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A couple of areas seem to predominate in November. One is the growing role of China, in particular its diplomatic and trade missions to Africa and India which will underpin investment and trade without north America or Europe in future. The other topic is the destruction of marine life, as a number of reports were released all saying similar things. It also seems that the interconnection between Investment and Climate Change is very strong in this edition. A number of reports in the Climate Change section have direct impacts for business and investment, and a number of issues raised in the Investment Section are direct consequences of climate change. The signals will only get stronger, but the conclusion is not going to change. Decision makers who wait much longer to exercise their green credentials may not get the opportunity to do so. The market will correct.

Geopolitics

The US midterm elections in early November voiced dissatisfaction with the current administration, but not much of substance will change in the short term.

Nancy Pelosi is set to be the first woman Speaker of the House of Representatives. She is second in line to the Presidency after Cheney. After the election Bush made congratulatory and conciliatory gestures pledging to work together. Pelosi was among the minority of Democrats who opposed the Iraq war from the outset.

Rumsfeld resigned to the relief of many. Two days before he resigned as defense secretary, he submitted a classified memo to the White House that acknowledged that the Bush administration’s strategy in Iraq was not working and called for a major course correction. Part of this included the suggestion that the administration consider a campaign to lower public expectations to limit the political fallout from shifting course. The memo suggests frustration with the pace of turning over responsibility to the Iraqi authorities and calls for examination of ideas that roughly parallel troop withdrawal proposals presented by some of the White House’s sharpest Democratic critics. (Text of the Memo)

Leading up to the elections, allegations of sex trysts and drug use with a gay prostitute forced the Reverend Ted Haggard (50), a married father of five, to step down as president of the National Association of Evangelicals, a 30 million-strong movement, after a self-described male escort went on the radio to accuse him of paying for gay sex. "Pastor Ted" is one of a new breed of evangelical Christians with close White House ties who have played a key political role in electing the Republican Party to power. A national leader of the campaign to outlaw same-sex marriage, Haggard reportedly spoke to President George Bush or his advisers on a weekly basis.

And then there was the controversy that arose over an alleged decision by Keith Ellison who was elected to Minnesota's fifth district, to be sworn in on the Koran instead of the Bible. Conservative columnist Dennis Prager wrote a column critical of such a move; USA Today's online version covered the story and reported that many conservative bloggers subsequently picked up on it. Critics of Prager responded that at least four Presidents have not been sworn in on a Bible, and that several Jewish elected officials have chosen to be sworn in on the Torah. Article 6 of the Constitution says "The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

In the end the Democrats won 6 Governorships from Republicans, holding a 28-22 advantage in this category, in state legislatures, Democrats picked up 145 seats and 12 legislative chambers, they also now control both branches of government in 15 states. This is significant for the simple fact that statehouses control the redistricting process which the Republicans have used to dramatic advantage in recent years. Democrats will have a chance to change the boundaries of election districts to make them more fair for their caucus. The Republicans lost power across all parts of the map and at every level of US Government. Our readers know why a party so thoroughly in control could have lost control so rapidly.

A national exit poll for a leading news agency indicated that about two-thirds of people felt Iraq was very important to their vote. But even more, about 80%, said the economy, government corruption and scandal were very important to their votes. In another exit poll, defying the traditional political maxim that "all politics is local," 62% of voters said that national issues mattered more than local issues. The exit poll also showed that 42% of voters called corruption an extremely important issue in their choices at the polls, followed by terrorism at 40%, the economy at 39% and the war in Iraq at 37%. And then again, maybe it was all because as John Thornhill notes " the US president is really a Frenchman"!

But will it mean anything. Will the regression of the last few years be reversed. Will the restrictions on personal freedoms, the widening social inequality and the national divisiveness and culture of fear be redressed? Don't hold your breath.

Turning abroad, the US released its annual Report to Congress of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. The commission has been harshly critical of China since its creation in 2000, and this year's report is no exception. But, particularly in light of the past 6 years US administration it is difficult to credit some passages. Andrew Leonard on salon.com points out that some sections of the report, if viewed from the perspective that the United States does not have unimpeachable character, are unhelpfully hypocritical.

Much of the world would be more likely to agree with those three paragraphs if the words "China" are replaced by"the United States"

Chinese President Hu Jintao, the first Chinese head of state to visit India in 10 years, at a meeting in Delhi said that Beijing sought no "selfish gains" in South Asia and that China could help forge peace between South Asian rivals, India and Pakistan. India has always been suspicious of China's close support for Pakistan and its military ties with India's historic rival. But money talks and if the ties between China and India are developed both countries will benefit. India would value China's manufacturing and China values India's service sector. Hu and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pledged to double their trade to $40 billion a year by 2010.

Vietnam was in the world spotlight as it hosted the leaders of 21 Asia-Pacific nations for their annual APEC summit. We were treated to a few photos of leaders in silks and criticisms of various regional policies. Critics said that Washington’s policy has handed Myanmar, formerly Burma, to China. however, the US would like to keep up the pressure. Unfortunately, there is not likely to be cooperation from rivals like China and Russia, nor even Singapore and Indonesia, which trade freely with Myanmar.The Asian energy rush is the latest demonstration of how the hunt for oil and gas, and China’s economic leverage, are reshaping international politics, often in ways that run counter to American preferences.

Two more suspicious Russian deaths occurred. Anna Politkovskaya, a prominent Russian journalist known as a fierce critic of the Kremlin's actions in Chechnya, was found dead in Moscow. The 48-year-old mother of two was found shot dead in a lift at her apartment block in the capital. Politkovskaya's murder has all the hallmarks of a contract killing. She had acted as a negotiator with the Chechen rebels who held a siege in a Moscow theatre in 2002. (Obituary: Anna Politkovskaya)

Also, Alexander Litvinenko, an ex-KGB colonel and vocal critic of President Vladimir Putin, fell ill on 1 November after a meeting at a London sushi bar and subsequently died. Litvinenko, 43, had been poisoned with radioactive thalium and it will be impossible to know the source, but a high level investigation is underway. He had revealed planting of bombs in Moscow apartments to blame Chechen rebels and was ordered to kill Boris Berezovsky. While it may or may not have been at the instigation of Russian authorities, the murder certainly drew attention to the regime.

The Pope's visit to Turkey was a welcome conciliatory move at a time when Turkey is trying to gain entry to the EU. Turkey has made a number of significant reforms to comply with entry requirements, especially for a predominantly Muslim country, such as a law against marital rape. However, there are some discriminatory practices and laws which are not appropriate for Europe and may be difficult to change. And there is a feeling that admission is being hindered by a religious prejudice. The Pope's visit was a symbolic gesture but an important signal for the EU to fulfill its promise of multicultural diversity and cooperation. Welcoming Turkey in to Europe, would be a milestone in integrating Islamic countries with the west and help change global sentiment to one of cooperation and maturity rather than fear and cynicism.

Milton Friedman died. His death gives us a reason to focus on his work, from which valuable lessons may be learned. Biographies refer to Milton Friedman as a nobel winning economist, but that minimizes his contributions. It's true he wrote works on Federal monetary policy which influenced governments around the world, but he was really a freedom fighter. He championed liberty using dollars and sense so that the everyday person could understand the impact on their own lives. He advocated individual autonomy and personal freedoms in the mid 20th Century when such ideas were disdained and governments were becoming increasingly patriarchal. His ideas altered the development of our planet pushing it further towards freedom. Some of the ideas he advocated:

We highly recommend his Free To Choose series. In honor of Milton Friedman, IdeaChannel is streaming the ground-breaking Free to Choose series as it originally aired in 1980 as well as an updated 1990 version, particularly enjoyable for us because of the extensive footage from Hong Kong (where we lived for many years), whose open systems are his quintessential example of a free market.

Twenty years on, "globalisation" has become the buzz word of free markets. This quote from Narayana NR Murthy of Infosys puts well the benefit and danger of globalisation today.

Globalization has wrought change all over the world. The effect on India is as great as on the U.S. Globalization cost two to three million Indian workers their jobs in the domestic automobile, computer and soft-drink industries when foreign companies entered India. But against that, weigh the 250 million Indians who have been lifted into the middle class by globalization. To cite a single statistic: In August, India became the fastest-growing cellular phone market in the world, adding 5.9 million subscribers.

