India’s rain woes grow bigger, scientists worried

Forecasting the June-to-September rains, which account for three-quarters of India’s annual rainfall, is becoming tougher. Last year, six states had to declare droughts despite predictions of a normal monsoon.

Although India is scaling up its prediction techniques, including joint Indo-American forecasting under a bilateral agreement, too little is understood about how pollution and rising temperatures are impacting the monsoon. But new research shows that they are surely having an impact on the climate.

“Our studies show the Indian Ocean has significantly warmed in 50 years. By about 0.6 degrees. Monsoon has been declining in the Western Ghats, and interior areas, such as Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, by about 6-7%,” R Krishnan, a climatologist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, told HT.

Krishnan also said that a weakening monsoon circulation has quickened the “warming of the equatorial India Ocean” and this, in turn, has contributed to a “further weakening of the monsoon”.

The new findings portend problems India isn’t currently prepared to address. Two-thirds of Indians rely on rain-fed farm income. The monsoon also replenishes 81 nationally monitored water reservoirs critical for drinking, power and irrigation. A changing monsoon could hurt millions of farmers.

Yet another published study, by Dr Veerabhadran Ramanathan of the University of California, San Diego, notes that climate change has “evidently already negatively affected India’s hundreds of millions of rice producers and consumers. More

 

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Wheat rust: The fungal disease that threatens to destroy the world crop

Scientists are warning that wheat is facing a serious threat from a fungal disease that could wipe out the world’s crop if not quickly contained.

Wheat rust, a devastating disease known as the “polio of agriculture”, has spread from Africa to South and Central Asia, the Middle East and Europe, with calamitous losses for the world’s second most important grain crop, after rice. There is mounting concern at the dangers posed to global food security.

Experts have been aware of the threat since a major epidemic swept across North America’s wheat belt in the 1950s, destroying up to 40 per cent of the crop. Since then, tens of millions of pounds have been invested in developing rust-resistant varieties of the grain. However, an outbreak in Uganda in 1999 was discovered to have been caused by a virulent mutation of the fungus. There has been alarm at the speed at which further mutations have subsequently developed and spread across continents.

Plant scientists in Britain estimate the latest developments mean that 90 per cent of all current African wheat varieties are now vulnerable to the disease.

Last year, Germany witnessed its first outbreak of stem rust in more than 50 years. The outbreak was spurred by “a period of unusually high temperatures and an unusually late development of the wheat crop due to cold spring and early summer temperatures”, explained Kerstin Flath, of Germany’s Federal Research Centre for Cultivated Plants.

A further outbreak occurred in Ethiopia last November, with farmers losing on average 50 per cent of their wheat crop; the worst affected lost up to 70 per cent. Experts met in Mexico last month to discuss the threat. Work is under way to examine the different strains, to identify similarities.

According to Dr David Hodson, of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in Addis Ababa, the disease’s threat lies in its ability to cause “large- scale destruction in a very short period of time over very large cultivated areas”. Rust epidemics could be compared to a forest fire, Dr Hodson said. Once it manages to gain ground it can very quickly spread out of control. The fungus reproduces millions of wind-borne spores, each of which is capable of starting a new infection.

Fazil Dusunceli, of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, said that the fungal disease, along with drought, are major challenges to wheat production globally.

He warned that countries need to react quickly to counter the new fungal varieties: “Production of new seed varieties is critical.” He said the UN was looking to countries such as the US, Britain and other European nations to lead the fight. “Developed countries have well-established institutions, programmes and capacities that developing countries lack. The developing countries are not sufficiently prepared to fight against these diseases and so when epidemics occur they encounter significant losses,” he said.

British scientists from the Sainsbury Laboratory, together with those from the world-renowned John Innes centre, both in Norwich are in the vanguard of efforts to combat the outbreaks. The UK teams are trying to control the disease with genetics rather than develop more powerful chemical fungicides. The work currently includes cloning new sources of resistance from wild grasses and from barley, which they think is essentially completely resistant to wheat rust.

