What weighs half a ton, then? The world's heaviest woman, according to the Daily Mail . The amount of municipal waste each of us generates each year. Half of a Volvo 960. Hey, have you seen this Google application? It makes listing things so much easier!
This week, Sources Close to Rowan Davies told her what a sustainable world would look like. It would mean each person on the planet emitting no more than half a ton of carbon per year. (That's before we even start to consider that, to fairly address the extraordinary imbalance between the emissions of developed countries and the emissions of majority-world countries, those of us in the West should actually emit a lot less and give the surplus to those who didn't create this mess.)
What could you do for your half-ton allowance? This is over a year, mind. Don't use it all at once. Fancy a cheeseburger? That'll be 6kg, so you could have about 83 of them. (I'm pretty sure I saw a guy engaged in that particular project yesterday.) A smoothie, by contrast, would account for only 2700g. You could take a short domestic return flight. One person could drive from London to Madrid, but s/he couldn't come back. That's actually not a bad deal. You could build one-hundredth of a new home, or heat one room in your current one. Bear in mind you can only do one of these things; the rest of your year would have to be taken up with zero-carbon activities. And no, you can't do that. New children take up a lot of carbon.
The UK government recommends that we all stick to around 8 tons of carbon emissions per person in 2009. The half-ton recommendation is an open secret in energy circles, but its implications are so frightening that no pressure group, let alone government, will publicise it.
Saturday, 4 April 2009
The Obama press conference
So, you know when you're at an international summit, right. Various press conferences are scheduled to be held throughout the day. I tripped along, palpitating, to the ones I was most focussed on - Douglas Alexander (Secretary of State for International Development) and Ed Miliband (Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change) - and was struck by the boredom of the press pack (about 30, maybe 40, at each); another day, another international summit. I got the first question in at both of these because I was sitting in the front row like the swot I am, madly making eye contact and nodding intelligently as the minister gave his briefing.
(In fact - indulge me on this for a minute - I am the first blogger ever to ask a question at an international summit. Yeah, I know you don't give a shit. You have a good point and you're making it well. You would definitely be surprised by how much this accolade is being fought over in the blogosphere (look I CAN'T break into the narrative to make an excuse for each individual piece of toe-curling terminology, we'll be here for months). So, to sum up: Hey! Losers! I was first! I asked a question about THE LITTLE LADIES and their LADY BITS! Build a bridge and get over it!)
So. UK ministers, foreign heads of state; press conferences came and went and the press in general did a good impersonation of a fourth-former at morning assembly, only not so good-looking.
We'd been told that the POTUS's press conference would be at around 18.00, but as the afternoon wore on, the internal plasma screens that were giving out information made no reference to it. Nevertheless, at about 17.15 I thought it would be a good idea to walk down the ExCel's internal 'boulevard' (see disclaimer above) to see if anything was happening. There were already about 100 journalists in the queue. The people in front of me were German broadcasters; the people behind were Chinese print journos. It reminded me of being in the queue for day tickets at Wimbledon. Some people caught your eye and smiled; others insinuated themselves into the queue like a pensioner at the five-items-or-fewer till. Reader, I actually physically shoved someone back out who'd pushed in front of me.
I turned around. I was now in the front fifth of the queue. Security personnel came to have a look at us a couple of times, walking up and down and eye-balling people. (One of the other G20Voice bloggers, a risk-management expert, remarked that it's a sign of how good POTUS's security is that it's almost invisible; being surrounded by a pack of suits talking into their wrists is, apparently, a sure sign that someone's security is a bit second-rate, and needs to create a public impression.)
Then they started to let us in. There were five or six different briefing rooms, and we were heading into the arena-style space, with capacity for about 600 journalists. I wanted to run, but somehow restrained myself. Neverthless, I got a fairly central seat in the ninth row. Once we were all in, there was a short wait before a man I've never met, and yet feel immensely familiar with, walked purposefully to the lectern in the centre of the stage.
