Politics

October 26, 2011

Pope Benedict and Bill Gates play Robin Hood for the G20

The next summit meeting of the leaders of the G20 nations takes place next week in Cannes, and the global financial crisis is top of the agenda. A variety of people from around the world are pressuring the G20 leaders to introduce a "tax on bankers". Such a tax has been discussed over the years under a variety of aliases, including "Tobin Tax" and "Financial Transaction Tax". However here in the UK currently the most popular euphemism for the idea is "Robin Hood Tax". Here's a video in which the team of Richard Curtis and Bill Nighy (of Love Actually fame) present their interpretation of the concept:

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October 22, 2011

Occupy Wall Street Finds Support in Some Unlikely Places

One way or another it's been an eventful week for protesters around the world, loosely gathered together under the "Occupy Wall Street" banner.

Amongst the usual suspects, last Friday Michael Moore spoke to Lawrence O'Donnell in an interview broadcast on MSNBC:

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April 4, 2011

Michel Martelly "Reportedly" Wins Haiti Presidential Election

According to the Miami Herald:

Former singer Michel ‘Sweet Micky’ Martelly is expected to be the next president of Haiti, observers say, defeating former first lady Mirlande Manigat.

After many months of intimidation, fraud allegations, reruns, recounts, and other delays it appears that later today Michel Martelly will be formally proclaimed as the new President of Haiti.  If that is confirmed the musician will  have a mountain of problems to deal with, but here is the one that concerns us most. According to the official statistics 4766 people have already died in the outbreak of cholera in Haiti. Things seem to be much improved, and only one of those deaths was on March 28th, currently the most recently reported date. However just as it was this time last year the Haitian rainy season is on the way. Unlike last year people in Haiti are already dying from cholera, and the program to improve supplies of clean drinking water and better sanitation is way behind schedule.

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April 6, 2010

Google Sell PowerMeter to Obama

Yesterday Google and other members of The Climate Group sent an open letter to President Barack Obama urging him to:

Adopt the goal of giving every household and business access to timely, useful and actionable information on their energy use.

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February 8, 2010

Obama U-Turn on Biofuels?

Way back in May 2009 the Guardian reported that:

The Obama administration took on the powerful farming interests in America's heartland today, making clear it does not see corn-based ethanol as part of the long-term solution to climate change.

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September 30, 2008

T. Boone Pickens on Lack of Leadership and Oil Prices

In an interview on CNBC this morning Texas oil billionaire and wind energy advocate T. Boone Pickens blamed "lack of leadership" from George W. Bush and "that speech" from Nancy Pelosi for the vote against the Bail-Out plan in the House yesterday:

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September 25, 2008

An Irony of the Financial Crisis – Action on Poverty Looks Utterly Achievable

Just over a week ago I found myself once again on EasyJet flight EZY6167 heading from Bristol to Amsterdam.  I asked the head of the cabin crew if he knew Dawn, who operated the camera on one of our previous internet videos.  He said he did.  I showed him one of our "Water Connects Us" leaflets, and I asked him if it would be OK if I handed some out to his passengers.  He said that would be fine as long as I didn't get in the way of the cabin crew as they went about their duties.

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September 13, 2008

Climate Change Hits the Poorest Hardest

In a report on the UNFCCC climate change conference in Bali last December, David B. Sandalow of the Brookings Institution, the influential Washington based think tank, pointed out that:

The most important outcomes of the Bali climate change conference didn’t make the headlines… yet Bali produced three important outcomes. First, developing countries stepped up to the table… Second, a new consensus on deforestation emerged… Finally, “adaptation” moved toward center stage. Today the world faces a sobering reality: even the most aggressive plans will not prevent some amount of global warming in the decades ahead. The consequences for poor developing countries are predicted to be most severe.

Mr. Sandalow quoted Nobel peace prize-winner Al Gore as saying in Bali:

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August 20, 2008

T. Boone Pickens Comments on the War in Georgia

Over the last few days T. Boone Pickens has held meetings with both John McCain and Barack Obama.

Yesterday Mr. Pickens was interviewed by Neil Cavuto of Fox News about those talks. Here's what he had to say:

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August 16, 2008

Mikhail Gorbachev Comments on the War in Georgia

A couple of days ago Mikhail Gorbachev, last head of state of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990, wrote an article for the Washington Post. Mr. Gorbachev opened that article by saying:

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