Academics at Cambridge University, led by Professor Christopher Gilligan, are using sophisticated mathematical models to help predict the likely spread from outbreaks. “The project is designed to develop and test mathematical models that can be used to improve understanding of when, where and how disease spreads, which regions are most at risk and how to control epidemics,” Professor Gilligan said.

Using models from the UK Meterological Office, the Cambridge team were able to predict the likely spread of the Ethiopian outbreak. “The results helped to direct sampling teams to find further outbreaks, from which it became apparent the epidemic was more severe and widespread than had been previously reported.” Further work by the modellers has identified which of the countries surrounding Ethiopia in Africa, and the Middle East, are most at risk. “The current evidence suggests that the risk of direct spread to the Indian subcontinent is small during the winter months,” Professor Gilligan said.

“The models show, however, that the fungus could spread in stages, by first infecting wheat crops in the Middle East and then spreading to other major wheat-growing areas.”

According to scientists, climate change is in part behind the threat. The aggressive spread of two forms of the fungus is widely believed to be linked to its rapid adaptation to warmer conditions. Dr Hodson said this is resulting in outbreaks in countries not previously affected, with epidemics in several countries from North Africa to South Asia. More

 

 

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Food shortages could be most critical world issue by mid-century

The world is less than 40 years away from a food shortage that will have serious implications for people and governments, according to a scientist. "For the first time in human history, food production will be limited on a global scale by the availability of land, water and energy," said a senior science advisor on food security.

"Food issues could become as politically destabilizing by 2050 as energy issues are today."

The world is less than 40 years away from a food shortage that will have serious implications for people and governments, according to a top scientist at the U.S. Agency for International Development.

"For the first time in human history, food production will be limited on a global scale by the availability of land, water and energy," said Dr. Fred Davies, senior science advisor for the agency's bureau of food security. "Food issues could become as politically destabilizing by 2050 as energy issues are today."

Davies, who also is a Texas A&M AgriLife Regents Professor of Horticultural Sciences, addressed the North American Agricultural Journalists meeting in Washington, D.C. on the "monumental challenge of feeding the world."

He said the world population will increase 30 percent to 9 billion people by mid-century. That would call for a 70 percent increase in food to meet demand.

"But resource limitations will constrain global food systems," Davies added. "The increases currently projected for crop production from biotechnology, genetics, agronomics and horticulture will not be sufficient to meet food demand." Davies said the ability to discover ways to keep pace with food demand have been curtailed by cutbacks in spending on research.

"The U.S. agricultural productivity has averaged less than 1.2 percent per year between 1990 and 2007," he said. "More efficient technologies and crops will need to be developed -- and equally important, better ways for applying these technologies locally for farmers -- to address this challenge." Davies said when new technologies are developed, they often do not reach the small-scale farmer worldwide.

"A greater emphasis is needed in high-value horticultural crops," he said. "Those create jobs and economic opportunities for rural communities and enable more profitable, intense farming." Horticultural crops, Davies noted, are 50 percent of the farm-gate value of all crops produced in the U.S.

He also made the connection between the consumption of fruits and vegetables and chronic disease prevention and pointed to research centers in the U.S. that are making links between farmers, biologists and chemists, grocers, health care practitioners and consumers. That connection, he suggested, also will be vital in the push to grow enough food to feed people in coming years.

"Agricultural productivity, food security, food safety, the environment, health, nutrition and obesity -- they are all interconnected," Davies said. One in eight people worldwide, he added, already suffers from chronic undernourishment, and 75 percent of the world's chronically poor are in the mid-income nations such as China, India, Brazil and the Philippines.

"The perfect storm for horticulture and agriculture is also an opportunity," Davies said. "Consumer trends such as views on quality, nutrition, production origin and safety impact what foods we consume. Also, urban agriculture favors horticulture." For example, he said, the fastest growing segment of new farmers in California, are female, non-Anglos who are "intensively growing horticultural crops on small acreages," he said.

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The above story is based on materials provided by Texas A&M AgriLife Communications.