You've read and heard all this before, but his charismatic authority is almost a physical force. I don't actually go a bundle on his rhetorical style myself - his cadences are repetitive - and politically he's not completely my style either. But he comes across as a fully-formed human being, only better (funnier, brighter, more skilled); he is Human 2.0. When it came to taking questions from the press, he didn't leave it to a flunkey at the side of the stage to pick who was going to get called on (as Gordon Brown had done earlier in the day). He said, apologetically, that he had a list of US journalists on whom he needed to call, but that he would try to 'sprinkle in' some 'random' questions from the rest of us. So the first few questions were the usual blah about US jobs; I'd like to be rude about this, but the questions to Brown had had the same domestic focus. Then he indicated that he was going to choose someone at random, and 600 journalists (including me? Hell yes!) put their hands in the air. He chose a woman who also turned out to be from the US. Later on, he chose an Indian journalist who asked a question about the bilateral meeting Obama had held with the Indian Prime Minster, Dr Manmohan Singh. Obama said that he was a great fan of Dr Singh's, and the Indian journo got a bit flustered and said 'Thank you, I'm very proud of him'. Her trembling voice and obvious excitement got the rest of us laughing, and Obama - with the timing of a master - looked at her quizzically and said 'Why, did you have something to do with it?'. It was like Saturday Night at the London Palladium.
At the end of the conference, I thought: are people going to applaud? Surely not. But they did. And as they applauded and got to their feet to leave, it created a little unintentional standing ovation. Then the press's inner fourth-former awoke from its daydream with a self-loathing start. Obama bt. International Press, 6-0, 6-1, 6-0.
What would I have asked him? 'Mr President [God you've GOT to say it haven't you], earlier today the UK's Secretary of State for International Development told me that maternal mortality rates in developing countries remain high because the issue is not a political priority in the West. Do you think his analysis is correct?'
(In fact - indulge me on this for a minute - I am the first blogger ever to ask a question at an international summit. Yeah, I know you don't give a shit. You have a good point and you're making it well. You would definitely be surprised by how much this accolade is being fought over in the blogosphere (look I CAN'T break into the narrative to make an excuse for each individual piece of toe-curling terminology, we'll be here for months). So, to sum up: Hey! Losers! I was first! I asked a question about THE LITTLE LADIES and their LADY BITS! Build a bridge and get over it!)
So. UK ministers, foreign heads of state; press conferences came and went and the press in general did a good impersonation of a fourth-former at morning assembly, only not so good-looking.
We'd been told that the POTUS's press conference would be at around 18.00, but as the afternoon wore on, the internal plasma screens that were giving out information made no reference to it. Nevertheless, at about 17.15 I thought it would be a good idea to walk down the ExCel's internal 'boulevard' (see disclaimer above) to see if anything was happening. There were already about 100 journalists in the queue. The people in front of me were German broadcasters; the people behind were Chinese print journos. It reminded me of being in the queue for day tickets at Wimbledon. Some people caught your eye and smiled; others insinuated themselves into the queue like a pensioner at the five-items-or-fewer till. Reader, I actually physically shoved someone back out who'd pushed in front of me.
I turned around. I was now in the front fifth of the queue. Security personnel came to have a look at us a couple of times, walking up and down and eye-balling people. (One of the other G20Voice bloggers, a risk-management expert, remarked that it's a sign of how good POTUS's security is that it's almost invisible; being surrounded by a pack of suits talking into their wrists is, apparently, a sure sign that someone's security is a bit second-rate, and needs to create a public impression.)
Then they started to let us in. There were five or six different briefing rooms, and we were heading into the arena-style space, with capacity for about 600 journalists. I wanted to run, but somehow restrained myself. Neverthless, I got a fairly central seat in the ninth row. Once we were all in, there was a short wait before a man I've never met, and yet feel immensely familiar with, walked purposefully to the lectern in the centre of the stage.
