Author Archives: admin

Movement on Kyoto

Leave a Reply

Australia has ratified the Kyoto Protocol, leaving the US the only major industrialised nation yet to agree to the climate treaty.

The endorsement was approved by the first executive council meeting of Australia’s new Labor government this morning, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said in a statement on the Labor Party’s Web site. Australia will become a full member of the Kyoto Protocol by the end of March, he said.

Rudd promised to make climate change a priority for his government, and I’m delighted with the drive he’s shown so far.

Australia’s target under the Kyoto accord is to limit growth in greenhouse gas emissions to an 8 percent increase above 1990 levels over the 2008-2012 period. The country is “tracking within 1 percentage point” of meeting that target, then-environment minister Malcolm Turnbull said in May. Australia is one of only three industrialized nations signed up to the accord that are allowed to increase emissions from 1990 levels by 2008-2012.

The Labor government will do “everything in its power” to help the nation meet its Kyoto obligations, Rudd said. This will include setting a target to cut emissions by 60 percent on 2000 levels by 2050, starting a national emissions trading system by 2020 and setting a target for 20 percent of electricity to come from renewable sources such as the sun and wind by 2020, he said.

The timing couldn’t be better, as delegates from around the world are meeting in Bali to hammer out the successor to Kyoto, which expires in 2012. If it puts pressure on the US to sign up — though this might only happen under the next administration — so much the better. And the more major nations on board, the more likely developing countries such as China will join too.

Malawi's transformation

1 Reply

Malawi has gone from famine-stricken to exporting food in just a couple of years. The secret? It ignored what the experts told it to do and instead did what was best for its people.

Over the past 20 years, the World Bank and some rich nations Malawi depends on for aid have periodically pressed this small, landlocked country to adhere to free market policies and cut back or eliminate fertilizer subsidies, even as the United States and Europe extensively subsidized their own farmers. But after the 2005 harvest, the worst in a decade, Bingu wa Mutharika, Malawi’s newly elected president, decided to follow what the West practiced, not what it preached.

Stung by the humiliation of pleading for charity, he led the way to reinstating and deepening fertilizer subsidies despite a skeptical reception from the United States and Britain. Malawi’s soil, like that across sub-Saharan Africa, is gravely depleted, and many, if not most, of its farmers are too poor to afford fertilizer at market prices.

Corn production is 3.4bn tonnes, more than twice what it was in 2005. The World Bank and others have expressed doubts over whether or not these figures have been inflated, but it is nonetheless exporting to its neighbours while not depending on international aid.

You can tell I'm a geek…

Leave a Reply

…when I post stories like this.

A US TV presenter says he and his team have found a series of footprints in the Everest region of Nepal resembling descriptions of the mysterious Yeti.

The presenter [Josh Gates] and his colleagues say they are “very excited”, although they are not saying they definitely believe it is the mark of the Yeti.

An excited Mr Gates described the main footprint as anthropomorphic, meaning it had human characteristics.

He said he did not believe the prints were man-made or that they came from a known animal such as a bear.

But he also said he was not sure he believed in the Yeti, and did not know what to make of it.

Casts have been taken of the prints, and these are being sent to the States to be examined.

Life in public

Leave a Reply

Jeff Jarvis makes an interesting point about social networking, Google presence and generally being known on the internet:

look at the benefits of publicness: We can maintain richer friendships longer. We may be more careful to act civilly in public. We may become more forgiving of others’ lapses of civility and sense in the hopes that they will forgive ours: the golden rule of the social life online, I hope. We can make connections with people with shared interests and needs. We act more socially. We find we can do more together than apart. We invest in and protect our identities and communities. We organize and act collaboratively to improve this world. Yes, there are risks to publicness and to losing privacy. But the benefits of life in the public are great. That is what my private peers do not realize but what the young public understands in their souls.

I like his thinking. True, it’s idealistic, but he’s highlighting the positive aspects to having a public presence on the web.

There are obvious privacy concerns, and one must be aware of how one’s web history can come back to haunt. The upside, Jarvis argues, is that other people have similar pasts and must forgive yours should they expect to be forgiven themselves.

Besides, there’s no reason you can’t have a weblife in public and not maintain a substantial degree of privacy.