 

© 2014

Knowledge Is Crime

Why Kidnapping, Torture, Assassination, and Perjury Are No Longer Crimes in Washington

How the mighty have fallen. Once known as “Obama’s favorite general,” James Cartwright will soon don a prison uniform and, thanks to a plea deal, spend 13 months behind bars. Involved in setting up the earliest military cyberforce inside U.S. Strategic Command, which he led from 2004 to 2007, Cartwright also played a role in launching the first cyberwar in history -- the release of the Stuxnet virus against Iran’s nuclear program. A Justice Department investigation found that, in 2012, he leaked information on the development of that virus to David Sanger of the New York Times. The result: a front-page piece revealing its existence, and so the American cyber-campaign against Iran, to the American public. It was considered a serious breach of national security. On Thursday, the retired four-star general stood in front of a U.S. district judge who told him that his “criminal act” was "a very serious one" and had been “committed by a national security expert who lost his moral compass." It was a remarkable ending for a man who nearly reached the heights of Pentagon power, was almost appointed chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and had the president’s ear.

In fact, Gen. James Cartwright has not gone to jail and the above paragraph remains -- as yet -- a grim Washington fairy tale. There is indeed a Justice Department investigation open against the president’s “favorite general” (as Washington scribe to the stars Bob Woodward once labeled him) for the possible leaking of information on that virus to the New York Times, but that's all. He remains quite active in private life, holding the Harold Brown Chair in Defense Policy Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, as a consultant to ABC News, and on the board of Raytheon, among other things. He has suffered but a single penalty so far: he was stripped of his security clearance.

A different leaker actually agreed to that plea deal for the 13-month jail term. Nearly three weeks ago, ex-State Department intelligence analyst Stephen E. Kim pled guilty to “an unauthorized disclosure of national defense information.” He stood before U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who offered those stern words of admonition, and took responsibility for passing classified information on the North Korean nuclear program to Fox News reporter James Rosen in 2009.

Still, someday Cartwright might prove to be unique in the annals of Obama era jurisprudence -- the only Washington figure of any significance in these years to be given a jail sentence for a crime of state. Whatever happens to him, his ongoing case highlights a singular fact: that there is but one crime for which anyone in America’s national security state can be held accountable in a court of law, and that’s leaking information that might put those in it in a bad light or simply let the American public know something more about what its government is really doing.

If this weren't Washington 2014, but rather George Orwell’s novel 1984, then the sign emblazoned on the front of the Ministry of Truth -- “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength” -- would have to be amended to add a fourth slogan: Knowledge is Crime.

Seven Free Passes for the National Security State

With Cartwright as a possible exception, the members of the national security state, unlike the rest of us, exist in what might be called “post-legal” America. They know that, no matter how heinous the crime, they will not be brought to justice for it. The list of potentially serious criminal acts for which no one has had to take responsibility in a court of law is long, and never tabulated in one place. Consider this, then, an initial run-down on seven of the most obvious crimes and misdemeanors of this era for which no one has been held accountable.

*Kidnapping: After 9/11, the CIA got into kidnapping in a big way. At least 136 “terror suspects” and possibly many more (including completely innocent people) were kidnapped off the streets of global cities, as well as from the backlands of the planet, often with the help of local police or intelligence agencies. Fifty-fourother countries were enlisted in the enterprise. The prisoners were delivered either into the Bush administration’s secret global system of prisons, also known as “black sites,” to be detained and mistreated, or they were “rendered” directly into the hands of torturing regimes from Egypt to Uzbekistan. No American involved has been brought to court for such illegal acts (nor did the American government ever offer an apology, no less restitution to anyone it kidnapped, even those who turned out not to be “terror suspects”). One set of CIA agents was, however, indicted in Italy for a kidnapping and rendition to Egypt. Among them was the Agency’s Milan station chief Robert Seldon Lady. He had achieved brief notoriety for overseeing a la dolce vita version of rendition and later fled the country for the United States. Last year, he was briefly taken into custody in Panama, only to be spirited out of that country and back to safety by the U.S. government.

