Monthly Archives: June 2009

If Waxman-Markey Went Global…

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…we might get up to 2.37C total temperature reduction by 2100. That’s around half of the projected BAU rise. And 1.129C of those would be the result of implementing Waxman-Markey targets in China, India and the rest of Asia, minus the Middle East and the former Soviet Union that is.

All figures come from MasterResource.

Now, who or what is going to convince China and India, a combined total of 2.5 billion people, to remain poor in the name of safeguarding the planet, exactly at the moment when their fortunes appear to be turning and future riches start to beacon?

Good luck with that…considering also that the implementation of climate-virtuous solutions developed in the USA and in Europe will not necessarily be feasible outside of the USA and Europe.

Harbingers Of A Climate Dictatorship

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I am not referring to Paul Krugman, the best evidence that Alfred Nobel was right in NOT establishing a Nobel Prize in Economics at his (Nobel’s) time (what Krugman’s got is an afterthought sponsored by the Bank of Sweden).

The harbingers of the upcoming climate dictatorship are all those commenters to his NYT article, confirming Krugman’s totalitarian idea that political disagreement about global warming is akin to treason.

If there’s really many of them, there isn’t much hope in the future. Either the scary climate scenarios will happen, and a climate dictatorship will be founded. Or they will not, and thousands and thousands of very angry people will be looking for something else to base their thirst for dictatorship upon.

On The Rise Of Far-Right Parties In Europe

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Recently I have been a panelist on TV talk-show “Forum”, presented by Andrew Gilligan on PressTV. I have been invited as London Media Officer for Silvio Berlusconi’s party, “The People of Freedom”.

One of the other panelists was Mary Honeyball MEP (Lab). The below is my reply to her blog “The Lure of the Bright Lights“:

One of the points made during the programme is that the far-rightists take advantage of the divisions among mainstream political parties. I am afraid you are perpetuating those divisions. I can assure you that Silvio Berlusconi’s party, “The People of Freedom” (”Popolo della Liberta’”) is on your “same side regarding the far right”.

In fact, there is no Party in the Italian governing coalition that could be described as belonging to the “far right” by any stretch of the imagination.

We, just like the European People’s Party as a whole, have the fight against all forms of fascism of old and new as one of our foundation stones. And let me be proud of the fact that throughout all recent elections all Italian far-rightists have been losing voters to the point of effectively disappearing from the political spectrum.

Why are things looking different in the UK? This is not something one can answer in a blog’s comment area. Because it takes time to analyse, then to understand what is peculiar about British politics and society. Such a strong and long-standing Parliamentary Democracy as yours, truly the envy of the world, still manages to inspire the rise of absolutely nasty and repugnant parties like the BNP. Why?

Likewise, Europe is a big place, and there is no chance to fight back at the ugly racist and neo-nazi ideas being banded around without having a good look at the peculiarities of each country’s political system and society.

I therefore urge you and everybody else interested in European politics to make the effort to understand the particular circumstances that regard each country. I know it is a huge effort, there’s now 27 of them.

But the last thing we should be doing is mindlessly sticking labels around. By making sweeping statements, sometimes based on what is summarily reported in the media by distracted journalists perhaps with a particular précis to follow, the risk is to create artificial divisions among what is an overwhelmingly anti-fascist electorate, effectively presenting tens of millions with the choice between feeling disenfranchised, and voting for the racists.

ps personally, I do not think there is anything to discuss with the BNP’s representatives. I am sure you will agree that it is impossible to change the mind of a Holocaust denialist on any subject. If I were a British politician, what I would be more interested into would be to share a platform with BNP voters. It is them, the ones we should all be working to welcome back to our world.