You've read and heard all this before, but his charismatic authority is almost a physical force. I don't actually go a bundle on his rhetorical style myself - his cadences are repetitive - and politically he's not completely my style either. But he comes across as a fully-formed human being, only better (funnier, brighter, more skilled); he is Human 2.0. When it came to taking questions from the press, he didn't leave it to a flunkey at the side of the stage to pick who was going to get called on (as Gordon Brown had done earlier in the day). He said, apologetically, that he had a list of US journalists on whom he needed to call, but that he would try to 'sprinkle in' some 'random' questions from the rest of us. So the first few questions were the usual blah about US jobs; I'd like to be rude about this, but the questions to Brown had had the same domestic focus. Then he indicated that he was going to choose someone at random, and 600 journalists (including me? Hell yes!) put their hands in the air. He chose a woman who also turned out to be from the US. Later on, he chose an Indian journalist who asked a question about the bilateral meeting Obama had held with the Indian Prime Minster, Dr Manmohan Singh. Obama said that he was a great fan of Dr Singh's, and the Indian journo got a bit flustered and said 'Thank you, I'm very proud of him'. Her trembling voice and obvious excitement got the rest of us laughing, and Obama - with the timing of a master - looked at her quizzically and said 'Why, did you have something to do with it?'. It was like Saturday Night at the London Palladium.
At the end of the conference, I thought: are people going to applaud? Surely not. But they did. And as they applauded and got to their feet to leave, it created a little unintentional standing ovation. Then the press's inner fourth-former awoke from its daydream with a self-loathing start. Obama bt. International Press, 6-0, 6-1, 6-0.
What would I have asked him? 'Mr President [God you've GOT to say it haven't you], earlier today the UK's Secretary of State for International Development told me that maternal mortality rates in developing countries remain high because the issue is not a political priority in the West. Do you think his analysis is correct?'
Wednesday, 1 April 2009
I had an interesting conversation about tax regulation today
I really did. Richard Mabey from the Tax Justice Network http://www.taxjustice.net/cms/front_content.php?idcatart=2&changelang=1
He says that effective taxation (the eradication of tax avoidance and tax evasion) would enable a world without development aid. Each year, approximately $400 billion of taxation revenue is lost to governments through the use of evasive taxation techniques. This sum would pay for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals eight times over. Every year.
The TJN lobbies for a global system of tax declaration that is both multilateral (ie, a mutual system between all the member governments) and automatic (rather than governments having to request individual pieces of information). The G20 is not expected to deliver this this time around, but the issue is creeping up the agenda - because taxation revenue suddenly looks a lot more important to most of these governments.
Tomorrow's communique is expected to announce the setting up of a definitive list of tax havens, and a move towards automatic information sharing. The TJN sees this as the beginning of a move towards tax justice.
He says that effective taxation (the eradication of tax avoidance and tax evasion) would enable a world without development aid. Each year, approximately $400 billion of taxation revenue is lost to governments through the use of evasive taxation techniques. This sum would pay for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals eight times over. Every year.
The TJN lobbies for a global system of tax declaration that is both multilateral (ie, a mutual system between all the member governments) and automatic (rather than governments having to request individual pieces of information). The G20 is not expected to deliver this this time around, but the issue is creeping up the agenda - because taxation revenue suddenly looks a lot more important to most of these governments.
Tomorrow's communique is expected to announce the setting up of a definitive list of tax havens, and a move towards automatic information sharing. The TJN sees this as the beginning of a move towards tax justice.
Monday, 30 March 2009
That's a good question and I'm glad you've raised it
Protestors - what in the name of Mike do they want?
I volunteered for a while at Schnews, a Brighton-based newsletter for the protest movement - http://www.schnews.org.uk/index.php. They were a funny lot. There was one very intense woman who was taking a forestry course in Lewes purely so that she could obtain a chainsaw license (crikey). I didn't gain a lot of insight while I was there, but I do remember being shaken by the depth of their loathing for Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth - I suggested contacting them for some help on a story. I might as well have shat in the fridge. There was a distinct flavour of the Judean People's Front about the place. Eeee, happy days.