*Torture (and other abuses): Similarly, it will be no news to anyone that, in their infamous “torture memos,” officials of the Bush Justice Department freed CIA interrogators to “take the gloves off” and use what were euphemistically called “enhanced interrogation techniques” against offshore prisoners in the Global War on Terror. These “techniques” included “waterboarding,” once known as “the water torture,” and long accepted even in this country as a form of torture. On coming to office, President Obama rejected these practices, but refused to prosecute those who practiced them. Not a single CIA agent or private contractor involved was ever charged, no less brought to trial, nor was anyone in the Bush Justice Department or the rest of an administration which green-lighted these practices and whose top officials reportedly saw them demonstrated in the White House.

To be accurate, a single member of the national security state has gone to prison thanks to the CIA’s torture program. That was John Kiriakou, a former CIA agent who tortured no one, but offended the Obama administrations by turning whistleblower and going public about Agency torture. He is now serving a 30-month prison sentence “for disclosing a covert operative’s name to a reporter.” In other words, the only crime that could be prosecuted in connection with the Agency's torture campaign was one that threatened to let the American public know more about it.

Now, however, thanks to leaks from the embattled Senate Intelligence Committee’s 6,300-page report on the CIA’s interrogation and torture program, we knowthat the Agency "used interrogation methods that weren’t approved by the Justice Department or CIA headquarters." In other words, its agents went beyond even those techniques approved in the torture memos, which in turn means that they acted illegally even by the standards of the Bush administration. This should be an obvious signal for the beginning of prosecutions, but -- not surprisingly -- it looks like the only prosecution on the horizon might be of whoever leaked parts of the unreleased Senate report to McClatchy News. More

 

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DARPA producing sea-floor pods that can release attack drones on command

The Pentagon’s research arm, DARPA, is developing robot pods that can sit at the bottom of the ocean for long stretches of time, waiting to release airborne and water-based drones to the surface upon an attack command.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) recently called for bids to complete the final two phases of its Upward Falling Payloads (UFP) program. The UFP operation is an effort to position unmanned systems around far-flung regions of the sea floor. The housing pods would be left in place for years in anticipation of the US Navy’s need for non-lethal assistance.

The UFPs would come equipped with electronic and low-power laser attack capabilities, surveillance sensors, and airborne and aquatic drones that would have the ability to act as decoys or offer intelligence and targeting data, Ars Technica reported.

DARPA recently solicited proposals for the UFP. It wrote, “To succeed, the UFP program must be able to demonstrate a system that can: (angel) survive for years under extreme pressure, (beer) reliably be triggered from standoff commands, and (coffee) rapidly rise through the water column and deploy a non-lethal payload.”

Autonomous, non-lethal systems are the priority for DARPA, given the remoteness of the UFPs’ stationing on the ocean floor. Recovery in the deep ocean would be difficult, and the pods with weaponry or hazardous materials could cause harm to ships upon expiration.

The UFP program’s first phase, launched in 2013, focused on designs for the robot pods and the capsules that will live inside, as well as communication logistics for UFPs to communicate with other modules. The next phase aims to develop prototype testing and demonstrations at sea in the next couple of years. The third and final stage will include “full depth” testing of various scattered modules working as one system by spring 2017.

Much of the UFP testing will likely occur in the Western Pacific, given the United States’ ongoing “pivot” to the region – not coincidentally near China’s realm. Other tests will occur near US shores to reduce costs.

DARPA is seeking a 59 percent increase for the Upward Falling Payloads budget, from $11.9 million to $19 million, it was reported in March.

In addition, DARPA has asked for a boost to its budget for underwater drone fleets. The agency has asked for its current spending to double, from $14.9 million to $29.9 million, for its Hydra program. Hydra was conceived to be a large, mothership-like craft capable of moving through the water and deploying a number of smaller surveillance drones.

The research agency also announced recently that it is launching a program to unite existing and future drones into hives, where individual autonomous aircraft will share data and operate together against targets on a battlefield under the oversight of human operators. More

 

© 2014

The Future Is Evaporating: Climate Change Could Dry Out 30 Percent of the Earth

Scientists expect the changing climate to bring on more drought; there's going to be less rainfall in the already arid regions.

That alone would be bad news for denizens of the planet's dry zones—in some places in North Africa, the American Southwest, India, and the Middle East, water shortages could well become an existential threat to societies built there. But new research shows that in addition to less rain, the rate of evaporation is likely to rise, too. Combined, the two forces could dry out up to a third of the planet.

