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Will China and U.S. please stop bickering?
Zhang Quanyi, UPI Asia
Chinese President Hu Jintao will be in the United States next week to attend the U.N. General Assembly and talks on climate change in New York, followed by a G20 meeting in Pittsburgh. It is a good opportunity for Hu to demonstrate China’s growing sense of global responsibility, just ahead of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
Global warming, U.N. reform, nuclear proliferation and strengthening the global economy top the challenges on the agenda at these meetings, and China is ready to make its contribution in each of these important areas.
Unfortunately, just ahead of these meetings, the United States declared late last week it would impose special duties on imported Chinese tires, sparking anger in China and resulting in retaliatory moves by Beijing…
(17 Sept 2009)
Tax Code Mocks Federal Energy Intent
Emily Badger, Miller-McCune
From 2002 through 2008, the U.S. federal government spent about $72 billion subsidizing fossil fuel industries, much of those benefits embedded in arcane tax codes written in another era, for a different kind of energy economy.
That number is more striking, according to a study released today by the nonpartisan Environmental Law Institute, when paired with the subsidies government has funneled toward renewable energy. Only $29 billion was directed to renewables over the same period, and more than half of that toward corn ethanol that many scientists now think may do more harm than good to the environment.
Traditional renewables — wind, solar, hydro, geothermal and biomass energy — received just $12.2 billion of government nudging, a figure that hardly jives with stated policy goals of the U.S. to “green” the country’s economy…
(18 Sept 2009)
Europeans Say U.S. Lacks Will on Climate
John Broder and Jack Kanter, The New York Times
As world leaders gather in New York for the highest-level conference yet on climate change, European leaders are expressing growing unease about the United States’ stance in international talks aimed at reaching a global agreement in Copenhagen in December.
Officials of several European countries have cited what they see as a lack of political will on the part of the United States to adequately address climate change. The American reluctance to accept any agreement that would require legally binding and internationally enforceable targets for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions could doom the Copenhagen session, they said.
Ahead of this week’s climate talks at the United Nations, the Europeans also expressed little hope that the United States Senate would act on a climate bill before the Copenhagen talks begin. They said the lack of domestic consensus sows doubt about whether the United States can keep any pledges it makes at Copenhagen, either on the level of reductions in global warming emissions or on financial commitments to help developing nations adapt to a changing climate…
(20 Sept 2009)
Afghanistan strategy in broad review
Julian E. Barnes, Lost Angeles Times via Denver Post
In the wake of a grim assessment from his top military commander in Afghanistan, President Barack Obama has begun a wholesale re-evaluation of war strategy, a process that goes beyond the current debate over troop levels to the question of U.S. strategic aims.
The review could lead to decisions to scale back broad efforts at political reform and economic development and to focus missions on hunting down al-Qaeda, by using small special-operations teams and armed Predator aircraft. A narrower American effort also could avert the need for additional troops, officials and experts said.
In recent comments, including several televised interviews over the weekend, Obama appeared to question the premise underlying the current U.S. approach, a strategy he approved in March. As a result, military officials were scrambling Monday to determine how drastic any resulting changes are likely to be.
White House officials did little to publicly clarify the situation Monday, saying only that Obama was intent on completing a “strategic assessment” before making any decisions on more troops for the war…
(22 Sept 2009)
We will back a global deal to cut emissions, says Obama
David Usborne and Andrew Grice, The Independent
Barack Obama insisted at a climate change summit yesterday that the US was committed to a new global treaty on greenhouse gases – explicitly distancing himself from George Bush – even while acknowledging that he faced an uphill task getting the necessary legislation passed in Washington. Listing actions taken in the US to curb carbon output since he took office, the President called his pledge “an historic recognition on behalf of the American people and their government. We understand the gravity of the climate threat. We are determined to act. And we will meet our responsibility to future generations”.
Even with bursts of encouraging rhetoric from leaders at the UN gathering in New York and some new commitments to act, notably from China, the mood among delegations was sombre. There was no hiding the acute awareness that talks towards sealing a new global pact on cutting emissions at another summit in Copenhagen this December are in deep trouble…
(23 Sept 2009)
The New Hard Times
Rob Harris, Sarah Kramer, and Michele Monteleone, The New York Times
Peter G. Holden, 92, grew up in the Jim Crow South during the Great Depression. He talks with his daughter and granddaughter about the role of community in hard times.
(2009)