My view is that globalization benefits the majority, and should be embraced, with this caveat: India, the U.S., and other countries must face the realities of globalization by creating more jobs for the poorly educated to compete in the global economy, or by improving education to give more workers the tools to compete.

There was jubilation across Nepal marking the signing of a landmark peace agreement between the government and the country's Maoist rebels. The accord formally ended a 10-year insurgency that killed 13,000 people. Hopefully it will hold.

We heard more news of public unrest in China. Chinese villagers have clashed with police after blockading a warehouse they said was built on illegally seized land. Thousands of villagers in southern Guangdong province moved on the building as dozens of officials gathered for its opening. Police arrived with tear gas after the villagers refused to leave, demanding an official inquiry. Rural unrest over alleged illegal land grabs in China is a growing problem. The residents of Sanzhou village, near Shunde, moved on the warehouse after months of protests over alleged land grabs.

Recent land disputes include:
6 Nov 2004: Paramilitary troops put down an uprising of 100,000 farmers in Sichuan province
10 April 2005: 20,000 peasants drive off more than 1,000 riot police in Huaxi, Zhejiang province
11 June 2005: Six farmers die in a fight with armed men in Shengyou, Hebei province
29 July 2005: Villagers in Taishi, Guangdong try to oust mayor
6 Dec 2005: Police shoot dead protesters in Dongzhou, Guangdong
14 Jan 2006: Police break up protest in Sanjiao, Guangdong, over land grabs

Martin Luther King will be celebrated by a Washington memorial. A host of civil rights figures and members of Congress gathered to celebrate the monument to be built not far from where King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech on Aug. 28, 1963. The memorial, to be built roughly a half-mile from the Lincoln Memorial, where King gave his historic speech, will be the first to honor an African American civilian on the Mall.

Risk and Terror

Do you have children? Were you a child once? ... Is this the right way to do things?

Hours after Israel ended its 6-day occupation of Beit Hanoun in Gaza its artillery bombarded the town ("by accident") killing 19 people. Israeli PM Ehud Olmert said troops had targeted an orange grove from which rockets had been fired, but instead hit homes in the northern town of Beit Hanoun. Israel has been getting away with much atrocity under the guise of accident in the last 6 months and we have all stood by and condoned it. While the media attempts to get the message across, it is almost certainly obliterated in the US, and elsewhere virtually ignored.

More than a third of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank are built on privately owned Palestinian land. Peace Now, an Israeli campaign group, reports in Breaking the law in the West Bank, that nearly 40% of the land the settlements sit on is, according to official data, "effectively stolen" from Palestinian landowners, and is a violation of Israel's own laws. Although the Israeli government has said repeatedly that it respects Palestinian property rights in the West Bank, settlements in the occupied West Bank are illegal under international law according to Fourth Geneva Convention (article 49), which prohibits an occupying power transferring citizens from its own territory to occupied territory. Some of the settlements that the Israeli government wants to be included within its final borders are built on land overwhelmingly owned by Palestinian individuals. About 430,000 Israelis live in these residential areas in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Peace Now called on the Israeli government to return the private land to its Palestinian owners. The findings reported include:

If big sections of those settlements are indeed privately held Palestinian land, that is bound to create embarrassment for Israel and further complicate the already distant prospect of a negotiated peace. The data indicate that 40% of the land that Israel plans to keep in any future deal with the Palestinians is private. The new claims regarding Palestinian property come from the 2004 database of the Civil Administration, which controls the civilian aspects of Israel’s presence in the West Bank.

Though the Israeli ties to the US and the Israeli propaganda machine have insulated the administration from international condemnation, increasing international awareness of the atrocities committed by Israel is beginning to emerge through the internet, bypassing protected western media. This international pressure on Israel to stop breaking international law and behave ethically is beginning to make a difference. Israel called off a planned air attack on a house in Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza after hundreds of Palestinians formed a human shield. Mohammed Baroud said he was warned by Israeli forces to leave his home. He instead ran to a mosque and summoned neighbours to help defend the house. Mr Baroud is a commander in the Popular Resistance Committees militant group. The Israeli army often orders people out of homes ahead of attacks, saying it aims to avoid casualties.

Pierre Gemayel, the Maronite Christian politician, was assassinated in Beirut. Gemayel, 34, was shot in his car in a Christian area of the city. The head of the anti-Syrian coalition, Saad Hariri, blamed Damascus. Syria has strongly denied any involvement. Another step back for Lebanon which has been brought to its knees since the Israeli invasion in July.

Saddam was sentenced to hang for crimes against humanity, just two days before pivotal US congressional elections. Bush hailed the sentencing as a 'milestone' while the EU and others raised doubts over the death penalty, legality and timing. Saddam's rule was marked by mass killing and torture, but the death sentence was for one episode - the massacre of 148 men and boys from Dujail, the site of a 1982 assassination attempt against him.

A classified US government report has concluded, not surprisingly, that the insurgency in Iraq is now self-sustaining financially, raising tens of millions of dollars a year. The report estimates that groups responsible for many insurgent and terrorist attacks are raising $70 million to $200 million a year from illegal activities. It says $25 million to $100 million of that comes from oil smuggling and other criminal activity involving the state-owned oil industry, aided by “corrupt and complicit” Iraqi officials. It is another sign that the popular desire in the Middle East is not purely what the US expects.

More Iraqi civilians were killed in October than in any other month since the American invasion in 2003, a report released by the United Nations said, a rise that underscored the growing cost of Iraq’s deepening sectarian war. According to the report, 3,709 Iraqis were killed in October, up slightly from the previous high in July, and an increase of about 11% from the number in September.

Auditing agency sponsored by United Nations reports that Halliburton subsidiary KBR charged Iraqi government as much as $25,000 a month for each of as many as 1,800 fuel trucks that were to deliver gasoline to Iraq after 2003 invasion, but trucks often spent days or weeks sitting idle on border; audit raises new questions about hundreds of millions of dollars billed by company under $2.4 billion contract awarded on eve of conflict; questions have been raised since it first became public that contract was awarded without competitive bidding; Pentagon auditors challenged more than $200 million of KBR's charges as potentially excessive or unjustified, then decided most costs were justified by peculiar nature of contract and wartime conditions; new audit contains mixed message for KBR and American officials who administered its contracts in Iraq. Further research is to be found at the Revenue Watch Institute whose aim is to improve democratic accountability in natural resource-rich countries by equipping citizens with the information, training, networks, and funding they need to become more effective monitors of government revenues and expenditures.

The US government has warned of an al-Qaeda call to attack US online stock market and banking services in December, though the Department of Homeland Security said there was no evidence to corroborate the threat. The threat supposedly to be in revenge for the continued detention of suspects at the US prison camp in Guantanamo Bay.

The only permanent international war crimes court has opened its first hearing, in the case of a Democratic Republic of Congo militia leader. Judges at the International Criminal Court are to decide whether Thomas Lubanga should stand trial for allegedly recruiting child soldiers. The five-year DR Congo conflict led to an estimated four million deaths. The US strongly opposed the creation of the ICC, fearing the political prosecution of its soldiers. The ICC was designed to end the need for the various ad hoc war crimes courts which have recently been established, including the chambers created to deal with war crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia and the genocide in Rwanda.

While traveling in Chad, Nicholas Kristof finds a new horrible face for the 21st century's first genocide. Video: The Darfur Crisis

One of the worst power failures in three decades plunged millions of Europeans into darkness in early November, prompting calls for better integration of energy supply.The blackout, which originated in northwestern Germany, also struck Paris and 15 French regions. Its effects were felt in Austria, Belgium, Italy and Spain. An overload in Germany's power network triggered outages leaving millions without electricity. Italy's prime minister, Prodi, has said Europe needs a central power authority to prevent the kind of blackouts that left swathes of West Europe without energy. Prodi said there was a "contradiction" in having a unified power network but no central authority.