The study, published in the journal Climate Dynamics last month, estimates that climate change will cause reduced rainfall alone to dry out 12 percent of the Earth's land by 2100. But if evaporation is factored in, the study's authors say that it will "increase the percentage of global land area projected to experience at least moderate drying by the end of the 21st century from 12 to 30 percent."

“We know from basic physics that warmer temperatures will help to dry things out,” the study’s lead author, Benjamin Cook, a climate scientist with Columbia University and NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said in a statement. “Even if precipitation changes in the future are uncertain, there are good reasons to be concerned about water resources.”

Writing in a 2011 literature review in the science journal Nature, the physicist Joe Romm elaborates on how increased heat and evaporation can lead to a vicious cycle: "Precipitation patterns are expected to shift, expanding the dry subtropics. What precipitation there is will probably come in extreme deluges, resulting in runoff rather than drought alleviation. Warming causes greater evaporation and, once the ground is dry, the Sun’s energy goes into baking the soil, leading to a further increase in air temperature."

Disappearing soil moisture is likely to be a greater problem than previously thought, and the occasional downpour won't sate year-round crops. As Columbia University notes, "An increase in evaporative drying means that even regions expected to get more rain, including important wheat, corn, and rice belts in the western United States and southeastern China, will be at risk of drought."

If it becomes too dry to cultivate crops on one-third of the planet's surface, there's little doubt that crisis will follow. For millions of people who depend on food grown in vulnerable regions, the future is literally evaporating. More

 

© 2014

Quenching Kenya: Can New Water Discoveries Save East Africa?

Water scarcity is becoming the defining international crisis of the twenty-first century. Water conflicts rage across the world as communities struggle to secure a clean, reliable supply.

One of the world’s most water-stressed regions is East Africa. Overexploitation of water resources there has been compounded by declining snowpacks on Mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya, which have shrunk since the late 1980s due to global warming. Meanwhile, Lake Turkana -- the world’s largest perennial desert lake -- has largely disappeared from Ethiopian territory, retreating south into Kenya.

In this light, the discovery of two significant aquifers in mostly arid Kenya by a Japanese-financed UNESCO project has been hailed as a potential game changer. The first, the Lotikipi Basin Aquifer, is situated just west of Lake Turkana. The second, the smaller Lodwar Basin Aquifer, is near Lodwar, the capital of Turkana county. The aquifers were discovered by a French firm, Radar Technologies International (RTI), using a space-based exploration technology called WATEX that was originally designed to reveal mineral deposits. The company blended satellite and radar imagery with geographical surveys and seismic data to detect moisture. Subsequent drilling by UNESCO confirmed the presence of aquifers. Three other suspected aquifers in the region have yet to be verified through drilling.

For parched and economically backward Turkana, more than one-third of whose residents are malnourished, the discovery of major groundwater reserves is a godsend. Not only will the reserves provide lifesaving water, they will also spur the development of agricultural and hydrocarbon sectors and improve the lives of the impoverished residents in this conflict-ridden region, which extends from Kenya into the borderlands of Ethiopia and South Sudan. More [Subscription]

 

© 2014

National Security by Robert Redford

 

 

© 2014

IPCC climate report: a route map for civilisation's greatest journey

The landmark UN report shows the affordable paths to averting a global climate catastrophe: now politicians must decide the route and who pays the fare

Jakarta traffic

If you are embarking on a long and essential journey, it really pays to book early. That is the key message from Sunday's landmark UN report that sets out the route to averting catastrophic climate change.

By starting right now to end the era of dirty fossil fuels and create a new world of clean energy, not only do you ensure you arrive at your destination – a safer world – but you also get the cheapest ticket. The report's message was as clear as a travel agent's advertisement: buy now or pay a premium later.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's chair, Rajendra Pachauri, drew on his early years as a railway engineer to drive the point home: “The high speed [carbon-cutting] train will leave very soon and all of the global community will have to be on board.”

But his IPCC colleague, Youba Sokona, a scientist from Mali and one of the trio who led the new report, was clear about the limits of the new plan: “We are the mapmakers: the [powerful] are the navigators.” He said the report is “telling truth to power”: the question now is whether the powerful want to listen.

