked this disaffection with the IMF and the political system to create a majority coalition that allowed him to violate constitutional constraints, infringe on democratic freedoms, and using the state as a mechanism of private capital accumulation.
South Africa has entered the most difficult political period since the end of apartheid in 1994. At the heart of the crisis is the question of the future direction of the country.
It started in 2002 with a few hesitant probes that were low on intelligence, high on imagination, and short a couple of helicopters reportedly lost in the desert wastelands of northern Mali. Then, in 2003, the U.S. launch of a second front in its Âwar on terror moved into top gear. In collaboration with its regional ally Algeria, the Bush administration identified a banana-shaped swath of territory across the Sahelian regions of the southern Sahara that presumably harbored Islamic militants and bin Laden sympathizers on the run from Afghanistan.
World leaders and celebrities declared 2005 to be the "year of Africa" with much fanfare. Beginning with the UK’s Commission on Africa report, and culminating in some supposed gains for the continent at the summit meeting of the Group of Eight (G8) wealthy countries, who were cajoled at several musical extravaganzas featuring the likes of U2, Madonna and Youssou N’Dour to do more to end global poverty, the year was billed as a "turning point" for Africa.
After a 2002 Israel Defense Forces attack, the Palestinian residents of the West Bank town of Jenin made it a point of pride to rebuild the razed buildings, restore homes ransacked by occupation, repave roads dug up by Israeli tanks, and replant olive groves uprooted by Israeli bulldozers.