The European Commission proposed €100 million global risk capital fund for developing countries to boost energy efficiency and renewable energy projects. The Global Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Fund will accelerate the transfer, development and deployment of environmentally sound technologies and thereby help to bring secure energy supplies to people in poorer regions of the world. The Commission intends to kick-start the fund with a contribution of up to €80 million over the next four years, and expects that financing from other public and private sources will take funding to at least €100 million. The Commission has appointed Triodos International Fund Management b.v. in conjunction with E+Co, to facilitate the implementation of the GEEREF in close co-operation with the European Investment Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and other interested parties.

A new study from McKinsey & Co tells us what most sustainability professionals already knew: that energy efficiency is a highly underutilized resource for reducing global energy demand -- so much so, says McKinsey’s Global Institute, that it could more than halve the amount of annual energy growth anticipated worldwide over the next 15 or so years. The report also explains why, despite energy efficiency’s profitable promise, many companies don’t engage in measures that have proven returns on investment. For example, on new-capital purchases, energy efficiency is typically a minor factor at best. Many high-return investments to improve the energy productivity of existing operations are left on the table, says McKinsey, as users often require three-year or less payback times for capital expenditures that reduce energy consumption. Of course, there is plenty companies are doing. There are abundant opportunities to save 70% to 90% of the energy and cost for lighting, fan, and pump systems; 50% for electric motors; and 60% in areas such as heating, cooling, office equipment, and appliances. In general, up to 75% of the electricity used in the U.S. today could be saved with efficiency measures that cost less than the electricity itself.

A bipartisan 78 percent of Americans want Washington to impose a 40 mile per gallon fuel-efficiency standard for American vehicles, according to a new national opinion survey. Other key findings of the Opinion Research Corporation survey include the following:

* Nine out of 10 Americans expect gas prices to go up "in the near future," with nearly half (46 percent) "definitely" expecting a resumption of higher fuel prices.

* 70 percent of Americans are not turning their back on fuel-efficiency concerns and say that they are factoring "expected future gasoline price increases into consideration in thinking about buying a new vehicle."

* Temporarily lower gasoline prices are not sending large numbers of Americans rushing back to gas-guzzling SUV and trucks. In fact, nearly half (45 percent) of Americans are now more likely to buy a "hybrid or other fuel-efficient vehicle" than they were six months ago, compared to 30 percent who are unchanged in their plans and fewer than one in four (24 percent) who are less likely to make such a vehicle purchase.

For those concerned about the interest in nuclear power these clips will be interesting. Video clips of Professor Hans-Peter Dürr, an internationally acclaimed nuclear physicist, have been added to the archive at bigpicture.tv. Dürr is the former Director of the Max-Planck Institute for Physics in Munich, Germany, and a founding member of the Global Challenges Network, promoting the responsible use of technology. He is also a council member of the Nobel Prize-winning Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, which focuses on measures to promote peace.

The Nuclear Brink (5m 04sec) Dr Dürr believes the nuclear threat to be "dreadfully high." America's preparedness to wage preventive war, while developing its nuclear arsenal, constitutes the most serious threat to world peace in his view. The threat to use military force merely serves to incentivize non-nuclear nations to build their own nuclear weapons. This can lead to war either by accident or by design. Dürr also questions the future of nuclear power generation, since new technologies now make it easier to use enriched uranium for weapons manufacture.

Nuclear Fallout (3m 54sec) Dürr believes that certain controls should be imposed on nuclear technological innovation. It must be recognized that scientific advances in this field can carry enormous social and environmental risks. Laws of probability are irrelevant where the potential impact of a nuclear incident can be catastrophic. It is tempting, although misguided, to offset the positive potential for nuclear power against the dangers of nuclear warfare as both carry great risk.

Teller’s Terror (2m 06sec) Dürr studied nuclear physics in America under Edward Teller, the so-called ‘father of the hydrogen bomb'. He was appalled by Teller's naïve belief that the bomb would secure world peace by being in the hands of the United States – the post-war leading power. As a German who had witnessed gross abuses of power he utterly rejected any such notion. It set him on his lifetime search for an alternative vision. Here he describes the occasion of a meeting with Teller at the time of the Bikini Atol tests in the mid 1950s.

New Futures (6m 03sec) Dürr believes that humans are essentially good and desire world peace. Mankind needs the background security that peace provides to offset the inevitable insecurities of everyday life. Peace demands a new culture of cooperation and mutual interdependence. The future is ours to shape and lasting peace is achievable should we choose it.

Climate Change and Environment

The Stern Review, released in October, generated a buzz for awhile in November. But not enough action. The Ecologist asks the right question regarding action for climate change. And gives the right answer, albeit rather dramatically.

Having enjoyed brief media coverage, world attention towards climate change during the last few weeks fizzled out, bogged down in international policy and technicalities at the UN Climate Change Conference in Nairobi. UN chief Kofi Annan criticised a "frightening lack of leadership" in tackling global warming, at the UN climate summit in Nairobi. Annan told delegates the phenomenon was as grave a threat as conflict, poverty and the spread of weapons. He said skeptics were "out of step, out of arguments and out of time". Annan announced a plan by six UN agencies to help Africa receive funds for clean development projects, such as renewable energy and forestry.

The report Ecosystem Challenges and Business Implications,which is also mentioned in the Investment section, warns that companies must transform business models and operations if they are to avoid major economic losses caused by the current degradation of ecosystems and the vital services they provide. Ecosystem Challenges and Business Implications, produced by Earthwatch Institute (Europe), the World Conservation Union, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, and the World Resources Institute, is based on global scientific facts and projections from the UN's multi-year Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and interviews with a range of business leaders to assess the implications and strategies needed to respond to environmental challenges. This research indicates that many companies recognize the risks associated with degrading ecosystems and are trying to adapt accordingly, but most fail to associate healthy ecosystems with their business interests. A collective business response is therefore needed to address the scale of environmental change currently taking place.

The World Meteorological Organisation has announced that the steady rise in atmospheric levels of the greenhouse gases blamed for climate change shows no signs of abating. The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide rose by about 0.5% in 2005. It said levels were likely to keep rising unless emissions of CO2, methane and nitrogen oxides were slashed. The announcement came on the eve of UN climate negotiations in Nairobi. The WMO said concentrations of carbon dioxide were measured at 379.1 parts per million, up 0.53% from 377.1 ppm in 2004. Concentrations of nitrous oxide (N2O) reached 319.2 parts per billion (ppb) in 2005, an annual increase of 0.2%. WMO Greenhouse Gas Bulletin 2005: CO2 levels highest ever recorded.

The Convention on Migratory Species report Migratory Species and Climate Change: Impacts of a Changing Environment on Wild Animals brings another perspective of the problems we have created through climate change. The UNEP backed report says that rising temperatures spell extinction for some mobile species. Turtles are particularly affected, the report finds, with rising temperatures changing the ratio of males to females. But it says conservation measures targeted at key areas can protect even migratory animals. By definition, migrating species must depend on several different ecosystems. Birds may fly from one continent to another, perhaps stopping at feeding grounds on the way. Whales and turtles cover vast tracts of ocean. Changes in any one of the locations which these animals use can be serious.

The UNDP's Human Development Report 2006, focuses attention on climate change by stating that efforts to help developing nations adapt to the impacts of climate change have been called "woefully inadequate". Rich countries have focused on ways to reduce carbon emissions but have largely ignored helping poor nations cope with the consequences. Farmers whose crops are reliant on rainfall are already having to cope with unpredictable weather, but do not have the support infrastructure of developed countries. The report, called Beyond scarcity: Power, Poverty and the Global Water Crisis [7.8MB], says climate change "now poses what may be an unparalleled threat to human development". While the outcomes may vary from country-to-country, the report said some "broad consequences" could be predicted:

How emissions will change over time is one of the factors considered by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the body responsible for collating and analysing climate data for the global community."At these rates, it certainly sounds like we'll end up towards the high end of the emission scenarios considered by the IPCC," commented Myles Allen from Oxford University, one of Britain's leading climate modelers. The "high end" of IPCC projections would imply a rise in global temperatures in the upper portion of its projected range of between 1.4 and 5.8C between 1990 and the end of this century, though the exact figure depends on how climatic systems respond to elevated CO2 as well as on how society responds. "We need to think about radical alternatives to the belt-tightening approach," said Professor Allen. "At the moment, the assumption is we will solve the problem by controlling demand; but regulating at the point of use is clearly not working."