The IPCC report sets out multiple possible routes. Some, based on renewable energy and cutting energy waste, are low-risk and comfortable, rather like a fast electric train. Other more circuitous routes, such as delaying action and then beingforced to suck carbon out of the air later, look more like a four-wheeled drive over a mountain range.

The IPCC has put a definitive map on the table and shown that the price of climate action is affordable. But the hardest choices remain in the hands of the powerful: which route to take and, even more difficult, who pays for the ticket.

The statements deleted from the final report summary, which is aimed directly at policymakers, reveal the political battles ahead. All mentions of transferring hundreds of billions of dollars a year from rich to poor nations to pay for going green were excised. Even the simple statement that 70% of all emissions come from just 10 big nations – think China and the US – was deemed too much like naming and shaming.

Nonetheless, many stark messages remain: all dirty fossil fuel use will have to end in the coming decades; huge stocks of coal, oil and gas will have to remain in the ground; countries and companies relying on fossil fuels may suffer big financial losses.

Choosing the route away from civilisation's looming climate car crash now falls to the world's leaders, with a deadline of December 2015 in Paris for a global deal. But they can no longer claim they don't know the way or can't afford the fare. As US secretary of state John Kerry put it on Sunday: “This report makes very clear we face an issue of global willpower, not capacity.” More

 

© 2014

The American people and the world must see that corporations have abandoned them

 

 

© 2014

IPCC Warns Of Greater Risk To Food & Water Security

AsianScientist (Apr. 11, 2014) – By T V Padma – The climate change-related risks from extreme events such as floods and heat waves will rise further with global warming, according to the second installment of the latest UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. This will aggravate food and water insecurity, especially for some of the poorest communities.

The report of the second working group of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), dealing with impacts, adaptation and vulnerability, and offering new insights into key risks due to climate change, was released in Yokohama, Japan.

“Nobody on this planet is going to be untouched by the impacts of climate change,” IPCC chair Rajendra Pachauri warned.

Christopher Field, the co-chair of the second working group, added: “We are not in an era where climate change is some kind of a future hypothetical. We live in a world where the impacts of climate change that have already occurred are widespread and consequential. There is no question that we live in a world that is already altered by climate change.”

The report highlighted many global shifts that climate change has already caused. It said that changing rainfall and melting snow and ice have affected water resources in many regions. Glaciers have shrunk, affecting run-off and water resources downstream. Permafrost is thawing, and wheat and maize yields have fallen in many regions.

The report also repeated warnings about shifts in species’ migratory ranges and the threats this may pose to food security. It also raised concerns about increased human displacement and resulting conflicts.

Impacts in Asia

Asia will be particularly hard-hit by water scarcity, food insecurity, the redistribution of land species and an increased risk to coastal and marine ecosystems, the report said. It predicts that South Asia will be the region most impacted by global warming, due to more extreme weather events such as floods and droughts.

It has “rung warning bells for Asia” and has “very serious implications” for South Asia in particular, said Chandra Bhushan, deputy director at the Centre for Science and Environment, a Delhi-based NGO.

A major reason for the greater impact in the region is its large population of impoverished people, said Bhushan. Bangladesh, India and Pakistan together account for almost half the world’s poor people, he said.

Purnamita Dasgupta, coordinating lead author of the report’s chapter on rural areas, and professor at the Institute of Economic Growth in Delhi, said that the impacts of climate change “will add to the existing vulnerabilities of people in rural areas, such as lack of access to water and infrastructure”.

“We could have more poverty shocks because the poor are already disadvantaged,” she said, adding that climate change acts as a “threat multiplier”.

With 70 percent of people in developing countries living in rural areas, the “rural poor would be impacted through reduced access to water” and “stand to lose whatever assets they have” with a rise in extreme events such as floods and drought, she said.

The report provides scientific evidence on how adaptation could reduce the risks that climate change will pose and how to manage those risks. “We now have enough evidence to show that adaptation is important,” Dasgupta said.