I'm pretty sure there is no codified set of aims or beliefs associated with this movement. However, the most unifying theme is probably anti-capitalism. Mainstream environmental/development pressure groups tend to either accept or embrace capitalism, and work within its confines. The protest movement genuinely wants to participate in an old-fashioned revolution, in which for-profit economic activity will be shut down, international economic institutions will collapse, national governments will fall, and people across the globe will return to pre-lapsarian agrarian subsistence lifestyles, albeit with any modern technology that can survive in a non-profit model.
I think they know that this would result in extraordinary levels of upheaval and bloodshed in the short-to-medium term, but they believe that the long-term outcome (sustainable lifestyles and an end to economic inequality) would be worth it.
I do have a sneaking sympathy for their reasoning. You don't have to look far to find evidence that the governments of the West are motivated by nothing but self-interest, and that the obscenity of global inequality is only ever addressed as an afterthought. Capitalism can't prioritise the needs of developing countries - that's not what it's for.
Anyway, if you look at that Schnews link you'll see a pretty cogent explanation of their aims.
I volunteered for a while at Schnews, a Brighton-based newsletter for the protest movement - http://www.schnews.org.uk/index.php. They were a funny lot. There was one very intense woman who was taking a forestry course in Lewes purely so that she could obtain a chainsaw license (crikey). I didn't gain a lot of insight while I was there, but I do remember being shaken by the depth of their loathing for Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth - I suggested contacting them for some help on a story. I might as well have shat in the fridge. There was a distinct flavour of the Judean People's Front about the place. Eeee, happy days.
I'm pretty sure there is no codified set of aims or beliefs associated with this movement. However, the most unifying theme is probably anti-capitalism. Mainstream environmental/development pressure groups tend to either accept or embrace capitalism, and work within its confines. The protest movement genuinely wants to participate in an old-fashioned revolution, in which for-profit economic activity will be shut down, international economic institutions will collapse, national governments will fall, and people across the globe will return to pre-lapsarian agrarian subsistence lifestyles, albeit with any modern technology that can survive in a non-profit model.
I think they know that this would result in extraordinary levels of upheaval and bloodshed in the short-to-medium term, but they believe that the long-term outcome (sustainable lifestyles and an end to economic inequality) would be worth it.
I do have a sneaking sympathy for their reasoning. You don't have to look far to find evidence that the governments of the West are motivated by nothing but self-interest, and that the obscenity of global inequality is only ever addressed as an afterthought. Capitalism can't prioritise the needs of developing countries - that's not what it's for.
Anyway, if you look at that Schnews link you'll see a pretty cogent explanation of their aims.
Sunday, 29 March 2009
The capering generalist
So, the G20 Voice people have set up a Ning site (no, me neither) for us bloggers to get to know each other. I'm beginning to wish they hadn't. All the other folks started blogging c. 1953. This is despite the fact that some of them are 12. They are all enthusiastically setting up pipetubes (that's for recreational drugs, surely) and RSS feeds (nope). They all run massively innovative carbon-capture schemes while working for the World Bank.
The G20 Voice people want us each to run a round table discussion in our 'area of expertise'.
Shall we make this a poll? We could do a poll, right?
My area of expertise could be:
a) things a four-year-old won't eat;
b) the circumstances in which you can legitimately add the possessive 's' after an apostrophe;
c) Welsh funerals (with special reference to gob-smacking displays of rapacity and drunkenness).
The G20 Voice people want us each to run a round table discussion in our 'area of expertise'.
Shall we make this a poll? We could do a poll, right?
My area of expertise could be:
a) things a four-year-old won't eat;
b) the circumstances in which you can legitimately add the possessive 's' after an apostrophe;
c) Welsh funerals (with special reference to gob-smacking displays of rapacity and drunkenness).
Thursday, 26 March 2009
An abbreviation a day. Maybe an acronym if you're lucky.
MNH: maternal and newborn health.
*A woman dies from pregnancy or childbirth-related causes every minute of every day
*Childbirth is the leading killer of young women worldwide
*Infants of mothers who do not survive the delivery are more likely to die within two years
*When a mother dies, enrolment in school for younger children is delayed and older children often leave school to support their family.
*Children without a mother are less likely to be immunized, and are more likely to suffer from malnutrition and stunted growth. The implications for girls tend to be even greater.