At the recent United Nations climate summit in Nairobi, a number of delegations, including those of Britain, Australia and the US, pointed out that they had managed to grow their economies without significant increases in carbon emissions. But, said Corinne Le Quere, the latest data showed this approach would not be enough to curb emissions in the future. "Improvements that have been made in the last 30 years appear to be stalling," she said. "We are going to need a real decrease in emissions."

The EU has set tough carbon limits under the European Trading Scheme's second phase, to the consternation of some of the 10 states involved. To make the scheme effective in tackling climate change, the EU has cut member states' carbon permits by 7% on average from 2008-2012. Germany, a major polluter, said the stricter limits were unacceptable and would push electricity prices up. Critics have accused nations of making carbon allowance levels too high. The European Trading Scheme (ETS) aims to cut emissions by 8% from 1990 levels. While the ETS currently covers large polluters, such as power firms and oil refineries, in time it is set to include emissions from the airline industry, among others. Member states which want to challenge Wednesday's new limits have two months to do so in a European court.

The UK's Carbon Trust has launched a scheme designed to help companies measure the total amount of carbon emissions from their goods and services. The "lifecycle assessment" or "cradle-to-grave assessment" initiative will provide businesses with a profile of products' pollution, from the sourcing of raw materials through to disposal. A recent poll by the Trust showed that 66% of people asked wanted to know the "carbon footprint" of their purchases. The carbon audits aim to identify ways firms can cut energy use and emissions. "Cutting carbon in the supply chain is the next critical stage in the business contribution to reduce emissions to tackle climate change, "said Carbon Trust chief executive Tom Delay.

The UK Civil Aviation Authority reported that budget airlines are overwhelmingly used by richer people taking an ever-increasing number of foreign holidays. The British Government has claimed that raising the cost of air tickets would be unfair to poorer households, who have come to expect a foreign holiday each year. Stephen Ladyman, the Transport Minister, said in September that "a tax on aviation isn't going to stop rich people flying - it means poor people won't". But the CAA noted that the social profile of air passengers has hardly changed in the past ten years, during which Ryanair and easyJet have grown from tiny operations into two of the biggest airlines in the EU. The survey will strengthen the case for imposing green taxes on flights. The CAA wants to dispel the belief that budget airlines have made air travel more inclusive and that raising taxes on flights would unfairly affect people on low incomes. Ryanair sells millions of return tickets costing less than £ 40 (€60), but the poor still cannot afford all the other costs of a foreign trip, such as hotels and meals, the survey says.

The second annual report on Canadian Environmental Sustainability Indicators was released in November and the news is not encouraging. Rising levels of greenhouse gas emissions and smog-forming pollutants and continued degradation of water quality in lakes and rivers are affecting the health and well-being of Canadians, and threaten the nation's long-term economic performance. The indicators show that Canada's economic growth comes with a high environmental cost.

We saw some wacky ideas for tackling climate change. Unfortunately they are seriously proposed and given consideration by serious people. They include ideas such as creating a solar shade for the planet ( a big space umbrella) and farming sea plankton. The common trait is that they are big and attempt to control nature. For these reasons they will not achieve the desired ends. Big means inflexible so they can not match natural volatility. Controlling nature is impossible because it is complex and holonic: press here it pops up there, press there it pops up elsewhere. Some will make money from others' gullibility, but the real solutions are in technologies like those of Eprida, which has a carbon negative energy production system scalable from micro to macro whose waste products are technical inputs for agriculture. Or technologies like the floor mats being tested in Japanese railway stations which generate energy from pedestrian vibration to power the turnstiles.

A survey from the US-based Center for the Digital Future, found 43% of online networkers from the US felt "as strongly" about their web community as they did about their real-world friends. It also revealed net-users had made an average of 4.6 virtual pals this year. The survey of 2,000 individuals forms part of a six-year study into attitudes to the web. More than three-quarters of Americans are net users, spending an average of 8.9 hours online a week, according to the team. And, for the first time in 2006, the number of women logging on equaled the number of men.

The attention to virtual online worlds, which extends people's lives in to a web presence, continues as it is recognised that they provide many of the intellectual and emotional stimulii that keep people interested and happy. But the virtual world is not immune from human pollution! Second Life had to close its doors for a short time after a worm attack called grey goo. The self-replicating worm planted spinning gold rings around the virtual world, which is inhabited by more than a million users. Players treated the attack with a mixture of mirth and anger. "Can this game get any more unpredictable and exciting?" asked one user, Loretta Lurra on the official Second Life blog. Adidas, Reuters and Channel 4's Big Brother are examples of real world commercial enterprises setting up business in Second Life. IBM continues its engagement as its CEO Palmisano gets an avatar (2 actually; one formal, one informal) via which to engage with the IMB Second Life community. Second Life has a population of more than 1.5 million and Linden Lab, its creator, says it is growing at about 38% every month. The inhabitants can buy and sell virtual land and objects for real money and in any 24-hour period as much as $690,000 can be spent. The grey goo attack and recent controversy over a tool called copybot which can be used to replicate people's virtual wares without paying for intellectual property rights is beginning to sour some people's opinion of the world. Linden Lab has promised it will release tools to protect people's virtual assets in the first quarter of 2007.

A consortium of seven newspaper chains representing 176 daily papers across the country is announcing a broad partnership with Yahoo to share content, advertising and technology, another sign that the wary newspaper business is increasingly willing to shake hands with the technology companies they once saw as a threat. In the first phase of the deal, the newspaper companies will begin posting their employment classified ads on Yahoo’s classified jobs site, HotJobs, and start using HotJobs technology to run their own online career ads. But the long-term goal of the alliance with Yahoo, according to one senior executive at a participating newspaper company, is to be able to have the content of these newspapers tagged and optimized for searching and indexing by Yahoo.

The web's love affair with blogging shows no signs of abating according to the latest report from blog tracking firm Technorati. Every day 100,000 new blogs are created and 1.3 million posts are made, it found during its quarterly survey. (Perhaps this report will become a blog ...)Postings intensify around significant events such as the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in the summer. There has also been an increase in the number of blogs being written in Farsi, the main language of Iran. Farsi, which is also used in parts of Afghanistan, has moved into the top ten languages of the blogosphere for the first time. While the daily figure of 100,000 new weblogs is down on the 160,000 total from June 2006 it does not indicate a slowdown in growth rates. It just means that more spamblogs or splogs - fake blogs used for promotion of affiliated websites - are being filtered out of the index. Technorati ranks blogs depending on how many sites link to it. The blogging elite - weblogs which have more than 500 other blogs linking to them - number about 4,000. Many of these blogs have been in existence for several years and tend to have new posts at least twice a day. Some of these are fully-fledged professional enterprises that post many, many times per day and behave increasingly like our friends in the mainstream media. The impact of these bloggers on our cultures and democracies is increasingly dramatic. English and Japanese remain the two most popular languages in the blogosphere. Despite problems for bloggers in China, Chinese remains at number three.

Forgive me if I rant against Microsucks in the following paragraphs. We use MS perhaps 1% of the time, but occasionally have clients using MS that require assistance with their IT, as we have recently, and the extraordinary contrivance MS has gone through to hand-cuff users to their software is quite frightening and debilitating to anyone's productivity and budget. Take the opportunity of the release of updates in Windoze and Orifice to change systems. The investment you'll have to make in learning new look MS can be put to learning Linux and the dividends will be reaped instantly as the virus scanner becomes redundant.

Microsoft even acknowledged the influence of the Linux operating system by striking a deal with Novell, a longtime rival, to ensure that Novell’s version of Linux could operate together with Windows in corporate data centers. In an industry known for strange bedfellows, the two companies said they were collaborating on technical development and marketing programs. They also took steps to ensure that Microsoft’s intellectual property was protected as it modifies its software to work with Novell's operating system SuSE Linux.

In the browser release, most of IE7's new features are already on Firefox. It makes you wonder why otherwise quite intelligent people keep going back to Microsucks.