However, it is difficult at this stage to work out the costs of adaptation measures, as few countries are yet to practice it. Nonetheless, Pachauri agreed that the report highlights the urgent need for adaptation and “hopefully restores the balance between the need for both mitigation and adaptation measures” by countries.

He added that there is a huge dearth of local knowledge on the kinds of adaptation needed in particular locations, and on which local institutions could be fully engaged in adaptation policies, practices and corresponding cost estimates. “That is a real gap” in knowledge that experts need to work on, Pachauri said.

Some positive messages

Yet the report said that “adaptation is already occurring” to an extent, as some governments are beginning to embed it in some planning processes.

“One thing that we have come up with is the importance of adaptation and mitigation choices because this is the only way we might be able to reduce the risks of climate change,” Pachauri said at a press briefing.

Camilla Toulmin, director of UK-based research organization the International Institute for Environment and Development, said in a statement: “Some of the world’s least developed countries are already forging ahead. Ethiopia has committed to carbon-neutral development. Bangladesh has invested US$10 billion of its own money to adapt to extreme climatic events. Nepal is the first country to develop adaptation plans at the community level.” More

 

© 2014

Capitalism simply isn't working and here are the reasons why

Suddenly, there is a new economist making waves – and he is not on the right. At the conference of the Institute of New Economic Thinking in Toronto last week,

Thomas Piketty

Thomas Piketty's book Capital in the Twenty-First Century got at least one mention at every session I attended. You have to go back to the 1970s and Milton Friedman for a single economist to have had such an impact.

Economist Thomas Piketty's message is bleak: the gap between rich and poor threatens to destroy us

Like Friedman, Piketty is a man for the times. For 1970s anxieties about inflation substitute today's concerns about the emergence of the plutocratic rich and their impact on economy and society. Piketty is in no doubt, as he indicates in an interview in today's Observer New Review, that the current level of rising wealth inequality, set to grow still further, now imperils the very future of capitalism. He has proved it.

It is a startling thesis and one extraordinarily unwelcome to those who think capitalism and inequality need each other. Capitalism requires inequality of wealth, runs this right-of-centre argument, to stimulate risk-taking and effort; governments trying to stem it with taxes on wealth, capital, inheritance and property kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Thus Messrs Cameron and Osborne faithfully champion lower inheritance taxes, refuse to reshape the council tax and boast about the business-friendly low capital gains and corporation tax regime.

Piketty deploys 200 years of data to prove them wrong. Capital, he argues, is blind. Once its returns – investing in anything from buy-to-let property to a new car factory – exceed the real growth of wages and output, as historically they always have done (excepting a few periods such as 1910 to 1950), then inevitably the stock of capital will rise disproportionately faster within the overall pattern of output. Wealth inequality rises exponentially.

The process is made worse by inheritance and, in the US and UK, by the rise of extravagantly paid "super managers". High executive pay has nothing to do with real merit, writes Piketty – it is much lower, for example, in mainland Europe and Japan. Rather, it has become an Anglo-Saxon social norm permitted by the ideology of "meritocratic extremism", in essence, self-serving greed to keep up with the other rich. This is an important element in Piketty's thinking: rising inequality of wealth is not immutable. Societies can indulge it or they can challenge it.

Inequality of wealth in Europe and US is broadly twice the inequality of income – the top 10% have between 60% and 70% of all wealth but merely 25% to 35% of all income. But this concentration of wealth is already at pre-First World War levels, and heading back to those of the late 19th century, when the luck of who might expect to inherit what was the dominant element in economic and social life. There is an iterative interaction between wealth and income: ultimately, great wealth adds unearned rentier income to earned income, further ratcheting up the inequality process.

The extravagances and incredible social tensions of Edwardian England, belle epoque France and robber baron America seemed for ever left behind, but Piketty shows how the period between 1910 and 1950, when that inequality was reduced, was aberrant. It took war and depression to arrest the inequality dynamic, along with the need to introduce high taxes on high incomes, especially unearned incomes, to sustain social peace. Now the ineluctable process of blind capital multiplying faster in fewer hands is under way again and on a global scale. The consequences, writes Piketty, are "potentially terrifying". More

 

© 2014