Millennium Development Goal #5 is to reduce maternal mortality rates by 75 per cent by 2015. It’s the MDG that has seen the least progress in the last decade.
The interventions that are needed are relatively low-tech and inexpensive: trained midwives at the local level, and obstetric care for emergencies. As far as I can make out, DFID has a fairly good record in this area; the country that needs to take a big lead is (inevitably) the USA. Its funding for maternal health programmes has consistently declined. The aim is to secure $3.9 billion per year for the next ten years (based on a World Health Organization estimate). This would enable significant progress towards providing universal access to maternal and newborn care.
The current orthodoxy is that to maximise effectiveness, the donor countries need to set up innovative funding channels so that, for instance, resources for countries or regions can be pooled. The High-Level Taskforce on Innovative International Funding for Health Systems met in London earlier this month to discuss such funding channels. The published note of the meeting contains some truly frightening predictions of mortality increases in developing countries as a result of the crash in the West. It also seems to place a depressing emphasis on the importance of the private sector, which has such a mixed record of providing vital services in developing country contexts.
Some of the proposals for raising the necessary funds are unedifying (optional levies on aeroplane tickets); some are potentially more interesting (an Italian proposal to ringfence a proportion of VAT income). The note also mentions a drive towards patent pooling of important drugs (such as the three drugs used to treat childhood HIV infection, each of which is currently under patent to a different company). Australia, apparently, is 'not interested in new taxes', but then I'm guessing most of its new mothers can confidently expect to return home with their babies in good health, so that's nice for them. The Japanese observer wisely emphasised the necessity for new funding, rather than channels that would simply replace existing development aid.
*A woman dies from pregnancy or childbirth-related causes every minute of every day
*Childbirth is the leading killer of young women worldwide
*Infants of mothers who do not survive the delivery are more likely to die within two years
*When a mother dies, enrolment in school for younger children is delayed and older children often leave school to support their family.
*Children without a mother are less likely to be immunized, and are more likely to suffer from malnutrition and stunted growth. The implications for girls tend to be even greater.
Millennium Development Goal #5 is to reduce maternal mortality rates by 75 per cent by 2015. It’s the MDG that has seen the least progress in the last decade.
The interventions that are needed are relatively low-tech and inexpensive: trained midwives at the local level, and obstetric care for emergencies. As far as I can make out, DFID has a fairly good record in this area; the country that needs to take a big lead is (inevitably) the USA. Its funding for maternal health programmes has consistently declined. The aim is to secure $3.9 billion per year for the next ten years (based on a World Health Organization estimate). This would enable significant progress towards providing universal access to maternal and newborn care.
The current orthodoxy is that to maximise effectiveness, the donor countries need to set up innovative funding channels so that, for instance, resources for countries or regions can be pooled. The High-Level Taskforce on Innovative International Funding for Health Systems met in London earlier this month to discuss such funding channels. The published note of the meeting contains some truly frightening predictions of mortality increases in developing countries as a result of the crash in the West. It also seems to place a depressing emphasis on the importance of the private sector, which has such a mixed record of providing vital services in developing country contexts.
Some of the proposals for raising the necessary funds are unedifying (optional levies on aeroplane tickets); some are potentially more interesting (an Italian proposal to ringfence a proportion of VAT income). The note also mentions a drive towards patent pooling of important drugs (such as the three drugs used to treat childhood HIV infection, each of which is currently under patent to a different company). Australia, apparently, is 'not interested in new taxes', but then I'm guessing most of its new mothers can confidently expect to return home with their babies in good health, so that's nice for them. The Japanese observer wisely emphasised the necessity for new funding, rather than channels that would simply replace existing development aid.
Governance and corruption... wait! Come back!
There’s an interesting blog here http://thekaufmannpost.net/ about good governance (in both developed and developing countries), and how governments get ‘captured’. Unfortunately, I have yet to find the page on which he provides a point-by-point explanation of wtf we should do about this. But I’m sure he’s written one, right? (He’s one of the other G20 bloggers.)
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