Microsoft has started the roll-out of its new operating system, Windows Vista, which at first is being made available to business customers only. The system, a replacement for the firm's current Windows XP operating system, will not be available to home consumers until the end of January. Vista is two years late and its consumer launch misses Christmas. Microsoft has even said it will be a challenge to convince some consumers to buy its new version of Office. "One of the biggest challenges... is to fight that perception that old versions of software are good enough," said Microsoft's Chris Capossela. Office 2007 goes on sale to business on 30 November, the same date new operating system Vista is launched. "Our business model of course allows you to keep using Office 2003 - the software doesn't really expire, " said Mr Capossela, corporate vice president of the Microsoft Business Division. If people do change, they will need to master an overhauled user interface designed to give people simpler access to the features of Office. With more than 400 million users of Office in the world, Microsoft are aiming to re-educate a sizeable audience.

More interesting to users should be the open solution in Windoze if necessary, and Linux when ready. There is also a growing audience for an open source solution: more than 40 million people are using OpenOffice.org, a free, community-built alternative.

Computer giant Sun Microsystems says it will offer programming language Java to the open source community. Java is used in more than 3.8 billion mobile phones, computers and other devices around the world. The decision to release the code under an open licence means the world can now use, develop and share Java for free. The same type of licence also covers the distribution of the core, or kernel, of the open source operating system Linux. Rich Green, Sun's executive vice president of software, said the company hoped to turn more developers into Java programmers: "The open sourcing of this really means more: more richness of offerings, more capability, more applications that consumers will get to use. The platform itself will become a place for innovation." Open source software has become a major force in the digital world - with the majority of web servers globally using Apache, an open source web server, many businesses using Linux on their machines and a growing library of open source projects available free to use. All the Java source code is expected to be released by March 2007.

A list of 13 "enemies of the internet" has been released by human rights group Reporters Without Borders (RSF). The list consists of countries that RSF believes are suppressing freedom of expression on the internet. They are: Belarus, Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam.

The first stage of a project to build one of the world's most advanced telephone networks has been completed. The so-called 21st century network is being built in the UK using Internet Protocol technology. The massive upgrade, the first of its kind, will cost British Telecom £10 billion and take until 2010 to complete. It will open the way to new services as well as making existing services quicker and cheaper than before.

Going truly wireless may not be so far away. Scientists at MIT are making practical progress in developing a system of transferring power via resonance of electromagnetic waves. Currently the system is 40% efficient but has the prospect of being able to power notebook computers, alarm clocks etc wirelessly. No doubt some environmental challenges still need to be overcome but this kind of electromagnetic resonance power may be commercial within a decade or so. The concept exploits century-old physics and could work over distances of many metres. Although the team has not built and tested a system, computer models and mathematics suggest it will work. The technique used is "resonance", a phenomenon that causes an object to vibrate when energy of a certain frequency is applied. Resonance can be seen in musical instruments for example. When you play a tune on one, then another instrument with the same acoustic resonance will pick up that tune, it will visibly vibrate. Instead of using acoustic vibrations, the system exploits the resonance of electromagnetic waves. Electromagnetic radiation includes radio waves, infrared and X-rays. Typically, systems that use electromagnetic radiation, such as radio antennas, are not suitable for the efficient transfer of energy because they scatter energy in all directions, wasting large amounts of it into free space. To overcome this problem, the team investigated a special class of "non-radiative" objects with so-called "long-lived resonances". When energy is applied to these objects it remains bound to them, rather than escaping to space. "Tails" of energy, which can be many metres long, flicker over the surface. "If you bring another resonant object with the same frequency close enough to these tails then it turns out that the energy can tunnel from one object to another," said Professor Soljacic. Hence, a simple copper antenna designed to have long-lived resonance could transfer energy to a laptop with its own antenna resonating at the same frequency. The computer would be truly wireless.

ICAAN can't. Or at least that seems to be the concern of many who see the openness of the web being hijacked by vested interests, especially the US government and their lobbyists. In November, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, announced the launch of a long-term research collaboration between MIT and the University of Southampton that aims to turn the web itself into a fundamental science. The Web Science Research Initiative will generate a research agenda to understand the scientific, technical and social challenges underlying the growth of the web. Research will focus on the volume of information on the web which documents more and more aspects of human activity and knowledge. The WSRI research projects will weigh such questions as:

. How do we access information and assess its reliability?
. By what means may we assure its use complies with social and legal rules?
. How will we preserve the web over time?'

The initiative will provide a global forum for scientists and scholars to collaborate on the first scientific research effort specifically designed to study the web and to develop a new discipline of science for future generations of researchers. Perhaps this node of interest will help maintain the web's integrity. We hope so.

The November edition of Inside Innovation by BusinessWeek was unusually interesting with a number of relevant topics catching our eye: an innovation radar that looks similar to GRI Equity's business diagnostic, highlight of the growth and effectiveness of storytelling as a communication tool, a review of Second Life, an article on how not to innovate which sounds like a lot of companies that we all work for, and a graphic discussion of energy footprints, as well as a collection of interesting new products.

Top

Holonics and LOHAS

Holonics

Organisation design and operation are beginning to be properly transformed to natural systems. I finished Maverick, the story of Semco by Ricardo Semler, which is a valuable playbook for open tech managers. By coincidence, in the same month BusinessWeek reported on the internally driven opening up of BestBuy, which has adopted many of the open policies pioneered by Semco. This happened at BestBuy through an internal mutiny allowed by the CEO, initially unwittingly, so that now people do things like set their own hours and goals. The results have been a decline in turnover and a increase in productivity. An Executive Life review also discussed the benefits of napping, a practice in Japan and some other cultures, but traditionally frowned upon in the west. What these examples point to is a very simple formula: let people manage themselves and include them in the business and performance will improve. If you treat people like children, you have to manage them like children, which demands significant resources as parents know. Treat them like adults and you get a naturally fun and productive place to work.

Scientists have shown that the genetic make-up of humans can vary hugely - backing up the groundbreaking research reported in Pratchett's Darwin's Clock in 2004 and demonstrating the holonic nature of genes. This massive increase in variability is important in tackling disease as noted below, but it also underlines the dangers of genetic engineering - a science for which we are plainly missing most of the facts. The UK-led team made a detailed analysis of the DNA found in 270 people and identified vast regions to be duplicated or even missing. This analysis of has now revealed some startling results. It would seem the assumption that the DNA of any two humans is 99.9% similar in content and identity no longer holds. The researchers were astonished to locate 1,447 so-called copy number variation (CNVs) in nearly 2,900 genes, the starting "templates" written in the DNA that are used by cells to make the proteins which drive our bodies. This is a huge, hitherto unrecognised, level of variation between one individual and the next.

As well as highlighting the danger of genetic engineering, the new understanding will change the way in which scientists search for genes involved in disease."Many examples of diseases resulting from changes in copy number are emerging," commented Charles Lee, one of the project's leaders from Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, US. "A recent review lists 17 conditions of the nervous system alone - including Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease - that can result from such copy number changes." A great many of these variations are in areas of the genome that would not damage our health, Matthew Hurles and colleagues told the journal Nature. But others are - and can be shown to play a role in a number of disorders.

Health

A New Mexico State Senator is calling on the Bush Administration to ban the artificial sweetener aspartame. Now present in more than 6,000 consumer products, aspartame has been repeatedly found to have ill health effects ranging from neurodegenerative diseases to brain tumors to birth defects. Senator Gerald Ortiz y Pino and members of the New Mexico Legislative Health and Human Services Committee filed a letter with the President's office, requesting he call on the FDA commissioner's office to rescind the approval of aspartame, which has been the source of more health effect complaints to the FDA than any other chemical on the market.

