CLIMATE CHANGE and ECONOMIC EQUITY: George Bush listens, learns, loves ... ignores?

Forget Kennedy's Peace Corps, Dubya is being urged to include a Clean Energy Corps in his legacy to the world post-2008. This is viewed as a key-turner to increase environmental and social sustainability in one of the most economically polarised developed countries, the USA. What are the chances for this being a pilot for a program with global eco- and social-sustainability objectives? Is the world ready for an eco-ethical Bush legacy? Would a more competitive eco-ethical field, would see Gore, Bono and Brown accelerate their international efforts? Or would the eco brand be forever tarnished?

Source: PRNewsWire: 'Go Green, Go Equal:' Environmental, Minority Groups Outline Needed Long-Term Economic Stimulus for All Americans

Unusual Coalition Urges Congress, White House to Focus on Sparking New Economic Boom, Resolving Climate Woes and Expanding Prosperity for Poor and Working Class.
Two dozen leading environmental and minority groups are urging the White House and Congress
to look ahead to a long-term economic stimulus package that would use targeted investments in energy efficiency, mass transit, and a "Clean Energy Corps" to put hundreds of thousands of Americans to work while strengthening the economy, accelerating towards energy independence, and easing the harm of global warming.
In the joint statement to President George Bush, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, the groups write: "By increasing national energy efficiency, reducing out-of-pocket energy spending, and creating employment opportunities, the measures above will meet basic stimulus goals while furthering national objectives of climate protection, energy security, and economic equity."
The statement continues: "In crafting a national stimulus package, we urge you to consider policy measures that not only help keep our economy out of recession in the short term, but also make smart investments in longer-term, sustained economic prosperity by moving our nation towards a clean energy economy that provides employment opportunities for poor and
working-class Americans.... We have an opportunity to act boldly to strengthen American energy independence, invest in the clean, sustainable energy sources that will form the foundation of a new era of economic prosperity, and address global warming -- all while putting hundreds of
thousands of Americans to work."

In addition to endorsing such short-term steps as increased spending on means-targeted or unemployment-targeted programs (e.g., unemployment insurance, food stamps, and LIHEAP) and investments in the U.S. physical infrastructure and public buildings, the groups also call for steps to "promote a clean energy economy that provides opportunities for all Americans, including the poor and working class, including:

-- Funding a public Clean Energy Corps that offers work and service opportunities to the young and poor to combat climate change through energy efficiency and weatherization projects;
-- Expanded and immediate funding of the recent Green Jobs Act (GJA), Title X of the EISA;
-- Directing infrastructure investments toward transit, mixed use dense development, walkable communities, and overall reductions in vehicle miles traveled and our nation's carbon footprint;
-- Investing in improving our electricity grid to be 'smarter' in end-use efficiency and allowing greater use of distributed renewable energy generation;
-- Using additional monies allocated to LIHEAP for improving building energy efficiency as well as home heating assistance, and removing current constraints on such use;
-- Extend production and investment tax credits for solar, wind, and other renewable energy companies to prevent high-growth clean energy industries from having to cancel projects and lay off workers;
-- Establishing federal credit guarantees for state and municipal 'efficiency utilities' promoting energy conservation efforts in transportation, industry, and buildings;
-- Establishing a federal revolving loan fund to support such efforts; and

-- Providing personal tax credits or rebates to encourage the purchase and installation of energy efficient appliances and heating and cooling systems."
The joint statement was signed by 1Sky; Breakthrough Institute; Center for Neighborhood Technology; Center for State Innovation; Climate Crisis Coalition; Climate Protection Campaign; Climate Solutions; ColorOfChange.Org; The Corps Network; Earth Day Network; EcoAmerica; Ella Baker Center for Human Rights; Energize America; Green for All; Green House Network; Hip Hop Caucus; Innovations in Civic Participation; Kyoto USA; MoveOn.Org Political Action; Solve Climate; Step It Up!; Sustainable South Bronx; and U.S. Climate Emergency Council.

AFRICA and the USA: Remarkable Change and Progress in Africa's Economic Development

Source: AllAfrica

On the second leg of a trip to three African countries, the Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, Henry M. Paulson, Jr., delivered this address to the Corporate Council on Africa's U.S.-Africa Business Summit in Cape Town.
Africa is a unique continent: diverse in people and heritage, with some of the most spectacular geography and biodiversity on the planet. All too often, however, those who do not know Africa well associate the continent with issues like famine, conflict and disease. Tonight, I will talk about a much different Africa, one with which I suspect most of you are more familiar – a continent of diverse nations increasingly defined by economic opportunity and promise.
Most importantly, I will talk about an Africa where leaders are taking control of their own economic futures and continuing to move beyond reliance on donors.