In related news, racketeering charges have been filed against then Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, Monsanto, NutraSweet Co., the American Diabetes Association and Dr Robert Moser for distributing toxic aspartame, in a class action representing many plaintiffs, filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California seeking $350 million in damages. The suit charges the defendants with manufacturing and marketing a deadly neurotoxin unfit for human consumption, while they assured the public that aspartame (also known as NutraSweet/Equal) contaminated products are safe and healthful, even for children and pregnant women. Rumsfeld, a director of several biotech companies including Gilead and Searle, is mentioned throughout the lawsuit. As evidence, an explosive affidavit from a former translator for the GD Searle company - the developer of aspartame - was made recently public and revealed the following: For 16 years, the Food and Drug Administration denied approval of aspartame because of compelling evidence of its contributing to brain tumours and other serious disabilities. Donald Rumsfeld left President Ford's administration as Chief of Staff to become the CEO of aspartame-producer GD Searle Co. in 1981. Shortly after, Rumsfeld became the CEO, and the day after President Reagan took office, aspartame was quickly approved by FDA Commissioner Arthur Hayes over the objections of the FDA's Public Board of Inquiry. Hayes had been recently appointed by the Reagan Administration. Shortly after aspartame's approval by the FDA, Hayes joined NutraSweet's public relations firm under a 10-year contract at $1,000 a day.In January 1977, the FDA wrote a 33-page letter to US Justice Department Attorney Sam Skinner: "We request that your office convene a Grand Jury investigation into apparent violations of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act." Skinner allowed the Statute of Limitations to run. Three FDA Commissioners and eight other officers and Skinner took jobs in the aspartame industry shortly after it was approved.

The problem of giving drugs to children to modify behaviour which was highlighted last month by the Ecologist continues to make news. The New York Times and Guardian both covered the problem and the Ecologist provided more evidence. The responsibility for care is now shifting from the medical profession, who have neglected any Hippocratic oath, to parents who are delegating their responsibility to third parties and pharmaceuticals. Stop dosing children.

Last year in the United States, about 1.6 million children and teenagers, 280,000 of them under age 10, were given at least two psychiatric drugs in combination, according to an analysis performed by Medco Health Solutions at the request of The New York Times. More than 500,000 were prescribed at least three psychiatric drugs. More than 160,000 got at least four medications together, the analysis found. For example, Stephen, 15, takes the antidepressants Zoloft and Desyrel for depression, the anticonvulsant Lamictal to moderate his moods and the stimulant Focalin XR to improve concentration. Jacob, 14, takes Focalin XR for concentration, the anticonvulsant Depakote to moderate his moods, the antipsychotic Risperdal to reduce anger and the antihypertensive Catapres to induce sleep. Over the last three years, each boy has been prescribed 28 different psychiatric drugs. Stimulants like Ritalin are by far the most commonly prescribed psychiatric medicines in children. But doctors routinely pair stimulants with antidepressants, antipsychotics and anticonvulsants, even though some of these medications can cause serious side effects, have few proven pediatric psychiatric benefits and lack clear evidence about how they interact or influence mental and physical development. Last year, the Food and Drug Administration required drug makers to warn on their labels that antidepressants can cause suicidal thoughts and behavior in some children. Anticonvulsant drugs carry warnings about liver and pancreas damage and fatal skin rashes. The side effects of antipsychotic medicines can include rapid weight gain, diabetes, irreversible tics and, in elderly patients with dementia, sudden death. When drugs are combined, these risks compound.

Scientists called for curbs on the use of 200 chemicals - to protect very young children. Some might accuse them of scaremongering, but anyone who dismisses worries about our toxic world, writes Sarah Boseley, should remember what happened to the Romans ...

The recent launch of an African Herbal Pharmacopoeia could signal a new era for botanical medicines. The pharmacopoeia is part of a co-ordinated programme being run by the newly formed Association for African Medicinal Plants (AAMPS). It will provide a ‘living database’ of thousands of plants with medicinal properties growing on continental Africa. The development is also a clear signal that African nations want to take ownership of herbs that are indigenous to the continent and to benefit more themselves from the $ 50 billion global market for herbal medicines, most of which is spent on plants from Asia. Africa is home to some well-known medicinal herbs, such as devil’s claw, but also to thousands of other plants that are gaining popularity around the world. These include herbs such as kanna, traditionally used as a mood enhancer, and buchu, a shrub used by herbalists to treat urinary tract infections. As well as quality and standard-setting initiatives such as the new pharmacopoeia, African countries are now carrying out work to encourage sustainable herbal cultivation. Many medicinal plants are under pressure from unsustainable levels of wild harvesting to meet global demands. The practice also threatens the delicate local ecosystems.

Getting in touch with nature can help keep people fit, reducing the burden of sickness on the health service, conservation experts say. Natural England is launching a campaign to get people to spend more time outside among the country's wildlife and natural environment. It said being close to nature could cut stress and increase physical activity.

New York is set to become the first city to pass a strict ban on trans-fats in restaurant food. Hydrogenated oils are known to increase the risk of heart disease and have no nutritional value. The law will affect more than 24,000 food establishments and restrict trans-fats to no more than half a gram per serving. New Yorkers eat out more frequently than the average American, and over half of the city's restaurants currently use trans-fats. Policymakers say the rule will go into affect July of next year and should not cause economic problems, given that alternatives to the trans-fats, like other oils or margarine, are comparably priced.

There are no half measures for heavy smokers wanting to minimise the risk that their habit will lead to their early death. Scientists found no evidence that heavy smokers who halve their daily cigarette intake cut their premature death risk. A long-term Norwegian study, of more than 51,000 men and women aged between 20 and 34, found stubbing out was the only way to cut the risk. The study is published in the journal Tobacco Control.

Obesity, which is linked to a range of health problems, including heart disease, is a growing problem across much of the developed world. The European Commission plans to launch a strategy to tackle obesity next year.

Researchers in the United States have found that heart patients who eat regular, small amounts of dark chocolate could be protecting themselves against fatal blood clots. But the discovery was only made because a group of “wayward” patients taking part in a study into blood clotting ignored instructions to give up chocolate during the research period. John Hopkins University in Baltimore had enrolled 1,200 people for an 18-month study on the impact on aspirin on blood platelets, the sticky cells that generate clots. It asked the participants to avoid eating certain foods known to affect platelets, including chocolate. But a group of 139 people were apparently unable to give up their chocolate habit, so the researchers decided to monitor its effect. Their conclusion was that snacking on just two tablespoons of dark chocolate a day reduced the development of potentially fatal blood clots. Lead researcher, Diane Becker, said: “What these ‘chocolate offenders’ taught us was that the chemicals in cocoa beans have a biochemical effect similar to that of aspirin in reducing platelet clumping, which can be fatal if a clot forms and blocks a blood vessel, causing a heart attack.”

Environment

Yet another strain of experimental genetically engineered rice has been detected in U.S. food shipments to Europe. This is the third GE rice contamination scandal in less than two months. The rice (LL62) was designed by Bayer but is not approved for human consumption in the EU. US rice farmers have suffered millions of dollars of losses from GE contamination just in the last few months. Tests in France found LL62, which is not approved in Europe. This comes on top of test results from several EU countries since August showing that US rice on sale in Europe is contaminated with another unauthorised GE rice variety, LL601. For the second time, the source of the contamination is Bayer Cropscience. Greenpeace believes that Bayer should be held accountable for its negligence, as it is clearly incapable of controlling contamination of rice with its genetically engineered varieties. In the interests of the global rice supply, Bayer should withdraw from all research, field trials and applications for GE rice globally.

In the largest and most comprehensive study of organic farming to date scientists from leading UK institutions show conclusively that organic farms provide greater benefits for a range of wildlife including wild flowers, beetles, spiders, birds and bats than their conventional counterparts. The results were published in the Royal Society Journal, Biology Letters. Scientists from the British Trust for Ornithology (Thetford), the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (University of Oxford) have spent five years studying the differences between matched pairs of organic and non-organic cereal-producing farms in lowland England. A huge amount of fieldwork was involved in the study - hedges were measured, beetles, spiders, birds and wildflowers were counted, farmers were questioned and bats were detected. Some of the significant results are:

· Organic crops contain almost twice as many types of plant species (85% more).

· There were more spiders (17% more), birds (5%) and bats (33%) too but the effects were not as significant as for plants.

There will be virtually nothing left to fish from the seas by the middle of the century if current trends continue, according to a major scientific study reported in Science: Report on the Impacts of Biodiversity Loss on Ocean Ecosystem Services. Stocks have collapsed in nearly one-third of sea fisheries, and the rate of decline is accelerating. The international team of researchers says fishery decline is closely tied to a broader loss of marine biodiversity, but a greater use of protected areas could safeguard existing stocks. "The way we use the oceans is that we hope and assume there will always be another species to exploit after we've completely gone through the last one," said research leader Boris Worm, from Dalhousie University in Canada. This is a vast piece of research, incorporating scientists from many institutions in Europe and the Americas, and drawing on four distinctly different kinds of data. Catch records from the open sea give a picture of declining fish stocks. In 2003, 29% of open sea fisheries were in a state of collapse, defined as a decline to less than 10% of their original yield. Bigger vessels, better nets, and new technology for spotting fish are not bringing the world's fleets bigger returns - in fact, the global catch fell by 13% between 1994 and 2003. Historical records from coastal zones in North America, Europe and Australia also show declining yields, in step with declining species diversity; these are yields not just of fish, but of other kinds of seafood too. Zones of biodiversity loss also tended to see more beach closures, more blooms of potentially harmful algae, and more coastal flooding. What the study does not do is attribute damage to individual activities such as over-fishing, pollution or habitat loss; instead it paints a picture of the cumulative harm done across the board. A key implication of the research is that more of the oceans should be protected. Protecting stocks demands the political will to act on scientific advice - something which Boris Worm finds lacking in Europe, where politicians have ignored recommendations to halt the iconic North Sea cod fishery year after year. Without a ban, scientists fear the North Sea stocks could follow the Grand Banks cod of eastern Canada into apparently terminal decline.

In related news, Ireland finally banned drift net fishing salmon. Ireland was taking about a quarter of Europe's catch because other countries had stopped fishing as the species is declining so fast. The Irish ban took many years and promises of private capital to buy out the nets. The campaign was pioneered by Orri Vigfursson and NASF. We will also see fishing bans on some Irish rivers (including the Slaney) as the country tries to resuscitate the population.

Also we saw news of the growing danger of plastic pollution which is threatening the world's largest marine reserve. The Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, the world's largest and most recently designated marine reserve, could be under threat from one of the world's largest floating rubbish dumps, according to the international environmental group Greenpeace. Pollution, especially plastic, is a growing global threat to the oceans, choking and trapping wildlife at sea and on land according to a Greenpeace report. Plastic is gathered by ocean currents from around the North Pacific and endlessly circulates in the "Trash Vortex", an area that can grow to be the size of Texas, in the North Pacific gyre.

Last but not least on the sea/fish front, the United Nations negotiations on fisheries have ended without a global ban on trawling methods which destroy coral reefs and fish nurseries. Conservation groups and some governments had argued for a ban on bottom-trawling, which drags heavy nets and crushing rollers on the sea floor. Negotiators could only agree on a limited set of precautionary measures. Last month, leading scientists warned there would be no sea fish left in 50 years if current practices continued.
Negotiations at the UN in New York aimed to secure an agreement to go before the General Assembly next month. Central to discussions was bottom-trawling, widely regarded as a destructive fishing practice. It targets slow-growing species such as orange roughy, which take decades to reach breeding age. Such species are especially vulnerable to overfishing because the population replenishes itself very slowly. Eleven nations have bottom-trawling fleets, with Spain's being the biggest. Studies have indicated that none would be commercially viable without government subsidies. In 2004, a report compiled for the World Conservation Union (IUCN) and other environmental groups concluded that bottom-trawling was "...highly destructive to the biodiversity associated with seamounts and deep-sea coral ecosystems and... likely to pose significant risks to this biodiversity, including the risk of species extinction." See the story in pictures here.

The world's richest nations are dumping hazardous electronic waste on poor African countries, says the head of the UN's Environment Programme. Speaking in Nairobi, Achim Steiner said consumerism was driving a "growing mountain of e-waste". UNEP estimates that up to 50 million tonnes of waste from discarded electronic goods is generated annually. Improper disposal of e-waste can release hazardous chemicals and heavy metals into the environment. E-waste is thought to be the fastest growing part of municipal waste in the developed world.

Education

Students at Altamira College in the Chilean capital Santiago have been testing a new computer game developed for them using their teachers as the bad guys. The game, entitled 2065, after the year in which it is set, was designed specifically for the college and is the first of its kind in Chile. It works by dividing the large group of students into five tribes. They must "build the world of their dreams" while fighting an evil "republic" made up of corrupt teachers. Gabriella Guzman, who helped develop and test the game, described it as "a bit like Sim City" but on a much smaller scale. "It allows people to take charge of the situation," she told BBC World Service's Digital Planet programme. "We tried to make a game which is fun. We think it is the challenge that makes games fun, and not the violence."

Imagine if virtually no child left primary school unable to read. Or if no teenager bunked off school and ended up in trouble with the law because their reading skills meant they could not cope.If these things could be changed, how much might be saved? We would no longer have to spend millions on anti-truancy campaigns. The bills for locking up young offenders could be cut dramatically. November saw new evidence of the effectiveness of a scheme that could do just that; a reading scheme that targets the least able six-year-olds. A year-long pilot project has shown that 80% of these vulnerable children can be brought up to the expected reading level for their age in a matter of weeks with intensive, professional, one-to-one tuition. In educational terms, that is the equivalent of a child being "saved". The scheme is called Reading Recovery. The shocking thing is that it is not new. It began in New Zealand 30 years ago and came to the UK as long ago as 1990. It is not an alternative to the general teaching methods for whole classes but is, instead, a highly structured intervention strategy for rescuing children who are struggling to take even the first steps towards reading. For the last 10 years there has been no shortage of research evidence showing its effectiveness. The most recent showed that children who were almost two years behind their expected reading age at six could be put back on track with 38 hours of teaching. It found that children on Reading Recovery improved at a rate four times faster than similar children who were not on the programme. Moreover they maintained their gains over subsequent years. Yet, instead of spreading, Reading Recovery has been in retreat in the UK ever since the government decided to pull the plug on its funding way back in 1995.

Children's personal skills are increasingly likely to influence their future earning potential, not just exam results, says the Institute for Public Policy Research. Failure to teach key skills such as communication is widening the gap between rich and poor. It recommends a longer school day so pupils can learn these "soft" skills at after-class arts and sports clubs. It even says that parents who fail to send their children to clubs should face fines. The IPPR report is based on surveys with people born in 1958 and 1970. It found personal and social skills had become 33 times more important in determining earnings over the two generations. The IPPR report said social skills could be improved at extra-curricular activities such as the scouts, cadets, martial arts, drama clubs and sports. The report also called for an "appropriate age limit" be set on TV, newspapers and mobile phone advertising targeted at primary school children. It added there should be a ban on the promotions ahead of consultation on the issue.

Teachers in the UK are warning that the exams system in England is unwieldy and becoming unsustainable because of a record number of pupils challenging their results. Last year 45,000 pupils - one-in-14 GCSE students - queried their results. And the National Association of Head Teachers say the extra work and the cost of the appeals is pushing the exam system towards collapse. It is also concerned wealthier schools who can afford to pay for appeals are gaining an advantage for their pupils. One-in-four of all the 45,000 GCSE pupils who challenged their exam mark ended up being upgraded! NAHT deputy general secretary Carole Whitty said: "If one-in-four are getting regraded then it does make you wonder if there are a load of students who - had they put their papers in for remarking - whether they might have been regraded too.

And two thirds of England's teachers believe the national curriculum is too prescriptive, while more than a third believe it makes it harder to manage pupils' behaviour, according to the Times Educational Supplement poll of 500 teachers and 100 heads. More than a half of those surveyed (55%) said they wanted to have the freedom to set their own curriculum. But the government said the national curriculum ensured schools provided a "broad and balanced" education for all. The findings reflect a survey carried out by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) in September this year. The ATL surveyed 628 teachers and support staff in England and found almost 90% wanted to tailor the curriculum to suit pupils' needs. This supports a trend to Pestalozzi methods and open learning.