For the rest of the speech AllAfrica.

CLIMATE CHANGE and EQUITY: China, coal and iPods

A good article from WSJ. Fails to point its finger at how fashion in gadgets requires these mobiles and other small electronic equipment to be flown from East Asia to Europe and the USA. Forget food miles, think gadget miles!

From Wall Street Journal: Why China Could Blame Its CO2 on West
By JANE SPENCER
To understand the deadlock in the debate on global climate change, take a look at your iPod.
The vast majority of the world's MP3 players are made in China, where the main power source is coal. Manufacturing a single MP3 player releases about 17 pounds of planet-warming carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
IPods, along with thousands of other goods churned out by Chinese factories, from toys to rolled steel, pose a question that is becoming an issue in the climate-change debate. If a gadget is made in China by an American company and exported and used by consumers from Stockholm to São Paulo, Brazil, should the Chinese government be held responsible for the carbon released in manufacturing it?
Next month, world leaders will gather in Bali to begin hammering out a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, the international treaty to combat global warming that expires in 2012. China and the U.S., the world's two largest carbon emitters, are facing mounting international pressure to participate in the new deal. But as the bill for unchecked emissions comes due, a battle is brewing over who should pay for it.
Past accords like Kyoto have looked at emissions on a country-by-country basis, requiring participating nations to reduce greenhouse gases released within their borders. In other words, the manufacturing nation pays for the pollution. But in a twist that could put more pressure on industrialized nations like the U.S., academics, environmentalists and some policy makers argue the next global climate treaty should take into account a nation's emissions "consumption." They argue the emissions are embedded in goods that move around the world through trade -- so if the U.S. imports iPods from China, Americans should share some responsibility for the pollution produced in making them.
"As China's emissions rise, everyone is pointing the finger of blame at China," says Andrew Simms, policy director of the New Economics Foundation, a think tank and environmental-advocacy organization based in London. "The real responsibility for rising emissions should lie with the final consumers in Europe, North America and the rest of the world."
The argument appeals to leaders in China, which by some tallies has already passed the U.S. as the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide. Earlier this year, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang reminded reporters from the Western media that "a lot of the things you wear, you use, you eat are produced in China." On the one hand, Western companies are manufacturing more in China, but "on the other hand, you criticize China on the emission-reduction issue," he added. Roughly 23% of China's emissions come from the production of goods that are shipped elsewhere, according to a recent report by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in Britain.
Some economists dismiss the argument and note that China happily benefits from the arrangement. "China loves being an exporter, so it's ironic they would blame the U.S. for their exports," says Robert Stavins, a professor of business and government at Harvard University. "It's called having your cake and eating it too."
At this point, the blame-the-buyer approach is more a negotiating tactic than a serious proposal for redrafting the global-emissions map. But as new studies and reams of data become available tallying embedded emissions, the research could influence the debate over what kind of emissions cuts various nations should be called on to make.
Advocates of the consumption-based approach argue it solves one of the key problems associated with the Kyoto Protocol, known as carbon leakage. This is the idea that countries can reduce their own emissions by sending dirty industries abroad. The same countries may still import the finished goods from the developing world, creating a situation in which global carbon emissions rise, even as individual nations meet their targets.
"If you have emissions constraints, it's become very attractive to relocate dirty production to developing countries, or import products from developing countries," says Glen Peters, a researcher at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. "You import the finished goods, and leave the pollution in China."
Technically, carbon emissions in the U.S. have declined in recent years, a fact noted by President Bush. U.S. carbon emissions fell 1.3% in 2006. But a recent study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University suggests the U.S. may be cutting its emissions by outsourcing more manufacturing.
"If the Chinese government was held responsible for its emissions, it would raise the cost of producing goods there," says Joseph Aldy, an economist at Resources for the Future, an environmental think tank based in Washington. "Typically, when one imposes a tax, the cost gets passed back to the consumer."