UK's Ofcom has probably taken comfort from the fact that both health campaigners and the food industry have attacked its ban on junk food advertising on children’s TV. Ofcom announced a total ban on junk food advertising around all children’s programming and all programmes that have a “particular appeal” to under 16s. The regulator’s decision to extend the expected ban to programmes other than children’s TV means that shows such as Friends and The Simpsons could be affected Its new rules, which also ban the use of celebrities and characters, such as cartoon heroes, free gifts and health or nutrition claims, will cut children's exposure to junk food advertising significantly. Even children whose viewing includes a high number of programmes targeted at adults, as well as those for children and young people, would see 41% fewer junk food ads. A Food Standards Agency ratings system will be used to assess which foods are too high in fat, sugar and salt to be advertised to children.

New York State’s highest court ended a landmark legal fight over education financing, ruling that at least $1.93 billion more must be spent each year on New York City’s public schools — far less than the $4.7 billion that a lower court called the minimum needed to give city children the chance for a sound basic education.

BusinessWeek tells of Korean cram-schhools to improve their exam performance at high school and university level. Thousands of students occupy a large venue where lectures are given by teachers that reach almost star status. It is another example of the importance given to education in Asia, where parents will spend half their income on educating children, compared with the approach in the west where education is almost frowned upon. The revenues of Megastudy, one of the schools, has doubled in two years.

Living

Buy Nothing Day was 24 November, the day after US Thanksgiving ... I wonder if anyone did. It would be a good start.

In the UK, research from financial services provider Liverpool Victoria shows that the cost of bringing up a child from birth to their 21st birthday has jumped to £180,137. In the last year alone, the cost of raising offspring has risen by 9%. Childcare and education are said to be the most expensive factors, costing parents an average £49,092 and £46,778 per child respectively. Education costs are said to have risen 26% since last year, helping to put up the expense of raising a child by a rate outstripping inflation almost four times. The report concludes that the high cost of starting a family has increased the cultural shift away from households having just one working parent. If found that today both parents have to work to cover the cost of bringing up children in two-thirds of families. A further 12% of working parents said they need to rely upon grandparents or other family members for regular financial support to help meet the costs of bringing up their children.

An Institute of Directors report says female directors of UK firms work longer than their male counterparts but earn on average 19% - or £14,028 - a year less. And the gender pay gap in the voluntary sector is about 25%. Most directors, whether male or female, had only "moderate" pay rises last year and fewer than 50% of managing directors got company cars. It found that the average female director earned £60,000 and worked 51.25 hours a week in a small-to-medium company and 57 hours in a larger firm. Their male counterparts had an average basic pay of £74,028 and spent on average 50 hours at work or 55 hours at a larger firm - described as one which turned over between £50 million and £500 million a year. A separate study by the Chartered Management Institute found that women managers were still being paid on average £5,147 a year, or 12%, less then men. This was despite the female bosses having gained bigger pay rises than their male counterparts for the 10th year in a row. Its survey found that the average salary, including bonuses, for female managers rose in 2005 to £43,521, while men earned £48,668.

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecology has called on the health profession to consider euthanasia for seriously disabled newborn babies. It has said "active euthanasia" should be considered to spare parents the emotional and financial burdens of raising such children. "A very disabled child can mean a disabled family," it says. "If life-shortening and deliberate interventions to kill infants were available, they might have an impact on obstetric decision-making, even preventing some late abortions, as some parents would be more confident about continuing a pregnancy and taking a risk on outcome." The call comes in the college's submission to the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, which is conducting an inquiry into the ethical issues raised by the policy of prolonging life in newborn babies. The submission states: "We would like the working party to think more radically about non-resuscitation, withdrawal of treatment decisions, the best-interests test and active euthanasia as they are ways of widening the management of options available to the sickest of newborns." While not officially calling for the introduction of active euthanasia, sensibly it wants it openly debated. The proposal has been supported by several top geneticists. Joy Delhanty, a professor of human genetics at University College London, said: "I think it is morally wrong to strive to keep alive babies that are going to suffer many months or years of ill-health."

Another step forward for the Catholics under modernising Pope Ben. The Roman Catholic church has taken the first step towards what could be a historic shift away from its total ban on the use of condoms. Pope Benedict XVI's "health minister" is understood to be urging him to accept that in restricted circumstances - specifically the prevention of Aids - barrier contraception is the lesser of two evils. The recommendations, which have not been made public, still have to be reviewed by the traditionally conservative Vatican department responsible for safeguarding theological orthodoxy, and then by the Pope himself, before any decision is made. The rethink, commissioned by Pope Benedict following his election last year, could save millions of lives around the world. It is likely to be raised today when the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has his first full discussion with the Pope at an audience in the Vatican.

Pope Benedict has met Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I in Turkey, on a landmark visit to the largely Muslim country. The Istanbul talks with the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians aimed to heal an old rift. The Pope also held Mass near a shrine to the Virgin Mary in the ancient western city of Ephesus.

South Africa's parliament has voted to legalise same-gender marriage - the first African country to approve such unions. The controversial Civil Union bill was passed by 230 votes to 41. The legislation was introduced after the Constitutional Court ruled last year that the existing laws discriminated against homosexuals.

Crumbs, a produce store in West Sussex, is trading so successfully on its low food miles pledge, that it is about to triple in size and open new outlets. Crumbs opened in a garden centre near the village of Washington last year. From the outset it pledged that it would source most of its produce from within a radius of 40 miles. All of the products are labelled with a food miles card detailing how far the product has travelled. The store sells a range of fresh fruit and vegetables, along with bread and other baked goods and locally made jams, chutneys and preserves. Crumbs has been so successful to date that its owners are now expanding the selling space and planning to open two additional outlets in Sussex in 2007.

Interesting results related to the study of circadian clocks (biological day/nigh clock of living beings) from the University of Virginia came to light. Tampering with the day/night cycles of lab rats accelerated their demise, and those whose disrupted cycles mimicked easterly travel fared much worse than those whose cycles mimicked westerly travels. Researchers are investigating whether stress is a cause. Based on results so far though, regular travellers might consider slowing down, and if necessary travel west instead of east.

Activities and Media

November can be a good month for us because the garden season slows briefly. However, there are other projects that seem to pick up any slack immediately. December, which should be quite is beginning to look busy with perhaps more travel than I'd like.

Gradually we are implementing changes to various changes to our website and expect to have new features early next year.

The Mayan Calendar and the Transformation of Consciousness by CJ Calleman is worth the read for the unusual perspective it delivers: that consciousness is affected by cosmic rhythm so much that without realising it we make decisions based upon that rhythm rather than purely what we understand to be free will. Do not be put off by some subjective conclusions but allow yourself to understand the idea he presents.

Also I must recommend Maverick by Ricardo Semler. The story of Semco in Maverick winds down about 1986. At that time I was in the best business school (Wharton) studying management with the best faculty (eg Tiffany) yet not a word was mentioned about these systems that had been introduced and made Semco one of the top performers in Brazil, although its in a tough business with lots of international competition. We now read of some companies, like BestBuy, introducing similar "novel" open strategies. If you want to get a jump on the competition, buy the playbook. Its a fun story too.

There are some video features on Global Warning here: http://www.stopglobalwarming.org/sgw_features.asp

"The Meatrix 2.5" One of the most popular and entertaining flash video series on the internet has just released its third chapter. Watch these colourful cartoon characters uncover some of the major problems inherent with factory farmed meats. http://www.moremeatrix.com/

The Ecologist has loaded a number of interesting podcasts on to its site: http://www.theecologist.org/podcasts.asp Included topics are nuclear power, why Siberian real-estate might be a good option and Jeffrey Sachs on 'the Search for Sustainable Living'.

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About
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Astraea News and Views
November 2006

Perspective

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Risk and Terror

Energy

Climate Change and Environment

IT

Holonics and LOHAS

Holonics

Health

Environment

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Activities and Media

holonics The Big Picture

body

mind

spirit

About Astraea

Astraea News and Views November 2006

Perspective

Geopolitics

Risk and Terror

Energy

Climate Change and Environment

IT

Holonics and LOHAS

Holonics

Health

Environment

Education

Living

Activities and Media

holonics
The Big Picture

About
Astraea

Astraea News and Views
November 2006