CLIMATE CHANGE and EQUITY: America looks to learn from development-friendly UK

USA: Farmers in developing world hurt by 'eat local' philosophy in USA

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

Increasing awareness of climate change has transformed the way Americans think about organic food. While organic consumers used to focus on how food was produced, such as whether pesticides were used, they now are also concerned about how far food has traveled to arrive at their plate. The issue is that greater distances often equate to more energy use and greenhouse gas emissions.
The preference for eating local has been popularized, among others, by UC Berkeley journalism professor Michael Pollan in the "Omnivore's Dilemma" and by Barbara Kingsolver in "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle." This "eating local" philosophy has a huge following among those consumers who buy organic food. But what about the consequences of the local food craze for farmers in the developing world who have joined the organic and fair trade movements?
We're getting a glimpse of the future of this debate in the United Kingdom, where the tension between the local food and fair trade movements is acute. Just recently, the U.K. Soil Association, a nonprofit group that promotes sustainable and organic farming, called on the British government to restrict imports of organic produce brought in by air. In a concession to the fair trade movement, this group would allow for imports from countries actively seeking to promote organic and fair trade markets within their own borders. Despite this concession, British fair trade activists are worried.
Whether the British government would ever adopt such a ban is questionable, but labeling schemes and use of concepts such as "food miles" (the distance a product has traveled to reach the store) are likely to increase consumer awareness and influence purchasing habits.
The suggestion that developing countries should promote local markets for organic produce in order to wean themselves off of export markets is a false alternative. These markets often already exist in everything but name.
Many farmers in the poorest of African nations - where I do my research - already supply local markets with their grains and produce. While not formally recognized as such, these markets are virtually organic because most poor African farmers restrict pesticide use to traditional export crops such as cotton, cacao and coffee, while local foodstuffs are grown with few or no chemical inputs.
Traditional export-oriented agriculture is problematic in many ways, but the organic and fair trade movements are beginning to diversify opportunities for African farmers in this sector. Just as Mexico and South America supply large amounts of organic produce to California, European demand for organic and fair trade products from Africa is surging. These are not just niche markets where developing world farmers can potentially gain a higher return, but these channels also promote better working conditions and the reduced use of chemicals. If the local food movements in Europe and North America reduce their demand for organic and fair trade products from afar, the most likely consequence is that African farmers who have entered these niche markets will return to producing their export crops in the conventional, pesticide-intensive manner. While local food markets can provide some income for these farmers, they still are reliant on export opportunities for the bulk of their cash income.
Although our decisions as consumers have the power to influence how our food is produced, this approach is limited. What we really need are changes in the basic rules that govern the global marketplace.
If international bodies, such as the World Trade Organization, set and enforced rules about basic working conditions and environmental standards, then we would not be relegated to trying to promote organic farming and fair labor practices via labeling schemes and informed consumption. If African countries were allowed to protect nascent industries, then they might not be so reliant on agricultural exports.
But until these changes are made, it is a cruel joke to condemn developing-world farmers to commodity crop production and then remove the only hope they have for higher returns - organic and fair trade crops and products. While the local food craze is all well and good, we should not be so quick to denounce organic and fair trade foods that are imported from the developing world. By shunning these products, we do not encourage local markets to flourish in these countries, but we condemn these farmers to the ills of conventional production for the global market (the only other real alternative at this time). We should remain open to such products in the short term, but also work for broad scale changes in the rules of the global market place to ensure that even conventional agricultural production is safe and fairly compensated.

ENVIRONMENT AND SOCIAL EQUITY: sustainable development in China

At the Chinese Communist Party's five-ennial general meeting, President Hu Jintao said "rapid economic growth remains the top priority", but acknowledged the need to pay greater attention to the environment and social welfare, adding "to realise social equity and justice is the Chinese communists’ consistent position”.

Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, the premier, have used the issue of sustainable development and increased welfare spending to distinguish themselves from the previous administration, which focused more on growth.

The other superpower elect, Hillary Clinton, sounds "fair miles" away from China's progressive position - “This administration has unilaterally pursued policies that are widely disliked and distrusted ... yet it does not have to be this way. The world still looks to the United States for leadership. American leadership is wanting, but it is still wanted.” Shaping her leadership agenda, she intends setting up an annual “E8” summit including India and China that would aim to tackle global warming and work towards energy security. She and her carbon-tonne-a-month compatriots should consider asking Hu Jintao and his 73 million party members to convene this meeting - at least their vision of sustainable development aims to shape a better world not simply point fingers at fast emerging economies.